Читать книгу The Wicked Awakening of Anne Merchant - Joanna Wiebe - Страница 7
ОглавлениеFIRST IT’S BLACK AND THEN IT’S BRIGHT. I’M RUNNING.
Someone has me by the hand. He’s shouting for me to hurry as he drags me over tangled roots and under sharp branches.
I realize I’m back in this world before I know I’m racing up from the shores of Wormwood Island, between its craggy trees, and toward its dark, beating heart: the Cania Christy Preparatory Academy, a stately campus of mossy stone buildings veiled in ocean mist and secrecy.
Oh, God. I’m back.
My heart’s pounding at double time.
I’m staggering. Lumbering. In bare feet.
“Come on!” Teddy hollers at me. I recognize his voice at the same time my eyes adjust to the bluish light. Sunlight through the trees. Sunlight trapped in swirls of low-hanging fog. I trip, and he yanks me back to standing, to running. “Wake up, Anne, before it’s too late. Before we’re there.”
Teddy. Teddy brought me back here. He was next to me in California only moments ago—or what seems like moments ago. And he was taking my blood, doping me, telling me—what was he telling me? My mind feels stuck back in that damn hospital bed, back with my body, back where I’m supposed to be. Remember. Think.
Ben helped me. Ben risked it all to help me escape Wormwood Island.
Ben Zin.
I’m back here, where Ben is. A silver lining I’ll think about later. After. After I wrap my brain around the here and now.
“Can’t you move any faster?”
“Teddy?”
“Good. You’re alert. Now hurry. He’ll be here any minute.”
“Teddy,” I repeat and stop suddenly.
He jerks my arm like it’s the leash of a disobedient dog. I pull back. He yanks again, harder. I free myself from his hold, stumble away, and stop cold against a tree. My feet sink into the chilly, wet earth of the forest floor. Standing here, feeling the ground beneath my feet, makes this all real.
My efforts with Ben were for nothing.
Flashes of last night—God, was it just last night?—strike me like furious fists. The glowing interior of Valedictorian Hall. That short-banged girl named Hiltop P. Shemese transforming into Villicus, and Villicus revealing he’s none other than Mephistopheles, the not-so-fictional devil who makes exchanges with humans. And then came Pilot Stone, my very own Judas, to help the devil do his dirty work. I see the vials—his, mine, beautiful Ben Zin’s—glinting in the firelight; I see myself grab them and flee, in flames, into the rain, up to the cliff. And then…and then Ben joins me, holds me, frees me. Kisses me. We jump. I vanish. Wake. And then Teddy…
“I need a sec,” I tell Teddy.
“I didn’t say we could stop!”
“I’m not asking.”
He’s panting when he halts to glare at me with those pale eyes of his. This demon-boy.
Behind him, the woods double and conflate. I brace myself against a tree, clear my head. I know what’s happening. I know I’ve just been vivified, created anew. I know Teddy’s got vials of my blood in his satchel.
I know all those things.
But I can’t intellectualize away the fact that I feel like my body, mind, and soul are bricks that have yet to be cemented together.
“Don’t give me that look,” I growl his way. “You’ve ruined everything.”
“Everything? You had nothing. What’s to ruin?”
“I was awake. After years in a coma, I was awake.”
“You’re not needed in California. I need you here. So does your mom.”
Teddy told me I had a purpose on Wormwood Island. Over the racing beep of my heart rate monitor and the slow drip of my IV, he said I should trust him, that my mom trusted him. My deceased mom. How could he know my mom?
“Why?” I ask him. “Why did you bring me back here?” And then I ask the question I should have been asking all along: “What don’t I know?”
“We could fill the world with what you don’t know.”
“Then start with the big stuff, Teddy. The life-and-death stuff.”
“We don’t have a moment to spare, Miss Merchant.” He goes for my arm again, but I jerk away. “You’re going to make this difficult?”
I hold his glare. “No more secrets. I’ll call my dad, tell him I’m being fed poison, and he’ll get me out of this coma faster than you can blink.”
“Don’t you realize Mephisto will bring you back? There’s no escape. He wants you here.”
“Why?”
“Naive little girl. Do you think he needs a reason for everything?”
“Yes.”
“Well, if you’re going to waste time,” he says. Kneeling, he swings his satchel down and rummages through it.
I glimpse two of my vials.
“Just two?” I ask. “You took three vials of my blood.”
“I sank one into the earth by the dock. I needed to vivify you. I thought you understood: this island is enchanted.”
“You mean cursed.”
“Enchanted, Miss Merchant. Those with the power to vivify the dead have enchanted Wormwood Island such that the moment a bone or a strand of hair or a vial of blood touches any part of the island, that person returns to life in an immaculate version of their past body.”
“Yeah, I know. The escape plan you foiled was kinda based on that whole idea.”
“I am not gifted with the talent to vivify merely by touching a vial, so I had to connect your vial with the earth. Now.” He tugs a heap of navy, gray, and yellow clothes out of his satchel and shoves them at me. Tall boots follow. It’s my Cania Christy uniform. “Put this on.”
“No.”
He looks up at me. His teeth are clenched. The kindness I thought I saw in him in my hospital room—the kindness that made me trust him for the faintest moment—has vanished like the dream it probably was. Only a monster would bring me back to this place, knowing what he knows about it. The vivified high-schoolers. The deaths narrowly escaped thanks to a devil’s trickery and outrageous sums paid by desperate parents. The cutthroat competition for a second life off this island, which is the reward given each year to one—and only one—valedictorian, the reward known as the Big V. I’m just a girl in a coma. I shouldn’t even be here.
I look at the uniform, held up to me like a peace offering when it’s anything but. I look at Teddy. My long, lanky, gray-skinned Guardian who seemed, until I woke to find him standing over my hospital bed, like just another Cania Christy garden-variety demon. Now I’m not sure.
“Put it on,” he repeats.
If my Cania education has taught me anything, it’s that you should never do something without getting something in return. That’s what Pilot taught me when he betrayed me. That’s the foundation on which Cania is built: tit for tat.
So I say, “One piece of clothing for one answer.”
“An exchange?”
I nod.
“Underclothes don’t count,” he says.
“Yes, they do.”
As he grumbles about the clock ticking, he pushes the ball of clothes into my hands and turns so I can drop my hospital gown; evidently, you vivify in the clothes you were last wearing.
After checking to be sure there’s no one around, I stand on the gown, rub most of the muck off my feet, and yank on my underwear, bra, and tights. I’m about to ask my first of three earned questions when Teddy whirls to face me again.
“Hey!” I hunch and cover myself with my balled-up uniform and boots. “This isn’t a peep show, dude.”
Ignoring me, he raises his hand and swirls it down as if he’s drawing a tornado in the air. I see a faint glimmer like a low-hanging cloud. It begins over our heads and curls around our bodies. When his fingertips pass my shoulders, the sounds of the island—croaking frogs, distant barking sea lions, the omnipresent wash of waves— vanish as if they’ve been sealed out, leaving us in a vacuum of silence.
Now we can be honest, he says. Actually, he doesn’t say it. His lips don’t even move.
“What the—” My voice is gone.
He shakes his head. Don’t speak to me, Miss Merchant. Think to me.
Think to you?
We’re in a silencer. It’s a common spell for preventing others—
Oh, the joys of being surrounded by devils.
—from overhearing a conversation. It gives voice to your private thoughts, but only for those within it. So, for God’s sake, don’t start fantasizing about Ebenezer Zin, that foolish boy who parades his eternal youth and beauty like—
Fine! I cut his tirade short. Where was I?
You’ve got three items on. So you’ve earned three questions.
First: Who are you?
My demon name is Ted Rier. I’ve been living in the underworld for the last 150 years.
Doesn’t seem long for a demon.
Is that your second question?
Definitely not. Okay, you said something about my mom trusting you. But if you’re a demon, how could you know my mom? I saw her in my hospital room. She looked more like an angel than, like, a dark soul.
You saw her?
Briefly.
He pauses. After she passed away, I met her soul.
My stomach knots. In Hell?
No, no, no.
Well, don’t scare me like that!
That’s three questions. Put on your shirt to earn a fourth.
I do. Where did you meet her?
Outside the realm of what you can understand. The spirit realm is very different from what you know here. The best way I can answer that question, Miss Merchant, is to tell you this: I’ve been masquerading as a demon.
I zip up my skirt and ask question five. So you’re telling me you don’t actually play for the devils?
I do not. I’m what you might call a secret agent.
I can’t help but smile.
Teddy scowls. I amuse you?
The only secret agents I know are, y’know, made in Hollywood. Like James Bond.
I don’t look the part?
My thoughts betray me: Not even in Bizarro World.
My sincere apologies, but the face and body you scorn are the visages that suit the tastes of Mephistopheles, whom I serve. I was once quite striking, I assure you. But physical beauty—
I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings…
—is hardly as interesting to Mephisto as the ways he can torture and manipulate a growing number of you simple-minded humans.
Got it. Sorry.
Which brings me to the point, if you can collect yourself for a minute, Miss Merchant.
I’m not even laughing! I barely smiled.
He glares at me. To answer your fifth question, I met your mother in secret when I was convening with the rest of the benign spirits aligned in our mission.
Which is… ?
Put on your cardigan.
Oh, for the love of…I hastily button the sweater. What’s your mission?
Our mission, Miss Merchant, is to stop the expansion of the underworld into this world.
So just a small mission, then.
Your mom specifically asked for you. She believes you can do this.
I saw that coming. Taking a deep breath, I nod. If it’s for my mom.
Very good. Mephisto’s reach is growing, in spite of his recent humiliations at your hand and the subsequent loss of at least one of the Seven Sinning Sisters. Now is the perfect time to strike. Or it will be, when we’ve built up enough supporters and we get the right plan in place.
Wait, who are the Seven Sinning Sisters?
He looks at the boots I hold, the last part of my uniform.
I tug them on. There. Boots count as two.
Boots count as one.
There are two of them.
They count as one.
After what you’ve done to me, Teddy, I’d say you owe me as many answers as I want. They count as two.
To my surprise, he relents. Two. Fine. The Seven Sinning Sisters are Mephisto’s most powerful followers. They are seven beautiful dark goddesses, each one a keeper of one of the seven deadly sins. They’re behind everyday destruction, making them exceptionally valuable followers Downstairs and here on Earth. He tilts his head. And now you’ve got just one question left. Hurry up with it. We’re wasting precious time.
But you hear my every thought! No matter what question I think, that’ll be it.
Suddenly, noises rush at me. I wiggle my jaw to pop my ears, and the low caws and sea lion moans that possess the island whoosh around us.
“Is that better?” Teddy asks.
I glimpse someone in the shadows. Both Teddy and I look in time to see Mr. Watso, dressed in fishing gear and looking 100 feet tall, sneer at us, growl a little, and trudge away. I haven’t seen him since the night his granddaughter Molly was cremated; he had to destroy her body because, if it remained on Wormwood Island, she would vivify—and Mr. Watso’s always seen the evil in letting a devil’s spell vivify the dead. The cremation happened the night after she was murdered—not for a crime, but for befriending me. Suffice it to say, I’ve made a lifetime enemy of Mr. Watso.
“Miss Merchant, we must hurry to campus.”
“Wait!” I’ve got to make this question worth it. But Teddy’s gritting his teeth like the world might end if I don’t spit out my next thought.
“Your question?”
“When I first came here, I—I didn’t wake up on the edge of the island. I was just suddenly at Gigi’s house, which is in the middle of the island. The first thing I really remember is waking up and getting dressed for school on my first day. But my head was clear. I knew everything I had to do, and I had this sense of where I’d come from and why I was here. I knew the name Cania Christy, and I knew Gigi. But, when I think about it, I don’t know how I could have known anything.” I look at him. “So how did that work?”
“That’s what you want to spend your last question on?”
“You rushed me!”
“You want to know more about vivification. You don’t want to know what’s become of Mephisto? Or who’s about to take control of Cania Christy?”
“There’s someone else in control?”
“You don’t want to know why your friend Molly allowed herself to be killed?” he continues in disbelief. “You don’t want to know if, after you destroyed the Stone boy’s vial, he’s gone Upstairs or Downstairs?”
“Now that you mention it…”
“You don’t want to know if Mr. Zin and his father are being punished for what the two of you did? You don’t want to know what punishment you’ll endure now that you’re back?”
God, I’ve really messed this up. There’s so much to know here, and it’s like I’m always a step behind. Teddy’s already glancing up-island, looking desperately through the trees toward something I know nothing about. So many secrets for such a small island.
“Just answer the question, Teddy,” I say in exasperation.
“I wasn’t there,” he reminds me, “but, as I understand it, you were vivified sometime in the early morning of your first day of school. Dr. Zin brought your vial to Gigi’s house, where Mephisto was waiting to vivify you and Star Wetpier was waiting to…” he hesitates, “rewrite your past. Your recent past.”
“Star Wetpier. The history teacher?”
“She’s a demon. Everyone who works here is either a punk— that’s what we call new lost souls—or a demon of some rank. Demons have powers, you see. Star’s gift is to rewrite the past. When you were in the initial fog of vivifying that day, she fed you details that kept you from questioning why you were here.”
“That’s a lot of work to get a coma victim into a snobby school for dead kids.”
“If you come with me, I’ll explain more.”
Teddy grabs me by the arm, and we’re running again. He tells me, in short gasps as we race to the road, what’s been happening in our absence. He knows because he’s bound to Mephisto, his master, who has brought him up to speed, like, telepathically or something.
“The underworld has been in an uproar since you and that Zin boy jumped off the cliff.” He charges on. “Mephisto has fallen from the status of devil to archdemon, which is still far above a demon but is, nonetheless, below where he once was. He’s been removed from Cania Christy.”
“What?”
“Gone. Until he can prove himself again, which will require him to rebuild his legions, he cannot lead this school.”
“We’ve got a new headmaster?”
“Don’t be too excited,” he warns. “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“Prepare for madness on campus. Everyone’s arguing, switching sides,” Teddy explains. “Alliances are forming and breaking. It’s chaos. And, yes, it’s all your fault.” He barely pauses for emphasis. “The powerless punks, scheming succubae, darkest demons— everyone that served Mephisto is questioning him. Your escape was like nothing seen before. Many of Mephisto’s followers lost faith in him—”
“Faith in a devil!”
Teddy shoots me a glare. “Everyone needs to believe in something.”
We bolt out of the woods and onto the road. The massive iron gates to Cania Christy loom ahead. I hear the commotion Teddy’s been warning me about: warring staff members trading sides and creating volatile new alliances.
“You should be safe now, though,” he says. “The demons won’t battle you. And the parents have all left.”
I happened to escape on one of the few nights of the year that parents are allowed to visit their kids—and my cries for help as I raced out of Valedictorian Hall, chased by Villicus and Pilot Stone, did not go unnoticed. Not that any of the parents raised a finger to help me. No, they closed their blinds and turned out the lights.
“What does that mean, I should be safe?”
Teddy’s breath is fast. “The parents see you as a threat. You killed one of their own. Pilot Stone.”
“He had it coming!”
“If that settles your conscience.”
He did have it coming. Pilot’s scheming ways could have jeopardized my life. It was him or me. None of the Cania parents would understand that. I’ve been an outsider among wealthy people all my life—first back in Atherton, and most definitely here. It’ll be a cold day in Hell before they take my side above one of their own.
“The new headmaster is about to arrive. I can feel him.” Teddy pauses to focus on whatever he’s feeling. I’m never going to get used to living among mystic oddballs like Teddy. “Oh, it’s him,” he says, seeing something I can’t imagine. “He’s the replacement. I should have guessed.”
“Who?”
“A liar. A terrible being. A devil we will destroy. Someone you should stay away from.”
“Who?”
Ignoring me, Teddy pushes through the gates of Cania Christy. We stumble into the closest thing to pandemonium this side of Hell. It’s late afternoon. In the half day that separated my departure from my return, the order of Cania Christy has collapsed into chaos as the school has found itself without a leader. An absent headmaster wouldn’t be a problem if the staff and faculty weren’t composed entirely—save Garnet Descarteres, my art teacher and Ben’s ex-girlfriend—of Mephisto’s legions. In his absence, they’ve gone off the rails. I watch as secretaries, Trey Sedmoney, and a teacher named Levi Beemaker board up Goethe Hall’s stained-glass windows. Below them, housedads, chem teacher Dr. Naysi, and my sculpting teacher ol’ Weinchler curse and throw anything they can get their hands on at the building. Near Valedictorian Hall, the janitor is fielding attacks from a cafeteria lady, who has broken a makeshift switch off a tree and is brandishing it.
“It’s so loud!”
At the opposite end of the quad, near the shore, student noses are pressed against the glass in the dorms, where most people must have been when the madness erupted. I search the crowd for the one face I most want to see. But he’s not there.
“It’s a wonder the parents escaped this madness. Come, to the quad,” Teddy says, pointing into the eye of the storm.
I follow him with my head down. Not just because I want to avoid the fighting faculty. But also because I get the sense that, among the student body, there’s a warrant out for my arrest. The coma girl who shouldn’t have been allowed here in the first place has caused more trouble than she’s worth.
I call after Teddy, “Why are they fighting like this?”
“Like I said, they’re choosing sides and forming alliances. Those who serve Mephisto are trying to defend themselves against those who’ve turned. This kind of upheaval isn’t rare Downstairs.”
“You mean in Hell?”
He nods as we back against a tree in the middle of the quad. And wait. Teddy keeps looking toward the Atlantic.
“This will all be different any second,” he says, and I hope he’s right.
But I’m not just hoping for peace. Or a new, better leader.
I’m hoping that, if and when this chaos subsides, I’ll see the boy I’ve been trying not to be too obvious about looking for. Ben Zin. His dad’s mansion is all the way on the other side of the woods, toward the village. Is he there now? Does he know I’m back? Is he, as Teddy suggested, being punished for helping me escape last night? Will I, too, be punished?
For the last few weeks, I was neighbors with Ben. I lived in the attic bedroom of a house that belonged to Gigi Malone, who sadly took her own life last night. She asked me to throw her body in the ocean, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I had to go to Valedictorian Hall, where my vial of blood was stored, and free myself. If I’d stayed, if I’d done what she’d asked, or if I’d gone to Ben’s like he’d asked, would this mess have happened?
“Who’s the new headmaster?” I ask Teddy. “You saw him?”
A woman’s shout interrupts me: “There he is!”
The hollering and smashing stops. We look toward the small dock just north of the dorms, just south of the cliff. There, a caravan of canal boats like you might see in Venice is being nudged against the dock by thick, burly rowers in red-and-white striped shirts. The men and women that fill the boats are dressed like members of the most spectacular circus; they begin, one by one, on shaky feet, to come ashore.
Students file onto the quad, veering away from the unstable staff as they do. I spot my archnemesis, Harper Otto, quickly; it’d be impossible to miss that red-haired Southern beauty queen, especially with her entourage of too-perfect followers. She sees me and mouths, “Murderer.” Behind her, someone I like even less—Hiltop P. Shemese, whom I didn’t expect to see again—shuffles out of the woods, smoothing her short bangs and bobbed hair as she flicks a glare at me, a glare that morphs into a thin grin. She offers a little clap for Teddy. Only when she’s turned back to the caravan do I smack Teddy.
“I thought you said Mephisto was gone,” I say. “Hiltop’s obviously still here.”
“Villicus is no longer in control of Cania. Even if he hadn’t been demoted, the parents wouldn’t have stood for it after seeing him chase a student down like he did you. But Mephisto will never leave this place, and so his avatar Hiltop remains.” He shoots me a pointed stare. “Until we destroy him—and his replacement—he will be here in whatever form he can skulk around in.”
“And how do you propose we destroy him? What’s the plan? I’m not exactly a demon slayer. Unless I can paint him to death, I’m not gonna be much help.”
“I don’t know the plan yet.”
“Sorry, what?”
“Patience, Miss Merchant,” he hisses. “You’re rushing like a common demon. We’ll work on it shortly. There’s time.”
“Here’s an idea: let me go home, and come get me when you’ve got a plan.”
He points hard at the people around us. “Don’t talk so loudly, and don’t look so familiar with me. I brought you back here against your will, remember?”
“How could I forget?”
“Well, then, you’re supposed to hate me. Play the part.”
That shouldn’t be a stretch.
“And remember,” he says so quietly I have to read his thin lips, “no one can know about my secret identity or our plan, when we create it. Tell them I put you in an unbreakable coma. Tell them whatever you must. Fight for the Big V to make them believe it. But do not let on that I’m involved in anything, Miss Merchant, or I will be killed. No one must know. Trust no one.”
“So I’ve gone from discovering secrets to keeping them?”
“Let’s hope so.”
Teddy stands on his tiptoes. Everyone is leaning and jumping to see over the heads of the crowd, to see the man of the hour. Playing the part of a loyal follower of Mephisto, Teddy grumbles that he thinks he can see “that egotistical little freak.” So our new headmaster has a big ego? I’m not sure that distinguishes him much from Villicus, who was anything but humble.
I watch Hiltop from afar and realize that I’d be a fool to believe that she—the only remaining avatar of Mephisto—is going to take this upheaval lying down; she’s probably already knee-deep in a plot none of us can imagine.
“Dia Voletto. He’s here,” Teddy whispers to me as he points at a man. “See his boldly tattooed arms—I believe you call those sleeves? That’s his mark; his followers wear tattoos the way Mephisto’s followers wear jewels. Those tattoos represent their powers.” He charges on. “Look at him. You’re not looking! Come, get closer and you’ll see little tick marks all over his body. That’s how he keeps track of his legions of followers. Anne, come. See your new headmaster. Tell me what you think of him.”
But I’m not paying attention to Teddy. Or to Dia Voletto. Or even to Hiltop.
Because Ben has just walked into my line of sight.
