The Wicked Awakening of Anne Merchant (13 page)

She nods.

“What is desirable about saying such hateful things to Miss Merchant?”

She looks down at her workstation.

“Whose PT is to attack others publicly? Whose PT is to spread rumors and lies?”

Everyone looks down.

“Meanwhile, Miss Otto is perfectly enacting her PT. She couldn’t be more desirable in her quiet defense of Miss Merchant.”

I glance at Harper. She looks as surprised as I feel.

“Choose your enemies carefully,” he warns us as he sits again. “Who’s next?”

It’s not until after class that I start to recover from hearing the long list of deaths I’ve been closely tied to. I’m packing up my stuff when I notice Dia standing in front of me, a playful grin teasing the corners of his lips. If he wasn’t a demon and Ben wasn’t my boyfriend, I could see possibly—maybe—only slightly, of course— having a teensy tiny crush on him.

“Anne, I have a question for you.”

I look at where my watch would be if I wore one. “I’ve gotta get to my next class. Can it wait?”

“You have a spare minute now.” He knows my class schedule. Why does he know that? “Look, instead of trying to wriggle your way out of talking privately with me, let me make this easy. Walk with me to Goethe Hall, and I’ll let you make a phone call. As a reward.”

“I can call my dad?”

An unexpected phone call? He’d freak!

I agree, and we start toward Goethe Hall.

“It sounds like you’re close with your parents,” Dia guesses.

“Pretty close. I’m an only child.”

“Of course you are.”

Whatever that means.

“I have a proposition for you,” he says.

“I’m not really the propositioning type. You might want to try Harper.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he says with a laugh. “Anne, remember a few weeks back when we talked about beauty up on that cliff ?”

Vaguely.

“Well, I’ve been thinking about it since. And today’s class gave me an idea.” He pauses like he’s waiting for me to guess. “I’d like to mentor you.”

“Mentor me?”
Quoi?
“In what?”

“I’ve been a great admirer of art for, well, a long time. You’ve got potential. Untapped potential. So,” he tilts his head bewitchingly, “will you let me coach you?” He leans in close enough that his aroma floats around me, and I’m extremely disappointed to find he is
sans
the brimstone odor most demons skunk up rooms with. “I’d like you to join me every Saturday, starting tomorrow.”

“So soon?”

“Yes. You’ll paint me. A beautiful painting we can hang in Cania College. Something real. Raw.”

“Every Saturday?”
Nooo!
Find a way out! Make up an excuse! “Um, sure, that sounds…great.”

Sonuvabitch!

“Great.”

We’re standing outside the front office, inside of which Kate Haem and Eve Risset are watching us like odd-looking birds.

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning. Nine o’clock. In my office. Enjoy chatting with your father.”

I do. Even with Kate and Eve obviously eavesdropping on me, I get a kick out of surprising my dad. He picks up on the first ring, and he takes a while to convince that I’m allowed to be talking to him; rule breaking is his biggest fear, understandably.

“Dad, seriously, the new headmaster let me call you.”

“Headmaster Voletto? Well, he seems to be a decent guy, punkin’.”

“Yeah,” I say, turning away from my eavesdroppers, “he’s surprisingly great.”

T
HE SUN IS
setting. Ben’s holding my hand and leading me through the brush on the southwest side of the island, where Mr. Watso lives in an ice-fishing tent in a frozen-over inlet. Because Ben and Dr. Zin
lived on the island for so long, they got to know Mr. Watso fairly well, and they weren’t punished for their relationship because they weren’t technically breaking a rule: Dr. Zin and Mr. Watso often fished together off the island, where Mephisto’s rules don’t apply. But ever since Ben became a student and Dr. Zin was forced to live off the island—in a yacht just offshore—they haven’t seen Mr. Watso much.

So now, according to Ben, Mr. Watso has invited us,
even me
, to join him for some ice fishing this evening. I strongly doubt my name was on the guest list. But Ben insists.

“His ice-fishing tent is probably too far off the shore,” I say to Ben. Half-frozen muck keeps sucking my boots into the ivy-spotted forest floor. “We’ll get more than a few feet away from the power of Wormwood, and we’ll end up on the shore again. Like when we jumped off the cliff and you reappeared on the island.”

“His tent is practically on the hillside.”

“This isn’t gonna work.”

“You have to be a good ten feet from land to vanish and reappear on land again.”

“More like five feet.”

“More like ten. I know what you’re doing. And you’re not getting out of this that easily.”

“
Please
go without me,” I say, pushing branches out of my way. I let a branch go too early, and it flings a wet leaf into my mouth. Ben doesn’t see it go in or get sputtered out. “Mr. Watso hates me.”

“He doesn’t hate you. He’s dealing remarkably well with Molly’s death.”

“Her murder, you mean. The murder for which I’m responsible.”

“That was between the Watso family and Villicus. You weren’t involved.”

“Mere technicality.”

“Just be nice, and he’ll be nice. A bit of time has passed since Molly died. Six weeks. If he held something against you, I think he’s forgiven you.”

I tug back on his hand. “I don’t know, Ben. I feel icky about this. Six weeks is no time at all. I’ve seen how long it takes people to mourn—”

“
Anne
.” He stops and takes my gloved hands in his. He’s lovelier than ever with the cold ocean wind nipping his cheeks and the desperate need to convince me lighting his eyes. “Okay, you got me.”

“I what?”

“This was supposed to be a surprise. Tomorrow is our two-month anniversary, and I wanted to celebrate by having a proper dinner with you, me, my dad, and Mr. Watso.”

“Wait, it’s our…what?”

“
A-a-and
since Dad’s here tonight but leaving tomorrow, I thought you wouldn’t mind if I shifted the dates a bit.”

“You’ve been keeping track of our anniversary?”

“Well, yeah.”

I
haven’t been keeping track!

“Of course,” he says, “we actually met five years ago, but that’s not the same.”

I watch him in awe. “No wonder Garnet hates me so much.”

“What do you mean by that?” But he’s blushing. He knows what I mean. He’s constantly catching me marveling at his profile, or ogling our blurring, entwined hands as we sit on the beach together, or admiring him when he spouts off some line from a book. He is a wonder. “I’m a cheese muffin, aren’t I?”

“You’re a romantic, Mr. Zin.”

“Is that better or worse than a cheese muffin?”

“It’s lower fat.”

“Anyway,” he says with a small smile and a sigh, “will you come with me now? My dad’s dying to get to know you. And Mr. Watso is honestly totally fine with you. He might even like you.”

“I can’t believe you had this plan all cooked up.”

“I love a surprise.”

“I’ll have to pay you back one day.”

He taps his lips. “I’ll take an advance payment.”

“You are
definitely
a cheese muffin.” I kiss him. “Who even says that, ‘cheese muffin’?”

“Chalk it up to my old age.”

I kiss him again. And, when he doesn’t pull away, I take that as an invitation for more. Since the night he told me he wanted to take things slowly, we’ve been like a nun and her priest. Well, not
totally. We hold hands and stuff. In fact, we hold hands so often, we’re becoming extensions of one another. But you could set a three-second stopwatch by our kisses.
One, two, three, pull back!
So it’s a major step that, at least ten seconds into this kiss—not that I’m counting—Ben’s not only failing to pull away, but he’s actually leaning into me, and his hands are exploring a little below the “safe zone” of my lower back. I feel his lips part, and I hear my name on his breath, and I dare to tug a little at his hair in response, just enough to raise his chin and expose his throat to my mouth.

But then an owl hoots somewhere in the woods. And Ben, with an awkward laugh, pulls away. His skin is red with heat, and his eyes are luminescent; I know he doesn’t want to stop, but hell if I can convince him we can go slow without going at a snail’s pace.

“So the thing of it is,” he says, taking my hand and turning us back on our path toward the small inlet where Mr. Watso lives, “my dad’s yacht is anchored just at the outskirts of the inlet.”

“Oh?” As if my head is anywhere near this conversation. If I ever find that damn owl…

“Yeah. He can basically jump off the boat, swim a few strokes, and climb up the shore.”

“Not that he would, though.”

“No, not that he would.”

“ ’Course not.”

“Yeah.”

Oh, God, is this how it’s going to be for the next six months? The fake chatter to mask what we’re really thinking, what we’d rather be doing? I could honestly care less about his dad’s boat.

“Here we go,” Ben says. “He lives right…about…there.”

Ben and I push through the last of the woods and find ourselves on the top of a semi-circular hill surrounding Mr. Watso’s small, private enclave. The water is frozen-over here, and pale brown driftwood pops out of snow-dusted ice, creating the sense that we’re standing next to the world’s largest piece of almond bark, as if the ruler of this island is Willy Wonka and not a devil. A blue tent sits on the ice below, butted up against the snowy hill; it’s Mr. Watso’s ice-fishing shack—a good one, the kind money buys.

Just beyond the opening of the inlet, the yacht Ben’s dad lives on bobs below a layer of fog. It’s at least ninety feet long and two stories
high, and it can’t be more than a year or two old. Written on its side is
Forever Tallulah
. My stomach drops. Tallulah Josey’s parents must have surrendered that boat in exchange for her admission to Cania, and now she’s expelled, thanks to Harper.

Ben catches me looking at the yacht.

“The whole bottom of it is refrigerated,” he says. “To hold hundreds of vials our dads have collected, with plenty of room for more. They renovated it to make it hypothermic. Medical grade. So the blood won’t spoil.”

“They’re storing backups of the vials in Valedictorian Hall?”

“No,” he says, staring pensively at the boat. “Have you wondered why Hiltop would stick around if she’s not even allowed to run Cania anymore?”

“Of course.”

We start inching our way down the steep hill, which is thick with soggy snow; multiple sets of footprints have etched a path for us, a zigzagging line of green down a canvas of white.

“The bottom of that yacht is filling up with the vials of people who haven’t died yet.”

“Living people’s blood.”

“Yup.”

“So, let me get this straight—let me think with my Demon Hat on. If I were in the business of vivifying the dead, why would I start collecting the vials of living people?”

“And keeping them close to shore,” Ben adds.

Why would Dia do that?

Damon Smith is why. I remember his vivification gone wrong. Too much time had passed between his death and their attempts to vivify him.

“Your dad’s yacht is just far enough from shore to prevent accidental vivification…”

“…And just close enough to get a vial onto the island without so much as a minute passing.”

So the vials containing the blood of the living are like insurance policies. “Kids that haven’t died yet get to know their vial is just feet from shore. As soon as they die, they can be vivified here.”

“Adults, too.”

“Adults, too?”

“If someone pitched you on a new life for your kids, don’t you think you’d want one for yourself, too? At least as an option?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Well, the rest of the free world would.”

“I doubt that.”

“You should read ‘The River Styx Runs Upstream,’” he says. “The market is
limitless
. Hiltop’s here because she—Mephisto— wants to expand. Cania was taken from her, but that’s just one small school on one large planet. Mephisto will expand. Cania College is just the beginning.”

“But Cania College was Dia’s idea, not Mephisto’s.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ve given up feeling sure about anything.”

We’re standing at the zipped-up door of Mr. Watso’s ice tent. Ben takes off his glove and scratches his fingertips over the material in lieu of knocking, calls, “Knock, knock,” and we wait.

“If I’ve learned anything about Mephistopheles in my years under his tyranny,” Ben whispers, “it’s that he is always a step or two ahead of the rest of us. If you ask me, I think Mephisto wanted Dia here. Sure, he got in trouble Downstairs, but he used that to his advantage. He lured Dia here to babysit us, which is giving him the time and freedom to expand.”

“But Mephisto didn’t know Dia was coming. He didn’t know the disruption you and I would cause.”

Ben shrugs. “I’m just saying. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mephisto gives Cania College to Dia to placate him, gets his baby, Cania Christy, back, and finds a new island where he can build an elementary school, a retirement home—hell, an entire town. Full-on expansion. In a world brimming with people who are terrified of death. Mephisto’s going to take all those vials my dad’s living with and, when their owners die, give people life all over the world. For a price, of course.”

“Dia sent Teddy away to look for new locations.”

“How do you know that?”

“I was there when it happened.”

Ben rolls his eyes. “See?” He scratches the tent again. “Where’s Watso?”

“Did we get the time wrong?”

“Maybe. My dad’s not even here,” he says. “Come on. Let’s go throw rocks at the yacht. Make some noise. He’s gotta be in there— probably passed out drunk.”

“
Ben
.” I hate when he makes light of his dad’s alcoholism.

“Hey, if you can’t save yourself, might as well destroy yourself, right?”

“I’m not much of a fan of your new philosophy. Especially when you
can
save yourself.”