The Wicked Awakening of Anne Merchant (22 page)

I am one of the Lucky Ten
.

thirteen

THE LUCKY TEN

WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN, YOU ALMOST ALWAYS ASK,
Why me?
When good things happen, you’re just supposed to accept them.

Being selected as one of the Lucky Ten is definitely a good thing. The best thing. It means I’m free. I’m alive again. I can go home to my dad.

But I can’t help wondering why I was selected. Of all people, why me? I’ve only been at Cania four months, and I’ve managed, in that time, to cause nothing but trouble for the school and its leadership. Is this Dia’s way of thanking me for Mephisto’s removal as headmaster? Or is he so pleased with our mentoring sessions that he wants me to go be an artist in the real world? But we haven’t even finished his portrait yet! And he certainly hasn’t suggested that I’m ready to paint without coaching.

How could I possibly have qualified to be one of the Lucky Ten?

I sink into the bed. It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt.

I stare up at the white coffered ceiling with its pale purple accents. It’s almost exactly like the ceiling of my dorm, but it’s vaster and more detailed, with sparkling chandeliers that catch the sunlight through a long, cream-colored wall of four dormer windows.

I inch up. Look around.

White desk. Velvety drapes. Cream-patterned cushions on the window benches. Smaller lamps that look like chandeliers. Amateurish paintings in gold frames.

The aroma of breakfast sausages and fried potatoes hangs in the air, telling me I’m somewhere new, somewhere wonderful. Just as Dia promised for the Lucky Ten.

A familiar pattern catches my eye: a Hermès scarf draped over a lamp on the other side of the room.

“Just like Harper had,” I whisper and flop back in bed.

Harper told me once that she’d decorated our dorm room to look exactly like her bedroom back in Texas. Did Dia give me a new home that looks like Harper’s? Why would he do that?

Why am I here?

Did Dia somehow find out that Teddy’s a celestial secret agent? Did he connect the dots between me and Teddy? Does the underworld now see me as a threat? Would they actually see me, a comatose artist, as a threat, and send me away? I can’t believe that.

Like I’ve opened Pandora’s box, more questions explode in my mind. Hard ones. And easy, obvious ones. Like, what time is it? The sun is shining through the windows. Could be ten or eleven. Did I really sleep until ten? That’s not my style. Or did I wake late because Dia’s team was transporting me here and it took a while? And where the hell is here? And, really,
truly
, how did I qualify for this? If Dia suspected I was up to something, would he just casually ship me off the island? Seems awfully un-demon-like.

I force myself to sit up again.

I
must
be one of the lucky ones.

It’d be the first time in my life. Feels too impossible to believe.

But it’s obvious I’m in a new home, as Dia promised.

But why this home? Why a room like Harper’s?

I lie back again, as if compelled by the coziness of this king-sized bed, as if the only answer is to sleep. It’s hard to keep my eyelids open.

“Look closer,” I tell myself.

I have a brand-new thought: I’m not one of the Lucky Ten. This is part of the Scrutiny challenge.

My eyes pop open. I flip the covers off.

“There is no Lucky Ten.”

Maybe that whole Lucky Ten business was just a red herring, a way to keep us from paying attention to the fact that we were each waking in a room that’s…that’s actually part of the challenge. Could it be? Scrutiny challenges are puzzles, games—maybe mind games?

Nothing has felt right until now.

If there is no Lucky Ten, that means I’m in the Scrutiny challenge. I’m in a foot race. And the clock’s ticking.

“K, so, if this is a challenge, what do I have to do to beat it?”

We wouldn’t all wake in a room like Harper’s Texas bedroom. Everybody must have woken in their own version of this. Which means this room is significant to me somehow. Figuring this out has got to be part of it.

“The room’s not real,” I whisper. “It’s just in my head.”

Surely Dia and his team wouldn’t construct 200 distinct rooms—like movie sets—for 200 students. Unless they aren’t making a Cania College at all; unless I’m in the village now. I slowly pull myself out of bed and, with my feet sinking into the area rug, walk to the windows, thinking I’ll see Wormwood Island. But that’s not what I see at all.

“Horse stables.”

Stables, and not an evergreen-covered hillside in sight.

I go to the door. It opens easily. I expected it to be sealed, to be fake. But a long hallway outside it runs toward an ornate staircase in a house that’s Texas-sized. I close the door.

“So I’m not on Wormwood Island,” I say, returning to the bed, which doesn’t seem to want to let me leave it. I curl up under the duvet. “And this room—hell, this house—could be Harper’s.”

Those words sink in as my eyes close.

This house could be Harper’s.

I sit up. Of course it’s Harper’s! I’m in Harper’s house. But it’s only in my head.

Unless I
am
one of the Lucky Ten.

“God, Anne, make up your mind,” I mutter at myself. I drum my fingertips on the duvet cover. “Okay, if I’m one of the Lucky Ten—if that shit’s real—then it won’t hurt a bit for me to sit here and imagine that this might actually be part of the Scrutiny. Because I’ve got nothing but time if I’m free of Wormwood Island and in a new
house.
But!
If the Lucky Ten is a red herring, then I’ve gotta figure out this challenge immediately.”

The bed pulls me back. When’s the last time I felt this tired, this slothful? I don’t even have the energy to figure out what could be a critical challenge.

“That’s gotta have something to do with it,” I say to Harper’s ceiling.

I’m not slothful by nature. But Acedia, goddess of sloth, is. She could be influencing me right now. This whole challenge could be based around her. Or around all the Seven Sinning Sisters.

“This could be one part of a bigger challenge. A seven-part challenge.” It hits me what that means. “I’ve barely even started the challenge! Everyone else might have figured this out already.”

But how could they?

You’d have to know about the real identity of Invidia and the other six. Who would know that? Ben and I figured it out on our own; Molly would only know because I told her. Is everyone else screwed? Or are they all in different challenges? Or do they all know what I know?

“Don’t worry about anyone else,” I say.

But not worrying is just as exhausting as worrying. So I throw the covers over my head, close my eyes, and think of how much I want to stay in bed and waste the day away. I can feel myself nodding off, and it feels delicious. I open my eyes a sliver as I roll away from the sunlight—and I realize I’m not in bed anymore.

I’m sitting at a breakfast nook in a sunny kitchen. A table of breakfast dainties and savories is before me, and none other than Harper, her dad, and her stepmonster are seated with me.

Now I know. I know I was right.

I’m in a challenge. This is it.

But how did I get from Harper’s room to her kitchen?

It wasn’t until I stopped fighting my laziness that I got here. I had to give in to the lure of the sisters. Not resist, not do the opposite. I have to sin to win. I’ve already done what Acedia would do—I’ve preferred sleep over activity—so sloth is satisfied. Six to go.

“Pass the bacon,” Harper says to her dad.

She flips her straight red hair, and I feel that familiar twinge of jealousy. Envy, I think. This is Invidia’s handiwork; she’s put me in the
house of the person I envy most. There’s a reason
this
Harper doesn’t look like she used to, like she did before she was vivified; I wasn’t jealous of that girl the way I’ve been jealous of the vivified Harper.

The Otto family kitchen is at least the size of the second floor of our funeral home, and it could be pulled from the pages of a magazine; beyond the folding deck doors that are wide open, letting in a warm breeze, an Olympic-size pool sparkles crystal blue in the sunlight. Harper has so much; they have so much. How can one family have far more than their fair share while my hard-working dad and deserving mother had so little? It eats me up inside. I look at Harper merrily crunching on bacon, and I want her to be the overweight girl she was before. Because she’s not allowed to have everything
and
be beautiful.

Their housekeeper comes out of the butler’s pantry carrying a plate of croissants.

I think I’ve just graduated to gluttony. Because I hit envy out of the park—it was easy.

There’s no question in my mind that a solid handful of the top students back at Cania are figuring this out, too. Even if their PT isn’t to look closer, and even if the whole school isn’t privy to the true identities of Invidia, Superbia, and their five sisters, they’ll be working their way through this challenge fast because it only takes doing the sin to move along in the challenge; you don’t have to be conscious that you’re even participating in the game.

So I attack the plate of croissants. Just tear through them like I’m at an old-school pie-eating contest. One after the other. Barely chewing. Washing the buttery bread down with milk, coffee, juice, everything they have on their table. A stack of pancakes follows. And fruit salad. Everything must go.

Harper and her parents are staring at me. I didn’t know they could see me. They’re an illusion, of course; obviously, Harper isn’t home with her family—she’s at Cania with the rest of us, probably sitting in some classroom, motionless, under a spell in which we’re only virtually doing all of these things.

“What?” I ask them with my mouth full.

“Are you okay, dear?” Mr. Otto’s looking at me over the top of his reading glasses. His newspaper is flipped down.

“You’re not real,” I tell them. “None of this is real. So zip it and let me get gluttony out of the way.”

“Sweetheart, are you”—Mrs. Otto pauses and glances with concern from Harper to me—“are you hungry?”

“Obviously.”

Mr. Otto’s face softens. “Is it your parents? Your dad doesn’t make enough money to feed you, isn’t that right?” He puts his paper down as I stop slurping my coffee long enough to pay attention. “Let us help you. We can give you the money you need for food, clothing, an education.”

“Help me? I don’t need your help.”

“It’s as if you haven’t had a decent meal in months,” Mrs. Otto says, tsking in pity.

Even Harper looks concerned for me.

Irritated, I shove away from the table. “I don’t need anyone’s help. I can do everything myself. I always have. I always will.”

Without realizing it, I’ve passed gluttony and moved swiftly through pride. Back at Cania Christy, if the Seven Sinning Sisters are watching me, Superbia, Invidia, Gula, and Acedia can check me off their lists. There’s only Avaritia, Ira, and Luxuria—or greed, wrath, and lust—left.

I waste no time.

As Mr. and Mrs. Otto watch in stunned silence, I clutch the string of pearls encircling Mrs. Otto’s neck. I’m about to yank them off. I’m all set to fly through the greed test. But her eyes are so wide with fear, I can’t help but utter the faintest apology for what I’m about to do.

Which lands me back in Harper’s bed.

“What the hell?” I snap at the ceiling.

How frustrating is this?

I wasn’t remorseless with that sin, so I’m back to square one? Just because I was apologetic. Just because I didn’t let the Seven Sinning Sisters get the better of me. Just because I let a little humanity shine through, which is a no-no in the land of devils and a surefire way to fail at the Scrutiny.

“Fine!” I shout at the sisters, as if they can hear me. Maybe they can. “Fine, I’ll do it your way. I’ll be the vilest little excuse for a human that ever walked through this house.”

I whip the blankets over my head. Dutifully, I say, “I wish I could spend all day in bed.”

I open my eyes expectantly.

But I’m not in the kitchen.

Dammit!
I don’t have time for this. Which is part of the problem. To pass Acedia’s test, I need to be lazy as all hell. Legitimately lazy. I need to
not
think about time; I need to drag my ass through life, languishing away.

With a deep breath, I close my eyes again. And let myself really sink into the pillows, really wrap in the warmth of the duvet. I push out thoughts of moving fast, of winning, of the other kids crossing the finish line, whatever that line looks like, and focus on how tired I am. And I
am
tired. I even yawn. It occurs to me that winning the Scrutiny isn’t a big deal. No, it’s far better to spend as much time as I can in this bed. It’s beyond comfortable.

I am sitting in the kitchen.

I smile. Perfect.

Enviable Harper is next to me. The platter of croissants follows. Mr. Otto looks like he could cry for me, and I am filled with pride, which makes me want to knock them down to size. So I wrap my fingers around Mrs. Otto’s necklace and, this time—without even a sense of hesitation—yank hard. It pops, Mrs. Otto yelps, and I race after a handful of loose pearls that get away, collecting them all greedily.