The Wicked Awakening of Anne Merchant (23 page)

“And nobody touch a bite of this breakfast,” I add. “It’s mine!”

I glimpse their silver on display in a curio, and I start emptying that as Mrs. Otto whispers to Harper to call the cops.

“Call the cops?” I repeat. “Nobody’s calling anybody!”

“You cheap little bitch,” Mrs. Otto snaps at me. “Get out of our house!”

“Your house?” I stomp up to Harper’s stepmonster. “What did you do to earn this? Marry a man with money? This isn’t
your
house. These aren’t your pearls, those aren’t your horses in the stables, and this isn’t even your daughter you pretend to care so goddamn much about. You really care, you Botox-injected bitch? Then why do you let her stay at a school you know damn well is run by ‘people’ who can’t possibly be playing for the good team? Why don’t you ask her why she hikes her skirt up and constantly feels the need to display her G-string and bra? Here’s why! Because
you don’t care
! That’s why she’s there. Because you
never
cared.”

I’m seeing red and can hardly breathe when I find myself back at Cania Christy.

But I haven’t done lust yet. Wrath and greed are both done, but what about lust?

Then I realize where I’m standing. Not in a room with a bunch of other entranced Cania kids. But in Dia’s office. And Dia’s here, too; he’s leaning against his desk, and his gaze is fixed on me.

“It’s all come so easily to you,” he says. “You’re light-years ahead of everyone else. Even your little boyfriend Ben isn’t this far ahead, and he knows all about the Seven Sinning Sisters, doesn’t he?”

I’m winning?

“Are you real?” I ask.

“Do you wonder why it comes so easily to you?”

“You’re trying to slow me down, aren’t you?”

He smiles. “I want you to be honest with me.”

“If you’ll be honest with me.”

“Ask me anything, Anne, and I will tell you. But I cannot break the code of the underworld. I cannot reveal anything about a superior devil.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“You realize this is a foot race, right?”

“A superior devil?” I wrack my brain. “Do you mean Mephisto?”

“As I said, I can say nothing.”

Just like Pilot said! Damn demonic hierarchies. But what does Dia know about Mephisto?

“Why did you tell me to trust my PT yesterday?” I ask him. “I want the truth.”

“Because I wanted to give you a chance to win. But not because I want you to leave. Simply because it’s not safe for you here. And now,” his gaze rolls from my head to my toes and back again, making me want to slap him, “be honest with me.”

“About what?”

“How did you feel when I embarrassed you in the library in front of everyone?”

“You mean yesterday?”

He nods.

“Embarrassed. You hit the nail on the head. That’s how I felt. Now, can you put me in whatever task will make Luxuria happy so I can finish this race?”

“
Embarrassed?
”

I groan. “Did you hear anything I just said?”

“You said you’d be honest, Anne.”

“I am!”

“Then tell me how you felt. When I stood in front of you. And I moaned and told you to make me feel it.”

“Em-barr-assed.”

“But in fact you felt…?”

And then I realize.

How did I not realize?

“You think I lust for you?” I utter, unable to believe it.

“I know you do. You look at me.”

He pushes away from his desk and steps toward me. I back up.

“I look at you? Like when I’m painting you?”

“You’re attracted to me.”

“I think you’re a better looking dude than I’d like you to be, sure—”

“Exactly.”

“But I’m into Ben. Completely.”

“Then why am I here? Why did Luxuria put me in your challenge? They got Harper and her family right, didn’t they? You whipped through the first six parts of this with the greatest of ease. Could they have been wrong to finish with me as the object of your lust, the sin you should give in to?”

He’s backed me all the way against the door.

“Do the wrong thing, Anne,” he says. “Do what scares you. It’s the only way to succeed in life, or at least at Cania Christy. The right thing is usually just a cover for something wrong anyway.”

“I don’t know what—”

“Just do it. Do anything. Bite my lip. Suck my tongue. Surrender to lust.”

In a heartbeat, I grab his hair and kiss him, just cutting off the last of his words as I do. Our mouths are open; I’m stunned by how swiftly he envelopes me. A flash of light explodes behind my eyes, and I see something, feel something I haven’t felt since the night Harper screamed. It’s overpowering.

The sound of applause forces my eyes open again.

I am in Valedictorian Hall.

And I am breathless in the aftermath of kissing a dark lord, of doing the worst thing I could do just to win a stupid race.

M
AESTRO
I
NSULLIS BEGINS
playing the organ at the front of the hall as Dia and the Seven Sinning Sisters, all of them clapping, glance from me to an enormous projection screen covering the wall of vials. My face, hot with a blush, is showing on the screen. My name and year are at the bottom of it, and my status as winner for the junior class is confirmed in print.

I need to catch my breath.

I look away from Dia. Fast.

I’m surrounded by 200 unmoving students on gleaming pews. Well, 198 of us are unmoving. Hiltop, the fake student, is standing at the back of the room. I am the first actual student to burst, with a jolt, out of the trance. I am the first to escape the illusion. I am the first to wake from the Scrutiny.

“I won,” I whisper.

Molly sleeps a few people down from me, and Emo Boy is to my left. I turn to find Ben is with all the other seniors in the three rows behind mine. Their heads are down. I wonder what they’re each going through. Who they envy, who they lust after, what inspires their wrath, and if they’re going with or against the compulsion to sin in these minor, everyday ways.

Guardians are lined against the walls. Pilot sees me shake off the residual grogginess caused by the spell I just broke and storms out of the building. I spy Teddy, who stares blankly ahead, as if I’m invisible and not the winner for the junior class, as if I don’t have the option of leaving now and letting him do what he will without me. But he knows I won’t leave. He knows I wouldn’t let my mom down.

So what will I do? What will I ask for?

I laugh to myself. It’s so obvious. I’m going to give Ben a new life.

Smiling now, I take in the long, narrow, and ornately decorated room I haven’t seen in months, the room that’s supposed to be locked until graduation day. Candles flicker in sconces and from three massive chandeliers. Portraits of past valedictorians circle the perimeter of the room. At the front, with a new floating stage before it, stands the massive apothecary-style wall I know well; in each of its small locked doors are vials of blood belonging to the students of Cania Christy.

Dia arrives in front of me and takes my hand. It’s too soon for him to touch me. The memory of kissing him is too fresh. Does he know about it?

“Congrats,” he says casually. Maybe he hasn’t got a clue that he was
lust
for me? “I don’t think Hiltop’s impressed,”—we glance and find her scowling our way—“but it’s my school now, right?”

Molly wakes with a start, which Dia takes as his cue to leave.

“Beat you,” I say lightly to her.

“Why am I not surprised?”

We both look at Ben. Still no movement. But a boy near him—a senior named Toshio—starts shaking his head, waking. I grimace; why can’t Ben win this? He knows about the Seven Sinning Sisters! Toshio’s eyes, wet with tears, open.

Harper wakes just after Toshio does. She snorts hard at my picture on the screen.

The first freshman and sophomore to wake shriek uncertainly and then powerfully, getting up to dance little jigs on the spot when they realize they’ve won. Our photos rotate on the screen.

I’m watching Ben when his head lifts. It takes a moment before his gaze finds mine, and I wave. His face is flush, making me wonder if he finished with Luxuria’s challenge, too, and, if so, whether I was his object of lust or not.

“Am I first?”
he mouths. Frowning, I shake my head and point to Toshio, who is rubbing his face maniacally and sweating like the devil in a lightning storm. Ben shrugs then adds, “Are you the first junior?”

A smile spreads across my face, and his eyes light up. But darkness replaces whatever initial joy he may have felt. Because the question of the hour is, what will I ask for?

“So,” Molly says, nudging me, “you need to ask for unlimited wishes. Totally. If one of you four lunatics doesn’t ask for that, I’ll lose all faith in humanity.”

More people awaken, one after the other, some with shouts, some with tears.

When others block my view of Ben, I turn to Molly.

“Do you think the reward is transferable?” I ask her.

“Girl, you planning on giving me your prize?” She slaps at me. “I love you, but I couldn’t possibly! …Oh, all right, twist my arm. I’ll take it!”

“Molly.”

“Okay, I’ll be serious. Well, Dia said the winner can choose something for themselves.” She doesn’t look hopeful. “Freeing Ben would be, in effect, for you. So maybe.”

The teachers tell everyone to return to their seats as Dia and the Seven Sinning Sisters take the stage. The walls seem held up by Guardians, all but three of them expressionless.

Superbia claps her hands, and the twenty or so remaining students who hadn’t awoken open their eyes, lift their heads. Emo Boy, seated next to me, stares around like he’s in the wrong place and grinds his fists into his eyes until it seems he might rip his retinas right off; his eyes are red when he darts a glare at me.

I hadn’t given any thought to those who believed they were among the Lucky Ten. Now I wish I’d never seen Emo Boy wake. You can almost see hope drain like blood from his skin. He thought it was real. I wish I didn’t know that. I wish my imagination didn’t jump to how long he lay in bed, filled with certainty that he’d been granted a special prize. I wish I couldn’t hear his light sobs as everything he almost had vanishes. He innocently, naively hoped, never remembering that the only way to survive Hell is to abandon all hope.

Dia switches on the microphone.

“How was that for a challenge?” he says, panning the room with his arms out like Cristo Redentor. “Pretty cool stuff!”

The three other winners hoot, but Dia will be standing up there a long time if he waits for the rest of the room to warm up. They’ve all just tasted freedom. Many of them believed they were among the Lucky Ten and this entire ordeal was over.

“All right, all right, so.” He rubs his hands. “We’ve got four smart kids to congratulate, haven’t we? Now I know that whole Lucky Ten business is something we created for the challenge, but the reward I told you about yesterday—the prize these four kids are getting—is real.” He reads the labels on the vials Dr. Zin hands to him. “Please rise, Miss Shanta Penrose, Miss Jihong Wu, Miss Anne Merchant, and Mr. Toshio Ona, our winners.”

Molly whoops once as I join the other three in standing, awkwardly, among a crowd of desperate people who can only see me with hate. They loathed me for killing Pilot and despised me for being alive, and now their jealousy is palpable enough to paint the
room green. I’ve just taken a second life from someone who actually needed it.

“The winners will join me in my office, where I’ll reward them with anything they choose.”

I keep my gaze fixed on Dia as he leads the crowd in their halfhearted applause. He strides from the stage, trailed by the Seven Sinning Sisters, and motions for the four winners to follow them out of Valedictorian Hall.

Molly pats my arm as I pass her. Plum tries to trip me.

I’m in the center aisle when Ben and I lock eyes, and he nods his encouragement. So positive. So optimistic. Much too good for this place.

A wobbly Dr. Zin takes Dia’s place on stage. He is holding his black doctor’s bag and a large ring of keys I recognize.

“Wave good-bye,” Dia tells the four of us as, at the door, we form a small crowd behind him and the Seven Sinning Sisters. “If you’re going to ask for what I think you’re going to ask for, this is the last time you’ll see any of these people.”

I glance at Molly, who gives me a thumbs-up and throws me kisses. I look at Teddy, who has the greatest poker face on the planet and off. At last, as I near the door, I look at my beautiful Ben. He presses his hand to his heart, and I wish I could go to him. Then he mouths the three little words we’ve never actually said to each other.

That seals it. I thought I was certain before about giving this prize to Ben, but now I know there’s no other way: if Ben doesn’t get a second life out of this win, I’ll have to agree to his love-in-theafterlife plan. Ben’s life or bust.

fourteen