The Wicked Awakening of Anne Merchant (18 page)

“Do you wanna know why I’m so sure that piece of junk isn’t worth my time, kid?”

The worst thing is playing along with questions like that. Of course I don’t want to know. Especially not when he calls me
kid
.

“It’s because,” he swings his bare feet down and waits until I return his stare, “you’re in a bad mood. You’re obviously in a bad mood about something—probably Ben—or it could be Christmas without your dad—and here you are grinding your teeth.”

“Mad about Ben?”

He smirks.

“Is something funny?” I ask.

“You don’t think that maybe you and Ben are a little poorly matched?”

I swallow. “Why would you say that?”

“Forget it.”

“Tell me.”

I wait for him to tell me Ben’s flawless. And privileged. And meticulous to the point of OCD. While I, in comparison, am too tall, too thick-waisted and thick-legged, too wild-haired, too poor with teeth that are too crooked. But he doesn’t say any of that. He says something much worse.

“You’re not meant for him.”

ten

THE MUSE

I KNOW NOW THAT I’M GETTING TOO CLOSE TO THIS DEVIL
called Dia Voletto. I know that because, like a good little devil, he’s found my Achilles heel, the gap in my armor, and he’s driven his sword into it.

“Come on, Anne,” Dia says to me. “You must know you’re meant for someone much better than that simple Zin character.”

“If you could please. Stop.
Moving
.”

“You’re angry.”

“I just think you need a better sense of boundaries.”

“Then take it out on the canvas.”

“Don’t act like you’re getting under my skin just to motivate me to paint better.”

“Take your feelings out on the canvas.”

“But I’m painting
you
,” I snap. “I’m not painting my feelings.”

With a laugh, he claps his hands together and grins behind the temple they form. If he expects better than a glare from me, he’s
beyond
out of touch.

“Now I know exactly what you’ve been missing,” he says.

“I’m sure you think you do.”

“Narcissism,” he says, his eyes twinkling.

“Says the demon version of Narcissus.”

“Anne, listen to me carefully.” His eyes, already dark, seem to blacken. “Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait
of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the painted canvas, reveals himself.”

“That was eloquently put.”

“It should be. It’s straight from
The Picture of Dorian Gray
. The beauty of the portrait of Dorian Gray was not his at all, but the desire of Basil, the artist.”

“I haven’t read that book.”

“You ought to. It will help you.” He adds, with a smile, “And it’s very sexy.”

“You talk about sex too much.”

“Says the virgin.”

He strides over to observe the rendering of his lean, tattooed body on my canvas. As he hunches next to me and pensively taps his finger on his lips, his loose button-up grazes my arm. I shift away.

“You don’t know anything about me and Ben,” I say.

“About Ben, no. But about you, yes.”

“About
relationships
.”

He lowers himself elegantly to the floor and crosses his brightly colored arms around his knees, looking up at me as he does.

“You think I haven’t had relationships? Look at me, Anne. Do you think I’m unfamiliar with girls falling in love with me?”

“Nice ego.”

“A girl like you ought to have my confidence. Or does Ben hold you on too high a pedestal to touch you the way beautiful women deserve to be touched? No, this must be it: you both scrub down with bleach, head to toe, before you can, what’s the word? Snuggle.”

Exactly the words to make me drop my brush in the birdbath and pull off my smock. He sees me get up to leave, and he laughs a little more. But he doesn’t try to stop me. Not physically, at least.

“I had a serious relationship once,” he says. “She was lovely. Well, to be honest, she was a tease who tormented me.”

I grab my book bag. “I thought we agreed to be…not like that.”

“Like what? Personal?”

“Inappropriate.”

“I’m not trying to seduce you. I’m trying to talk to you. I forget sometimes that you’re so young. Please,” he says, tugging my bag from my grip and gesturing to the chair I’ve just abandoned. “Sit.”

Reluctantly, I teeter on the edge of my seat.

“Her name was Gia,” he begins. I glance at his
Dia
+
Gia
tattoo, which is the only one he never changes. “She was the most powerful underworld goddess. The Seven Sinning Sisters served her. Every incubus and succubus in existence served her. As did witches, familiars, all of them. She was particularly good at claiming the souls of men.”

“She was a succubus?” I ask.

“She started as one, but she became a goddess. She was at least as powerful as Mephistopheles, and twice as powerful as I.”

“Did you leave her behind in the underworld to come here?”

“She left me. Just like Ben will leave you.”

“Seriously, I don’t want to talk to you about Ben.”

“Why not? Because you only want to do what’s safe? Even if you did talk to me about him, you’d do it in the safest possible way, wouldn’t you?”

“I guess we’ll never know.”

He shoves his hands through his hair and messes it wildly. He’s beaming when he looks at me again.

“The
unsafe
reality is the one you need to explore, Anne!” he proclaims. “The one where humans are darker than Lucifer himself. The one where a demon
is
a human. The one where nothing is black or white and we are more than the places we come from yet inevitably and tragically tied to them.”

The unsafe reality. It’s a terrifying reality, one I’ve been avoiding since the day my mother was diagnosed with rapid-cycling bipolar disorder. It’s becoming clear to me that I’ve exchanged my artistry—who I am—for the safety and comfort of a normal life. Is there such a thing? If all life comes in shades of gray and we can be just as evil as demons—I mean, I killed Pilot, and I truly haven’t felt a twinge of regret since—then perhaps normalcy is simply an unattainable illusion, a mirage.

The sound of paper tearing interrupts my thoughts.

“I like this,” Dia says, pushing against my knee to lift himself. He waves a sketch at me. It’s from my sketchbook. He was going through my bag. “I’m taking this. This is passion.”

My heart stops when I see the sketch. It’s the girl I drew outside of Lou Knows’ room. The girl I saw in the mirror.

“No,” I say, grabbing but just missing it.

Like a child with an idea, he backs away slowly, grins, and lets his eyes roam the page as I protest.

“You can’t have that. It’s not yours.”

“
This
girl is not in a silly, prudish little uniform,” he says. “This is raw.”

“Give that to me.”

I snatch it, but he tugs it from my grip and catches my fists almost at the same time, then locks them between the fingers of one hand, showcasing his otherworldly strength. I try to free myself. His grip refuses to give, and his gaze feasts on the girl with the tail.

“She’s beautiful,” he says. “She’s your muse?”

Mortified, I shake my head. “I don’t know what she is.”

“She’s an enchantress. A goddess. Just missing her wings.”

Thoughtfully, distractedly, he releases my wrists and settles onto the chaise, still looking at the woman in my sketch. He dismisses me without another word, and it’s only when I’m in the hallway outside his office that, beneath a disturbingly beautiful Beksinski, I steady myself against the wall and pray that my proximity to demons is not, somehow, transforming me into an underworld goddess.

“I’M
SORRY WE
don’t have a tree,” Ben says. “And I wish our dads could be here.”

It’s Christmas Eve. Ben and I are walking hand in hand under a still, starless, and cold gray sky through what was once the village. On Ben’s mind is the sad absence of twinkling lights, green garland, silvery wrapping paper, and all the signs of this time of year, a time he loves with an enthusiasm he reserves for only his favorite things, of which he has few. On my mind is the Scrutiny—it’s a few days away, and it’s Ben’s big opportunity to up his game and elevate his status in the Big V competition. He’s asked me to stop thinking about it, stop talking about it, but that’s an impossibility. Every moment with Ben is a reminder of how few we might have left.

“We can
pretend
our dads are here,” I suggest. “I used to pretend Christmas was different all the time. Didn’t you?”

“Different how?”

“Different like—well, Christmas was always busy for my dad. Suicides, post-party car crashes, Christmas tree fires. But his staff would take their holidays. So my mom would have to help him with one funeral after another.”

“You spent Christmas alone?”

I smile at him as he lifts our joined hands to kiss mine. We’re both wearing mittens, so he presses his lips to wool, not skin. “Don’t cry for me, Argentina,” I say lightly.

“Now I
really
wish we could celebrate Christmas properly.”

Enormous construction spotlights shine on the fully framed Cania College. The hammers are down and the chain saws are off for the first time in months.

“It’s starting to look like a real school,” Ben says. “I think there’ll be more moss than ivy on its walls, though.”

“Maybe there’s a way for you to go to Cania College after graduation,” I suggest. We head back onto the road north. “Or you could
try
to win the Scrutiny. Let’s pretend you wanted to try. Just entertain the idea. What would you do next? How could we make that happen?”

“You know what I’d like to pretend?” Ben says.

“That I’m okay with my boyfriend having a death sentence?”

He stares into the puff of white his breath makes. “I’d like to pretend we’re in New York City for some Christmas shopping.”

“Sounds fun.”

“And we just went to see a show on Broadway. Something Christmasy. A ballet.” He checks to make sure I’m watching him, which I am, which I always am. “Tomorrow, we’ll be flying home to spend the holidays with your dad. You’ve been talking about how quiet he can be throughout the year but how he seems to come alive as soon as you put that record on for him—that Christmas one by that weird European group.”

“Boney M.”

“Exactly. And I’ve been acting like I’m not afraid of offending him somehow and turning the two of you against me forever.”

“This is a detailed daydream, Mr. Zin.”

“And it’s nighttime, of course,” he says, refusing to let my reality check pop his expanding bubble, “because New York is
almost
beautiful enough to deserve you when it’s all lit up. And we’re walking
through Times Square—the lights are so garish they’d be offensive if it wasn’t Christmastime. People are hurrying around us, running off to see their families, and there are no bad moods.”

He looks at me. Expectantly.

“And you and I are on our way back to our hotel room…,” he prompts.

I’m silent. Silent girl on a silent night.

“We just saw
The Nutcracker
,” he continues when I add nothing. Squeezing our hands together, we meander up the road, and the woods thicken on either side of us. “You, Miss Merchant, liked it a lot more than I did.”

“I did?”

“You did, yes. And after the show, we went to this place in the-Theater District that’s supposed to have the most amazing flourless chocolate cake. You’d heard about it from an art critic who’s been hounding you to let him host a show for you. With maybe a few of my pieces on display, too. Anyway, we took his recommendation and went for dessert.”

At last, I decide to play along, to help Ben shape this vision that will never be.

“And, lemme guess, I liked it more than you did?” I ask.

“What can I say? You’re all the sweetness I need.”

“
Sooo
,” I say, laughing off his cheesiness and trying to fit myself into his imaginary world, “we walked back to our hotel. Even though I wanted to catch a cab.”

“Because you’re in heels.”

“You said it was too nice to catch a cab. You insisted we walk.”

“You look amazing in those heels, by the way.”

“Why, thank you.”

“And what do I say when you
reluctantly
agree to walk with me?” he asks me.

“You say…if all else fails, you’ll carry me.”

He smiles. “Hop on.”

I laugh. “Right.” But he’s serious—he wants me to get on his back. “Ben, I’m heavier than I look.” I’ve never pretended to be petite. But he keeps staring at me like he won’t move until I do.

That’s when I catch a glimpse of something in his eyes. It’s clear—as clear as the green of his irises—that this fantasy is real for
him. A normal life for the two of us is real for him. That’s what he wants. All his bravado these past months has been for show.

So I nod, and he stoops, and I try not to be too awkward as I wriggle onto his back and pray for a Christmas miracle that makes me about twenty pounds lighter. He tucks his arms under my legs and heaves me up the rest of the way without so much as a grunt. I wrap my arms around his neck, kissing his cheek as I do.