The Wicked Awakening of Anne Merchant (37 page)

The open door is beyond her. I’m not sure she’ll let me leave this lab without a fight, and, unless Gia appears, I won’t survive a battle with her.

“I gave to you in ways I’ve never done before or since. I gave unconditionally to you, without asking anything in return, and elevated you to a standing no lost soul had ever achieved.”

“Do you expect gratitude?”

“Just respect. I, the Great Exchanger, asked for nothing when it came to you. I always knew you were special, Gia.”

“I’m Anne.”

“Don’t sell yourself short.”

I back toward another station and stand behind it, shifting ever closer to the far edge of the room, to the empty aisle that will lead me straight to the door in six, maybe seven strides. The station protects me from Hiltop, although, without question, she could reach
me before I’m halfway out the door. She doesn’t have to touch me to seize me. And the bitch can fly.

She observes me like I’m a lab rat acting most peculiarly.

“You are free to run away,” she says.

Holding my breath, certain she’s lying and about to pounce, I inch into the aisle and creep forward, my eyes on her.

“But don’t think you can run from who you really are and who I am to you. You will come back to me. All roads lead to me.”

“Dream on.”

“Why do you think you left the underworld?” she asks. “Your lover had scorned you, making love to Invidia behind your back. You rushed to me when you learned of his betrayal, and you begged me to help you through it. I found a solution for you: this girl you pretend to be. And you loved me even more for it.”

“I could never love you.” I turn away, dead-set on the door now. “I love my parents—my real parents, no matter who ‘created’ me.”

“You love them?” she shouts. “Perhaps you think you do now… but that wasn’t always the case.”

I’ve
always
loved them
.

“After all, Gia, you were the one who condemned Nicolette to die.”

twenty-three

OUT OF BODY EXPERIENCES

“NICOLETTE MERCHANT WAS THE FIRST WOMAN IN HER
right mind to ask me for a child,” Hiltop says.

Her voice nears, making my skin itch like it’s shrinking, like I might burst out of it. The hallway begins to pulse with shades of red.

“I was floored. And little surprises me, so that’s saying something,” she continues. “I needed time to think through exactly how it would work and what to request in exchange. You, Miss Saligia, helped me make sense of what to do and what to demand.”

“I did not.”

“You jumped at the chance to toy with a silly woman who needed to be taught a lesson.”

“My mother was a saint. She was just desperate.”

I hear the soles of her boots squeal against the tile behind me.

“Aren’t they all? But, my, how you and I laughed to think what it would be like for these humans—
Nic and Stan, high school sweethearts
—to discover their miracle baby, spawned nearly thirty years after our lovebirds first met, was not so much an angel as a demon.”

“Stop it.”

My shoulders are tensing, my hands cramping, my calves tightening. My beating heart pummels my ribcage. I know what that means, but if Gia appears now, will she be able to stand up to Hiltop?

“A witch’s baby,” Hiltop pushes.

“
Shut your mouth
.”

“And when it came time for me to go to The Land Above,” she says, “and settle the terms with Nicolette, you said—why, Gia, perhaps you recall what you said to me?”

I can feel her demonic gaze on my back, searing raw holes.

“Is that a
no
?” Her breath prickles my hair. “You said I should give this foolish woman
half
the time I gave Faust—just twelve years—to spend with her daughter. And then I should seize the two things she deserved to lose for making such a request. Do you know what those two things are?”

Before my eyes, the hallway has started to transform. Patchwork shimmers clap together, replacing the wall of lockers, into misty woods thick with knotty trees, each of which moves like it’s alive. A damp chill runs over me. A shadowy figure sways next to me.

“The first?” Hiltop says. “Her sanity. The second? Her daughter. You said, and I quote—”

I know the words before she says them.

Not because I can anticipate them.

But because I can remember them. Because I am in the memory. She is feeding the memory to me.

“—
Make her kill her child, Master, in her lunacy. And I shall join you on Earth to help you expand your reign over these beings
.”

The shadowy figure vanishes, exiting the memory. But I, Gia, am left behind. I feel myself sink to my knees. I feel my palms on the muck of the forest floor. I dig my nails into the powdery ash, the permafrost of the underworld. Arms wrap around me, comforting me, and I find they are not arms but the roots and branches of the shadowy trees that live and breathe in the underworld forest I’m recalling.

Hiltop steps into the hallway. She is an obscure, shape-shifting silhouette in the woods of my memory—now schoolgirl, now lurching man, now animal, now hooved beast.

“You will come around to me,” she says, her voice a thousand miles away. “Because you are my child. You will find your way back to me. We will expand our hold together.”

Could it be true? Could Gia have agreed to come to Earth, to be me, just to help her mentor? Could she have lied to Teddy? Is she playing Teddy somehow? If it’s true that she condemned Nicolette to such a fate, could she, in fact, be as evil as I’d expect an underworld goddess to be? I’d be a fool to believe Hiltop, but I’d be a fool to ignore her, too.

“I’ve given you the illusion of freedom,” she finishes. “Don’t make me regret it.”

I glance up as Hiltop’s nefarious spectre drifts off. She rounds the corner just as the roots untangle, the chill lifts, and my vision fades.

The school hallway is as it was. Hiltop is gone. But I am here. And I am different.

I fight the urge to lower my head, to close my eyes as I might have done in the past. I battle the pity party that would celebrate my penetrating shame—my furious regret—at being the reason my mother degraded through a dehumanizing mental illness, the reason she tried to kill me. And instead, I let my breath come faster, harder. I welcome bright pulsing pain as it rushes through my veins, lighting my skin on fire. I stoke the flames deep within my soul that are brimming up, up, up to my throat, that are surfacing in my mouth, and that explode, at last, with a cry that changes everything.

The overhead lights sizzle on and pop off with bright sparks. The windows flex. The walls shake just as they did at Dia’s. Everything is just as it was in the Zin mansion, but stronger.

In the midst of the pandemonium, I keep my head, though I feel weaker than I have in a long time. I force myself to stay present, not to black out, not to run from Saligia. Because I need to know if she’s good or bad, and to do that I need to connect with her. I watch the teacher’s desk slide away from me and the framed periodic table behind it clatter from the walls to smash on the floor. I watch the stools shove away and I hear the beakers near me rattle together. I refuse to be overwhelmed by my own power—by Saligia.

I am filled with great expectations when I look down at myself. Equally so when I grab for my velvety tail and wait for the itch of light-filled wings, both of which I hope are with me now.

But there is nothing.

No tail. No wings. I pat my hands over my body.

Nothing.

What happened? Why didn’t it work? And why am I so sapped of energy? I feel like I could fall asleep standing up.

A glint of silver in the far corner of the room catches my eye. I jerk to look, and there I see her.

She is not a reflection in the window. She is real, here with me in the flesh. She is standing near the collapsed shelves. With her magnificent cat eyes, she watches me, but she is as listless as I am. Two
frail wings flit and fall behind her shoulders. I can’t even see her tail. She is leaning against the broken shelves, spent.

“Gia,” I breathe.

I have, somehow, projected her. Split my spirit. Disassociated. Cast her straight out of me, as if from my mouth. And it’s left us both weak. “How did…that happen?”

“Our. Gift.” Her body sags into the wall. “Cast. Souls.”

Gia and I have a gift. All demons do. Ours hadn’t occurred to me. I’d ask more, but I have bigger questions. I don’t want to believe that there’s a part of me—old or not—that would do what Hiltop said I did to my mother. Or to anyone.

“Did you. . .condemn Nicolette. . .like Meph said?” I ask her.

Her lips move. But she’s listless and drifting.

“Are we evil?” I ask.

This time I hear her: “Leave. Me. Be.”

“I can’t do that. I need your help.”

“Be.
Anne
.”

Spent, she vanishes. And my heart thumps hard again. My back straightens, my shoulders square; I am my whole self. But a different self than I’ve been these past few months. Because the underworld goddess I was trying to be has asked me to stop using her, to be who I am.

“I’m not ready to,” I say, knowing she can hear me. “Not yet.”

No, not yet. I’ve made too many promises. Too many people are depending on me to help them. Harper and Pilot aside, Teddy and my mom need me to help them take down two underworld leaders. That Gia knows about that but doesn’t want to help makes me think maybe Mephisto was right, maybe she’s a bad soul. My head throbs at the thought, but it must be true.

“You’d rather back out on the woman you condemned to insanity and ultimately to death,” I say to myself, to Gia, “than do the right thing and help her. You’d rather cower. But I wouldn’t. Anne wouldn’t. So you won’t, either.”

T
HE NEXT DAY
, I feel renewed. Like I’ve fought with my inner demon and won.

Until I see Harper.

I’m near the water, where a feat of strength exercise has just ended, leaving Ben victorious with his clapping girlfriend and a decidedly sober-looking Dr. Zin. A small crew of freshmen are taking down what was evidently an obstacle course, with the Seven Sinning Sisters overseeing them, when Harper plants herself in front of me, crosses her arms, and taps her foot.

“I’ll take that barrette back, ugly as it is,” she says. “I’ve figured out what we can do to get me a new life. So I’m gonna give you some power by serving you, and then you’re gonna do exactly what I say.”

Now I cross my arms. “Why would I do that? So you can serve me and leave?”

She chews on her lip. “I’ll serve you for a fixed amount of time. Then bail.”

“How long?”

“We’ll go to Voletto’s office right now. Find out what demon gives second lives. Figure out how to get that demon servin’ you. And then I’ll serve you until, say, the end of the school year, at which time you’ll liberate me.”

“Why would Dia tell us anything?”

Flipping her hair, she poses suggestively. “You stick to your knitting. I’ll stick to mine.”

Superbia is watching us. When our eyes meet, she lowers her chin for the first time in the many months I’ve known her. Oh, God. I know what that look means. Superbia’s mine? She begins walking our way, her head down the whole time.

“Let’s go to his office,” Harper says to me.

“Now?”

“No, next Christmas.”

“Do you need me there? I think you’re better at that stuff than I am.”

“I sure am! But what kinduv master would you be, lettin’ me hog all the glory?”

Superbia sidles up next to me, and Harper, never one to miss a chance to suck up to a teacher, comments on how lovely she looks today. Superbia rolls her eyes.

“I have to talk to Miss Merchant, Miss Otto,” she says. “If you’ll excuse us.”

Harper slides her narrow gaze my way. “Half an hour. Be there. I’m not kidding.”

As she darts up to Goethe Hall, I turn to Superbia. Sunlight glints off the locket around her neck. Her tattoo is gone.

“Master,” Superbia says, “I understand you split your soul last night.”

“How could you know that?”

“Good news travels fast. Until now, I couldn’t be sure if your return was sincere. But now I know. The others are sure to follow you. Even Invidia will come around. We all will. If your choice is to return.”

“Look at me,” I insist. “You can’t follow me. Dia will notice you’ve left him.”

“So you
don’t
choose the life of Saligia?”

As the Existentialism Club takes over our spot in the quad, I pull Superbia aside. For privacy.

“Tell me,” I whisper to her, “why did I leave the underworld? Was it because of Dia? Or Mephisto? Or…was it to help Teddy? Do you remember my friendship with him?”

“Ted Rier?”

I nod.

“We cannot be too careful with our choice of enemies.”

Shit, that’s not very helpful. I realize, at once, that she’s quoting
Dorian Gray
. I’m about to push for more, but she is slipping my locket from her neck. She hands it to me.

“Did you just stop following me?” I ask.

“Your question proves to me you are not the Saligia I once served.”

That was fast.

I watch in confusion as she saunters away, all eyes on her.