The Wicked Awakening of Anne Merchant (41 page)

I look at him now, so close to his freedom, so close to being the older brother to a sister who needs him.

“Tell me why, Anne.”

This is no time to slip up. We’re too close to success.

“I don’t know,” I say flatly. “But I hate you.
I
hate
you
. So stop bothering me, got it?”

I pick up the canvas and, without glancing back, head to Goethe Hall. My hands are shaking hard enough that the canvas might fall. I just make it to Dia’s office without dropping it.

Dia and Hiltop are waiting for me.

I’ve just leapt from the frying pan into the fire.

I
SET THE
canvas down and adjust the sheet over it. I know what’s going on. I know why Dia and Hiltop are both here. It’s the moment I’ve been dreading since half the school staff started wearing my locket and bowing to me when I walk by.

“This is about Saligia?” I ask as I take a seat.

Their arms are crossed over their chests. They are standing on either side of the fireplace and leaning against the pale marble surround. Dia coughs; he looks feeble enough to blow over. Hiltop, of course, is her typical nothing-looking self.

“Why are you rebuilding your legions?” Dia asks me. “Is it to destroy us?”

“Is that even a possibility?”

“Don’t be smart with us,” Hiltop snaps. “You’ve been running around here all semester getting so-and-so to succumb to your will. They’re talking about it in the underworld. So it stops now. I’m not about to let you tarnish my reputation again.”

“I thought you loved me, G,” Dia says. “You’ve taken four of my Seven Sinning Sisters.”

Four?
Three more, and I could give new life to everyone on this godforsaken island. Without a thought, I leap to my feet and bolt to the door. I just need to get the other three on my side, and this whole thing will be over!

But Hiltop flies to the door. She throws her body against it, blocking me. I shove her with all my might, and she budges, but not enough. Not even close to enough.

“Why haven’t you stopped me before now?” I ask her.

Hiltop smirks. “It’s been mildly entertaining to watch you return, Saligia, but the fun has been had. Surrender your legions.”

“Surrender them?”

That’s not how this is supposed to go. I’m not done! I need the remaining three sisters to help me give Harper and Pilot the lives I promised.

“Surrender them to us. Today.” Hiltop glowers. She pushes me back toward the fireplace. “Now.”

If I lose my followers now, I lose everything. I break every promise. And everyone I know and love suffers, fails, even dies.

I can’t stop now.

I can’t surrender now. Not yet. Not when everything is so close!

“We’ll remove Ben from the running for the Big V if you don’t,” Hiltop threatens.

I could break into Valedictorian Hall tonight. Get Ben’s vials. But then what? I’d need the Seven Sinning Sisters to help me give Ben a new life off the island. But they’re not all mine yet.

Hiltop and Dia are watching my wheels spin.

Dia coughs. He looks like he has the flu. Good.

“And then there’s the matter of Jeannie Zin,” Hiltop adds. She paces before the fire. “She’s alive, you know. Thanks to me. It’s always a good idea to have a little leverage—a card up your sleeve.”

“What’s your point?”

“I will kill her,” Hiltop says matter-of-factly.

“You can’t kill humans,” I remind her. “It’s against the rules.”

Dia and Hiltop snicker.

“The only clearly drawn lines run across the center of this island, Miss Merchant,” Hiltop says. “In matters of spirits, demons, and divine beings, lines blur. I will, quite easily, remove Jeannie Zin from this life. After all, I gave her life to her, much like I gave yours to you, much like I give life to one student every year. I can take that life away. Perhaps not directly. But never question, when Jeannie is gone—locked away in a nuthouse or after succumbing to the inner voices that tell her to cut herself until the pain goes away—that it will be your doing. I’ll be sure to let Dr. Zin and Ebenezer know she died because a girl who fancies herself the great Saligia chose her demon followers over pure, innocent Jeannie.”

That’s not true.

But it will sound like the truth.

“So what do you want me to do?” I ask. “How do I get them to stop following me?”

Dia sighs with relief. I’m sure he thinks the reason he’s weak is because I’ve taken so many of his followers. But I know better. His strength won’t return when they do.

“They are connected to you by your hair,” Dia says faintly. “It’s what I’ve always loved most about you.”

Hiltop lifts a pair of shears from the mantel. They glint.

“Cut it off. Now. All of it.”

twenty-six

SAMSON

THE SMELL OF BURNING HAIR SEEMS LIKE IT MIGHT HAUNT
me forever as I balance myself against the front doors of Goethe Hall and tell myself that what I feel now, this listless and faint energy I have, is normal; it’s what everyone feels; it’s what I used to feel; I’ll get used to it again.

Behind my eyelids, I see myself standing in Dia’s office, before one of his many mirrors, and holding Mephistopheles’ shears. They made me do the cutting. Mounds and mounds of my blonde curls fell to the ground. Dia called Invidia into his office and had her shovel my hair into the fire. I felt the powers of my followers leave me immediately, like Samson must have felt after Delilah cut his hair.

Hiltop was pleased.

Invidia did not look displeased. I always sensed she’d be the hard nut to crack of the Seven Sinning Sisters, given her history with Gia and Dia.

Dia looked healthier after my hair-chopping, but not by much. When Hiltop and Invidia left, Dia seemed surprised that I’d have the willingness to sit and work more on his portrait, but with the unveiling in two days, I had little choice. I told him he still wasn’t allowed to see the painting. But recognizing my new weakness and the futility of my commands, he tore the sheet off it. At the sight
of his own beauty, captured in ways only Oscar Wilde, Molly, and I could imagine, he staggered backward and clutched at his chest.

“It’s as if you’ve seen every side of me,” he said, wistfully letting his fingertips hover over the oil smears, the coal smudges, the faint watercolor, the raw edges of torn photos, and the lines of my thick pencil. “It’s genius.”

“But don’t you think…” I let my voice trail.

“Don’t I think what?”

“That it’s not wholly you. It needs to be the greatest version of you ever made, something even better than your real self. Something even more beautiful to you than the purest soul.”

“But how?”

I gave it some thought. Or pretended to.

“Leave it with me,” he said, still transfixed by his own image. “And then you must meet me tomorrow—”

“You’ll be busy getting ready for the party tomorrow.”

“Ah, yes! Right. Okay, then meet me Saturday, just before the unveiling, for the final strokes.”

I agreed and left him to spend the night wishing he could be as beautiful as the sight he saw in the painting. He knows that beauty is impermanent. But he forgets that my gift has always been to cast souls from one object to another. I can only imagine that Superbia has been trying to tell me how to destroy him since the day she held up a copy of
The Picture of Dorian Gray
for our class.

As I walk across the quad now, I expect people to point and laugh at my newly shorn hair. My wild, enormous hair and the strength I felt, the prideful ways I used to strut, are gone, hobbled.

But nobody points and nobody laughs.

Yes, they stop and notice my jagged haircut, the longest pieces of which are no more than an inch in length. But it’s as if they know why I did it, that it wasn’t by choice, that everything here is an act of sacrifice. Seniors, juniors, sophomores, and freshmen alike see me, drop their eyes, and raise them again to shrug or half smile or do whatever gesture it is that best expresses in that moment just how powerless we are here.

Molly says, “Oh, girl,” when I swing open our door.

The news of my changed appearance spreads fast. Harper comes storming in just minutes later and stops short. Plum is right behind
her. I am sitting on my bed, rereading
Faust
—my eyes are on the line “
Des Chaos wunderlicher tochter
,” which Teddy quoted to me back in September—as they stare at my shorn head and abruptly leave.

Molly says everything she can to convince me I’ll rock this look. It’ll grow on everyone. Short hair is totally in. And it suits my face.

“My mom used to braid my hair,” I say to her.

“Well, I’m sure your mom would do awesome stuff with your short hair, too.” She snoops through her makeup bag until she finds a pair of eyebrow scissors. She sits me on a chair in the middle of the room, throws a towel down, and starts flipping through some of her celebrity magazines for inspiration. The snipping begins. “You’re gonna rock this look—trust me.”

“They did this to take away my followers.”

“I remember a time when severing ties seemed like a crazy idea,” she says, “but it was for the best.”

“You mean with Ben.” I want to believe this is for the best, like severing Ben’s ties to me was, but I can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel like I did then. “We were so close. I almost got Dia, you know? You should’ve seen him today—he was so weak looking. And he told me I already had four of the Seven Sinning Sisters serving me. Four.”

“Who’s to say they don’t serve you now?”

“They need to be adorned with a marker of mine. That was my hair. When I used Meph’s shears to cut it off—well, I felt the energy leave my body, Mol, so I think that’s that.”

“But if they love you, they’ll want to serve you.”

“They can’t love me now that I’ve let two devils get the better of me. I’ve shown weakness.” The collateral damage of this battle: “I won’t be able to help Harper or Pilot get a new life.”

“They’ll be fine.”

“They’ll hate me.”

“So it’ll be like it used to be,” she says as she searches for pomade.

“I can’t end Dia now,” I say. “Not without Saligia’s ability to cast souls around.”

“Who said you don’t have that power anymore?”

She’s right. I’m still Saligia inside, even if my followers are gone.

“Look,” she says, “you’re almost done with Dia’s painting, right?” She waits for me to nod. “Then you can do what you told
Teddy you’d do. But, Anne, before you try to take down an underworld leader, can I say something?”

Her pretty, fiery gaze magnetizes mine. I nod.

“Are you
sure
you want to destroy Dia?” she asks me. “You don’t have to. You don’t have to do any of this. Trust me.”

I’m about to answer when, behind her, Harper and Plum appear in the doorway. They wield a selection of scissors, a nylon stocking, and a box of hair dye. They’re not smiling, but they don’t look like they’ve come to stab me, either.

Molly turns to see where I’m staring.

“We got a common enemy,” Harper drawls. “
They
do that to your hair?”

“They said I had to get rid of my followers. This was how.”

“We felt it happen,” Harper admits. “Knew something was wrong.”

“What’s all that stuff for?” Molly asks them.

“If we stay up all night, we can make a wig,” Plum says.

“A gnarly-colored one, unfortunately,” Harper explains. “My red hair and y’all’s dark hair. We’ll dye it afterward.”

“Jet black,” Plum adds, waving the box of hair color. “So edgy.”

Molly’s fist goes straight to her mouth; she swivels away. When she looks back again, her eyelashes are wet with tears.

“That’s really nice of you,” I tell Harper and Plum. “But I couldn’t possibly take any of your hair.”

“Bobbed hair is the next big thing, Merchant,” Plum says.

“It’s so generous, but I’m going to wear this short cut,” I say with a small grin, which vanishes when I give Harper my full attention. This is not going to be easy. Better just to say it, which I do: “Harper, I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to give you a new life.” I watch her swallow, unblinking. “I know that you’ll tell Garnet the truth now. I’d ask you not to, but I’m not in any position to ask you for anything, least of all mercy on Ben Zin.”