The Wicked Awakening of Anne Merchant

by Joanna Wiebe

  Dia opens the door to the stairwell, and I follow him through, with Ben and Molly close behind us. I hear them talking back and forth, the metal staircase clattering under eight stomping feet, but I refuse to give in or say anything about my decision. My throat is so tight, I can hardly breathe, let alone speak.

  “She asked Dia to get Eve to break us up,” Ben says in exasperation. “Sever ties. That’s what she said.”

  “Break you up?”

  “She won’t listen to reason.”

  “What’s Eve got to do with it?”

  “I dunno. Anne seems to know. Molly, help me stop her. Please.”

  “But she’s crazy about you, Ben. Why would she—?” Molly’s voice drops. “Oh, God.”

  Six footsteps on the stairs. Then four.

  Dia and I keep marching up, leaving the two people I care about most behind. I hear their voices, Molly’s soft and Ben’s high with panic.

  “What?” Ben asks her. “Mol, tell me before it’s too late and she ruins everything.”

  “She couldn’t transfer her prize to you, could she?”

  “I don’t think she wanted to!”

  “She did. But evidently she couldn’t. So she has to do this, Ben. For you.”

  “She has to break up with me for me?”

  “For you…and Garnet.”

  Dia swings open the door to the second floor.

  I glance back to see, half a flight down, Molly’s face softening and Ben looking about as desperate as a person can. Her gaze catches mine as I pause in the doorway, and, to my relief, she nods at me. Ben sees her look, sees me, and abandons her to chase me up the stairs and out. He bolts at us just as Dia and I enter the dimly lit wood-paneled staff lounge, where Eve is drinking scotch with Kate at a dirty-looking old card table.

  Ben flies into the lounge. He grips my arms in his hands. The unruffled Ben is gone; the fighting Ben, the one I so rarely see, is here. Finally. But too late.

  “I know you want to be with me. I know it!” he says wildly. “So stop this now. We’ll figure something else out.”

  “There’s no other way,” I tell him. “You have to be with Garnet.”

  “Ending you and me won’t start me and Garnet.”

  I don’t tell Ben that this is only the beginning of my plan. I know things I haven’t told him; I know the powers of most of the staff; and, thanks to Lou, I know demons can serve humans. I might—I just might—be able to convince Pilot to serve me, if there’s something in it for him. (Long shot, but worth a try!) And if I can do that, I’ll gain a little power, possibly enough to charm a demon into using their powers for me…and, in turn, for Ben. Because I’ve seen how hurt Garnet is. So I know it’s going to take more than severing my ties with Ben to soften Garnet’s hardened heart; it’s going to take a spell.

  First things first: separate Ben from me.

  Second: see how to charm a demon. Which is why I’m standing here, why I need to watch.

  Third: watch Ben win the Big V at the end of May.

  Detaching myself from Ben in more ways than one, I calmly remove his hands and turn back to Dia, who is looking impatiently at me as Eve and Kate sit, waiting for something to happen.

  “Sorry, yes, this is what I want, Mr. Voletto,” I say. “Please proceed.”

  Dia eyes Ben. “You gonna stick around and watch your own heartbreak, kid?”

  “I’m staying if she is.”

  “Will he remember this?” I ask Dia.

  “No.”

  “But I will?”

  “Would you like to?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Sever his ties to me, but I don’t want to forget anything. Not even this moment.”

  “Anne!” Ben begs. “Stop. This is insanity.”

  Dia sets his gaze on Eve. “You. Stand up.”

  Exchanging a glance with Kate, Eve rises. She is as crazy-looking as ever, with a windswept hairdo straight out of the eighties, smeared neon-pink lipstick, and bleached eyebrows like sun-drenched tumbleweeds. She is wearing the brooch of Mephisto; she is his servant, which is just as I’d thought, given that Eve was here before Dia arrived. I want to see how to get a demon that doesn’t serve you to use their powers for you.

  “Come to me,” Dia commands Eve.

  Hesitantly, she steps within arm’s reach of Dia. As she does, he grabs the bottle of scotch from the table and smashes it hard against the edge, creating an explosion of shards, sending alcohol flying.

  Ben and I jump; he pulls me into his arms protectively. His breath is warm in my hair as he whispers his last pleas to me. I sink into him, already regretting my decision.

  “Dia Voletto,” Eve murmurs, “show me mercy.”

  Sneering, Dia tosses the bottleneck aside and lifts a long, thin sliver of glass from the chair. He yanks Eve’s arm and pins it behind her back, pulling up hard enough that she doubles over and cries out. He wrenches her arm violently, so much that Ben and I both flinch—though neither of us can keep from looking—and jerks her hand around until it looks like her whole arm might snap off. She pleads. But he’s relentless. He tugs on her fingers; joints pop. He brings the six-inch-long glass shard to her fingertip.

  I have to watch every step. I have to make this worth it.

  Eve yelps as, pitilessly and with a low growl, Dia pushes the sharp shard under her fingernail, into its tender bed. She squeals and gasps. At the table, Kate looks on helplessly. Squirming.

  Molly walks in and stops short. I hear her sharp gasp. She rushes to me and Ben.

  “Get out of here, you guys,” Molly says to us. “Why would you want to see this?”

  “Stop!” Eve pleads. Her voice is raw, like burning acid. The more she cries, the deeper Dia pushes the thick, sharp shard—well past the nail, all the way under her skin. I look away when I see it tear through layers and pull the nail up. “Mercy! Please. I’ll do anything! Just stop!”

  But he doesn’t stop.

  He cranks her arm like a winch. I hear first a snap and then a wail. Ben and Molly have turned away. I have to look. To take mental notes.

  “What—what is your command?” Eve asks at last.

  “Sever ties between Anne Merchant and Ben Zin,” he says. “Disconnect Ben from her.”

  This is it. This is where my life with Ben ends.

  When Eve pants her agreement, saying it is done, Dia throws her to the floor, letting her writhe and struggle for breath. Her arm is broken. Her hand is mangled.

  Ben’s arms loosen around me. I find him staring in blank confusion at me, as if trying to figure out why he was standing so close to me.

  Molly puts her hands on my shoulders and whispers, “You can still be friends.”

  But Dia’s not done. He turns his dark, glistening eyes on Kate, who gulps. To our surprise, he slips across the tabletop, gliding easily, and lands in a straddle on Kate, who is white with fear. He pins her in her chair.

  “Dia? What are you doing?” I ask.

  Dia’s on a mission I can’t understand. He seizes the bottleneck with one hand and, with the other, clasps Kate’s hair at the roots and yanks her head down, cracking her neck. Unlike Eve, Kate suffers in silence, biting back the screams, though I can’t say the same for Molly, who’s muttering about lunacy as she tries to tug me and Ben to the door. But I can’t stop watching.

  Kate’s neck is exposed to Dia. The race of her pulse in her throat is audible. He slashes the sharp fragment up her neck, up her jaw, all the way to her eye, where he stops just long enough to watch her thrash in pain, to feel her body wriggle under him. Dark red blood oozes from the gash he’s made as a sob leaks from her lips.

  “You,” Dia commands Kate, “you will make Ben Zin hate Anne Merchant.”

  “Wait,” I stammer. Molly steps forward, looking as concerned as I am. Wait, wait, wait. I didn’t ask for hate.

  “It’s done!” Kate cries.

  Dia leans back, spent. Scarlet drips down Kate’s long, gnarly hands, which clutch at her bleeding neck and face.
>
  On a slow pivot, like Damon Smith, like my soul has been removed and left me with the emptiest possible shell, I turn to Ben. His blank expression changes, like he’s put on a mask for the Cupid and Death Dance—but he’s playing the part of Death and playing it well: his sneer is deep and disgusted when our eyes meet, and he recoils, taking my heart with him.

  This is the worst, by far, of all the times Ben has rejected me. Not only because I brought it on but also because, unlike the other times, there is no hope that it will ever change to acceptance. No friendship in store for us. The spells have been cast; the deed is done. And I am left, motionless in Molly’s embrace, to watch Ben excuse himself from the room like the overly polite, too-formal boy he is and dart away, past Elle Gufy, who is just coming into the lounge.

  Ben.

  “Now it’s your turn, Anne,” Dia says.

  I’d forgotten anyone else was here. Molly shakes me back into reality—a reality I’d like to avoid—and I glance, gape-mouthed, at Dia. He’s left Kate to clean her gashed face, and he’s stepped casually over a moaning Eve. Now his gaze jumps from me to Elle to Molly.

  “You wanted to see how it’s done, right?” Dia asks me.

  “You knew that?” I stutter. Molly whispers for us to go. “How did you know?”

  “Because you’ve put the pieces together.”

  “What pieces?”

  “You know why I came here. Surely you know everything. And you wanted to know how to use your powers without telling anyone.”

  “I what?”

  “So do it. Use Elle here to make Molly feel ugly.”

  I look at Molly, who is motionless with confusion.

  He yanks Elle closer and nods for me to grab a shard of glass. “I’ll submit to you temporarily, if you’d like, just to loan you my powers. So you can be who you are.”

  Molly looks as lost as I feel.

  “Dia, put that down and let her go,” I say. “I’m not doing anything. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  His smile fades. He thrusts Elle away. To my surprise, Elle’s face drops as if she’s crestfallen to have escaped a torture that’s left Kate and Eve bloody, broken, and agonized. As if she wanted it.

  “Then why did you give me that picture?” he calls after me as Molly leads me out.

  Molly utters an awkward thank you to the demons we leave behind—all of them surprised to see me go—as she tugs me into the hall, drags me to the stairwell, guides me down to the first floor, and, without a word from me, wrenches me into the wintery air, where she stands me up like a dummy against the cold stone wall of the back of Goethe Hall.

  “That was brave of you, Anne,” she says. I think she’s been saying other things, too, but that’s the first line that makes it through. Her teeth are chattering with the cold when I finally look at her. “Now Ben is free to be with Garnet, and he might actually win. Was that your plan?”

  I nod.

  I haven’t breathed in a while.

  I take a slow gulp of air.

  “It’s a good plan. But why did you have to watch it happen? Why didn’t you just get Dia to break you guys up? He must have the power to.”

  I stare at her.

  “Is it true, what Dia said?” she asks patiently. “Did you want to see how to do it?”

  My reasoning runs through my head in perfectly plotted form: make it so Ben will be with Garnet, and then eliminate all the obstacles from his path to a new life. But my mouth just hangs open. Snowflakes land on my lip and melt.

  “I think you’re in shock or something.”

  I don’t want to move. I don’t want to take a step because that means it’s all real, everything. And I don’t want to move until I understand what Dia meant.

  “Who does he think I am?” I utter.

  Molly looks relieved to hear me speak. “If you don’t know, why would he think you do?”

  “The drawing. He asked why I gave him the picture. But he took it.”

  “What was it?”

  “A sketch I did. Months ago. He took it from me.”

  “A drawing of him?”

  “The girl I saw in the mirror. I drew her. He said she was an underworld goddess.”

  “I don’t understand. What girl?”

  “She had…a tail. And she was me. I was her. Harper saw. She screamed.”

  “Were you tripping on acid by chance?”

  “Mol.”

  Our eyes meet.

  In a moment of clarity I realize that she is watching me with thinly veiled judgment—and why should I expect anything else? It was only because I was afraid of this moment, of this look in her eyes, that I kept my secret from her, waiting night after night until she was asleep before I’d even close my eyes.

  Now I’ve lost Ben. And maybe even Molly. Never has a life fallen apart so swiftly. Even Faust had twenty-four years before his life came crashing down. And he had the pleasure of a life-altering exchange to indulge in before things fell apart. I’ve had nothing; I’ve had three months with a guy I love, two months with a forgiving friend, and as good as those things have been, I hardly feel like I’ve had enough to make losing it all worth it.

  “I need to be alone,” I choke.

  She doesn’t stop me when I turn to the iron gates of Cania Christy and stand before them. She is gone when I look back. Instead of heading to the road, I retreat and veer toward the south end of campus, toward the woods that lead down to the old Zin mansion, taking the path I used to take to Gigi’s every day. Frosted leaves are frozen into the hardened mud at my feet as I step into the forest, feel the darkness cloak me, and stop. I inhale deeply through my nose, and exhale through my mouth. And close my eyes.

  Wormwood Island has never been this silent. Not a drumbeat, not a drill, not a demon to be heard. The stillness is heavy and light at once. The calm is unmovable.

  And there, in the perfect silence, I yell. I scream. I roar as loud and as hard as I can. I roar to shatter windows and make birds drop from the sky. I roar to chase Ben away and bring him back to me. I roar to fight who I am, whatever that may be, and invite it in. I roar in one long, clear, uninterrupted streak, with my eyes squeezed tight and my body arched, forcing all my air and sound and hate and love up and out.

  My roar wanes into a holler, and my holler into a groan, and my groan into a whimper.

  But there is so much more where it came from. It will never be done; it’s just muted. It’s always happening. It will never stop.

  When I open my eyes, Teddy is standing not ten feet away.

  “You decided to stay,” he says to me. Calmly. As if he hasn’t just witnessed the manic cry of a girl on the edge.

  “You.”

  Shaking with rage, I storm at the asshole who brought me back here. I crush my forearm into his throat. I push him hard, with a crunching thud, against a tree. Even as he tries to form words, I grab a branch. Back a step away. And, with all my strength, bring the cold, jagged hunk of wood down on his shoulder. As hard as I can. He doubles over. I bring it down on his other side and catch him just across the face.

  “What don’t I know?” I scream as I hit him, feeling Ira herself awakening inside of me. “Who am I?”

  I smash it on top of his head, bringing him to his knees. I could kill him; it’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before—the desire to destroy and the wild itch in my arms to feel his body collapse and stop moving, surrounded by all the fluids a mortician would drain away. That he can’t be killed by blunt force means nothing to me. His immortality is a subject for a logical person, and that’s not me right now.

  Why can’t I be with Ben?

  Why am I here?

  Why does he want me to play this horrible game, a game with no prize but the possibility of one day waking only to find that everyone I love is gone?

  “Why did you choose me?” I throw the branch down. “Why?” I repeat, spent and weakened. In a final whimper, “Mom.” As if she can hear me.

  Once I’m unarmed, Teddy bo
lts at me. Hard. Just as I did to him, he does to me: his elbow nearly breaks my windpipe as he sends me stumbling like a rag doll onto the forest floor and then drags me up, propping me against a wet, mossy tree.

  I don’t care. Hurt me. Kill me, if you can.

  His arm is hard under my chin, pressing harder at his wrist, hard enough to snap my neck, when he sneers into my face, his eyes glowing in the dark of the woods, and his gray skin broken and bleeding.

  “Just because I’m playing for the good side,” he snaps, bits of his smoky spittle flying onto my face, “doesn’t mean violence is off-limits, kid!”

  “Tell me the truth,” I choke, though I’m barely able to force a sound out of my throat. “Why do you believe I’m the one to help you? Why me?”

  “I was waiting to tell you this.” He knows better than to loosen his hold, even as I’m gasping for air. “I couldn’t say it until I knew you were committed. And now that you’ve saved Ben instead of going home—”

  “I haven’t saved Ben.” I couldn’t save him. I could only push him away. Maybe they’re one and the same when it comes to me.

  “—I can tell you more. A dark secret, Miss Merchant. But if you think your heart hurts now, prepare yourself.”

  “Tell me, Teddy.”

  My chest is heaving, and I might pass out any second. It’s only adrenaline and his arm that keep me upright. He relaxes his hold on me just enough that I can speak without choking.

  “How old was your mom when she had you?” he asks.

  “Get to the point.”

  “How old?”

  “Forty-something. Forty-four. What does that matter?”

  “How many miscarriages had they had?”

  It’s something my parents rarely talked about and something I’ve always tried not to think about. My mom used to blame the funeral home for her losing so many pregnancies—said a person can’t profit from death and hope to bring life into the world. And then she would smile at me, mess my hair more than it already was, and say I was her perfect exception.

  “Lots.”

  “They even tried in vitro, but your mom couldn’t carry babies naturally, Anne. She worked in a library, right?”

  “She was smart. Even when she got sick,” I cough, “she was smart.”