The Wicked Awakening of Anne Merchant

by Joanna Wiebe

  “Ben gave you a copy of Faust, but you didn’t have to read it to know it. So tell me, why did you know the story of Mephistopheles and Faust?”

  “She told it to me. It was one of her favorites.”

  “Your mother knew it well. She knew Mephisto was someone you could go to in your most desperate hour, and he would come through for you. For a price.”

  My jaw tightens.

  “Your mother did what no sane person has done before.”

  “Teddy, don’t you dare say something that’s not true.”

  “This is no lie. She crossed a line to get you.”

  No. I can’t stop shaking my head. No.

  “Anne, your mother asked Mephisto for a baby.”

  sixteen

  IN THE SHADOWS OF ANGELS

  I’M NOT HERE. I’M NOT IN THE WOODS WITH A GRAY-FACED demon telling me things no one should ever hear. I’m back home, back in California, and I’m six years old, and my mom is braiding my hair as she tells me she’d give up everything she has and then some for me. I’m four years old with my parents in a small LA playhouse, watching a performance of The Black Rider, listening to my mom whisper an explanation of what I’m seeing: the hunter traded his soul to the devil for bullets that couldn’t miss. I’m eleven years old, a year before my mom was diagnosed bipolar, and sitting in the car with her outside a church, watching her wring her hands, and then I’m biting my tongue as the rear wheels skid on the gravel and we speed away. I’m twelve, and she is at the kitchen table, her face wet with tears; she smiles at me through them, and she says, No matter what, it was worth it.

  I’m there.

  I’m not here.

  “But,” Teddy continues, bringing me back to these cold, damp woods, “you and I both know that demons can’t create humans.”

  I look into his eyes, which are swirling with a mix of dark and light emotions, sorrow shining through the strongest. He’s just told me Mephisto helped make me. But maybe it’s not true?

  “So it didn’t work?” I ask, clinging desperately to this shred of hope. But it’s slippery. It’s a cliff I’ve slipped off; it’s a branch I’ve caught just in time, but I can’t hold on much longer. I know, without Teddy saying it, that this story doesn’t end well.

  “It worked,” he says.

  “Impossible.”

  “Mephisto cannot create humans. What does he need in order to vivify kids here?”

  I try to swallow. “Their DNA.”

  “Your mom had a fertilized egg from in vitro.”

  I’ve stopped breathing.

  “All Mephistopheles needed was a soul,” he says. “Where do you think he got that soul?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  But I do know.

  The underworld is filled with souls. Dark, damaged, writhing souls. The souls of the Seven Sinning Sisters and the demons, punks, dark witches, succubae, and incubi under them and alongside them.

  Releasing me, Teddy watches my reaction as he backs away.

  I’ve fallen into my own grave. Anne Merchant has been shoved into a six-foot hole, and every new realization is a shovelful of earth that’s been thrust onto me, burying me alive. The unearthly woman I saw in the mirror and sketched; Dia said she was an underworld goddess. Invidia touching my hair, and the sense of power that filled me. Mephisto’s tolerance for me in spite of the trouble I’ve brought on him. Even the reason Mephisto wants me here at all. To say nothing of how easily today’s challenge came to me, as if the seven deadly sins are second nature for me.

  “Am I possessed?” I stammer.

  “You are a soul reincarnated.”

  It takes me a while to actually utter these words: “Not just any soul?”

  “Not just any soul.”

  My voice is tiny. “Is it very bad, my soul’s history? The person I am?”

  “Not in my books. I proudly served you.”

  “You what?”

  “Don’t you remember anything?” He sighs. “You took me under your wing when I was first cast into the underworld. You trained me, you coached me, and when it came time for you to trade your many legions for this opportunity, you freed me. I was able to retire my powers so I might never be made to do wrong again.”

  “Hold on,” I say, holding my hand up and trying to keep it together.

  But he charges on. This is a secret he’s been keeping since the day Villicus introduced me to him, back when I thought he was just my apprentice Guardian. He’s known who I am all along. Unfortunately for me, every word he says tears me further from the person I thought I was, from Anne Merchant, daughter of Nicolette and Stanley Merchant, high school sweethearts. Every word he says condemns me to Hell.

  “I served a powerful goddess named Miss Saligia,” he says. “Your name was Saligia. Miss Saligia, the goddess overseeing the Seven Sinning Sisters,” Teddy clarifies at last, draining the blood from my whole body as he does. “And you, my dear, were spectacular. A rare symbol of hope in a dark world. Where Mephistopheles and Dia Voletto built their legions with fear and intimidation, you compelled yours to love you, which is, to be sure, as rare and as powerful as…as eternal youth. Or perfect beauty. Your followers’ love for you would make Romeo jealous.”

  “Love…”

  “Do you understand, Miss Merchant?” He searches my face. “Miss Saligia was the soul put into the body of a girl born Anne Elizabeth Merchant. You were Miss Saligia.”

  I know. I know. But I don’t want to know.

  My heart thumps harder. I breathe through it, quieting it.

  “Saligia started as a succubus. And she—you—worked your way up until your powers neared those of Mephisto himself. Under your leadership, the Seven Sinning Sisters came to conquer the human world and win countless souls for the underworld.”

  “Not exactly news worth writing home about, Ted.”

  “But think of what it means about who you are, about the power you had…and could have again.” I feel him watching me. “Miss Merchant, don’t be so hard on yourself. Each of us has Heaven and Hell in him. And as a wise man once said, ‘I like men who have a future and women who have a past.’ Be proud of your past. You were amazing as Gia.”

  “Gia?”

  Oh, shit. That’s Dia’s girlfriend’s name.

  “Gia is short for Saligia?”

  So this past I’m supposed to be proud of started with me as a mother-effing succubus and then landed me in the arms of Dia Voletto. No wonder Teddy once suggested I’d be successful in life by using sex to get ahead. Little wonder Pilot, after Lou told him about me, insisted I change my PT to match Harper’s. They both knew I started as a succubus. Hell, years ago a boy said he had a naughty dream about me. Even then. Even then I was part Saligia.

  And then there’s Dia.

  Luxuria put me in a lust challenge with him. Because of our past.

  He said he came back here for a purpose. He wasn’t sent here; he came here intentionally. Was I that purpose? Did he come to win me back?

  Was Ben never meant to be mine?

  I slide down the tree and slump on a mossy stump.

  “I’m a demon.”

  “To define is to limit.” Teddy sits opposite me. “You gave up everything you had in the underworld to help me. And, along the way, to seek revenge on Dia.”

  “Revenge?”

  “Dia hurt you. Embarrassed you. Betrayed you.”

  Daylight turns to night as I sit in silence, my hands on my mouth, my eyes skyward, and let it all sink in. With the calming tone of a friend, which makes me wonder why I’ve always felt such tension with Teddy, he explains that he and Gia were close friends almost from the moment he feigned a fall from grace and landed in her command. She showed him that even condemned souls were not entirely black.

  I listen, but all I can think is, This is how it feels to die. You’re just going about your business, on your way to an appointment, thinking about what’s for dinner tonight, and then a bus hits you. You’re just swimming laps, wondering
why you don’t do this more often, and a clot loosens to find its way into your heart. You’re just looking for stronger pills to fight your migraines, and the doctor says it’s cancer. And me? I was just trying to help Ben win the Big V, and Anne Merchant died.

  “There was a reason you came here, Anne. A purpose.”

  I stare at him. I can’t speak.

  “Gia wanted to destroy Dia. And I need to destroy Mephisto, though admittedly I can wait.”

  “But Dia has a tattoo of her name. And he speaks so fondly of her.”

  “Trust me on this.”

  “Gia became me so she could kill Dia? But how would she know Dia would come to Earth?”

  “It’s destiny.”

  “And what does that have to do with you and my mom’s plan?”

  “We want Dia gone as badly as we want Mephisto gone. You were on board with this, too, when we were friends in the underworld.”

  I grip my hair at the roots and groan. “Mephisto made me Anne Merchant,” I say. I must be in shock to voice the words without getting sick. “Why would he agree to let me come here if I was only going to destroy him?”

  “He didn’t know. He was your mentor, you see. You loved him like a father.”

  Now I am gonna be sick.

  “Haven’t you wondered why your punishment for breaking the rules left Molly Watso dead and you barely bruised? Haven’t you wondered why he hasn’t killed you yet? He knew you as Gia. He loved you as Gia. If he didn’t love himself and his Earthly activities more, he might have found himself serving you. But Anne, never forget this: when he made you into his first proper, real, functioning human being—when you agreed to be part of his experiment—he became, in his mind, your father.”

  “But he tortured me in Valedictorian Hall,” I say. “Why would a so-called father do that?”

  He smiles. “It’s so nice to hear you ask questions Gia never would have.”

  “Teddy, why?”

  “Miss Merchant, isn’t it clear? That was a show of love.”

  “Oh, please.”

  “Demons seek pain. Pain is pleasure. It’s how we operate.”

  Kate, Eve, and Elle didn’t run from the lounge when Dia entered the room. And Elle looked disappointed when she realized Dia wasn’t going to hurt her.

  “That’s twisted,” I say.

  “The combination of your distaste for the underworld and mastery of the darkest arts—”

  “Mastery of what? I’m not a master of anything!”

  “You will find that you are. And you will see that the two parts of you, Anne and Gia, make you perfectly suited to execute Dia Voletto. Start with him. He’s the easy one,” he says. “It will help earn Mephisto’s trust. And it will be easy to do without me.”

  “Wait, wait, wait. You want me to destroy Dia…on my own?” I leap to my feet. “Forget this. I’m out! I don’t care who I was. I’m someone else now.”

  He shouts after me, “I’ll do my best to return to help you. And Anne, don’t forget that your mother is party to this.” He had to play that card. The Dead, Angelic Mom Card. “You wouldn’t have agreed to become Anne Merchant if we hadn’t talked through all of this and you hadn’t agreed.”

  Slowly, I turn to face him again. “To destroy Dia.”

  “Destroy him first. Build up your courage. And then face the one you’re scared of.”

  “I’m only afraid of Mephisto because I got my ass handed to me when I went up against him in Valedictorian Hall!”

  “The bravest amongst us is afraid of himself.”

  “What? Are you, like, quoting someone? God, just talk normal.”

  “Miss Merchant, you ultimately won against Villicus.”

  “Barely. And only because of Ben, who’s out of the picture now. And let’s not forget that I was trying to save myself then, not destroy a devil.”

  “Imagine if you were to try to end the simpler of the two.”

  After the casual way Dia executed twenty students today, I’m not averse to returning the favor. “Fine. But you’d better have a plan.”

  “I have a strategy, yes. Many of Dia’s servants were once yours. Take them back.”

  “Get them to serve me?”

  “Yes. Start with the lesser demons. Don’t begin with the Seven Sinning Sisters, or Dia and Mephisto will see you as a threat.”

  Finally, decent advice. Crazy, but something I can busy myself with.

  “You will find yourself at least as powerful as Dia in little time—because although he has beauty on his side, you have brains.”

  “Thanks. I think.”

  “Never underestimate genius! I’ve seen with my own eyes that genius lasts longer than beauty.”

  “I’m hardly in the realm of genius.”

  I’m starting—slowly—to come to terms with this. It’s as if I’ve always known my life would be a short one and my fate something to run from. There’s a reason my paintings are never of rainbows and honeybees.

  “So I try to get demonic followers, and then you come back, and we, like, somehow, I dunno, battle Dia?”

  “That’s fine. But I’ll need a reason to return,” he says. “Dia continually rejects my requests to return here. I know I’ll be allowed to return for graduation day when all Guardians are here. Do you think you can re-establish Saligia by then?”

  I throw my hands up. “It’s my first time re-establishing demonic powers, Teddy. I’ll do my best.”

  “Very well, Gia.”

  “I’m Anne!”

  “Listen, you may not like the idea of being Saligia, Miss Merchant, but that is who you are. And my gut tells me that, once you start exploring Gia, you’ll have a hard time wanting to be Anne Merchant again.”

  I glare up at him. “I’m Anne.”

  A small smile colored gray and black cracks a line through his face. He presses his finger to his lips, reminding me that we must keep all of this on the DL. I wonder for a second why he didn’t use the Silencer to erase this conversation. We’re not so far from campus that we couldn’t be overheard.

  “Remember: Many adored you once. Love doesn’t die. Nothing dies. It just shape-shifts.”

  “You’re a real poet, Ted.”

  “And you thought I was just a pretty face.”

  The sun has set on the longest day of my life, the day in which I lost Ben, lost Molly, and even lost my parents—I am not their creation as much as I am Mephistopheles’. It is also the day I gained something I’ve never wanted and still don’t: a spiritual connection with the underworld.

  I leave Teddy in the woods and stagger, in a cold daze, back to the still, gray campus. I pass the boys’ dorm, inside of which Ben is preparing for a new life with his old love. I have to numb myself. Immortality is a curse; it would be a relief to die of sadness right now.

  I climb the stairs to the second floor of the girls’ dorm.

  I walk into the bathroom, stumble past a group of sophomore girls who look surprised to see me still here, and turn on the hot water in the shower. Under the scalding rush of water, I strip off my uniform and stand like someone anesthetized. Like the walking dead. Like a girl in a coma.

  I am joined by Hiltop. She observes me silently. My “father.”

  I wrap a towel around my body and leave my uniform behind on the shower floor, under the still-running water, where Hiltop continues to stand.

  Molly is asleep when I go to our room.

  I sit on the edge of my bed and know I do not need to worry about falling asleep first. Molly will not scream if and when she sees my tail. She heard who I am. What I am.

  I get under my covers.

  I sleep.

  I wake. Molly is gone.

  I get ready. I go to my art workshop. My classmates look at me like I’m a spoiled brat, like I have so much life I can afford to throw second chances away. Augusto comments on the amount of time I have been spending under the mentorship of Dia.

  The bell rings. I pack my bag.

  I walk into the hallway
.

  Ben is standing in the hallway.

  He does not look directly at me. He hands a note to me. He takes care not to touch my fingers.

  Garnet joins him. She takes his hand. They walk. Garnet tosses her hair and looks over her shoulder at me. She giggles.

  I open the note. I fold it again.

  I go to study hall.

  Molly looks at me, and I feel like a dog that has had two legs amputated. Like it would be humane to put me down. I sit at the desk in front of Molly.

  Mr. Italy tells everyone to be quiet. Fisher T. Italy. Power? To shift reality. Could I make him serve me? If he served me, could I leverage his power to change my new reality back to my old, naive, loved-by-Ben one?

  It is a blizzard outside. The windowsills are stacked high with snow.

  I unfold Ben’s note.

  Molly kicks the leg of my chair.

  I read Ben’s words.

  Anne—

  Garnet has informed me you are harboring feelings for me, and it is disrupting her work as your teacher. I appreciate your interest, but there is no world in which you and I could be together. Please leave us be.

  Ben

  I turn the note over. The blank page stares at me. It wants to blind me. I want to let it.

  It is good that Ben is gone. If he knew the truth about me, he would be revolted.

  I pick up my pencil. I tap the end of it on the paper. The beat is slow. It keeps time with the memories I shared with Ben. Ben behind the village bench. Ben on the cliff, saving me, holding me. Ben in the twinkle lights of Gigi’s house, deep in a fantasy.

  Maybe I, too, could play pretend for a while. Pretend I’m normal, not a girl with the worst case of inner demons known to mankind.

  I stop drumming.

  I hold my pencil in both hands.

  Molly kicks the leg of my chair again.

  I snap the pencil in two.

  And, with that, a tsunami-sized wave of relief washes over me. The release of hearing the thin wood and lead snap, even as half my classmates swivel to scowl and even as Mr. Italy stares over the top of his narrow reading glasses at me.

  Like I’ve been holding my breath for a day, I sigh and relax my neck, my shoulders. I just wish I had another pencil to snap. Just one more—no, maybe 100 more—to give me the push I need to cry, which I have yet to do.