The Wicked Awakening of Anne Merchant Read online

  THE

  WICKED

  AWAKENING

  OF ANNE

  MERCHANT

  THE

  WICKED

  AWAKENING

  OF ANNE

  MERCHANT

  By Joanna Wiebe

  BenBella Books, Inc.

  Dallas, Texas

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Joanna Wiebe

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  10300 N. Central Expressway, Suite #530 | Dallas, TX 75231

  www.benbellabooks.com | Send feedback to [email protected]

  First e-book edition: January 2015

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Wiebe, Joanna.

  The wicked awakening of Anne Merchant / by Joanna Wiebe.

  pages cm

  Sequel to: The unseemly education of Anne Merchant.

  Summary: “Thrust back into the cryptic world of Cania Christy, Anne Merchant finds herself tangled in a mystic plot she can’t escape”—Provided by publisher.

  ISBN 978-1-940363-29-5 (paperback)—ISBN 978-1-940363-58-5 (electronic) [1. Supernatural—Fiction. 2. Good and evil—Fiction. 3. Boarding schools—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction. 5. Wealth—Fiction. 6. Islands—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.W63513Wic 2015

  [Fic]—dc23

  2014027912

  Editing by Heather Butterfield

  Copyediting by Brittany Dowdle

  Proofreading by Greg Teague and Jenny Bridges

  Cover design by Sarah Dombrowsky

  Cover illustration by Chad Michael Ward and Ralph Voltz

  Text design and composition by Silver Feather Design

  Printed by Lake Book Manufacturing

  Distributed by Perseus Distribution | www.perseusdistribution.com

  To place orders through Perseus Distribution:

  Tel: (800) 343-4499 | Fax: (800) 351-5073|E-mail: [email protected]

  Significant discounts for bulk sales are available. Please contact Glenn Yeffeth at [email protected] or (214) 750-3628.

  CONTENTS

  SEMESTER ONE

  one | Into the Fire |

  two | Same as the Old Boss |

  three | The Sacrificial Lamb |

  four | Envy |

  five | The Vivification of Damon Smith |

  six | Inner Demons |

  seven | Dia Voletto |

  eight | Underworld Rising |

  nine | The Mentor |

  ten | The Muse |

  eleven | Under Scrutiny |

  twelve | Second Chances |

  thirteen | The Lucky Ten |

  fourteen | A Devil’s Gift |

  fifteen | Spirit and Flesh |

  sixteen | In the Shadows of Angels |

  SEMESTER TWO

  seventeen | The Road to Hell |

  eighteen | Good Intentions |

  nineteen | Gia |

  twenty | A Legion of Three |

  twenty-one | ‘T Ain’t No Sin |

  twenty-two | Things Fall Apart |

  twenty-three | Out of Body Experiences |

  twenty-four | Crossroads |

  twenty-five | The Picture |

  twenty-six | Samson |

  twenty-seven | Breaking Spells |

  twenty-eight | Graduation Day |

  twenty-nine | The Valedictorian |

  thirty | Impossible Beauty |

  thirty-one | Revelations |

  About the Author |

  SEMESTER

  ONE

  one

  INTO THE FIRE

  FIRST IT’S BLACK AND THEN IT’S BRIGHT. I’M RUNNING.

  Someone has me by the hand. He’s shouting for me to hurry as he drags me over tangled roots and under sharp branches.

  I realize I’m back in this world before I know I’m racing up from the shores of Wormwood Island, between its craggy trees, and toward its dark, beating heart: the Cania Christy Preparatory Academy, a stately campus of mossy stone buildings veiled in ocean mist and secrecy.

  Oh, God. I’m back.

  My heart’s pounding at double time.

  I’m staggering. Lumbering. In bare feet.

  “Come on!” Teddy hollers at me. I recognize his voice at the same time my eyes adjust to the bluish light. Sunlight through the trees. Sunlight trapped in swirls of low-hanging fog. I trip, and he yanks me back to standing, to running. “Wake up, Anne, before it’s too late. Before we’re there.”

  Teddy. Teddy brought me back here. He was next to me in California only moments ago—or what seems like moments ago. And he was taking my blood, doping me, telling me—what was he telling me? My mind feels stuck back in that damn hospital bed, back with my body, back where I’m supposed to be. Remember. Think.

  Ben helped me. Ben risked it all to help me escape Wormwood Island.

  Ben Zin.

  I’m back here, where Ben is. A silver lining I’ll think about later. After. After I wrap my brain around the here and now.

  “Can’t you move any faster?”

  “Teddy?”

  “Good. You’re alert. Now hurry. He’ll be here any minute.”

  “Teddy,” I repeat and stop suddenly.

  He jerks my arm like it’s the leash of a disobedient dog. I pull back. He yanks again, harder. I free myself from his hold, stumble away, and stop cold against a tree. My feet sink into the chilly, wet earth of the forest floor. Standing here, feeling the ground beneath my feet, makes this all real.

  My efforts with Ben were for nothing.

  Flashes of last night—God, was it just last night?—strike me like furious fists. The glowing interior of Valedictorian Hall. That short-banged girl named Hiltop P. Shemese transforming into Villicus, and Villicus revealing he’s none other than Mephistopheles, the not-so-fictional devil who makes exchanges with humans. And then came Pilot Stone, my very own Judas, to help the devil do his dirty work. I see the vials—his, mine, beautiful Ben Zin’s—glinting in the firelight; I see myself grab them and flee, in flames, into the rain, up to the cliff. And then…and then Ben joins me, holds me, frees me. Kisses me. We jump. I vanish. Wake. And then Teddy…

  “I need a sec,” I tell Teddy.

  “I didn’t say we could stop!”

  “I’m not asking.”

  He’s panting when he halts to glare at me with those pale eyes of his. This demon-boy.

  Behind him, the woods double and conflate. I brace myself against a tree, clear my head. I know what’s happening. I know I’ve just been vivified, created anew. I know Teddy’s got vials of my blood in his satchel.

  I know all those things.

  But I can’t intellectualize away the fact that I feel like my body, mind, and soul are bricks that have yet to be cemented together.

  “Don’t give me that look,” I growl his way. “You’ve ruined everything.”

  “Everything? You had nothing. What’s to ruin?”

  “I was awake. After years in a coma, I was awake.”

  “You’re not needed in California. I need you here. So does your mom.”

  Teddy told me I had a purpose on Wormwood Island. Over the racing beep of my heart rate monitor and the slow drip of my IV, he said I should trust him, that my mom trusted him. My deceased mom. How could he know my mom?

  “Why?” I as
k him. “Why did you bring me back here?” And then I ask the question I should have been asking all along: “What don’t I know?”

  “We could fill the world with what you don’t know.”

  “Then start with the big stuff, Teddy. The life-and-death stuff.”

  “We don’t have a moment to spare, Miss Merchant.” He goes for my arm again, but I jerk away. “You’re going to make this difficult?”

  I hold his glare. “No more secrets. I’ll call my dad, tell him I’m being fed poison, and he’ll get me out of this coma faster than you can blink.”

  “Don’t you realize Mephisto will bring you back? There’s no escape. He wants you here.”

  “Why?”

  “Naive little girl. Do you think he needs a reason for everything?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, if you’re going to waste time,” he says. Kneeling, he swings his satchel down and rummages through it.

  I glimpse two of my vials.

  “Just two?” I ask. “You took three vials of my blood.”

  “I sank one into the earth by the dock. I needed to vivify you. I thought you understood: this island is enchanted.”

  “You mean cursed.”

  “Enchanted, Miss Merchant. Those with the power to vivify the dead have enchanted Wormwood Island such that the moment a bone or a strand of hair or a vial of blood touches any part of the island, that person returns to life in an immaculate version of their past body.”

  “Yeah, I know. The escape plan you foiled was kinda based on that whole idea.”

  “I am not gifted with the talent to vivify merely by touching a vial, so I had to connect your vial with the earth. Now.” He tugs a heap of navy, gray, and yellow clothes out of his satchel and shoves them at me. Tall boots follow. It’s my Cania Christy uniform. “Put this on.”

  “No.”

  He looks up at me. His teeth are clenched. The kindness I thought I saw in him in my hospital room—the kindness that made me trust him for the faintest moment—has vanished like the dream it probably was. Only a monster would bring me back to this place, knowing what he knows about it. The vivified high-schoolers. The deaths narrowly escaped thanks to a devil’s trickery and outrageous sums paid by desperate parents. The cutthroat competition for a second life off this island, which is the reward given each year to one—and only one—valedictorian, the reward known as the Big V. I’m just a girl in a coma. I shouldn’t even be here.

  I look at the uniform, held up to me like a peace offering when it’s anything but. I look at Teddy. My long, lanky, gray-skinned Guardian who seemed, until I woke to find him standing over my hospital bed, like just another Cania Christy garden-variety demon. Now I’m not sure.

  “Put it on,” he repeats.

  If my Cania education has taught me anything, it’s that you should never do something without getting something in return. That’s what Pilot taught me when he betrayed me. That’s the foundation on which Cania is built: tit for tat.

  So I say, “One piece of clothing for one answer.”

  “An exchange?”

  I nod.

  “Underclothes don’t count,” he says.

  “Yes, they do.”

  As he grumbles about the clock ticking, he pushes the ball of clothes into my hands and turns so I can drop my hospital gown; evidently, you vivify in the clothes you were last wearing.

  After checking to be sure there’s no one around, I stand on the gown, rub most of the muck off my feet, and yank on my underwear, bra, and tights. I’m about to ask my first of three earned questions when Teddy whirls to face me again.

  “Hey!” I hunch and cover myself with my balled-up uniform and boots. “This isn’t a peep show, dude.”

  Ignoring me, he raises his hand and swirls it down as if he’s drawing a tornado in the air. I see a faint glimmer like a low-hanging cloud. It begins over our heads and curls around our bodies. When his fingertips pass my shoulders, the sounds of the island—croaking frogs, distant barking sea lions, the omnipresent wash of waves— vanish as if they’ve been sealed out, leaving us in a vacuum of silence.

  Now we can be honest, he says. Actually, he doesn’t say it. His lips don’t even move.

  “What the—” My voice is gone.

  He shakes his head. Don’t speak to me, Miss Merchant. Think to me.

  Think to you?

  We’re in a silencer. It’s a common spell for preventing others—

  Oh, the joys of being surrounded by devils.

  —from overhearing a conversation. It gives voice to your private thoughts, but only for those within it. So, for God’s sake, don’t start fantasizing about Ebenezer Zin, that foolish boy who parades his eternal youth and beauty like—

  Fine! I cut his tirade short. Where was I?

  You’ve got three items on. So you’ve earned three questions.

  First: Who are you?

  My demon name is Ted Rier. I’ve been living in the underworld for the last 150 years.

  Doesn’t seem long for a demon.

  Is that your second question?

  Definitely not. Okay, you said something about my mom trusting you. But if you’re a demon, how could you know my mom? I saw her in my hospital room. She looked more like an angel than, like, a dark soul.

  You saw her?

  Briefly.

  He pauses. After she passed away, I met her soul.

  My stomach knots. In Hell?

  No, no, no.

  Well, don’t scare me like that!

  That’s three questions. Put on your shirt to earn a fourth.

  I do. Where did you meet her?

  Outside the realm of what you can understand. The spirit realm is very different from what you know here. The best way I can answer that question, Miss Merchant, is to tell you this: I’ve been masquerading as a demon.

  I zip up my skirt and ask question five. So you’re telling me you don’t actually play for the devils?

  I do not. I’m what you might call a secret agent.

  I can’t help but smile.

  Teddy scowls. I amuse you?

  The only secret agents I know are, y’know, made in Hollywood. Like James Bond.

  I don’t look the part?

  My thoughts betray me: Not even in Bizarro World.

  My sincere apologies, but the face and body you scorn are the visages that suit the tastes of Mephistopheles, whom I serve. I was once quite striking, I assure you. But physical beauty—

  I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings…

  —is hardly as interesting to Mephisto as the ways he can torture and manipulate a growing number of you simple-minded humans.

  Got it. Sorry.

  Which brings me to the point, if you can collect yourself for a minute, Miss Merchant.

  I’m not even laughing! I barely smiled.

  He glares at me. To answer your fifth question, I met your mother in secret when I was convening with the rest of the benign spirits aligned in our mission.

  Which is… ?

  Put on your cardigan.

  Oh, for the love of…I hastily button the sweater. What’s your mission?

  Our mission, Miss Merchant, is to stop the expansion of the underworld into this world.

  So just a small mission, then.

  Your mom specifically asked for you. She believes you can do this.

  I saw that coming. Taking a deep breath, I nod. If it’s for my mom.

  Very good. Mephisto’s reach is growing, in spite of his recent humiliations at your hand and the subsequent loss of at least one of the Seven Sinning Sisters. Now is the perfect time to strike. Or it will be, when we’ve built up enough supporters and we get the right plan in place.

  Wait, who are the Seven Sinning Sisters?

  He looks at the boots I hold, the last part of my uniform.

  I tug them on. There. Boots count as two.

  Boots count as one.

  There are two of them.

  They count as one.

  A
fter what you’ve done to me, Teddy, I’d say you owe me as many answers as I want. They count as two.

  To my surprise, he relents. Two. Fine. The Seven Sinning Sisters are Mephisto’s most powerful followers. They are seven beautiful dark goddesses, each one a keeper of one of the seven deadly sins. They’re behind everyday destruction, making them exceptionally valuable followers Downstairs and here on Earth. He tilts his head. And now you’ve got just one question left. Hurry up with it. We’re wasting precious time.

  But you hear my every thought! No matter what question I think, that’ll be it.

  Suddenly, noises rush at me. I wiggle my jaw to pop my ears, and the low caws and sea lion moans that possess the island whoosh around us.

  “Is that better?” Teddy asks.

  I glimpse someone in the shadows. Both Teddy and I look in time to see Mr. Watso, dressed in fishing gear and looking 100 feet tall, sneer at us, growl a little, and trudge away. I haven’t seen him since the night his granddaughter Molly was cremated; he had to destroy her body because, if it remained on Wormwood Island, she would vivify—and Mr. Watso’s always seen the evil in letting a devil’s spell vivify the dead. The cremation happened the night after she was murdered—not for a crime, but for befriending me. Suffice it to say, I’ve made a lifetime enemy of Mr. Watso.

  “Miss Merchant, we must hurry to campus.”

  “Wait!” I’ve got to make this question worth it. But Teddy’s gritting his teeth like the world might end if I don’t spit out my next thought.

  “Your question?”

  “When I first came here, I—I didn’t wake up on the edge of the island. I was just suddenly at Gigi’s house, which is in the middle of the island. The first thing I really remember is waking up and getting dressed for school on my first day. But my head was clear. I knew everything I had to do, and I had this sense of where I’d come from and why I was here. I knew the name Cania Christy, and I knew Gigi. But, when I think about it, I don’t know how I could have known anything.” I look at him. “So how did that work?”

  “That’s what you want to spend your last question on?”

  “You rushed me!”

  “You want to know more about vivification. You don’t want to know what’s become of Mephisto? Or who’s about to take control of Cania Christy?”