Stone! I wish I had Teddy as my Guardian again.”
He stops cold as I march on. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Go to Hell. Again.”
“Anne, there’s more to winning the Big V than a second life!”
Now I stop cold.
“It’s trivial stuff for most of us,” he continues. “But it could be big for you.”
I turn to him. “Spill it.”
“Riches.” He drags the word out. “Everything you’d need for a great new life. Valedictorians have gotta set up a new identity, move somewhere no one will recognize them, buy a house, go to school, get a car, all that stuff. Money was nothing for Mephisto, and it’s nothing for Dia. These rewards are a little extra perk for the person destined to be a great success in this world. You’d get…a lot. As in never-worry-about-money-again a lot.”
I could go to Brown.
Buy a New York brownstone.
Open an art gallery.
My dad could start new, too.
“Why is this the first I’m hearing of these ‘riches’?”
“Like I said, it’s small potatoes to most of us. Life is our big prize.” He can see me considering it, and I wish I could pretend I’m not intrigued. “We’d need to change your PT, though, to guarantee your victory. See, I work with Lou Knows—the janitor—and he told me something about you. About your soul. Something I don’t think you know, but you really, really should.”
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure if I’m allowed to tell you. Just lemme find out—I don’t wanna piss anyone off. But, Annie, truly, if we change your PT to one that’s more like Harper’s—”
I should’ve seen that coming! Harper’s PT is to succeed by using her sexual desirability, which is possibly the most offensive PT ever committed in blood. Teddy spent his time as my Guardian trying to convince me that I was predisposed to such a PT, and now Pilot’s trying to do the same thing.
“Do you find it hard to look in the mirror?” I snarl.
His smile vanishes, and he grabs me by the arm. “Don’t make this worse than it has to be. It’s a simple win-win arrangement. You scratch my back—”
“And you’ll stab mine?” I free my arm. “Pilot, be real. This ‘magical reward’ Dia’s promised you? It’s impossible. You don’t have any blood or sources of Pilot Stone’s DNA. You’ve only got your soul, which was barely enough to qualify you as a human before.”
“He can make me human again.”
“Even powerful demons—even devils—even Lucifer—can’t make a human.”
The sunlight slips behind a cloud, and Pilot becomes a still, silent silhouette.
“Look, I’m sorry to rain on your parade.” I shove my fists into my cardigan pockets.
“You’re missing the obvious.” His voice is as cold as the wind blowing down from Canada. “Think of all the long-dead people who’ve left pieces of themselves behind. Frozen blood. Locks of hair. All perfectly usable DNA samples.”
“So you’re going to find Einstein’s hair and, like, be reborn as Einstein? Good plan.”
“I’m talking about sure things, Anne, not fantasy.”
“Right. Because you’re firmly planted in the real world.”
“Actual DNA,” he continues to explain. “The stuff you find in mummies. I’m talking about reincarnating as one of the kings who ruled thousands of years ago. Their souls have moved on, so there’s plenty of room for me under their skin. Museums are filled with the DNA of ancient royals, and when my dad gets his hands on some”—he steps into the sunlight—“I can and will be born again. My soul. In the body of King Tutankhamen.”
“You realize Tut had a super-long head and a cleft palate, right?”
“Don’t mock me.”
“To mock you, I’d have to entertain the possibility of this actually happening for you, or of me helping you. Let me clear this up for you right now: it’ll be a cold day in your neck of the woods before I fight for the Big V.” His frustrated glare follows me as I spot Ben and start away. “I don’t want your prize, Pilot. I wasn’t kidding when I threw your vial over the cliff. You deserve to be exactly where you are.”
BEN AND I are on the fourth floor of the library. He is flipping through a massive Latin dictionary, and I’m reading about the celestial rules believed to dictate the creation of human beings.
“See!” I say, smacking the page every time some ancient religious scholar proves me right. “Dia would need a physical human body to put Pilot’s dark, ugly little soul in. And to create that body, he’d need the combined DNA, masterfully united, of two humans. He ain’t got that. Those are the rules. Boom.”
“‘Invidia’ means envy,” Ben tells me.
“And,” I continue uninterrupted, “although these books are a tad outdated, it seems like every time the underworld has tried to make a human, it’s been a disaster. The closest was Jack the Ripper, so”—I meet eyes with Ben—“clearly the recipe is still in the test-kitchen phase.”
The lights and the heat on this little-visited floor of the library have been off, broken, or flaky for as long as Ben can remember, which is why we’re sitting in a circle of candles of all shapes and sizes, some of them scented. We’re reading over their dim glow, rubbing our hands every so often over their flickering flames, and starting to get a little hungry from the aroma of melting vanilla and brown sugar. Outside, it’s dark already, and sleet hits the windows with flat thuds. If Ben hadn’t spazzed about our uberbrief kissing session the other night, I might think something would happen here, in this perfectly romantic setting. But there’s room for a whole extra person to sit between us.
“Did you hear what I said?”
“Something about wanting a fresh-baked cookie?” I guess and blow out the vanilla candle. “You actually said”—I put my book down—“that invidia means envy. In Latin.”
“And superbia means pride. And avaritia means greed. And…”
“And? Am I supposed to be following your train of thought?”
“The seven deadly sins. Pride, greed, envy, and so on. Invidia is one of them.”
“Maybe that’s, like, her special demon power or something: to inspire envy.”
“Or,” Ben positions a candle under his chin to cast dramatically eerie shadows over his face, “she is envy.”
I nod and whisper, “She’s totally envy. I guessed that she was one of the Seven Sinning
