I’m supposed to hate Teddy, not reveal our private convos. My easy tone hasn’t escaped Ben’s attention. Leaning back on his hands, he chews his lip as he observes me.
“Why was Teddy telling you all this?”
Keeping Teddy’s secret mission for me from Ben will be about as hard as keeping your heart from knowing what your brain is doing. I don’t want to keep secrets. But until I talk to Teddy more, I’m not going to risk anything.
“You know me,” I say. “People just love spilling their souls to me.”
“I actually haven’t noticed that.”
“Maybe it’s just demons then.” Time to maneuver back to safer territory. “Mr. Zin, you are a smart dude, figuring out who Invidia is. I guess I know why my ego takes a beating every time I see her. She makes me envy her.”
After a beat, he confesses, “She makes me feel inferior.”
“Envy.”
I scoot next to him and, careful not to knock a big pillar candle over, tug his book until it’s half on his lap, half on mine. We read everything we can about the Seven Sinning Sisters.
“Pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth,” Ben reads. “Those would be some powerful demons to have on your side. They were all Mephisto’s?”
“That’s what Teddy said. But, you know. Who would trust him?” I choke.
He continues reading aloud, but, word by word and line by line, I find myself thinking more about the fact that my left knee is pressed against his right knee, part of his thigh is against mine, and our shoulders brush every time his chest rises with a deep breath. He smells delicious. His hands are very strong looking. And there’s no denying that he’s most irresistible when he’s either reading or talking about books. But he’s made it clear that he doesn’t want to move too fast, not that I do, either—but I think he may have more self-control than I do. So, to keep from throwing myself at him, I slam his book closed.
“What just happened?” he asks with a smile.
I grab his hand and jump to my feet, tugging him up. “Let’s look up Dia Voletto next.”
Ben and I dart down to the first floor, where a few Guardians and their students angrily hush our excited whispers, and dash to the card catalog. In our previous lives, we both lived in the library, so we’re fine with the Dewey decimal system, which Harper’s peon Plum is groaning about near the periodical section. Hurriedly, we find four cards for books that mention or are about Dia Voletto.
“He’s the demon of ego,” Ben reads on a card as we take the stairs two at a time back to the fourth floor. Only to find the books on Dia Voletto are all gone.
“He took them,” I say.
“What more could we expect from the demon of ego?”
“Major faux pas.” We settle back to the middle of the ring of candles, which thankfully haven’t burned the place down in our absence. “Stealing books from the library.”
“Yeah. If he wasn’t already condemned to Hell.”
I begin closing the books. And Ben stacks them. But we’re moving at about half speed. I pray he’s killing time for the same reason I am: I don’t want a reason to leave. I’ll gladly pretend we need to be here as long as possible. I don’t want to go yet. I can’t imagine ever wanting to go.
When we’ve made towers of the books we read, books Ben has been reading for years, he starts unfolding dog-ears, and I pull my knees into my chest as I watch him. He’s talking absently about the world of demonology, and it’s not until he sighs and sits back that I realize I haven’t told him about his dad. He notices my face drop, and he comes to my side, wrapping his arm around my shoulders.
“What is it?”
“I saw your dad today.”
“Was he sober, by chance?”
I turn to look him in the eyes. “He was burned. On his neck. And he looked…dejected. Like he’d lost all hope.”
“He probably has.”
“Ben.”
He shrugs. “‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.’ My dad held out longer than the average man would.”
“Hiltop said your dad wanted the burns. As a reminder of your car accident.”
“He’s doing what he has to do to cope. Y’know, with my decision to die.”
“But if you were to fight for the Big V…”
“I’m not going to fake I’m into Garnet. Please, Anne. Drop it.”
He lifts my hand and holds it up flat, and we watch as he folds his fingers between mine. The lines distinguishing my skin from his blur, like they’re glowing at the edges, like we’re melting into one person.
“More spirit than flesh,” I whisper.
He brings our hands to his lips. And, when he doesn’t let up, I shift until my lips are pressed against the other side of the fist we’ve made. Our eyes meet. We lower our hands.
“Ben, you’re going to have to choose Garnet.”
“I hope you mean garnet the gemstone.”
“You need to win the Big V.”
“Shh.” He puts his finger to my lips, and I pretend to bite at it. “I’m with you. Not her. Any plan that keeps me from you is no plan for me.”
“But Ben—”
“If I have to choose between death and life without you, I choose death.”
“That’s very”—I pause—“cheesy.”
Because we can’t actually stay in the library forever, we make our way outside and, holding hands, meander down the dark island, past the red line that used to mean so much, past the old Zin mansion in which Dia and Invidia now live, past Gigi’s old cottage, toward the village. Most of the villagers’ homes, which were enormous, are being demoed to make way for the college.
“Why do you think Mr. Watso’s here?” I ask Ben. “Everyone else is gone.”
“He made a deal with the devil. I assume he’s here because he has to be. Maybe if he signs the island over to them, they’ll let him go.”
“Sign it over?”
“My dad has this idea that Villicus wanted you and Molly to break the rules and be friends. He put you at Gigi’s so you’d be more likely to run across the only village girl. That way, he’d have some leverage—he could dangle Molly’s life in front of Mr. Watso in exchange for the island.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Mr. Watso is a
