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
