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.
After 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?”
“There’s someone else in control?”
“You don’t want to know why your friend Molly allowed herself to be killed?” he continues in disbelief. “You don’t want to know if, after you destroyed the Stone boy’s vial, he’s gone Upstairs or Downstairs?”
“Now that you mention it…”
“You don’t want to know if Mr. Zin and his father are being punished for what the two of you did? You don’t want to know what punishment you’ll endure now that you’re back?”
God, I’ve really messed this up. There’s so much to know here, and it’s like I’m always a step behind. Teddy’s already glancing up-island, looking desperately through the trees toward something I know nothing about. So many secrets for such a small island.
“Just answer the question, Teddy,” I say in exasperation.
“I wasn’t there,” he reminds me, “but, as I understand it, you were vivified sometime in the early morning of your first day of school. Dr. Zin brought your vial to Gigi’s house, where Mephisto was waiting to vivify you and Star Wetpier was waiting to…” he hesitates, “rewrite your past. Your recent past.”
“Star Wetpier. The history teacher?”
“She’s a demon. Everyone who works here is either a punk— that’s what we call new lost souls—or a demon of some rank. Demons have powers, you see. Star’s gift is to rewrite the past. When you were in the initial fog of vivifying that day, she fed you details that kept you from questioning why you were here.”
“That’s a lot of work to get a coma victim into a snobby school for dead kids.”
“If you come with me, I’ll explain more.”
Teddy grabs me by the arm, and we’re running again. He tells me, in short gasps as we race to the road, what’s been happening in our absence. He knows because he’s bound to Mephisto, his master, who has brought him up to speed, like, telepathically or something.
“The underworld has been in an uproar since you and that Zin boy jumped off the cliff.” He charges on. “Mephisto has fallen from the status of devil to archdemon, which is still far above a demon but is, nonetheless, below where he once was. He’s been removed from Cania Christy.”
“What?”
“Gone. Until he can prove himself again, which will require him to rebuild his legions, he cannot lead this school.”
“We’ve got a new headmaster?”
“Don’t
