for madness on campus. Everyone’s arguing, switching sides,” Teddy explains. “Alliances are forming and breaking. It’s chaos. And, yes, it’s all your fault.” He barely pauses for emphasis. “The powerless punks, scheming succubae, darkest demons— everyone that served Mephisto is questioning him. Your escape was like nothing seen before. Many of Mephisto’s followers lost faith in him—”
“Faith in a devil!”
Teddy shoots me a glare. “Everyone needs to believe in something.”
We bolt out of the woods and onto the road. The massive iron gates to Cania Christy loom ahead. I hear the commotion Teddy’s been warning me about: warring staff members trading sides and creating volatile new alliances.
“You should be safe now, though,” he says. “The demons won’t battle you. And the parents have all left.”
I happened to escape on one of the few nights of the year that parents are allowed to visit their kids—and my cries for help as I raced out of Valedictorian Hall, chased by Villicus and Pilot Stone, did not go unnoticed. Not that any of the parents raised a finger to help me. No, they closed their blinds and turned out the lights.
“What does that mean, I should be safe?”
Teddy’s breath is fast. “The parents see you as a threat. You killed one of their own. Pilot Stone.”
“He had it coming!”
“If that settles your conscience.”
He did have it coming. Pilot’s scheming ways could have jeopardized my life. It was him or me. None of the Cania parents would understand that. I’ve been an outsider among wealthy people all my life—first back in Atherton, and most definitely here. It’ll be a cold day in Hell before they take my side above one of their own.
“The new headmaster is about to arrive. I can feel him.” Teddy pauses to focus on whatever he’s feeling. I’m never going to get used to living among mystic oddballs like Teddy. “Oh, it’s him,” he says, seeing something I can’t imagine. “He’s the replacement. I should have guessed.”
“Who?”
“A liar. A terrible being. A devil we will destroy. Someone you should stay away from.”
“Who?”
Ignoring me, Teddy pushes through the gates of Cania Christy. We stumble into the closest thing to pandemonium this side of Hell. It’s late afternoon. In the half day that separated my departure from my return, the order of Cania Christy has collapsed into chaos as the school has found itself without a leader. An absent headmaster wouldn’t be a problem if the staff and faculty weren’t composed entirely—save Garnet Descarteres, my art teacher and Ben’s ex-girlfriend—of Mephisto’s legions. In his absence, they’ve gone off the rails. I watch as secretaries, Trey Sedmoney, and a teacher named Levi Beemaker board up Goethe Hall’s stained-glass windows. Below them, housedads, chem teacher Dr. Naysi, and my sculpting teacher ol’ Weinchler curse and throw anything they can get their hands on at the building. Near Valedictorian Hall, the janitor is fielding attacks from a cafeteria lady, who has broken a makeshift switch off a tree and is brandishing it.
“It’s so loud!”
At the opposite end of the quad, near the shore, student noses are pressed against the glass in the dorms, where most people must have been when the madness erupted. I search the crowd for the one face I most want to see. But he’s not there.
“It’s a wonder the parents escaped this madness. Come, to the quad,” Teddy says, pointing into the eye of the storm.
I follow him with my head down. Not just because I want to avoid the fighting faculty. But also because I get the sense that, among the student body, there’s a warrant out for my arrest. The coma girl who shouldn’t have been allowed here in the first place has caused more trouble than she’s worth.
I call after Teddy, “Why are they fighting like this?”
“Like I said, they’re choosing sides and forming alliances. Those who serve Mephisto are trying to defend themselves against those who’ve turned. This kind of upheaval isn’t rare Downstairs.”
“You mean in Hell?”
He nods as we back against a tree in the middle of the quad. And wait. Teddy keeps looking toward the Atlantic.
“This will all be different any second,” he says, and I hope he’s right.
But I’m not just hoping for peace. Or a new, better leader.
I’m hoping that, if and when this chaos subsides, I’ll see the boy I’ve been trying not to be too obvious about looking for. Ben Zin. His dad’s mansion is all the way on the other side of the woods, toward the village. Is he there now? Does he know I’m back? Is he, as Teddy suggested, being punished for helping me escape last night? Will I, too, be punished?
For the last few weeks, I was neighbors with Ben. I lived in the attic bedroom of a house that belonged to Gigi Malone, who sadly took her own life last night. She asked me to throw her body in the ocean, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I had to go to Valedictorian Hall, where my vial of blood was stored, and free myself. If I’d stayed, if I’d done what she’d asked, or if I’d gone to Ben’s like he’d asked, would this mess have happened?
“Who’s the new headmaster?” I ask Teddy. “You saw him?”
A woman’s shout interrupts me: “There he is!”
The hollering and smashing stops. We look toward the small dock just north of the dorms, just south of the cliff. There, a caravan of canal boats like you might see in Venice is being nudged against the dock by thick, burly rowers in red-and-white striped shirts. The men and women that fill the boats are dressed like members of the most spectacular circus; they begin, one by one, on shaky feet, to come ashore.
Students file onto the quad, veering away from the unstable staff as they do. I spot my archnemesis, Harper Otto, quickly; it’d be impossible to miss that red-haired Southern beauty queen, especially with her entourage of too-perfect followers. She sees me and mouths, “Murderer.” Behind her, someone I like even less—Hiltop P. Shemese, whom I didn’t expect to see again—shuffles out of the woods, smoothing her short bangs and bobbed hair as she flicks a glare at me, a glare that morphs into a thin grin. She offers a little clap for Teddy. Only when she’s turned back to the caravan do I smack Teddy.
“I thought you said Mephisto was gone,” I say. “Hiltop’s obviously still here.”
“Villicus is no longer in control of Cania. Even if he hadn’t been demoted, the parents wouldn’t have stood for it after seeing him chase a student down like he did you. But Mephisto will never leave this place, and so his avatar Hiltop remains.” He shoots me a pointed stare. “Until we destroy him—and his replacement—he will be here in whatever form he can skulk around in.”
“And how do you propose we destroy him? What’s the plan? I’m not exactly a demon slayer. Unless I can paint him to death, I’m not gonna be much help.”
“I don’t know the plan yet.”
“Sorry, what?”
“Patience,
