an idea: let me go home, and come get me when you’ve got a plan.”
He points hard at the people around us. “Don’t talk so loudly, and don’t look so familiar with me. I brought you back here against your will, remember?”
“How could I forget?”
“Well, then, you’re supposed to hate me. Play the part.”
That shouldn’t be a stretch.
“And remember,” he says so quietly I have to read his thin lips, “no one can know about my secret identity or our plan, when we create it. Tell them I put you in an unbreakable coma. Tell them whatever you must. Fight for the Big V to make them believe it. But do not let on that I’m involved in anything, Miss Merchant, or I will be killed. No one must know. Trust no one.”
“So I’ve gone from discovering secrets to keeping them?”
“Let’s hope so.”
Teddy stands on his tiptoes. Everyone is leaning and jumping to see over the heads of the crowd, to see the man of the hour. Playing the part of a loyal follower of Mephisto, Teddy grumbles that he thinks he can see “that egotistical little freak.” So our new headmaster has a big ego? I’m not sure that distinguishes him much from Villicus, who was anything but humble.
I watch Hiltop from afar and realize that I’d be a fool to believe that she—the only remaining avatar of Mephisto—is going to take this upheaval lying down; she’s probably already knee-deep in a plot none of us can imagine.
“Dia Voletto. He’s here,” Teddy whispers to me as he points at a man. “See his boldly tattooed arms—I believe you call those sleeves? That’s his mark; his followers wear tattoos the way Mephisto’s followers wear jewels. Those tattoos represent their powers.” He charges on. “Look at him. You’re not looking! Come, get closer and you’ll see little tick marks all over his body. That’s how he keeps track of his legions of followers. Anne, come. See your new headmaster. Tell me what you think of him.”
But I’m not paying attention to Teddy. Or to Dia Voletto. Or even to Hiltop.
Because Ben has just walked into my line of sight.
IN THIS MOMENT, I CAN’T HELP BUT WONDER IF MY RETURN to Wormwood Island isn’t the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Demons aside. Devil Destruction Challenge aside. Medically induced coma that could kill me aside.
Ben and his dad, Dr. Zin, the recruiter for Cania Christy and a former plastic surgeon, are walking in what could be slow motion directly across from me, only steps from me—and they don’t know I’m here. I want to call out, but more than that I want to pause time and simply look at the guy I thought I’d never see again. Ben, with his precisely brushed ashen hair. Ben, with his uncannily green eyes, eyes the color of a breaking wave in a Turner shipwreck painting or the sky in a Cézanne seascape. He is tall, his back is straight, and his chin is held high, like his mother must have told him to hold it back when she was alive, and his sister Jeannie was alive, and his life was headed on a different course. Back before a drunk-driving accident brought him to my family’s funeral home and changed everything.
Around me, everyone is saying, “Look, look.”
I watch Ben and Dr. Zin pass me by. It’s only when Dr. Zin falls against a sophomore girl that I realize this is not the picture of a father and son out for a walk. It looks like Ben’s hoisting Dr. Zin up, like his dad might fall over at any moment.
“What do you think of him?” Teddy nudges me.
“I think he’s drunk.”
“Voletto?”
No, not Dia Voletto. Dr. Zin is clearly intoxicated. I close my eyes, certain he fell off the wagon after learning about the reckless, destructive escape plan his son was involved in. Now I can see the far-reaching effects of what we’d tried to do: Dr. Zin nearly lost the only child he has left, the son he chose over his daughter. And, without question, Ben will be punished for helping me. What might that punishment be? The worry about it could easily push a recovering alcoholic like Dr. Zin beyond his will to be sober.
I call Ben’s name. But the crowd is too noisy.
Taking me by the arm, Teddy ushers me in the opposite direction, through the throngs, up to the front of the crowd where Hiltop is quietly observing the arrival of the new headmaster. The underworld leader known as Dia Voletto is, to my surprise, on his hands and knees just on the edge of the shore. He seems fascinated by something he’s spotted in the water.
Hiltop looks angry enough to kill. Which kinda makes me like Dia, her replacement.
“Master,” Teddy says to Hiltop, with the slightest bow.
I shudder at the sound of it. Master. If my mom wasn’t on Teddy’s side, I’d be grabbing his satchel, throwing it into the Atlantic, and praying for a miracle in California.
“You’ve brought her back,” Hiltop says to him without deigning to look his way. Or mine.
“I promised I would, Master.”
Teddy’s convincing enough that I almost believe he was lying to me about this whole celestial takedown mission. Of course, he’s had a few years of practice as a fake demon. If he wasn’t believable, he’d probably have been destroyed—I think you can destroy a demon, but hell if I know—or, at minimum, Mephisto wouldn’t have brought him to work at his precious school for dead kids.
“Dia Voletto will need the vials,” she tells Teddy with a glance at his satchel. She turns her glare on me. “I told you you’d be back. You thought you got away.”
“I did. Your little peon had to abduct me to bring me here. But I guess breaking the basic rules of humanity is the norm on Wormwood Island.”
“A bent rule is not a broken rule,” she says. “You were signed over to me, and not just until something better came along. You were signed over to me until the day of your graduation. Only I may sever that contract; you may not. There are no refunds at Cania Christy.”
“Well, given that you’re not even in charge here anymore, whatever contract my dad signed is null and void.”
She clenches her fists. “All the contracts have been revised, to be sure, and Dr. Zin will begin traversing the world to have Cania’s 200 parents sign their precious children over to Headmaster Voletto,” she says. “Of course, he’ll have help.”
“Help? From whom?”
“I’ve found myself a second recruiter, you see.”
While Hiltop watches Dia Voletto, who is still transfixed seemingly by his own reflection, I watch Hiltop. This small, nearly invisible girl with a face so simple, she could be a doodle; she’s hardly fleshed out
