The Wicked Awakening of Anne Merchant by Joanna Wiebe Page B

obvious.” His voice is as cold as the wind blowing down from Canada. “Think of all the long-dead people who’ve left pieces of themselves behind. Frozen blood. Locks of hair. All perfectly usable DNA samples.”
    “So you’re going to find Einstein’s hair and, like, be reborn as Einstein? Good plan.”
    “I’m talking about sure things, Anne, not fantasy.”
    “Right. Because you’re firmly planted in the real world.”
    “Actual DNA,” he continues to explain. “The stuff you find in mummies. I’m talking about reincarnating as one of the kings who ruled thousands of years ago. Their souls have moved on, so there’s plenty of room for me under their skin. Museums are filled withthe DNA of ancient royals, and when my dad gets his hands on some”—he steps into the sunlight—“I can and will be born again. My soul. In the body of King Tutankhamen.”
    “You realize Tut had a super-long head and a cleft palate, right?”
    “Don’t mock me.”
    “To mock you, I’d have to entertain the possibility of this actually happening for you, or of me helping you. Let me clear this up for you right now: it’ll be a cold day in your neck of the woods before I fight for the Big V.” His frustrated glare follows me as I spot Ben and start away. “I don’t want your prize, Pilot. I wasn’t kidding when I threw your vial over the cliff. You deserve to be exactly where you are.”
    B EN AND I are on the fourth floor of the library. He is flipping through a massive Latin dictionary, and I’m reading about the celestial rules believed to dictate the creation of human beings.
    “See!” I say, smacking the page every time some ancient religious scholar proves me right. “Dia would need a physical human body to put Pilot’s dark, ugly little soul in. And to create that body, he’d need the combined DNA, masterfully united, of two humans. He ain’t got that. Those are the rules. Boom .”
    “‘Invidia’ means envy ,” Ben tells me.
    “And,” I continue uninterrupted, “although these books are a tad outdated, it seems like every time the underworld has tried to make a human, it’s been a disaster. The closest was Jack the Ripper, so”—I meet eyes with Ben—“ clearly the recipe is still in the test-kitchen phase.”
    The lights and the heat on this little-visited floor of the library have been off, broken, or flaky for as long as Ben can remember, which is why we’re sitting in a circle of candles of all shapes and sizes, some of them scented. We’re reading over their dim glow, rubbing our hands every so often over their flickering flames, and starting to get a little hungry from the aroma of melting vanilla and brown sugar. Outside, it’s dark already, and sleet hits the windows with flat thuds. If Ben hadn’t spazzed about our uberbrief kissing session the other night, I might think something would happen here,in this perfectly romantic setting. But there’s room for a whole extra person to sit between us.
    “Did you hear what I said?”
    “Something about wanting a fresh-baked cookie?” I guess and blow out the vanilla candle. “You actually said”—I put my book down—“that invidia means envy . In Latin.”
    “And superbia means pride . And avaritia means greed . And …”
    “And? Am I supposed to be following your train of thought?”
    “The seven deadly sins. Pride, greed, envy, and so on. Invidia is one of them.”
    “Maybe that’s, like, her special demon power or something: to inspire envy.”
    “Or,” Ben positions a candle under his chin to cast dramatically eerie shadows over his face, “she is envy.”
    I nod and whisper, “She’s totally envy. I guessed that she was one of the Seven Sinning Sisters—she left Mephisto for Dia—but I hadn’t realized they are the seven deadly sins…personified.”
    “Where’d you hear all that?”
    “Teddy told me.”
    Oops. I’m supposed to hate Teddy, not reveal our private convos. My easy tone hasn’t escaped Ben’s