The Merciful
I crouch at the edge of my bed and lean down, peering under the dust ruffle.
“There you are, you little devil,” I mutter.
Dr. Jekyll stares out at me with wide eyes, like he’s afraid I’ll reach in and grab him by the tail. I won’t even reach under to touch him—when I tried petting him under there before, he clawed the heck out of me, and I still have the marks to prove it. Dynamo said he could tell me who to trust, but I didn’t expect him to say I couldn’t trust myself. He was so sweet when I held him the first time, but the moment we got back here and I let him out of his crate, he turned into a hissing demon-kitty.
Hence the name.
“Come on, you have to use the litter box eventually,” I say, wiggling his little cat toy at him. Maybe he doesn’t like it because he can smell the other cat on the old toy that Dynamo got from his sister.
At last, I give up and climb to my feet with a sigh. I put some food into his dish and grab my jacket to head for the dining hall for my own dinner. Jekyll comes out to eat when I’m not in the room, and he even used the litter box once, so I guess he’s doing okay, even if he hates me.
Like usual, I check my reflection in the mirror before going out, but I don’t linger. My strawberry blonde hair is plaited into two tight braids, and I wear my usual clogs, knitted tights to keep my legs warm, a flowered skirt that skims my calves, and my puffy jacket with a hat I crotched my first winter with Aunt Lucy. Satisfied that I look adequately sexless, I leave my room.
The moment the door opens wide, a grey streak shoots past my legs and down the hall, disappearing down the staircase.
Crap!
I race after him, cursing Jekyll and Dynamo and myself for taking him. Pets are not allowed in the dorms. I could probably be kicked out for having one. At the very least, they’ll make me get rid of him, and since I don’t know anyone who will take him, I’d have to bring him to the shelter and hope someone adopted him. Then again, maybe that’s what he wants. He’d obviously be happier with anyone else. Maybe he’ll be Mr. Hyde for his new owner.
I step onto the stairs and spot the little fluffball on the landing for the next floor. He looks up, his blue eyes round, and then disappears like a wisp of smoke down that hall.
I grit my teeth and clatter down after him, cursing my clogs now. I’m going to need a confession after all the swearing I’m doing in my head over his cat. But it’s evening, when everyone is home, or coming and going from dinner, and the chances of someone seeing a forbidden cat running around in the hall are higher than at any other time of day.
I’ve never been on the second floor, since I don’t have any reason. I don’t have any friends, and my room is on the third floor. I glance up and down the hall, but it’s the same as mine. A few doors have decorations, some left from the beginning of the year when the sisters put our names on each one, some signifying that the girls are in the one sorority on campus. A few are decorated with personal touches by the craftier girls. One that looks like they left up their Halloween theme swings open ahead of me, and suddenly, I’m standing face to face with the white-haired boy from the lecture hall.
I’ve never seen his face up close before, since I’m usually staring at the back of his neck as he gossips with Annabel Lee and Ronique. But now he stares back at me, as startled as I feel, and I realize how beautiful he is. He looks like a K-Pop star, with a slender, elegant build that towers over me, white hair tousled in a casually cool way, as if he just ran his fingers through it, chiseled cheekbones, pouty lips and bedroom eyes, and smooth skin that has a radiance most girls would kill for.
“Did you just see a cat?” I ask, halfway convinced that Dr. Jekyll ran into the room. He’s so fast, I don’t even know if I saw him dart in or not.
“A cat?” he asks in that purr of a voice he uses in class.
“I—I saw a grey cat,” I stammer, trying not to blush, trying not to give away that I’m the one with a contraband animal. “It went this way. Not that it’s mine, I just thought… Maybe you’d seen it.”
The K-Pop idol cracks a smile as he saunters toward me, so we’re within normal conversing distance. “Oh, don’t worry, the girl down the hall has a bunch of rodents.” He waves lazily behind him. “I’m sure your pussy is not a problem.”
“I—It’s not…”
He looks me up and down and cocks his head to one side. “What are you supposed to be?”
“What?”
“Are you dressed up as Heidi or something?” he asks, gesturing to my clothes. “Pippi Long Stocking? The Wendy’s girl?”
“I’m not—” I shake my head and refocus. “You didn’t see a little grey kitten come by?”
“Only kitty I’ve seen is Annabel’s,” he says, glancing back as a ghostly goth girl slips from the room like a shadow and appears at his elbow, cradling a black cat in her arms. “Speak of the devil.”
“Hi,” I say on a breath, hoping she doesn’t remember me. I remember her. Even with all the makeup, the black lipstick and piercings, I’d recognize Angel’s cousin anywhere. His mom once joked that North blood was so strong that every single one of them looked like siblings, no matter how different their moms looked. She’s right. They all have the same Colombian features, jet-black hair, dramatic lashes, and striking eyes. While Angel is tawny complected with opaque, jade green eyes, though, Annabel Lee has alabaster skin and eyes as golden as her cat’s.
The slightest twitch of her black-nailed fingers is her only greeting, and I can’t read anything in her blank, sullen expression. I can’t tell if she knows who I am. We never hung out—she’s on the gang side of Angel’s family, which my parents didn’t want touching our lives. Heath and Eternity were from the law-abiding side, so they were allowed.
“This is our resident Wednesday Addams, and that wraith in her arms is Edward Gorey,” the K-Pop star says, catching the black cat as it launches itself like a projectile from Annabel Lee’s arms to his. “Oh, and I’m Manson. Like Marilyn, not like the serial killer. I assure you, I’m totally harmless. Unless you fuck with my friends, in which case…” He looks me up and down and raises a brow, a little smirk on his face as he strokes the cat’s head.
“He will poison you with something entirely untraceable but that kills you in a slow, agonizing, indescribably gruesome way,” Annabel Lee says, the corners of her mouth lifting into a sadistic smile, as if that prospect is the only thing that brings light to her dark world. “For me.”
“Noted,” I say. “I’m just looking for my cat. And there he is.”
Dr. Jekyll comes trotting down the hall toward us, tail straight up, like nothing happened. I hurry to scoop up the little fluff ball before retreating.
“You have a familiar?” Annabel Lee asks behind me.
I wince, but it would be rude to walk away when she’s talking to me, so I stop and turn back slowly. “I have a kitten,” I say evenly. “I know I’m not supposed to. It’s just…”
My throat catches, and suddenly I have the terrible urge to cry. After all I’ve gone through, I can’t stand the thought of being alone in that room again, even when the alternative is a demon cat who hates me.
“They can see people’s auras,” the goth girl says. “They can sense if they’re here to do you harm. Bring her over. You’ll see.”
I slowly return to them. The black cat hisses fiercely, and Jekyll shrinks down in my arms like a turtle trying to pull its head into the shell.
“I’m not—” I start, horrified that she’ll think I mean her harm, and she’ll have a reason to rat me out for having a pet. Or get her boyfriend to poison me. Maybe she’s finally making good on the threats her family threw with the bricks through our windows.
“She’s not hissing at you,” Annabel Lee drawls, sounding unbothered. “She doesn’t like strange cats.”
“I’ll put her up,” says Manson. “It was nice meeting you…?”
“Mercy,” I say, realizing I never introduced myself. “Mercy Soules.”
“Well,” he says, drawing up to his full height of at least six feet, cradling the spitting cat in his arms. “May God have mercy on all our souls.” He whirls dramatically and starts off down the hall, trench coat flapping behind him like Dracula’s cape.
“That’s quite a name,” Annabel Lee says, before cracking the tiniest, rueful smile. “Then again, I’m one to talk. I’m literally named for Edgar Allan Poe.”
I know.
I almost say the words before I catch myself. She doesn’t seem to remember me, and since the last thing I need is one more person on campus who hates me, I’m not about to remind her.
Stepping forward, she holds out a finger to pet the top of Jekyll’s head.
Instead of hissing like I’m trying to shove him in a bathtub and drown him, he reaches up his nose like a sweet little angel and bumps it against her finger.
“Who’s ziss wittle guy?” Annabel Lee asks in a baby voice that I wouldn’t have thought could possibly come from a girl who wears all black and has spikes everywhere from her platform boots to her belt to the dog collar around her neck. She even has a spike extending from a piercing between her lower lip and chin. Maybe it’s to keep herself pure, so her boyfriend can’t kiss her.
“This is Dr. Jekyll,” I say, cradling the kitten protectively, though I have no idea where that instinct comes from, since it’s clear the feelings between us are not mutual.
He sniffs Annabel Lee’s finger, then closes his eyes and rubs his head against it.
“See?” she says, giving him a few more pets before straightening. “Looks can be deceiving to humans, but never to cats. They don’t judge books by their covers.”
“I wasn’t—” I start, then break off.
Her white teeth flash in a grin. “Of course you were.”
Of course I was. She looks like the kind of person who holds satanic rituals to call in actual demons, curses people with witchcraft, or otherwise consorts with dark forces. But now I notice the stylized cross hanging from her neck, although she also wears a pentagram and an evil eye, which only leaves me more confused. I can’t tell if it’s just part of an elaborate costume, meant to look tough and gothic, or if she really has sold her soul. And I guess that’s her point.
“Sorry,” I mutter. If she’s a witch, that’s even more reason not to get on her bad side, though I’m not sure why she’d be at this school if she worships the devil.
“Forgiven,” she says. “I prefer to let people show me who they are before I make my own judgments about them.”
I swallow hard. “So, you do know who I am.”
Manson and Ronique emerge from her room, and she smiles at them before turning back to me. “We’re about to go eat. Wanna come with?”
“Oh, thanks,” I say, looking down at Dr. Jekyll, who’s now curled up and purring like the sweetest kitten on earth. “I should get him back to my room before anyone sees, though.”
“Maybe next time,” she says, already turning to her friends.
My chest hollows out into a cold, empty pit, and I duck my head and hurry away before her friends can talk to me. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, why I want to cry as I hurry up to my room, shielding Dr. Jekyll from view with my jacket when a group of girls passes me on the stairs. Maybe it’s because for the first time since I arrived here, someone was nice to me—besides a priest, who is obligated to be—and I can’t be friend with her because her cousin is one of the boys making my life hell.
My mind flashes to that day in my room, in my bed, his sensuous mouth caressing me with damning strokes of the purest pleasure, prying my fingers loose from their death grip on my self-control, plunging me deeper into hell each time I lost it. He led me down a path that I don’t know if I can ever find my way back from. If he’s not as cruel as the others, it’s not because he’s kind. It’s because he’s not after my body. He’s ferreting out my soul.
I cradle Dr. Jekyll close to my chest, thankful for him. He might hate me almost as much as the boys, but he’s mine. He’s all I have, all I’m allowed. I can’t make friends with the dramatic Annabel Lee and her gorgeous boyfriend and her sensible friend. Choosing other friends, even ones completely different from Eternity, would be an insult to her memory. I can’t replace her, so I’ve never tried. All my focus has to be on finding her, and surviving the Hellhounds, and evading the Sinners.
So that’s what I’m focused on as I hurry down the hall to my room and slip inside. I pull up short, my breath catching. There’s a plain white envelope lying in the center of my bed.
I spin around, and Dr. Jekyll squirm and hisses. Making sure my door is closed, I set him down, then hurry through the room, checking every corner and crevice to make sure we’re alone. My heart is hammering as I turn back to the letter. I trudge toward it, dreading opening it, knowing I will anyway. I can’t stop the curiosity. I can’t just throw it away.
Someone was in my room again.
This time, I left the door unlocked in my rush to follow the kitten. Which means it could be from anyone. But I know before I even pick it up that it’s not random. It’s for me. And it’s from the same person who’s been here before, who’s been leaving me threatening messages since I arrived. Fingers trembling, I turn it over and pull out the single sheet of white paper.
“For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.”