Last Rites Read online

  An Imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  Penguin.com

  RAZORBILL & colophon is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Produced by Alloy Entertainment

  1325 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10019

  First published in the United States of America by Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2018

  Copyright © 2018 Alloy Entertainment

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Vega, Danielle, author.

  Title: The merciless IV : last rites / by Danielle Vega.

  Other titles: Last rites

  Description: New York, NY : Razorbill, [2018]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018003871 (print) | LCCN 2018010488 (ebook) | ISBN 9780448493510 (E-book) | ISBN 9780425292181 (hardback)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Demoniac possession—Fiction. | Good and evil—Fiction. | Italy—Fiction. | Horror stories.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.V43 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.1.V43 Med 2018 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018003871 ISBN 9780425292181

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  To Terry and Becky

  and Darla and Brad

  and Bruce

  (who gave me my first ever computer)

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  CHAPTER 1: Before

  CHAPTER 2: After

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5: Before

  CHAPTER 6: After

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9: Before

  CHAPTER 10: After

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12: Before

  CHAPTER 13: After

  CHAPTER 14: Before

  CHAPTER 15: After

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17: Before

  CHAPTER 18: After

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25: Before

  CHAPTER 26: After

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28: Before

  CHAPTER 29: After

  EPILOGUE

  Acknowledgments

  CHAPTER 1

  Before

  It’s been three weeks. That’s twenty-one days. Five hundred and four hours. Thirty thousand, two hundred and forty minutes. I tried to break it down into seconds, too, but the numbers got too big and I couldn’t do the multiplication in my head.

  I’m woken up at seven every morning, when the night nurse delivers a bowl of cold oatmeal and warm OJ before heading to the front desk to clock out. It’s always a different nurse, her face blandly sympathetic as she hands me the aluminum tray and plastic spoon. She (it’s always a she) wears inappropriately cheerful scrubs. Laughing bananas. Puppies in sports gear. Teddy bears.

  I eat alone in my dorm room, scraping the sides of the bowl to get every last bite. Not finishing your meal is considered a sign of passive aggression. Do it often enough and they make you talk about it in group therapy.

  * * *

  • • •

  After breakfast we have art class—or what passes for art class in here. The nurses herd the girls sane enough to be trusted with scissors into the activity room, a low-ceilinged space with no windows and violently orange carpet. We sit in hard plastic chairs while the nurses pass out construction paper and Crayola crayons.

  I select a blue crayon from the box and roll it between my fingers. It’s half-melted, the paper long gone, and it leaves stains all over my hand.

  I took an art class once. Figure drawing at the community college. My dad surprised me with a box of charcoal pencils and a ream of creamy white paper on my first day. I still remember how smooth and soft that paper was. How it soaked up the charcoal like it was thirsty.

  I push the memory aside as I lift a piece of rough construction paper from the pile. Everything is rough here, in the institute. I doodle my name, Berkley, surrounded by daisies and hearts.

  The girl sitting across from me is sniffing the red crayon. She pushes her hair back with one hand, revealing a face that’s all eyes, and cheekbones like razorblades. She lowers the crayon to her mouth, sticks out her tongue—

  “No, Cassandra.” A nurse swoops down and plucks the crayon from between her fingers. “We don’t eat the art supplies.”

  Cassandra looks like she’s been denied a treat. She stares at me from across the table, running her tongue over cracked lips.

  * * *

  • • •

  Lunch comes next. The line of girls stretches across the cafeteria and into the hall. We hold scratched aluminum trays and inch forward, staring into space like zombies.

  The quiet bugs me—it has since I first got here. Lunch used to be the social event of my day. The cafeteria at my old school was a huge indoor courtyard. When you leaned back, you could see the windows from each floor of the four-story building, all the way up to the glass dome ceiling. Whom you sat with mattered, and people noticed if a boy stopped by your table to say hi or ask what you were doing that weekend.

  Until I was a junior, I mostly existed outside of all that. My best friend, Tayla, and I were your typical wannabe girls. Maybe I’m not supposed to admit that, but it was true. We sat at the corner table in the cafeteria, watching the parade of boys circle Harper Cole and Mara O’Neal. I’d pretty much resigned myself to a boring high school existence until, one day, Harper leaned back in her chair and flicked a hand at Tayla and me as we made our way past her table.

  “Hey, Berkley,” she’d said, something mischievous flashing through her eyes as she jerked her chin toward the empty spot beside her. “Eat with us.”

  Five words and Tayla and I were in.

  “Hurry up,” the lunch lady shouts at me. Her voice snaps me out of the memory and back to the cold, gray institute cafeteria. I’m next in line. I slide my lunch tray forward, looking around for someone to sit with.

  There’s Bridget, who thinks the rats that live inside the walls talk to her. Or Amelia, who says her mother’s death was a conspiracy covered up by the United States government. Or Lauren, who . . .

  Whatever. You get it.

  I take my tray to an empty table in the corner and sit down. I wonder what Mara and Harper are doing at this very second. I picture Harper lounging on the floor of her NYU dorm, impatiently flicking through some fashion magazine she buys only for the perfume samples, waiting for spring break to start. And Mara will be crouched over her tiny little desk just down the hall, covering a giant textbook in Post-it notes and studying for midterms. She was our high school val
edictorian, but she has to get straight As to keep her scholarship—not that she needs it. Her parents are loaded.

  I stir my serving of mystery meat with a plastic spoon. I wonder if Harper and Mara are thinking of me, too. If they’re picturing me in here.

  God, I hope not.

  * * *

  • • •

  After lunch, I head back to my room. I hear voices and swearing outside the thin walls. Sounds like another fight in the common room, probably over whether to watch reruns of Keeping Up with the Kardashians or The Big Bang Theory, which are somehow the only two television programs that ever play on the bolted-down television. The shouts rise, and then cut off abruptly. One of the nurses must’ve threatened medication.

  Technically it’s my free hour, which means I could be arguing in the common room, too, or at least wandering through the vomit-colored halls, getting some exercise. Instead, I collapse on my cot. I punch my lumpy pillow into a shape vaguely resembling an old rock and wedge it beneath my back, where it immediately deflates.

  I sneak the bottle of Wite-Out from under my mattress and drag the spongy brush over my nails in long, even strokes. I used to love painting my nails. I’d find nail-art pics on Instagram, watch tutorial after tutorial until I could perfect the tiny field of polka dots, draw a perfect sunflower using a toothpick and a cotton swab. Tayla wanted me to teach her, but her hands always shook.

  The nurses took all my polish when I checked in. Apparently some of the girls in this place actually drink the stuff. I nabbed the Wite-Out from the reception desk when they weren’t looking.

  A girl screams. The sound is high and shrill, and it echoes through the hallways outside my room. My muscles are like rubber bands, snapping tight. I focus on the white streaks of paint sliding across my nails so I don’t have to think about how the scream doesn’t sound human. It sounds like a dying animal, a fox or a cat.

  The door to my room opens with a creak of rusty hinges, and a girl I don’t recognize walks past my bed.

  “Cool nails,” she says, nodding at my hand. She’s Latina, with long, dark hair, brown eyes, and brown skin. “They’re sort of mod, right? Very 1960s London.”

  I pop an eyebrow at her. She doesn’t look like she eats crayons or talks to rats, but you can’t always see a girl’s crazy. She flops onto the bunk across from me—which I’d been using as an open-air closet for the two additional blue, nondescript T-shirts and drawstring pants I’m allowed—and kicks her paper-thin slippers to the floor.

  “Uh, thanks?” I push up to my knees, careful not to screw up my nails. “But who’re—“

  A nurse appears at the doorway, clipboard in hand. “Berkley Hubbard, meet Sofia Flores,” she says, not bothering to look up from her papers. “Your new roommate.”

  Sofia jerks her chin at me by way of greeting. I’m still processing and can’t form words. I thought I had a private room.

  The nurse doesn’t wait for my response. “Sofia, is there anything else I can get you before I go?”

  “Cigarette?” Sofia deadpans.

  We don’t get a lot of attempts at humor in here, and I don’t know if I’m more surprised by the bad joke or by the fact that the nurse actually laughs, her stomach heaving beneath kitten-print scrubs.

  “You’re a hoot, darling,” she says, still chuckling as she starts to pull the door shut. “I’ll leave the two of you to get acquainted.”

  And then she’s gone. Sofia leans against the wall, crossing her legs beneath her. “So,” she says, eyes following the exposed pipe stretching across our ceiling. “What’re you in for?”

  Anywhere else this might seem like the kind of question you don’t touch until you get to know each other. In here, it’s the equivalent of asking what college you go to or what you’re majoring in. It comes right after “Hey, what’s your name?”

  “I had a breakdown . . . thing,” I say, trying for casual. “I lost it at my first college party. I’m told there was a lot of screaming and that I sort of pulled a knife on some guy.”

  Sofia’s eyebrows go up. “You’re told?”

  “Yeah, well, I was pretty stoned. Don’t remember much. My parents totally overreacted, sending me here.” A jerk of my shoulder like it’s no big deal. I turn back to my nails and, muttering, add, “After what happened to Tayla, it’s not like they were going to take any chances.”

  “Who’s Tayla?”

  Thinking about her sends heat climbing up my neck. I pick at a chunky glob of Wite-Out near my thumb. “She was my best friend my whole life, but she committed suicide last year. I had the panic attack a few months later.” I clear my throat. “You?”

  Sofia says, without missing a beat, “Murder.”

  I look up too quickly and search her face to see if she’s serious. She stares back at me with eyes so empty she could be a doll.

  Then her lips split into a grin. “Come on, I’m kidding.”

  “Oh.” I laugh—nervously at first, and then for real. Laughing feels good. Really good. It’s weird how much you miss the little things. “Jerk.”

  “I was in solitary for a month after a little disagreement with some visitors, but they’ve finally deemed me sane enough to enter the wider population of crazies.” Sofia flips her hair over one shoulder and starts to braid her thick curls. “Lucky me, right?”

  “Why solitary?” I’m not sure if this is cool to ask, but Sofia rolls her eyes like she couldn’t care less.

  “Suicide risk. At least that’s what it says on my forms.”

  “Oh.” I don’t know what to say to that so I squirm, pretending I’m trying to get comfortable in my makeshift nest of threadbare blankets and scratchy sheets. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be, I’m fine.”

  She seems fine, at least more “fine” than anyone else in this place. I study her face for a moment, trying to figure out what kind of girl she was before. She’s pretty. It’s not flashy pretty, so you don’t notice it right away, but she’s got big eyes and long lashes and full, heart-shaped lips. I bet she was popular.

  Her fingers are still working at her hair, and I notice she has a tattoo in the crook of her hand: a serpent with a long, pornographic tongue, a headdress made of feathers propped on its scaly head. It’s an old-school, punk-rock tattoo. Homemade, the lines all sketchy and blue. My dad used to have a coffee-table book filled with prison tattoos. I think he liked the way it contrasted with our Connecticut-chic décor.

  “Is that real?” I ask, eyebrows lifting.

  Sofia tilts her hand to the side, frowning at the tattoo like she just remembered it was there. “This thing? As real as it gets.”

  I scoot to the edge of my bed. “Did you do it yourself?”

  “I used to be friends with this chick who worked in a tattoo parlor. She showed me how to do it using just a needle and ink. It’s impossible to find enough toilet paper in this place, but they’ve got needles and ink everywhere.”

  “You did it in here?”

  “Yep. In solitary.”

  I imagine her crouched on the floor in solitary, stabbing her hand over and over, smearing ink into the bleeding wound. I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep my lip from curling. “Sounds like it hurt.”

  A shrug. “That’s kind of the point, isn’t it? They put us through so much shit in this place. I want to walk away with something to show for it.”

  That’s the polar opposite of what I want. I want to walk away from this place without a mark. I want it to be like I was never here in the first place, like this was all some crazy nightmare.

  Lately, that seems impossible. I’m half-convinced the smell of this place is seeping into my skin. That I’ll never be able to scrub off the stink.

  “You’ll change your mind,” Sofia says, like she knows exactly what I’m thinking. I look up with just my eyes, suddenly wary.

  “What do
you mean?”

  “You’re thinking that you don’t want anyone to know you had to come to a place like this, right?” I don’t believe in mind-reading psychic nonsense. But this is spooky.

  Sofia leans forward, hands curling around her bed’s metal frame. “But you’ll change your mind. You went through hell and survived to tell the tale. A couple more weeks of this shit and you’ll want to wear it like a badge of honor.”

  “I don’t know about that.” But my voice doesn’t sound sure, even to me.

  Sofia studies me for another moment, dark eyes moving over my face. Finally, she leans back, mattress springs screeching as she recrosses her legs and lets her head drop against the wall. “You’re probably right. What the hell do I know? You seem like a good girl. Not like the other fuckers here.”

  She says good girl like it’s a compliment, but I just met her so I can’t be sure.

  “I bet you only have a couple more weeks left,” she adds. Her eyes flick over my face, narrowing. “Am I right?”

  “Three,” I admit. “I’m already counting down the seconds. You?”

  She presses her lips together, eyes moving to the door and then back to me again. “Are you kidding? They’re never letting me out.”

  I can’t tell whether she’s serious. I attempt a smile, waiting for her to crack up again and tell me she’s only kidding. But she doesn’t say a word. Just stares back at me with those strange, empty eyes.

  The girl in the TV room starts screaming again. Short, staccato bursts this time, the sounds rising and falling like hammer blows. My shoulders go rigid as I wait for her to stop. I glance at the door, one hand going to my throat. I can feel the bomp bomp bomp of my heartbeat in my fingertips.

  The screaming goes on and on.

  CHAPTER 2

  After

  My packed suitcase sits on the bed in front of me, filled to the brim with sundresses and strappy sandals, cropped tank tops and plastic sunglasses. Mara, in typical detail-oriented Mara fashion, made sure I knew the exact weather forecast when we Skyped last night so I could pack appropriately for the insane heat. I could see the sweat dotting her pale forehead, her white-blond pixie-cut hair stuck to her skin.