“Ethan? Everything okay?”
“Oh yeah,” I said, quickly, reaching into my bag for my notebook. “I’m not—I’m not very good, you know, but I like to draw.” I opened my notebook to a sketch I’d done of the House of Seven Terrors during earth science. “So you can say no, but I was thinking…maybe I could, I don’t know, illustrate some of the stories? Like what you’d find in a book?”
Maggot. If a man desires respect, he must not frame his every sentence as a question. If you consider yourself to be an artist, then be that artist.
That was…surprisingly good advice from a creature likely born from a fiery pit.
You could reward my genius by feeding me, Maggot, Alastor hissed. Feed me!
“Well, hey, this is pretty great!” Mr. Gupta said as I tried not to die of embarrassment. My whole face felt like it had caught fire, even as excitement zipped through me. “I think illustrated retellings would be excellent, as long as they’re done in your own unique style. What elective did they assign you?”
“Just—” I ignored the feeling of hot sand rushing through my good arm again. “Just, uh, study hall.”
Feed me!
“Have you ever taken an art class before?”
What was Alastor doing? Why were my fingers twitching again?
FEED ME.
I looked up, remembering to shake my head. “N-no, I haven’t.”
“I’ll talk to the art teacher, see if she can’t let you sit in on a few of her classes—”
Without warning, without thinking, my hand shot out and snatched a small, palm-size pumpkin that Mr. Gupta had been using to decorate his desk. My arm jerked my hand up to my mouth and my jaw snapped down around the pumpkin. I bit into it hard, tearing a chunk away to chew and swallow.
Mr. Gupta stared up at me from his desk chair with wide eyes.
“I…mistook it…for an apple,” I said lamely, trying to hand it back to him.
“I think you’d better hang on to that,” Mr. Gupta said. “In case you need a snack for later.”
Coach Randall was all squeaking sneakers and whispery whistles. He wore a white Nike tracksuit with orange stripes and a matching baseball cap. Both were emblazoned with the school’s logo. Which, you guessed it, was a witch riding a broomstick across a crescent moon. From the look of him, I didn’t think he was the kind of person to let me off the hook for the day because I had an upset tummy—or because I hated physical exercise of any kind.
Fear is for the weak and meek. This is yet another opportunity to prove your excellence.
Yeah. That, or I needed to be on some form of asthma medicine.
I sucked it up and tugged on the sad gray gym uniform Nell handed me before I went into the boys’ locker room. We joined the rest of the class in the gymnasium for stretching. Then we had to do a few warm-up laps around the badminton nets.
I started out by trying to keep pace with Nell, but it became clear pretty fast that it wasn’t going to happen. Physical education in Redhood was learning to waltz or golf.
Nell left me behind wheezing, a look of pity on her face, her glasses bouncing on the bridge of her nose. If we were ever chased by a fiend, I now knew for certain she could and would outrun me, leaving me to be eaten.
Faster! Alastor commanded, like I was some kind of horse he was trying to steer. Have you no pride, man?
At that point, no. But what I did have was a crippling cramp in my right side and a desperate need for water.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone come up behind me, slowing down to match my labored pace.
Parker, of course.
He wasn’t even sweating as he lapped me, turning back with a shrug, as if to say, What are you going to do about it?
Do you not tire, Alastor began, of always trailing behind, staring forlornly at the back of others’ heads?
“Of course I do,” I snapped, ignoring the alarmed look Norton tossed my way as even he passed me.
It wasn’t until the start of my third lap, and everyone else’s fourth, that things below my neck started to go a little weird. That same prickling weight I had felt in my arm at lunch was back, only this time it was in my legs. It came on so fast that I stumbled, my toes catching on the polished wood court.
What are you doing? I demanded.
Batten down the hatches, knave! Alastor said. This ship is about to set sail!
To say that it’s disturbing to no longer be in control of your limbs is like saying it’s only a little weird to see someone dressed as a dinosaur eating frozen hot dogs on a bench made of pigeons.
I let out a sharp yelp as my legs began to move, clumsy at first, then faster and faster, and steadier when the malefactor finally got a better grip on them. The gym walls and championship banners hanging from them blurred into streaks of orange and black.
I didn’t ask for this! I told him. This isn’t a contract.
Of course not, you urchin-snouted miscreant. Were this a contract, you would have finished by now. Onward!
The surge of energy that pulsed through me was like sticking my finger in a power socket. But I didn’t feel any kind of pain. Actually, I felt great. The warmth spreading through my chest ate away at the tight ache. My breath came back in a rush. I pretended I was clinging to the back of a speeding car.
I came up behind Parker so fast he only had one chance to look over his shoulder before I passed him by. The next time I got close to him, he started running faster, trying to keep his thinning lead. His sneakers pounded the ground, his arms pumping wildly as he wove through the other students.
I don’t want to lose, I thought. I don’t want to lose….
My legs charged into an even faster sprint, finally passing him. My chest felt like it was cracking open, it was that overstuffed with bright, sparkling elation.
Victory!
Was this what winning felt like all the time—like you were flying?
Parker tucked his head down and charged forward, his shoes squeaking with the force of his movement. He was so focused on picking up speed he didn’t notice that Norton was directly in his path.
“Watch out!” Nell called.
Norton looked back just in time to see Parker collide into him at top speed, slamming them both down to the ground. The soles of my shoes squealed as I dragged them to a slow stop a short distance away.
“Oh Lord,” the coach said. He threw his clipboard into the air and ran over, blowing frantically into his whistle. Like that was going to do anything at that point. “Emergency! Emergency! Someone call nine-one-one!”
“Maybe we should start with the nurse?” Nell suggested, helping a dazed Norton sit up. Aside from some red blotches on his knees and palms from where he hit the ground, Norton was okay. Parker was another story.
“Owwww—my ankle!” he said, rolling onto his back, clutching at it with his hands. The whole PE class gasped and gagged when he lifted his hands and revealed the unnatural angle his ankle was bent at. Parker’s face screwed up, his mouth twisting in pain.
My heart was still thundering in my chest, so loud I could barely hear the voices around me.
I didn’t do that. I didn’t trip him, or force him to run faster to try to keep up with me.
No, you did not, Maggot. The blame rests heavy upon his shoulders. You were merely proving yourself.
“He came out of nowhere,” Norton was saying as he stood on shaky feet. “I would have moved out of the way.”
“I know you would have,” Nell said, giving me a narrow, suspicious look. “It was pretty strange, wasn’t it?”
Within minutes, a young woman—the nurse—arrived to assess the situation. Parker covered his bright red face with his hands.
“Good God, son,” Coach said, pounding my shoulder. “Tell me you’ll try out for track and field! You’re a natural—a godsend—!”
You are very welcome, Al gloated.
But I wasn’t about to thank him. It doesn’t count.
Of course it does, Maggot. You
won. You were the best—we were the best.
But it wasn’t a race. And even if it had been, I wasn’t a track star—an eight-hundred-year-old fiend was. Still, I couldn’t forget how easily my legs had eaten up the ground, how the cool air had felt against the sweat on my face. Passing people, instead of being passed, had felt as natural and necessary as breathing.
But I felt that small pride start to deflate as I watched the nurse comfort Parker. The other kids watched in both horror and horrible amusement as the scene played out in front of them. Something heavy sat in the pit of my stomach, and I didn’t think it was the pumpkin I’d eaten.
“Thanks, I wish I could,” I told the coach, watching as the nurse pulled out her cell phone and finally did call for an ambulance. “But I won’t be here for long.”
The first slap on my back scared the living daylights out of me. Then Peter Fairfield held up a hand as he walked by, and it took me a full minute to realize he wanted a high five. I was ready for the next one, lifting my arm, but at the last second Brian Farrell turned away. He waved a hand in front of his face and stepped wide around me. He looked grossed out.
Not this again, I thought, feeling miserable. For the first half of the year, the kids at the Academy had pretended I had some kind of disease that they could catch if I stood too close to them. There was a whole set of rules and everything. The only loser of the game was me.
I turned back to the bulletin board on the wall. Most of the papers stapled up there were sign-up sheets for clubs and sports. Some were just laminated copies of the school rules. But there was a big school calendar for October, with the thirty-first, a Monday, marked with a pumpkin sticker.
Halloween on a Monday? This really was the worst year.
I leaned in. There was a star on the Friday before Halloween—the twenty-eighth. The Thirteenth Annual Production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.
I skimmed the board again until my eyes landed on the bright orange sheet labeled CRUCIBLE AUDITIONS.
Oh, I thought. Huh.
Hmm. That, from Alastor. This would be frivolous human entertainment, I presume?
The Crucible was an old-ish play about this guy, John Proctor, set during the Salem Witchcraft Trials. One of the girls—one of the evil ones who start accusing people they don’t like of being besties with the Devil—falls in love with him, and when he shoots her down, she accuses him and his wife of being witches.
I’d never made it through the play without falling asleep. It’s basically a lot of people running around screaming, “I saw Goody So-and-So with the Devil!” which gets real old real fast.
But apparently not to Nell. Her name was right at the top of the auditions list—barely visible under where someone had marked it out with a pen.
Ooohhhhhh. My brain was rapid-firing now. That weird speech she had been reciting when I first met her. Because it is my name! That had been from the play, I was sure of it. She had been practicing even though her name was crossed out.
When Nell finally decided to show up, I pointed out the sign-up sheet. She didn’t say a word, only lifted a small spray bottle out of her bag and aimed it right at my face.
“Did you make a contract with him?” she hissed, still spraying. “Is that how you ran so fast?”
“Ack! Ack!” I sputtered. It tasted so bad, so gross, I tried wiping my tongue off against my shirt. Ugh. “What are you doing?”
“Answer my question!”
What foul treachery is this? Alastor wailed. By the realms, you smell of roses and spring. Find mud, Maggot, and quickly rid yourself of this rotten stench!
Nell moved the bottle down and sprayed the rest of me, not stopping until my shirt was so wet it clung to me.
“Stop, stop,” I begged, trying to twist away from the torture. “Of course I didn’t make a contract. He just—he just gave me a little boost! That’s it. I would never make a contract. Ever!”
“Fine,” she said, returning her weapon to her bag. “From now on you have to shower after PE, okay?”
“What the crap, Nell?” The smell of flowers was already giving me a headache.
“You—” The witch lowered her voice, pulling me away from the girls’ locker-room door as more of the girls spilled out. “You mean you can’t smell yourself?”
“I can now!”
“All right, come on, I need to show you where the library is and I’ll explain on the way.” She raised the spray bottle again and gave it a little shake.
Do not let her douse us with such a vile concoction again! Alastor said, and I felt my speed pick up to dart away from her.
“It’s just Febreze!” Nell wasn’t even gasping for breath as she caught up to us. “I’m just trying to help you, but if you’d prefer to smell like rotten eggs—”
I skidded to a stop on the uneven sidewalk. Rotten eggs. Like the night of the test? I lifted my shirt, and noticed that there was a kind of gross smell cutting through even the flower-power stench.
“That was…me?” I whispered, horrified. Nell took me standing there as permission to spray me down again.
“It’s bad,” she said. “You probably can’t even smell it because you’re so used to it.”
“But what is it?” I asked. I knew I didn’t smell like sugarplums and Christmas after running around and sweating, but it wasn’t even hot outside.
“Fiends are warm-blooded—way warm-blooded. Their body temperatures are much higher than a human’s. That smell, the sulfur, that’s their version of sweat. So when you get overheated you sweat like normal, but…”
“So does he,” I finished. “Awesome.”
I smell of conquered kingdoms and doom and despair, Alastor cut in, proudly. Unlike you paunchy, knotty-pated maggot pies.
“So basically I’m going to smell like a stink bomb until we get him out, or he worms his way out?”
“Well, if that second thing happens, at least you’ll have bigger things to worry about,” Nell offered in a weak voice.
I followed her up the path to the library, where my study hall was being held. “Maybe I could just get out of PE—”
“Yeah, good luck with that,” she said, holding the door open. “Remember, stay here until I come get you after school. We’ll take the bus home.”
“Your home,” I corrected, with a pang.
“If you need anything, I’ll be in the theater,” she said. “And, Ethan? Don’t be an idiot, please.”
“It’ll be a challenge,” I told her. “But I think I’m up for it.”
The library was empty except for a few kids at the row of computers in the center of the stacks. A half dozen more were hunched over tables, scribbling away at their homework. The librarian glanced up at me as I walked through the security thing, giving me the once-over.
“Are you new?” The woman wasn’t old, but she wasn’t young either. Her brown hair was streaked with rivulets of silver. A deep crease marred her forehead as she frowned at me. “You look familiar, but I can’t seem to place your name.”
Crap.
No—there was no way she could recognize me as Prosper Redding. Nell’s glamour spell was still in effect. Stop making dying-animal noises. You are fine. You. Are. Fine.
I could feel myself start to shrink back a little from her intense stare, but I forced myself to stand up straight. “My name is Ethan White. And, yeah, I’m new.”
The woman seemed to measure me with a single look. “All right. Library closes at five. No monkey business on the computers, understand? Let me know if you need help finding a resource.”
I took a seat at one of the worktables, fully intending to ignore the rest of my homework in favor of planning out my project for Mr. Gupta’s class. It was just that the computers were so close to me, whirring, breathing out their hot air as they loaded and printed and processed. They were ancient compared to the thin screens and wireless keyboards that we had at the Academy.
Lucky us, I realized for the first time. I’d just taken them for granted.
> I took a seat as far away from the other kids as I could, glancing over at them while I waited for the Internet to load. The librarian left her desk, pushing a cart of books needing to be reshelved into the stacks.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard for a moment, itching to type REDDING FAMILY into the search bar. I took a deep breath and shook my head. The most important thing was keeping Nell’s spell intact and lying low. If everything went according to the plan, I’d see my family soon. Right now that had to be enough for me.
But it didn’t mean I had to sit there idly and just stay safe, like Uncle B had instructed. If they didn’t have a computer at home to research, I could do it here for them.
I typed GETTING RID OF DEMONS into the search bar and leaned close to the screen. Instead of pulling up the search page, a white one with a huge red stop sign appeared.
YOU HAVE BEEN DENIED ACCESS TO THIS SITE AS IT HAS OBJECTIONABLE CONTENT. ETHAN WHITE, YOUR INTERNET USAGE IS MONITORED AND LOGGED.
“Craaaaap,” I whispered, clicking back. I tried again, this time searching for EXERCISING A DEMON.
I believe the word you are looking for is “exorcising,” Maggot, Al said, sounding bored.
But I remembered the subject that definitely had not bored him. A DEMON—I deleted that. Something told me demon was a word the school blocked for very obvious reasons. TRUE NAMES AND MAGIC.
Search results finally loaded. I scanned through them quickly, scrolling down. Most of the pages had to do with Dungeons & Dragons or video games. There were a couple of sites dedicated to Wicca, and a Wikipedia page dedicated to “True Names.”
Interesting. Many cultures possess a secret, sacred language from which they derive names which express their true nature… I scrolled down farther. In certain folktales, there is a tradition that if one possesses someone’s true name, that person or being can be controlled or affected magically.
Rubbish, Alastor declared. Which made me instantly print out the page to show Uncle Barnabas and Nell later. There were even a few academic papers linked as references at the end, which I added to the print queue so I could read them later, when I wasn’t scared of someone looking over my shoulder.