“Choco-cho-cho-choco-coco-chocolate—”
“Flavor, special flavor. Tuesday pumpkin, spicy pumpkin—”
“Orange-ysicle, creamsicle, orange-y dreamsicle—”
The faeries had brains as small as specks of dust. Unfortunately, they were capable of speech. Perhaps even more unfortunately, they were limited to repeating back only what they had overheard. Many secrets plots and devious schemes that had been passed in whispers in the Dark Palace had been regrettably announced to the entire realm by the unseen faeries clinging to nearby rocks and statues.
Nightlock had clearly visited this place before and had come prepared. He reached into the pocket of his drooping, brightly patterned shorts. He whipped out a half-eaten bar of chocolate the little witch had abandoned the night before. It was as though he had cast a spell of his own. The chattering fell silent and each and every tiny head swiveled toward the hob.
Alastor found himself taking a step back. Their eyes were huge with hunger and shot through with red. Nightlock threw the candy as far as he could down the alley, grunting with the effort. The cloud of faeries crawled, fluttered, and buzzed their way over to it.
“Shame,” Nightlock said. “They have become addicted to the humans’ evil sweets. Evil, evil, evil. It gnaws at their minds, poisons them, makes them hungrier.”
With the swarm of faeries occupied, Nightlock turned toward the metal garbage container. Alastor stepped aside, allowing the hob to pass. He watched as the little fiend knocked once, twice, thrice, against the side of the bin. The sound was like thunder.
“Elf, His Highness is here—make haste,” Nightlock said. He knocked again, this time harder and faster. “Do not keep my lord and master waiting. It is a school night, and he has a bedtime.”
“Silence,” Alastor hissed, feeling his face flood with heat. Princes of the Third Realm did not have bedtimes. If he hadn’t been trapped in the boy’s body—
The wind shifted, cutting a path straight up the alley. It lifted the boy’s dark mop of hair off his forehead. Just for that moment, the sickening syrupy smell lifted away; now he smelled iron. Sticky, hot iron with the faintest touch of damp earth.
Nightlock, though an inferior creature, must have scented it too. His huge eyes seemed in danger of popping from his skull.
“Open it, servant,” Alastor managed to squeeze out around the lump in the boy’s throat.
The hob squared his shoulders and used every ounce of power in his squatty legs to huff, puff, and drag the bin away from the brick wall. He revealed a wall of climbing green vines, where no plant should have been able to grow.
Alastor followed the unnaturally bright trail of green down the rain-slicked wall. Down to a second, narrower alleyway that had been masked by the bin. Down to the source of the vines—a pool of dark emerald-green elf blood.
Nightlock shrieked and scampered behind him, clinging to the boy’s leg. Snot streamed out of his nose as he shook.
“Master, Master, no!” he moaned as Alastor dragged them both forward to peer into what had been this elf’s home.
The alley was only feet deep, but was kept impossibly clean and tidy. Stretches of shining fabric were draped overhead, likely to keep out the rain and snow. There was bedding for sleep and a worktable and bench. Half-finished pieces of jewelry and precious stones were abandoned, untouched. They gleamed, calling to Alastor. That was the elves’ true magic: everything they touched became irresistible.
This was not a robbery, he thought. If it had been, they would have taken the gold. He let his vision fall back upon what was left of the elf’s body.
Its long, pointed face had been slashed nearly off. Ribbons of bloody cuts ran down the creature’s body—the deepest in his chest, where his two hearts once beat.
Alastor felt ill. Beyond ill. True, in the past he had seen battles, ordered the death of criminals Downstairs, and he had tormented his own brothers with their worst nightmares. But this…this was brutal. This violence was frightening, even to him.
“What could have done this?” Nightlock moaned. “By the realms!”
The shadow beside them dove forward with a ferocious roar. Alastor was all instinct, swinging the boy’s arm around, sending a white-hot surge of power rippling up to his clenched fist. The blast connected with the ghoul’s jaw, snapping it hard to the right. Its face, all twisted and wrinkled green flesh, was nearly all teeth, its mouth enormous enough to fit the boy’s head inside.
Eight eyes rose through the flaps of skin where a man’s eyelids might have been. Stringy black hair slapped the boy’s face as the ghoul tried to land a blow to his stomach.
“You attack me?” Alastor growled, sending another surge of pure, crackling power to the boy’s fist. “You dare to challenge me?”
The ghoul stood nearly two heads taller than the boy; its limbs could stretch and contort on demand, which was the only reason it was able to reach behind itself and pull a jagged blade from the belt draped over its wrinkled, pocked skin. Alastor caught the hilt and let his magic pour from him, melting the metal down until it disintegrated entirely.
“Return to Downstairs,” Alastor commanded, pouring his crackling, rageful power into the ghoul, “and—”
For the first time, Alastor noticed that the ghoul’s control collar had been removed. That explained why he had become vicious enough to attack, he supposed. Under his brother Bune’s herding and influence, the ghouls were nothing more than collectors of the magic that came from young humans’ fears. He searched for the bottle they used to store the energy, hoping to drink it to replenish what he had used tonight, but there was none.
Curious.
The ghouls sent children dark dreams, or, when the malefactors were in dire need of magic, were allowed to pass through the mirrors to hide beneath beds or in closets. They did not attack malefactors. With or without their collars, they did nothing without the command of one fiend—Alastor’s brother, Bune.
“Who do you serve?” Alastor asked, shifting the boy’s hand until it closed around the ghoul’s neck, which was splattered with emerald elf blood. “Why have you come here?”
The ghoul leaned forward, meeting Alastor’s gaze in an outrageous show of impertinence.
“I serve,” it gasped out, “the true, worthy heir, my master—”
Bune.
One last surge of power burst through Alastor and out the boy’s hand. He held on to the ghoul as it screamed, burning from the inside out until there was nothing but ash floating in what had been the elf’s home.
“Bune,” he whispered, scattering the remains of the ghoul with the boy’s feet. He had not been Downstairs when the curse was cast—at least he could name the villain. What was this feeling inside of the boy’s chest—this unbearable tightness? “I knew it would be so.”
“My lord and master!” Nightlock said, crawling out from under the workbench. “How—how fearsome! This hob did not know you possessed so much power, that you h-had recovered so much of it already.”
He had. Human “junior high,” as it were, was an excellent breeding ground for misery. Alastor had feasted on the feelings of frustration, anger, and hopelessness he’d felt there. But he did not tell the hob that he had used too much of it. Already, he felt his grip on the boy loosening in a dangerous manner. Now, unless the boy signed a contract, there truly would be no escaping until the night of his thirteenth birthday.
He could not let Bune defeat him.
His brother had always gone two steps beyond cruelty. Alastor believed that humans deserved whatever ends their foolishness brought to them, but Bune believed that they should be destroyed, and their realm and its magic claimed once and for all.
He had been the one to lock Pyra inside the tower for not being able to manifest her animal form. Bune had taunted her, bruised her, told her that it was only by their father’s mercy she was still alive. As their father’s heir, Alastor had been able to swear to her that he would free her once he had the throne.
B
ut he did not have the throne, Bune did.
Which meant that Pyra was in far more danger than he ever imagined—if his sister was still living at all.
On the third night, the dream returned.
The panther with its gleaming black coat and sinewy limbs did not make an appearance, but the vision was scorched with fire. It lit something beneath my skin until even my nostrils were drenched with the rotten-egg smell of sulfur. Its words seemed to stroke down my spine like its soft, silky tail.
Do you hear the singing bone? Do you hear the singing bone?
Heading to school that morning, just before the bus turned into the drop-off lane, I finally built up the nerve to ask Nell about it. Ever since the tour groups had enthusiastically agreed to work with the House of Seven Terrors on a regular basis, she’d lost that pinched look on her face whenever she spoke to me.
As I said, to win favor from others, you must grant them a favor.
I brushed Al’s words aside, waiting as Nell thought it over.
“A singing bone…that’s something from folklore—fairy tales,” she said. “My mom told me about it once, and I think there are a couple of variations of it. It usually goes something like, a jealous brother or sister will kill one of their siblings and hide their bones. But when the bones of the victim are found, they sing the truth of what happened.”
“Ugh,” I said. What did that have to do with anything in that dream, though? What was my brain trying to get me to figure out?
“Why do you ask?” Nell said as the door swung open and we made our way down the aisle. I caught her glancing around as we passed some of the other kids, but they hadn’t said a word about her or to her since we got on the bus.
“Just something I read when I was doing research on…well, you know,” I said, lowering my voice. “By the way, I think we should look into the whole name-of-fiends thing….”
Nell stopped so suddenly I accidentally walked into her back. “You think we haven’t? Trust me, the spell is the only way.”
“I know, but—”
“Uncle Barnabas checked on his source for the…” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “For the toes. He thinks he’ll be able to get them by the end of next week. He has some way of shipping them to us without customs freaking out, apparently.”
Somewhere inside me, it sounded like Alastor let out a tiny gasp of alarm.
I knew it was an option—the only real plan that we had—but something still made me wonder about the name thing, if only because of Al’s reaction to it. If Nell and Uncle Barnabas had given up on that line of thinking, I’d pursue it myself. Just in case we needed a backup plan.
“Hey…one more thing,” I said quietly. “Is there anything, you know, amiss Downstairs? Have you heard anything about something going on there?”
You remembered. Al sounded genuinely surprised.
Nell stared at me. “Why would I have heard anything at all? It’s not like I have a pen pal down there.”
I tried, I told him. I could maybe ask Missy…
You would?
I was still thinking about those words, and the malefactor’s surprise, as we arrived at school and left the bus behind. I didn’t shake them off until it was time to put my plan into play.
“Aren’t you coming?” Nell asked when I started to turn down the wrong corridor.
I glanced at the clock in the hallway. I had less than ten minutes to do this.
“Just—bathroom,” I said, giving her a small wave. “Be there in a few.”
Once she headed toward homeroom for announcements, disappearing around the corner, I took off at a run, bursting back outside into a drizzle of rain cold enough that it probably should have been snow. The clouds were enormous, twisting around the sky, making me feel like I was standing at the center of a whirl of mist.
What are you doing, Maggot? Alastor asked, curious.
I’d never been in the theater building, but Nell had pointed it out to me in passing. It was attached to the art studios. Inside, the hallways were covered with cast and crew photos, more than half of them The Crucible. Spaced between them were large theater posters, all featuring the same woman in different roles and big seventies hair: Anna Drummer. Otherwise known as Madam Drummer, the theater teacher.
I found her in her office, her head of frizzy purple-red hair bent over a costume that looked older than her, carefully stitching the frayed ends back together. To her right, a big backdrop was partially unrolled, exposing some of the artwork.
I’m not one to criticize another artist’s work, but…yikes. Making the sad depiction of the forest even worse was the odd ripple at the base of it, where it had clearly been damaged by water.
“Madam Drummer?”
The woman jumped about two miles in the air, clutching at her chest.
“Sorry! I didn’t mean to startle you,” I said. “I just wanted to ask you something, if you have a second?”
“Well—my goodness, let me catch my breath,” she said. “Are you here about the auditions for John Proctor?”
The one thing Madam Drummer, wearer of three scarves at once, had in common with my grandmother was that they both tried really hard to make normal words like auditions sound French, even with her New Jersey accent.
“Not for me,” I said. “For my cousin Nell Bishop.”
Madam Drummer stared at me. “I’m not sure I follow…?”
“She wants the part,” I said. “She has everything memorized—and she’s good. I don’t get why you won’t even let her audition.”
“Because she is a girl,” she said, speaking slowly and clearly, like I was a child.
Preposterous. Al sounded surprisingly indignant on Nell’s behalf. As if your poor excuse for a bard, Shakespeare, did not have men play women all the time.
Good point.
“Didn’t Shakespeare have men playing the female characters?” I asked. “I know it was a different time, you don’t have to explain that, but…it just seems unfair.”
Many humans do not care about what is “unfair,” for it varies so much between them. They are, however, highly motivated by the promise of wealth.
“The script, you see, it’s very specific on the matter—”
It took me a second to understand what Al was trying to say. “But think about how much publicity and exposure you’ll be able to get for this—I mean, come on, aside from the fact it’s just the right thing to do to give everyone a fair shot, haven’t you done the exact same version of this play every year? With the same backdrop, and the same costumes?”
Her expression narrowed unpleasantly. “What are you suggesting?”
“What if—I don’t know, isn’t the whole play about unfair persecution and how easy gossip and lies can spread?” I said, mind racing. “Isn’t that just like…isn’t that just like middle school? What if you used the script but changed the setting and characters, just a little bit?”
“Young man,” she began, drawing in a deep breath. “The play debuts next Wednesday. Today is Friday. Even if we worked through the weekend, do you think I have the funds to simply purchase new costumes and backdrops? It’s not like I can ask the parrot-brained art teacher for her help.”
“No, no—but—if it’s set in modern times, the cast can just wear their own clothes. You can use desks and props from classrooms. I can paint the backdrops for you for free. Please just consider it. She’s such a good actress. She can’t prove you wrong if you don’t even give her a chance.”
The warning bell rang, interrupting the long silence that followed.
“I’d need to see your artwork,” she said slowly. “Your ideas.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll sketch some at lunch. They’ll be great, I promise. But does this mean you’ll let her audition?”
Madam Drummer flicked her hand at me. “Yes, yes, now get to class.”
I didn’t bother to hide my grin as I took off at a run, bursting outside and pounding through the mud to get back into the main building. br />
Why did you do this? Alastor asked. What are you hoping to trade the witchling for?
Nothing. Not everything is a transaction, I told him.
Did you engage this plan because you wished to feel better about yourself? The malefactor was clearly flabbergasted by the concept of friendship, never mind kindness.
I want to help my family. I thought you’d get that, since I’m guessing what you really want me to ask Nell is what’s going on with your family, not your realm.
Such presumption, he sputtered, such impertinence—
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Parker coming up the ramp next to the staircase on his crutches, trying to keep up with his friends. I shoved through the door, flinging rain and mud everywhere, including on the ground the janitor was trying to mop up.
“Hey!” he barked after me, slamming his HALLWAY CLOSED sign down. “Freaking kid!”
I glanced back, just as Parker and his goons tried to approach the janitor.
“Go around—I don’t care if you’re late, the floor is too wet to be safe—”
I all but slid into first period, shoes still squealing as I hit the carpet and ran to my seat next to Nell. The tardy bell rang just as I collapsed into it. She looked at me, alarmed. Mrs. Anderson gave me a raised-brow look from where she was writing out the day’s earth science lesson on the whiteboard.
It wasn’t until after the announcements had finished that Parker finally limped his way in, looking rain-soaked and irritated.
“You’re late, Parker,” Mrs. Anderson said, pointing to a stool at the front of the class. “You know the drill.”
“But I had to go around the long way,” Parker said, leaning against his crutches. “And it’s hard to get around in these things—”
The science teacher put her hands on her hips as the rest of the class squirmed uncomfortably, trying not to laugh at the faint squeak in his voice. I cringed on his behalf.
He does not deserve your pity, Maggot.