I scrambled back onto the stage and bolted for the right wing. My hands shoved aside the black curtain and anyone who stepped in front of me. I fought the rush of prickling through my limbs, slamming my good arm down to my side to keep Alastor from moving it. It struggled against my grip.
All you have to do is make a contract, Maggot, and you both will walk out of here alive.
“I thought…” I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to steady my breathing.
You thought what? That we were friends? That I had forgotten my original purpose? You will make this contract, Maggot, or you will lose her once and for all. Do you not remember that sheet of paper, the one you found in your father’s desk?
Of course he had seen it in my memory. When Prue was at her weakest, my grandmother’s publicist had drafted a press release they could use if she didn’t survive—so they “wouldn’t have to think about it” during the worst moment of their lives.
“Why are you doing this?” I breathed out. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”
This time, I felt Alastor’s anger and frustration detonate inside of my head. Because it is the only way! If I do not feed off the energy of this contract, I shall never be strong enough to escape you in time!
I stumbled forward, down the short hall connected to backstage. Alastor’s words were still ringing in my mind as I found Nell applying her stage makeup with a small sponge.
“What’s—”
I shoved through the other kids getting ready around her and hooked my arm through hers.
“Prosp—Ethan!” she hissed as I dragged us out of the room. “Stop—are you listening to me? Hey!”
We passed the greenroom, which, unfortunately, already had crew gathered there. I tried the other doors frantically. Nell gripped my shoulder, forcing me to stop. It was dark back there, but I could still see her wide eyes behind her glasses.
“It’s Prue, she’s here,” I tried to explain. “I saw her! Al brought her here to try to force a contract—”
Nell didn’t react like I thought she would. Instead of the panic I felt, her face seemed to harden into a mask. She glanced back over my shoulder. My eyes went to where her hands were fisting the fabric of her pants. “You…I think…”
She walked a few steps down the hall to the last door, an old dressing room that we’d used for temporary storage. Nell retrieved a silver key from her pocket and shoved it into the lock.
I let her push me inside the dark room. “Nell, what if Prue gets close? What if something happens to her and she—”
Nell shut the door behind us. I heard a click as it was locked again.
“Wait.” My heart was beating so hard I thought it would bruise against my ribs. “What’s going on? Nell?”
“Prosper…I wish…I wish things had been different. I wish it didn’t have to be this way. I just…”
Her voice was quiet, shaking around the edges. I felt against the wall for the light switch. Nell snapped her fingers, but the overhead lights didn’t come on. Instead, a ring of small white candles in a perfect circle flared to life.
There were mirrors everywhere, across both the front and back walls. They caught the candlelight and lit the entire room.
Prosperity. Get out of here. Get us out of here now.
“Nell…” I began, backing up toward the door. She beat me to it, holding it shut with her hand.
“Just go sit over there, in the center,” she said. When I didn’t move, when I tried to pull the door open by force, she threw out a hand and sent me skidding to the back of the room. As I slammed into the ground, all the air blew out of my chest. My vision blanked out for a second as my head hit the title.
“Tell me what’s going on!” I demanded. “Nell!”
There was a sharp knock at the door. She scrambled to get it, letting two figures squeeze through. The door locked again, but she kept her hand there. The metal handle turned bright red-hot under her fingers.
“Prosper!”
Prue dropped the backpack in her hands onto the ground and rushed over to me. I pushed myself up just in time for her to throw her arms around my neck. “You’re okay! We were so worried! What’s going on? Who are these people?”
I pushed her back. “You can’t be here, you have to leave!”
She looked hurt for a second. Then she just looked angry. “Are you kidding me? You’re the one that asked me to come!”
“What…what are you talking about?” I whispered. “I never asked you to come!”
“Then what is this?” Prue reached into the front pouch of her backpack, pulling out my notebook—the one filled with sketches of the school, of the House of Seven Terrors, of me and Nell. Even the little one I did of the wharf.
“I found it wedged into my window,” she said. “I recognized your drawings right away. I thought…you were trying to lead me to you. That you wanted me to rescue you.”
“No!” I said. “You don’t understand what’s going on—Prue, you don’t know what’s inside of me.”
“You mean the malefactor?”
Okay. Apparently she did know what was inside of me.
“Grandmother told me everything—they all did, everything about the curse and the Bellegraves, and what she was trying to do that night.”
“All lies, I’m sure,” I said, pulling out the last sheet of notebook paper. This one didn’t have a drawing on it. It was a message, in the same smeared handwriting: CohMe NohW. BRiNG Yoooous ONlY.
“You thought I wrote this?” I asked. “Seriously? You don’t even think I’m capable of basic English?”
“It was so fortunate that I was home when Prudence rang the bell,” came Uncle Barnabas’s rich voice. “She held up your school picture and asked if I had seen you. I’m glad I could reunite the two of you.”
Nell stood silently at his side, staring hard at the floor.
“You already knew who I was?” Prue asked before turning to look at me. “Prosper? Who is this person? Who’s that girl?”
“It’s okay,” I said, “Prue, that’s Uncle Barnabas. You know, Dad’s brother? That’s his daughter, Nell.”
Prue pulled away from me again, turning around. I scrambled up after her even though my knees felt hollow.
“This isn’t Uncle Barnabas,” she said. “I don’t know who you are, but our real uncle came to the Cottage last week to help look for Prosper. The whole family did.”
“That’s…impossible,” I said, turning toward him. He leaned casually against the door, his arms crossed over his chest. Slacks and a loose button-down shirt—it was the nicest I had ever seen him look.
I warned you! Al roared. I told you not to trust them!
Why had I? It seemed enough at the time that he’d saved me, but then he’d shown me the letter from Dad…
And Missy had shown me how easily handwriting could be copied with a single spell.
Bile rose in my throat, burning.
“This is very unfortunate,” he said. “This ruse would have been easier to keep up if the idiot had stayed in Las Vegas where he belonged. I suppose now is as good of a time as any to get things started. Cornelia, if you wouldn’t mind…?”
Nell looked like she wanted the floor to swallow her whole. She sat beside the cauldron that was steadily bubbling in the middle of the room. Around her were empty vials, the body of a dead eel…
Three toes of a man hanged for his crimes, a newborn eel’s freely given slime, wings of a black beetle plucked midflight, two eggs of a viper stolen at night, a gleaming stone cast down from the moon, all boiled in a cauldron at high noon… The spell. Nell had started the spell, likely before we ever left school on Monday. If she’d had the key to the room, if she had reinforced it through enchantment, hardly anyone would have been able to disturb it.
“Who are you?” I demanded. “Answer me!”
“Typical. A Redding shouting and stomping around to get his way.” The man I knew as Uncle Barnabas kicked himself off the wall. He gave a little sarcastic bow. “T
he name’s Henry Bellegrave. My daughter and I are here to take back everything your family took from ours.”
For a second, it was like my brain forgot how to work. Dark fuzz was crowding in on my vision, and I felt both dizzy and sick at the same time. I didn’t snap out of it until I felt Prue’s hand reach back to push me behind her. To protect me.
Not this time, I thought, stepping forward.
“You’re a Bellegrave?” I asked Nell. My brain finally put together all of the little clues. I really was an idiot.
“No, I’m a Bishop,” Nell said. “He…I never met him until my mom died.”
“It was a fortuitous turn of events,” Henry said. “I knew Cornelia’s mother had…talents. I sought her out when I was doing my research for my PhD, lived with her, studied her. She herself had studied Goody Prufrock, and had shared the ingredients necessary for Prufrock’s spell. But I needed the incantation, the words she spoke, in order to complete it. I left to do my own research, and, over a decade later, heard rumors that dear Tabitha had found a record of the incantation. By the time I returned to Salem for it, Tabitha had oh-so-sadly passed and her grimoire, where she kept all of her notes, was conveniently missing, but lo and behold, here was a daughter I never knew I had, just waiting for me. And she was talented, like her mother.”
Nell turned back toward me, her voice breaking. “I couldn’t…Prosper, they said if I helped them, I could have my mother back. The malefactor he contracted with would free her from the shade realm.”
Oh, Alastor said. Oh, these weak human hearts.
What do you mean?
Tell Mistress Cornelia she has been lied to. The realm of shades can be opened, but not without throwing off the balance of life. Worse, it would not be her mother that returned to her. It would be a shade of her mother, a hungry ghoul who would haunt her forevermore. Tell her!
“They lied to you,” I said. “Nell, I’m sorry, but it’s not possible. Al says—”
“I don’t care what he says!” she shouted. “They said I could have my mom back! Missy wouldn’t help, and I couldn’t do it alone. They promised! You have to understand!”
“Yeah, I understand all right,” I said. “You really are a great actress. You had me stupidly believing we were friends.”
“You were never friends,” Prue cut in, giving the other girl a look like Death itself. “They interrupted Grandmother in the middle of the ceremony to help you.”
“How is trying to stab me with a knife helping me?”
“She had to cut each of your limbs to make sure the fiend couldn’t control them or fight back—then she was going to finish the spell that witch—Goody Prufrock—started.”
Wow. Okay.
“If that was her intention, then she’s a bigger fool than I thought,” Uncle—Henry Bellegrave said with a sharp laugh. “The intention of the original spell was to seal the malefactor inside of the servant girl, but it was also meant to strip him of his power and pass it to another. Of course, our friend Alastor cursed himself before that could happen and here we all are.”
I understand now, Al said, sounding more furious than before. If I hadn’t done what I did that night, my brother would have stolen my powers and rendered me mortal. The flames would have taken care of the rest.
“Start, Cornelia,” Henry barked. “Now.”
I stared at her as she came and picked up her mother’s grimoire. Prue and I both tried to dive for it, but Nell threw us back against the wall with a wave of her hand.
Let me help you. I can get us out of this.
I don’t want your help, I said, suddenly too angry to see straight. All of this, every single bit of this, was his fault. None of this would be happening—the attacks, the kidnappings, making me feel like I belonged here. My hands tightened into fists at my side. I couldn’t hear the words that Nell was murmuring over the pounding blood in my ears.
Now, Prosper, NOW! She’s summoning my brother—she’ll bring him through and then it will all be for nothing. He will kill you to kill me!
Prue screamed my name as I launched forward, knocking candles over and spraying hot wax everywhere. Henry knew what he was doing, though. He had his arm locked around my throat, and one of mine pinned at a painful angle behind my back.
I can get us out of this! Take the iron bracelets off! TAKE THEM OFF!
“Watch now, malefactor,” Henry whispered in my ear. “I’ve made a contract of my own. Everything you helped the Reddings take from my ancestors will be mine once more.”
He pointed me toward the nearest mirror and held me there. Prue took a step forward, raising her fist. All Henry had to do was twist my arm and get me to scream for her to back off.
“Dude,” I said, struggling to pull away. “Get over it! It’s been three hundred freaking years!”
“And yet I live with the consequences every day!” he said. “Of what your ancestors did! It’s a miracle that I’m here today.”
Yes, Al agreed. Clearly I didn’t do as thorough a job as I thought. I wonder which Bellegrave escaped the colony before I got my claws into him?
The floor shook under our feet—one solid pound, and then another, and another.
Oh, Al said simply, crap.
“What was that?” I heard someone say outside the door. “Did you feel that?”
I opened my mouth to scream for help, but Henry laughed. “She’s enchanted the door. No one will get in.”
“What…what is that?” Prue’s voice shook. I followed her pointed finger to the large mirror again, trying to ignore Nell’s voice as she repeated, “Come forth, come forth, come forth, and pass into our realm.”
It started as three blurry lights in the mirror. They bobbed up and down a little bit—one white, the others a wicked green. And then they got bigger. And bigger. And bigger. Until they weren’t just little lights, they were…
Ogres, Alastor said. They’re dumber than fen-sucked louts, but they’re bonny fighters.
What does that mean?
Allow me to put this in a way you’ll understand: it means WE ARE DOOMED.
They were ugly—skin like old, rotting frogs, with razor-sharp beaks that were already dripping with yellow foam. The stink of rotten eggs filled the small room, but it wasn’t coming from me. The ogres’ ears were long and pointed, jutting out from an otherwise smooth, grayish-green skull. I’ve never seen eyes that shade of burning gold before. The two of them stared hungrily at us through the glass.
One raised a big beefy hand and knocked.
Prue screamed.
They weren’t done. The same ogre pressed its huge clawed hand up against the glass and pushed. The mirror stretched and stretched and stretched like it was made of rubber. But even rubber has a snapping point. When it happened, it sounded like a gunshot. The ogre’s hand smashed through, slapping against the ground for something to grip.
“Nell! Stop! Stop it!” I yelled. It was already too late. The first ogre pushed its wide shoulders through the gold frame, grunting with the effort. The metal bent and cracked, warping to give him and his identical brother enough room to duck through. When they finally stood at their full height, they towered over all of us—seven, eight feet tall. And almost just as wide.
“Keep going,” Henry growled to Nell. She had stopped, staring at the fiends with total terror. “You’re not finished yet!”
Nell glanced at me and then away, back at her mother’s grimoire. Her hands were shaking so hard she could barely hold the heavy book up.
“Come forth, come forth…” she whispered, “and pass into our realm.”
The final light began to take shape. It was a white light that quickly turned into a big black cat—a panther.
The panther from my dream.
Its silky coat flashed as it stepped through the mirror, slinking forward until it came to a stop between the two ogres and sat. One bright blue eye and one black eye.
One eye that allows us to see in this world, and one to see Downstairs.
I knew Nightlock had mentioned what form they took in our world—there was a snake, maybe. All I could remember was the poor one that got stuck with being a hedgehog. So who was this?
Before I could stop him, I felt the bubble rise in my throat. Alastor’s prim voice burst out of my mouth. “Who are you? How dare you enter this realm and break the balance?”
The panther smiled. Actually smiled.
“Now, big brother,” came a refined woman’s voice, “don’t tell me you can’t recognize your own sister?”
“Pyra.”
The world seemed to drop out from under us.
Pyra? As in your sister, Pyra? As in your sweet little sister that, oh no, could never be involved in this?
The panther took a step toward us and nodded at Henry. The man released me and pushed me toward her. Prue got there faster, grabbing my arm.
“Alastor, how charming. You’ve made a friend,” Pyra purred. “It pains me to see you in such a form, living with such creatures as these.”
“What are you doing here?” I felt Alastor’s words leaving my mouth, his words ringing in my ears. Prue looked startled, but didn’t let go of my arm. “Have you come to take me home? You’ve finally manifested your animal form—how brilliant. I assure you the protectors will not be necessary once I’m free.”
Al, I thought at him, this is the creature I saw in my dreams—
But I swear—I swear I felt Alastor swell with pride inside of me. My skin prickled, static racing along my arms, my neck, my face.
No! Al, think about this—if she’s here, it means she’s the one that’s behind all of this! She made the deal with the Bellegraves, she betrayed you to Honor! Listen to me!
“Oh, my poor, stupid brother…” Pyra began to weave in and out of the candles, circling around the ogres. They stood like stone, guarding the mirror. The glass there rippled, signaling that the portal was still open. “I’m not here to take you home. I’m here to take what should have been mine over three hundred years ago.”
If Alastor had been in full control of my body, we could have…I don’t know, we could have at least made it harder for the ogres to swipe me off the ground and dangle me from my right foot like I was some kind of bug they were about to eat. I should have taken the iron bracelets off when I had the chance.