The Last Life of Prince Alastor

by Alexandra Bracken

  A Master stepped out of a pocket directly in their path. He clutched a tray in his hands, one overflowing with glass goblets of iridescent green drink.

  “Liquid magic,” the Master called out. “On the house! Feast, quench, and be scary, for tomorrow we close!”

  He pressed a goblet into the boy’s hands and whirled away, skipping through the fiends that rushed toward him to get a sampling of their own.

  The boy sniffed at the liquid.

  “Are you really going to drink that?” Nell whispered. “It looks like Mountain Dew.”

  Try it. I must know the taste of pure magic in liquid form.

  Prosper sipped at it, then coughed, pounding his chest. Alastor cringed. How could magic be so disgustingly sweet?

  “It is Mountain Dew. Seriously, what’s going on with this place?”

  What is this . . . dew? We have no such thing on our mountains, nor frost.

  Setting the remainder down on a booth ledge, Prosper answered, It’s a drink from the human world. All of this seems to be from the human world. The “Masters” are scamming you. Do they have some kind of portal to get supplies?

  They had the portal Bune had offered them. But surely, no. The Masters always sold the most interesting tools and food. Things you could find nowhere Downstairs, and could use to impress other fiends and render them helplessly jealous.

  You are incorrect, Maggot. The Masters are clever, they’ve developed all this by themselves—

  “Is that a box of Cheerios?” Nell said, pointing to a booth labeled MUNCHIES AND CRUNCHIES. “And that’s a NASCAR sweatshirt!”

  The strange garment currently being tugged at by two arguing goblins was the only one like it on a rack that had horrifyingly familiar clothing: shirts made of tartan that were so very popular with mortals, fuzzy jackets, even those devious fake pumpkins. An ogre had looped the hollow pumpkins’ black straps around his ears, turning so that his friend could admire them.

  “And here, a fine hat!” one of the merchants, a goblin missing several fingers, said. He threw out his arms proudly displaying a rectangular object that looked to be made of thin brown fabric.

  “That’s a grocery bag . . .” Nell whispered.

  Prosper hushed her, watching as a fiend slapped down gold coins on one counter, ripped what appeared to be some sort of shiny disk out of another fiend’s hands, and held it up to the light, twisting and turning it until its surface showed a rainbow.

  Another held what looked to be a kind of red baton, only when the hooded fiend clicked the button on its side, its circular face illuminated with a beam of golden light.

  What madness is this? Alastor demanded.

  Flashlight, Prosper thought back at him. You didn’t tell me fiends loved human crap and food. We could have brought stuff with us to trade!

  All along . . . all these hundreds of years, the Masters had been selling fiends items from the human realm. Alastor knew he shouldn’t have believed them when they claimed to have found an ancient treasure trove in one of the lava pits.

  Truthfully, he had not understood why Prosper had asked about the vanished humans until that very moment, staring at a lycan unsuccessfully attempting to use what Alastor now knew to be a “cardboard” box to sled across the ground. Downstairs, time did not exist as it did in the mortal world. A human could stay in this realm and live an unreasonably long life. Perhaps the Masters had originally wanted Bune’s mirror as a means to escape, or had that bargain kept them trapped here?

  The boy shook his head. You said the Scholar is toward the end of the market, right?

  Correct.

  He continued on several steps, jostled by the crowd from all sides. Within seconds, they both noticed that the witchling was no longer with them.

  “Nell!” Prosper whispered to her back. She had gone rigid beneath her hooded cloak, unable to tear her eyes away from the booth across the crowded walkway.

  This stall was nothing more than a wall of stacked glass cages, each containing a different creature. A different . . . oh.

  The hob running the booth reached in with a stick, zapping one with a bolt of magic. The creature shifted, momentarily disappearing into a glimmering cloud of light, before returning to its arachnid form.

  “The Masters bought them because they thought they could be trained to perform, but they refused,” the hob explained to the customer standing before him. “Now they’re yours to buy back, if you’ve got the blackpennies.”

  Alastor rather recognized that large, hairy tarantula.

  And that ball of black fluff attacking the glass barrier with its tiny wings and claws, desperately trying to break out.

  “Toad,” Nell breathed out.

  Nell tried to lunge for the stall’s owner—a hob balanced upon a high stool in order to be seen over the counter. I barely caught the back of her cloak in time to stop her. Even then, as I swung her back toward me, I had to fight the urge to keep from lunging at him myself.

  “Wait a second,” I whispered close to her ear. “Look.”

  The tall, gray-skinned fiend leaning his bony arms against the counter bore a terrifying resemblance to a praying mantis, save for his humanoid face. He was deep in discussion with the hob. They both gestured toward the cages and the changelings within them.

  “We can’t wait! He has Toad and Eleanor!” Nell hissed back.

  The hob had more than just the two changelings: there were eight of them spread out across the glass cases. A parrot, a frog, what looked like a lizard that decided it preferred fur to scales, a snake with unnatural bright feathers around its head, and a pug puppy with bright green eyes.

  Nell let out a quiet noise of frustration, crossing her arms over her chest. I drew us back, closer to a stall selling mutilated oil paintings of vampyres and other finely dressed fiends.

  Toad and Eleanor had disappeared from the human world in the days leading up to the confrontation with Pyra, but Nell hadn’t seemed concerned, so I hadn’t been either. Every morning, I’d watched as Toad wandered off through an open window to go catch his breakfast, do his business, or visit Missy at her shop. He came and went as he pleased.

  Clearly, we should have been a little more worried.

  I told you, Alastor said. The only good use for them is to pickle them and roast them over a blazing fire.

  You also said they were “nothing more than mice” Downstairs, so why are they being sold to the highest bidder?

  Alastor was silent for a moment. I perhaps . . . exaggerated their lack of importance and did not mention their scarcity. They can also be entertaining, under the right forms of

  torture.

  “Who caught them and brought them Downstairs in the first place?” I whispered.

  Nell met my gaze. Even with her face shadowed by the hood, her eyes were blazing. “Nightlock. It has to be. I’ll wring his wobbly little chicken neck—!”

  Before I knew what was happening, Nell was knocked sideways, slamming into me. I threw out my arms to steady her as another fiend charged past us, marching up to the booth. Their vivid emerald-green cloak stood out in a sea of black, crimson, and glum purples.

  The fiend was too small, the top of her head just reaching the counter’s edge, to make eye contact with the hob. That didn’t stop her from slamming a sack of coins down on the counter and declaring, “I’ll take them all!”

  One of the changelings, the one who’d chosen the form of a fancy red parrot, began to squawk and beat its wings. Its muffled coos of “Floo-rah! Floo-rah!” could be heard just over the din of chattering voices around us.

  The hob peered down over the counter at Green Cloak through enormous spectacles that made his already large yellow eyes look like a frog’s. A dribble of blue snot ran down from his bulbous red nose, only to be licked away. He hooked his glasses back onto his two horns. Shaking his head, he shoved the money sack back onto the ground, leaving the little fiend outraged.

  “Is this not a place of business?” she demanded.


  “This fiend has already repurchased these vermin for his master,” the hob told her, pointing to a fiend with long, stick-thin limbs.

  A grendel, Alastor explained. Good for little else but chimney-sweeping and clearing out banebat infestations from towers.

  With all the attention on what was happening at the counter, no one noticed that a pocket of air opened, and one of the Masters reached a hand through to snatch the bag of coins. He wrenched it back inside the portal and the air stitched itself back up.

  My mouth fell open. Oh, so the Masters could steal, but the other fiends couldn’t?

  “Too late,” the grendel purred. “I’ve already paid full price for them all. My most illustrious employer plans to host a dinner party this eve in honor of the queen.”

  “I’ll turn him into minced meat,” Nell growled, struggling against the grip I still had on her cloak.

  “Changelings are not for eating!” Green Cloak’s voice was like a toddler’s—or a cartoon character’s. Its syrupy-sweet tone was totally at odds with the husky growl of the other fiend. “They are intelligent, sensitive creatures who deserve our respect!”

  The grendel howled with laughter.

  “They are dangerous pests,” the hob declared, “yes, they are.”

  “And such delicacies,” the grendel said, bending at the waist to meet Green Cloak’s gaze. “They are friends only to witches. Are you one?”

  Nell tensed.

  “N-no,” Green Cloak spluttered. “Of course not!”

  “Then there is no problem,” the grendel said. He tossed the hob one velvet sack of coins, then another. The squat creature’s stool rocked back and forth dangerously as he tried to catch them.

  “Have the changelings delivered to my employer’s home by midday, Croakswell.”

  The hob nodded eagerly, already counting the coins in each sack. “Pleasure doing business, oh yes, you are a fine sir, indeed. This hob is ever-so-grateful for your business—”

  Hobs are not meant to run any sort of business! Alastor fumed. The only thing they excel at is scrubbing outhouses! Honestly!

  “The bird—” Green Cloak tried, the words trembling slightly. “At least let me have that one?”

  The gray fiend stopped, tapping one of his bone-thin fingers against his pointed chin. “Sure, little one. Come by our home on Grave Street. It’s the house with the many spires.”

  Green Cloak’s shoulders slumped in obvious relief. “Thank you . . .”

  “I’ll have the cook prepare the bird to your specifications. How do you like your meat prepared? Rare? Medium well?”

  In the moment it took Green Cloak to process what he’d said, my stomach managed to twist itself into one big knot. Alastor didn’t bother to smother a cackle.

  The smaller fiend let out a keening wail of distress and threw herself at him—but she didn’t get far. The moment her foot lifted from the market’s platform, two Masters appeared again, blocking the space between her and the gray fiend.

  “No fighting,” one of them warned, his voice the echo of an echo.

  “Send her out!” the grendel said. “She’s broken your rules!”

  Both Masters wagged a finger at him. “No one tells us what to do.”

  “O-of course not,” the grendel agreed quickly. “I will finish my shopping and begone. I thank you for one last splendid day at the market—”

  One of the Masters leaned forward from under his cloak, squinting an eye at him. The bush of his beard seemed to crackle with sparks of magic. “We like suck-ups less than thieves.”

  The grendel fled as if there were a river of acid at his heels.

  Nell let out a frustrated breath, standing on her toes to see over the heads of the dispersing crowd. Toad had slumped against the cage. Then his bright green eyes went wide, and a moment later he smashed his furry face against the glass—staring right at us.

  “What do we do?” Nell whispered, glancing down at the black vial still in her palm.

  My head felt like it was spinning as I tried to pin down some kind of plan. We could try to get Toad, Eleanor, and all the others out and risk testing to see if there was magic in place to prevent stealing. We could even wait until they had been carted outside the boundaries of Neverwoe and try to grab them then. Both acts could get us caught, and potentially killed, but the thought of the changelings becoming part of some monster’s meal—potentially a special one for the queen—made my blood boil.

  Every obvious option would take more than whatever time we had left in the market. And once Neverwoe closed, how would we be able to find the Scholar to get the information we needed about Prue’s whereabouts?

  Not to add to the morbidity, but maybe there was a way to kill two—figurative, non-changeling—birds with one stone by following the grendel back to the house. There, we could save the changelings and potentially tail Pyra back to wherever she was keeping Prue.

  There were so many ways that plan could unravel. It was risky, especially when we had a good, concrete option for information a few dozen feet ahead in the market.

  I concur.

  You also don’t care if they eat the changelings, so keep your opinion to yourself.

  Nell pushed forward through the dispersing crowd just as the hob reached up and tugged on a rope over his head. The stall’s curtain swept down, blocking the cages from sight. A tiny hand reached between the folds and hung a SOLD OUT sign on the edge of the metal counter.

  I shook my head. There was only one way to do this, and I liked it about as much as I liked the fiends. “We should split up.”

  What? No!

  “What?” Nell said in a hushed voice. “No!”

  Who are we going to throw in front of us if someone tries to stab you?

  “Just for a few minutes,” I told her. “You stay here and keep an eye on Toad and the others and make sure they’re not taken out of the market without us knowing where they’re headed. I’ll talk to the Scholar and get answers about where Prue is being held. I’ll meet you back here—in, like, ten minutes?”

  I glanced down, forgetting I wasn’t wearing a watch. The admission bracelet stared back at me. A prickle of dread worked down the back of my neck. At some point the bracelet had shifted from silver to a deepening shade of pink. The metal was growing warmer by the second.

  That was okay.

  This was fine.

  Totally.

  “Okay,” Nell said, tugging her hood up. “Just be quick, okay?”

  I turned back toward the milling fiends, the bustle of bags and jars and cauldrons being filled with purchases. With only the light of the magic glowing bubbles and a few strings of lights, the farthest reaches of the two rows of stalls seemed to bend toward darkness.

  “Yeah,” I promised. “Real quick.”

  There was a line out in front of the Scholar’s booth four fiends deep. The curtain was drawn on the stall, but now and then it fluttered as a fiend passed in and out of its depths. I stood at the back of the line with my arms crossed, careful not to meet any creature’s eye, but it was almost impossible not to look at them.

  A fiend with silvery skin and ears like a small elephant stormed out of the stall with an audible Argh! I’d seen a few like this one before, but none dressed in a crushed-velvet suit. The gold chains dangling between the fangs that curved down over its pointed chin jingled, emphasizing each of the fiend’s words. “You filthy liar!”

  Goblins never take ill tidings well, Alastor observed. Their tempers have held their kind back for centuries.

  I wasn’t sure what he meant by that until the goblin suddenly spun around and pulled a long, thin sword out of the hilt at his side. Instantly, the Masters were there. The hands, with their ropes of nails, clutched a variety of blades, from kitchen knives to curved swords.

  The goblin took a step back but didn’t lower his sword—he only swung it toward those of us in line.

  “He is a charlatan!” he said, his rumbling voice ragged with emotion. “Do not give him
what he asks for! He’ll sell you lies in return!”

  “Stuff it, you silver-bellied windbag,” said the female ogre at the front of the line. She was dressed in a fine dress of red velvet, her wisps of hair braided into loops. She also stood head and shoulders above the rest of us, including a smaller catlike fiend that had to keep darting out of the way to avoid being trampled.

  “Next!” a voice called from inside.

  The Masters parted to allow the ogre through. The goblin stood clutching his sword, trembling with rage. The lady ogre reached out and flicked him on his snout.

  “Beslobbering wretch!” the goblin snarled, and, before the Masters could disarm him, sliced the tip of his sword against the ogre’s arm.

  Blue blood bubbled along the small gash. The ogre let out a shocked gasp, clamping her thick hand over it with a look like she was dying.

  “Wait—wait—” the goblin said, eyes flaring. “I did not mean to do that—I did not mean to—”

  The Masters appeared around him, circling in like a noose.

  “I’m—!” The rest of his plea was choked off as the Masters swept him up off the platform and dragged him into a pocket. The clamor of the surrounding fiends died off, leaving us in eerie silence.

  What . . . are they going to do with him? I asked Alastor, trying to keep my head down. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the small catlike fiend reach up and bat at the silk coin purse hanging from the ogre’s hip.

  They’ll drop him off a cliff, most likely. Oh no—don’t be a fool, fiend!

  At the very instant the feline fiend sliced a claw through the bottom of the purse, its admissions bracelet heated to a molten red. The band tightened until the paw was finally sliced clean off.

  The fiend yowled, hopping around until a Master reached through a pocket and dragged him inside.

  Another Master’s hand collected the few coins that had fallen to the ground, unseen by the distracted, raging ogre. Just before the pocket of dark air closed, the Master gave me a meaningful look.