“Prosper,” Nell said, grabbing my wrist. “Stop. Seriously. You’re making me dizzy with the pacing.”
My face heated at the touch. I pulled my arm away, turning toward the other side of the room.
“I can’t help it,” I said. “I would scratch off my own skin just to have something to do right now. Maybe we should just go find Flora?”
Finally, some sense! I knew you had it in you, buried deep beneath the teetering mounds of timidity.
“Why don’t we talk about what you learned from the Scholar first?” she suggested. “And you should actually eat something so you don’t faint from exhaustion and force me to carry you on my back across this whole realm.”
As realistic as that situation sounded for the old Prosper, the new one wasn’t about to be anyone’s deadweight.
“I don’t need food,” I said sharply. “We need to just go to the house. The Scholar said Prue is in the highest tower of Skullcrush Prison, and aside from a mirror portal that’s heavily guarded, there’s only one other way into the fortress.”
Nell dragged Flora’s lantern close enough for the eerie green glow to paint her skin emerald. She pulled her glasses off, wiping them on the one clean cover of her oversized cloak. Toil and Trouble was already open in her lap. “He didn’t specify where it was?”
“He didn’t know,” I said, feeling another flash of irritation at the Scholar’s deception by omission. “He said only Pyra and hobs who worked to clean the prison do. Hobs whose names end in lock.”
Both of her brows rose as she put her glasses back on. “Lock? Like our little rodent of a friend Nightlock?”
I nodded.
“Unbelievable,” Nell said slowly. “Goody Elderflower says that hobs start working at a young age, but they’re assigned their jobs at birth and it all depends on their name? They don’t even get a choice? That’s so messed up, even for fiends.”
That is the way of things! Alastor said defensively. The proper way of things! And it is not as if they complained about their lot in life.
I shook my head. Did you ever ask them if they were happy? Was it ever a choice?
Of course not. Every fiend has their rightful role. Ogres build. Goblins scout. Malefactors rule. Perhaps the real reason the realm is collapsing is that Pyra destroyed those foundations.
Or, based on what Flora had said, their cooperation and the magic rationing was probably the only reason there was any part of the realm still standing at all.
“I’m sorry we have to take this detour from Prue,” Nell said quietly.
“It’s not even really a detour,” I said. “After we rescue the changelings, we get to kidnap Nightlock from his own dinner party. We’ll force him to come with us to Skullcrush Prison—Al, what step is that on?”
The prison sits on the other side of the mountain, on the Crown, Alastor said. His voice sounded thin, as if he were still struggling to understand what was happening. The step above this one, where the towers once stood. My great-great-grandsire . . . he wished the prisoners to be forced to look up at the Horned Palace at all times and contemplate their own insignificance.
Well, that sounded about right.
“So we’ll have Nightlock show us the way in, restrain him so that he can’t warn anyone, get up into the tower, and then I’ll get us out of there,” Nell said.
“How?” I asked.
Her hands worried the edges of her book. “I know I promised no more secrets, but . . . just in case something happens, I think it’s better if the fiend in the room doesn’t know.”
It was a totally logical choice to make, I knew that. Yet some part of me—the part that still stung a little from what had happened—hated it. I promised Nell a new start, though, and while a Redding might have reason to think a Bellegrave was working a lie, and vice versa, a Redding had no reason to doubt a Bishop. Especially one whose life was equally at stake thanks to the deal her father had struck.
“Can I ask you something?” I began. I sat again, this time directly in front of her. Nell thumbed through her book. “If you help me and work against Pyra . . . does that mean you could die? Because it really sounded like you could die, just based on what your father said. And I really, really, really don’t want you to die.”
“I really, really, really don’t want you to die either,” Nell said, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “The truth is, I don’t really know. I actively worked against her when I . . . when I threw my mom’s grimoire to you and it burned, and I didn’t fall over and croak. Maybe as long as she has a chance of succeeding, I’m okay?”
The stolen page crinkled as I pulled it from my cloak’s pocket. No time like the present.
“About the contracts,” I said. “I may have an idea.”
Not this again, Alastor muttered. I’ll drown out every thought you have on the matter, if I must. It’s a realm of terror, it’s a realm of fears, it’s a realm of—
Even with his off-key singing, I could still focus enough to add, “If we figure out Alastor’s true name, we can compel him to break the contracts.”
Nell’s face lit with excitement. “Could he break one Pyra created?”
Being the superior malefactor, yes—that is, no, definitely, assuredly I could not.
“He could,” I said, smoothing the page out on the ground between us. “These are all the notes that the Scholar has on it, including a few letters.”
“Huh,” Nell said, scanning the Scholar’s tidy notations. “What information was Alastor desperate enough to get that he’d give away letters of his true name?”
Alastor fell suspiciously silent.
“He gave one more for information on Prue, amazingly enough,” I told her.
Nell shot me a look of complete disbelief.
“I know, but it’s part of our deal that he has to help me get Prue back to our world,” I said. “He didn’t have much of a choice. I had to trade the information about Alastor’s secret outhouse to get the bit about Nightlock and the entrance.”
“And he agreed to that?” Nell looked like I could have knocked her over with a flick of the finger.
I shook my head. “Yeah, right. Of course he didn’t.”
The skin between her eyebrows creased. I didn’t understand that look at all. Why did she seem more surprised that Alastor hadn’t helped than if he had?
“I think the Scholar is right about his name beginning with an S,” I said. “I’m almost positive that Pyra was visiting me in dreams in our world, and she was using the name—maybe to try to compel him to wake up from his sleep?”
“Singing Bone,” Nell said, her face brightening. “No wonder you were asking about it.”
My sister, Alastor began, his voice chillingly low, visited you in dreams as I slept, and you did not think to tell me?
“I didn’t figure it out until I saw her in her animal form, and, at the time, I think she was only trying to compel you to wake up,” I told him. “Anyway, it’s obviously not Singing Bone, but something like it. I know that’s not much, but it’s a start. We just have to make sure Pyra doesn’t use it before we can.”
“Agreed,” Nell said, folding the page and stowing it under the cover of her book. “I can’t imagine what information you had to trade to get the Scholar to give you this whole page. Please tell me it wasn’t anything that could literally come back and bite you.”
I shrugged. “I didn’t give him anything for it.”
Nell looked up, with that same pinched look as before. The words were slow with confusion as they left her. “You . . . stole this?”
For some reason, heat flushed through me. “The Masters are human. Or were human. Maybe the ones who accidentally stumbled into the realm.”
I was almost disappointed at Nell’s lack of surprise. “I figured as much. My sense of magic is weaker here, but they didn’t feel like fiends. What does that have to do with anything, though?”
“I saw one of the Masters steal something and realized that the theft cur
se only applied to fiends,” I said with a grin. “Meaning, you and I could take whatever we needed, including that page.”
“No, I mean, I’m . . . surprised that you would just take it,” Nell said slowly, her brow wrinkling. “You being, well, you.”
My smile faded.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked. My hands curled hard around my knees. “You don’t think I’m willing to do whatever it takes to save everyone and get Prue back?”
“That’s not what I—” Nell looked down at the page, running a finger down its torn edge. “Never mind.”
“Don’t ‘never mind’ it,” I said. “If you have something to say, just say it. Like you would have before, when you had no problem telling me what a spoiled idiot I am.”
“I told you I was sorry about that,” she said.
“I know,” I said, the words rapidly losing their heat, “and most of the time when you called me out, I actually did deserve it. I feel like we’re fighting right now, but I don’t understand why.”
Because you’re a Redding and she’s a Bellegrave, Alastor sighed happily, and you are forever fated to circle back to hate one another.
That wasn’t true. Right now I was just Prosper, and she was just Nell, and there was something wrong.
Nell glanced at me, then back at her book. A deep frown settled on her face.
Seriously wrong.
“Nell . . . what’s going on with you?” I asked, softer than before. “I know things aren’t exactly stellar right now, us being trapped in a demonic realm on the verge of destroying itself and all, but you’re holding on to that book like it’s a life jacket. Is it being here, Downstairs? Are you worried about the deal?”
She shook her head.
“Does it have anything to do with the fact that you don’t want Flora to call you ‘Goody Bishop’?” I said, for lack of anything else to try.
Although I’d been the one to ask, I don’t think anything could have prepared me for her quiet, heartbreaking, “Yes.”
It was a long time before Nell was able to speak. She seemed to be rehearsing the explanation in her head, testing out all of its different deliveries, the way she might for a role in a play.
Nell closed the book, but her finger kept absently tracing the gold foil letters of TROUBLE on the cover.
“Are you . . . dying?” I managed to get out.
Please, I thought, please no . . .
Nell’s mouth dropped open. “No! It’s nothing like that. It’s just complicated, and I’m not sure where to start.”
“Maybe start with the Goody thing,” I said carefully, finally taking a small bite of granola. She nodded and took a steadying breath.
“I don’t want Flora to use the title goody, because goody is reserved for witches who have finished their training.”
Instantly, the ridge of my spine relaxed. I released a soft breath. If that was it, then—
“And I’m never going to finish my training.”
I actually choked on the granola. Nell reached over, pounding me on the back. My eyes were still watering and I was still coughing as I said, “Are you serious?”
Here was a list of the first things I ever learned about Nell:
1. Nell was an amazing actor.
2. Nell loved wearing bright colors and mixing patterns, and somehow it always worked.
3. Nell lived in a legitimately haunted house she loved running.
4. Nell was a witch.
5. Nell was good at being a witch.
6. Nell was super-proud of being a witch.
I will admit to being intrigued, Alastor said, swirling in my mind. But I’d welcome one less witch in the realms. We have enough of their brand of menace.
“I know I told you a little bit about what it’s like to be a witch,” Nell said. “That we inherit the ability from our mothers. But there’s more to it than that. All the covens
in America are overseen by the Supreme Coven. They set the rules that all of us have to follow, and they administer the trials, which determines if a witch can finish her tutelage and join a coven or begin one of her own.”
“Okay,” I said. “I follow. Where’s the Supreme Coven based?”
“New York City,” she said. “That’s where Crescent Academy is, too.”
“There’s an actual witch school?” I asked. “Wicked.”
Wicked is reserved for only the best of fiends. Remove that exalted word from your mortal mouth.
Not wanting to explain the finer points of New England slang to an eight-hundred-year-old demon, and also seeing the hard expression on Nell’s face, I quickly added, “I mean, not wicked wicked, like the whole ‘wicked witches’ thing, I mean it like ‘hey, awesome,’ because for one thing, you’re not green, and wow, I am still talking. . . .”
Nell almost smiled. “It’s decidedly not awesome. Crescent Academy is for ‘misbehaving’ young witches who need ‘the strictest of guidance reform to be functioning members of our secret society.’ It’s also where orphans or abandoned or even young witches who didn’t know about their heritage go. We call them Daughters of the Moon, since they usually don’t have a mother or a coven around them to do the teaching. It’s where . . . it’s where I’ll end up. If I’m lucky.”
“But you’re not an orphan,” I said, my brow creasing. “You have Missy and the Salem coven, right?”
“I fall into the first category, Prosper. Misbehaving. I broke the first rule of witchery—”
To always be a cantankerous, tempestuous plague to the four realms?
“I aided a fiend,” she said miserably. “I guided three of them through the mirror portal to find us. I cast a spell on Pyra’s behalf, out of my own mother’s grimoire.”
Oh. Oh, man. “But you also helped me. That has to count for something . . . ?”
She lifted her shoulder in a faint shrug. “I’m not sure it’s going to matter much to the Supreme Coven. If I take responsibility and plead my case, the best outcome is that I’d have to leave Salem and live at Crescent Academy for the next few years to finish my schooling. The worst is that they could put a hex on me that would suppress my magic. Forever.”
Wow. Maybe the witches were a little wicked after all.
“But that’s so harsh,” I said. “You were being told that Pyra could bring your mom back to life—who wouldn’t take that deal?”
“Would you?” she pushed back.
I pointed at myself. “Who has two thumbs and just made a contract with a demonic parasite to help save his sister?”
Finally, Nell let out a small laugh. “That does make me feel better, in an awful way. Or at least less stupid.”
I stared at her. “You are one of the smartest and bravest people I’ve ever met. That’s why I can’t believe that you’re just going to . . . give up and not fight to finish your training. Is Crescent Academy really that bad?”
“It’s miserable. Cold. It’s what witches use as a bogeyman—be bad and you’ll end up at Crescent Academy. But it’s more than that,” Nell said, pressing a hand to her book. Her voice became tight as she continued, “Going in front of the Supreme Coven and explaining what I did . . . even if they don’t take my powers, it would dishonor my mom’s memory. She was such a respected witch, the leader of the Salem coven. I can’t do that to her. It’s better that I . . . discontinue my lessons and go live with Missy. Get on with my life.”
Her shame tastes of pepper, Alastor noted.
My whole chest seemed to lurch. I knew a little something about being the family embarrassment. “Nell . . . I don’t know what to say. Not that I have any business voicing an opinion about it since I don’t know what it feels like to, one, be a witch; two, lose a mom; and three, face a choice like this, but it’s just . . . not right.”
“It’s better,” Nell insisted, with that same terrible, thin tone. “I knew it was wrong to work with Henry and Pyra, but I still did it because I wanted my mom back so much. What if my judgment slips like that again, because�
�because something might happen to you? To Missy? To Toad?”
So that is why she clutches the book close, Alastor said. She relies on it to confirm her thoughts and beliefs, so as not to stray from what these witches have decided is the right and proper course. Life is a blank page on which we write our destiny. A life lived by another’s book is no life at all.
Reluctant as I was to admit it, Alastor was actually pretty insightful about these kinds of things. He could pinpoint a person’s weakness within seconds. Of course, his fatal flaw was that he couldn’t recognize any of his own.
I wasn’t sure what to say, but I wanted to help Nell so badly, I felt it like a knot tightening in the pit of my stomach. “I support you, no matter what you decide. But all of this just happened. . . . You don’t have to choose right away, do you?”
She shook her head. “No, but I’m sure the Supreme Coven knows it’s happened by now. Every day I wait is a mark against me.”
Wow, these witches . . . I guess centuries of being burned at the stake, hanged, and drowned had hardened some hearts.
Whatever Nell was about to say next was interrupted by the sudden reappearance of Flora. She burst into the hut like a clap of thunder, narrowly missing trampling my hands.
Nell surreptitiously wiped her face against the sleeve of her cloak before asking, “Did you find a way in?”
Flora’s eyes glowed. “Oh yes. I definitely did.”
I helped Nell pack up everything she had taken out, my hands lingering on the bottles and vials of potions and powders.
I didn’t know much of anything about this Supreme Coven, or if pushing back against the rules would only get her in more trouble. Maybe it really was as bad as all that, and these weren’t just stories meant to give little witches nightmares.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s get going.”
But even as we stepped back out into the empty Scales, I couldn’t stop thinking that if something mattered to you that much, you had to fight, and fight, and fight to keep it—to protect it—in whatever way you could.
JANUARY 1692
TOWN OF SOUTH PORT
The Last Life of Prince Alastor Page 12