The Last Life of Prince Alastor

by Alexandra Bracken

  I turned to look at Nell. She was rubbing her chin, her brows furrowed as she tried to write the script for how we were going to pull this off.

  The smell of food was turning my stomach hollow, and the longer we stood there, the worse my nausea became. They couldn’t possibly be serving dinner yet—we were supposed to have five hours, and we’d barely used two to rest and get here. I knew from years of painful dinner party experiences at the Redding ancestral home, the Cottage, that chefs might do some preliminary prep work, but they wouldn’t start cooking this early—

  “I suppose this is the moment I ought to tell you that you’re likely already too late,” the shade said. “They moved the dinner up by two hours because of the evacuation. They’re already four courses in with only three left.”

  Nell and I exchanged horrified looks. Flora moaned, wilting down onto her knees.

  Cease this pathetic display at once, Alastor ordered. The changelings would be one of the final courses. There’s time yet to save them, if you must.

  I released a shuddering breath, reaching over to grip Nell’s wrist. Her eyes focused on me again. “Alastor says there’s still time—we can save them.”

  Two more ghosts, both elderly and hunched, rushed in and out of the kitchen’s swinging door. Their forms drooped as they tried to balance two trays.

  A thought zinged through me.

  Zachariah was blocked by the house from entering the room, but we weren’t. And if there was one thing I’d learned from living inside a haunted house, it was that if you couldn’t be the living dead, you could make a pretty decent show of playing them.

  “I have an idea, and you’re going to hate it,” I began.

  “Is that idea me pretending I’m a shade to get into the kitchen?”

  I blinked. “Er, yeah.”

  “I don’t hate it,” Nell said, leaning in close enough that our heads were bowed together. “But as much as it kills me to pass up a juicy role, it has to be you.”

  “Me?” I repeated. “What? Why? You’re the actor!”

  “Yeah, but I’m also the witch, and I need to cast a stun spell on the other shades to keep them from seeing us and raising the alarm,” she said, taking out Toil and Trouble. “We just need something white and powdery like flour, and you need to do your arty magic with whatever we find to make you look as awful as the rest of them.”

  “You die of a wasting fever and see how lovely you look,” Zachariah groused. “And besides, you can’t stun a shade. They don’t have physical form.”

  “No, you technically can’t,” Nell agreed, running her finger down a page of her book. “But you can temporarily dissolve them into a million little particles of light and magic and call it ‘stunning’ because it sounds nicer.” She looked up toward me. “We’re only going to be in the clear for however long it takes for them to reassemble.”

  I tried not to sigh. “How long is that?”

  “Fifteen minutes,” she said, then added, less confidently, “give or take.”

  I set my shoulders back, taking a deep breath.

  Whatever it takes, I reminded myself.

  “Okay. That’ll have to be enough,” I said.

  If you’ve finished fluffing your courage, look for a storeroom to the right of the staircase. I am uncertain about this “flower,” but there is something you can use, if your goal is to paint yourself even paler than you already are.

  That something was ground maggots.

  Really? I asked him.

  Bake them in a meat pie, sprinkle them on a stew—it truly is a versatile ingredient.

  “Just hold your breath!” Flora coached as Nell lifted the bag over my head. “If it gets in your eyes, you’ll be even sadder than the maggots were as they were pulverized.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and covered my mouth and nose with my hand. But instead of water, something icy, wet, and reeking of rotten apples was dumped on my head, soaking straight through my clothes and seeping into my skin.

  “Ugh—”

  What a waste of perfectly good beetled juice!

  “To make the powder stick,” Nell explained. The apology in her voice didn’t exactly ring true as she struggled to hide her smile. “Here come the maggots.”

  The white powder whooshed down over me. Most of it crashed into the floor and launched an explosive cloud back up into the air. The girls gagged, waving the fine dust away.

  Even though I had covered my face again, I still inhaled the dust and began to cough, beating my chest to get the ground-up bugs out of my lungs. The powder quickly caked onto my skin and clothes.

  Nell smeared the maggot powder into my face, stepping back to examine her work. “There’s no mirror to show you, obviously, but I think it looks fine.”

  Zachariah floated behind her, arms crossed, looking off at the shelves filled with jars of pickling fairies. “He’ll definitely be caught. Don’t expect any of us to clean your organs off the fiends’ weapons.”

  “Oh, Zachy, you’re so funny,” Flora said, forgetting that she couldn’t actually punch his shoulder. “But what about his chain? Won’t the others notice?”

  “There’s no time,” I said. “I’ll just be fast—let them out and move on. Any other advice?”

  That last part was directed at Nell, but Zachariah answered. “Chef has eight arms, so best of luck to you.”

  Nell turned me back toward her. “Just be quick, act like you belong there, don’t make eye contact with anyone, and use this—”

  She pressed a small satchel into my hand. I unknotted its ribbons and looked at the glittering purple mass inside. It wasn’t the same vial she had shown us earlier—the emergency out. Maybe she had more faith in me than I thought.

  “Dizzy dust?” I asked.

  “No, it’s even stronger—I took it from Missy’s shop, so you know it’s going to be good,” she said. Then added, “Don’t use it around an open flame, okay?”

  “When you say things like that, it doesn’t actually make me feel better,” I told her.

  “Also, in case it wasn’t obvious, you shouldn’t breathe it in, either,” she said, then gave me a firm push toward the door, the hallway, and the kitchen a few doors down. “Also, maybe don’t get it in your eyes.”

  “Please stop talking,” I begged.

  “Good luck, pasty Prosper!” Flora whispered loudly. “We’ll be watching!”

  “Don’t expect us to bury you,” Zachariah said. “And if your shade gets trapped here, you definitely get the toilets.”

  Wonderful.

  I waited until the shades had come in and out one more time before I snuck down the short hallway to the kitchen—I didn’t know what the word skulked meant, exactly, but I’m guessing it was what I was doing. I skulked like a creep through the darkness.

  I glanced back at the sound of Nell’s quick whispering and three loud popping gasps, only to find the hallway aglow with a sea of sparkling magic particles.

  By the realms . . . Even Alastor sounded a little awed by the display.

  Nell and the others ducked around a corner, and she leaned forward only to mouth, “Glide, glide!”

  I slid one leg forward along the carpet’s long embroidered snake, on to the next carpet, along the back of the snake until I reached the swinging kitchen doors. The same garlic smell was even stronger now, mingled with roasted something and the tang of soured sweetness. Pots and pans clattered inside, making it seem as if there was an army of chefs and not just one fiend who was many-armed, and dangerous.

  Aside from the usual kitchen sounds—and the frantic chop-chop-chop of a knife hitting a counter—there was a gurgling, muted voice singing.

  “Little beasties, see how they gleam, when I chop! I make them scream—”

  I pushed the door open, roasting with the wave of heat that billowed toward me. The room was smaller than I’d imagined standing outside of it, and much of what space it had was taken by a massive metal stove that looked like a cousin of a pipe organ.

&n
bsp; Fire burst from beneath the boiling pots and pans, rocking them on their burners. I held my breath as the exhaust pipes belched out greasy smoke and crispy flecks of food.

  “—tiny gristle bits, oh-so-plump, fatten them up to carve their rumps—”

  The fiend working the stove was a whirl of thin, slick arms, each with dozens of small suction cups. It had the upper body of a man—a very, very purple man, with a very, very pointed head. So pointed, in fact, the chef’s hat perched on it barely fit.

  The chef had two large tentacles where a man would have had legs. The other six were all occupied with moving pots around, chopping, or spooning out soup into skull-shaped bowls.

  I gave a wide berth to the collection of knives hanging on the wall, all of which clattered together like wind chimes as I passed. They gleamed with bad intent in the low firelight. Beside them was an enormous empty tank that stank of salt water and mold and seemed to bubble with its own heat. There were no fish inside for the chef to cook—

  Of course not. Because that tank wasn’t for keeping seafood fresh. It was to keep the chef fresh. A trail of slime led from it to where he stood by the stove, every spare inch of it covered with roaches.

  A scylla, Alastor complained. What fool would hire it? Everything it touches will taste of the Poisoned Sea.

  On cue, a glob of purple slime dripped into one of the pots. The mixture splattered and sizzled against the scorching surface.

  “Whoopsie!” the chef sang out, patting the smoking embers that had landed on his already scorched apron. “Crunchy minions, squealing with fright, put ’em in the oven to serve tonight—”

  The chef never once turned around. One tentacle reached down, opening the oven door.

  “Nearly hot enough!” he declared, with a glance to the other side of the room. “Just enough to crisp you up, not enough to ash you.”

  I followed his gaze over to the racks of cages and baskets hooked onto the opposite wall. Here and there I saw lizards and snakes, most blissfully coiled around nests of eggs and enjoying the room’s oppressive heat.

  Beneath them, a group of changelings cowered at the edge of their cage.

  The enclosure must be iron—it’s the only substance capable of nullifying their power. Or else they truly are as dunderheaded as I believed them to be for not transforming into beings that could break out.

  I saw Eleanor wave her legs toward the chef. The gleam of bright feathers. Fluttering moth wings. The stretch of a frog’s gullet as it gulped in air. The shape of a snake’s rattle tail.

  But I didn’t see a small black kitten with the wings of a bat.

  My stomach churned.

  “Now, now, little morsels,” the chef said. Each of his words sounded as if it were traveling across the room in bubbles. A new coat of slime broke out over his skin like pus bursting from a festering wound. “What is there to cry about, hmm? Do you miss your little friend? The little fearsome critter who tried to save you? The master had a very special request for him. He will love seeing you again—just before your crunchy-munchy little bodies are cut up and washed down with a glass of beetled juice. Hee!”

  Inside their cage, some of the changelings began to mewl and cry. The rattlesnake’s tail shook out a warning of its own against the air.

  He must be speaking of the witchling’s Toad, Alastor said. Then it is already too late.

  No, I thought back to him, the chef’s talking about him like he’s still alive.

  I held on to that thought and wrapped it around myself like armor. Toad was alive, and somewhere in this house. And he would claw the living daylights out of me if I didn’t help the others first.

  It was Eleanor the tarantula who noticed me. Her legs began to do a little anxious dance, as if she didn’t know whether to be excited or afraid. I pressed a finger to my lips, keeping my eyes on the back of the chef’s head as he tossed a whole pot of black noodles into the air and caught it in a different hissing pan.

  I took a step forward, feeling something under my foot in the instant before I pressed it down.

  Crunch.

  My heart slowed to a single, tormented thump. Black guts oozed out of the roach smashed beneath my foot. The rattling in the cages stopped.

  The pans stilled on the stove top.

  And the butcher’s knife came whistling through the air, straight for my head.

  The knife spun toward me handle over blade, blade over handle, its dingy metal glowing like a demonic eye. A rush of painful prickling woke me out of my deadly trance. Alastor took control and threw us to the floor.

  The knife thwacked into the door, making it sway open and shut.

  I jumped to my feet, reaching for the sachet that Nell had given me with shaking hands. A sharp, high whistle was the only warning I had as Al danced us away from the next knife, slamming us into the side of the putrid water tank.

  “How dare you enter my kitchen without permission, filthy shade,” the chef gurgled. “The master will have a century for this!”

  Without thinking, I opened the small sack and tossed its entire contents into his face—and into the flames licking the pots on the stove behind him.

  The scylla’s two black eyes blinked as he inhaled the dust, each arm quivering before going limp.

  He fell against the stove top with a horrifying thud, banging his pans around. I saw his sleepy face for only a second before the whole room roared.

  An emerald tide of heat and light blasted from the stove, pawing at the ceiling, lancing out far enough to make the water tank crack and burst. The rancid contents washed out, smothering the flames before they could devour the creatures trapped in the cages.

  I slapped both hands to my mouth as the chef’s charred corpse toppled to the ground. The roaches fell upon it immediately, chewing through the tentacles and carrying off whole chunks to their hidden homes in the walls.

  Well done, Maggot!

  “Holy crap,” I said, stomach heaving. “I’m gonna be sick—”

  The changelings stared between me and the melted, warped end of their cage. The parrot hugged the snake close to its chest, its feathers puffed out in outrage.

  The doors swung open behind me, and I whirled around, hands still pressed to my mouth.

  Nell and Flora stood there, surveying the smoldering remains of the kitchen. Floating behind them, Zachariah raised one brow.

  “I was . . . wondering why it suddenly smelled like fried calamari . . .” Nell said weakly.

  “Ribbit!” Flora rushed across the room. The heat from the cage singed her hands. She yelped but didn’t let go until she had the latch open.

  The changelings spilled out. The parrot carried the frog between its talons, planting it on Flora’s head before nuzzling the elf’s pointed chin.

  “I was so worried!” Flora cried.

  Nell stooped to pick up Eleanor, letting the tarantula climb over her fingers and up her arms. “But . . . where’s Toad? Weren’t there others?”

  Flora swiveled around, searching through the cages. Ribbit the parrot made a mournful sound, but the elf continued to search, finding only feathers and tufts of fur. Tears began to leak from the corner of her eyes.

  “We weren’t quick enough,” she whispered. “All the rest . . .”

  Alastor, for once, was quiet. It was a good thing, because if he’d had some smart-aleck response to that, I would have found a way to reach into my own body to strangle

  him.

  Now that the shock of the minor explosion I’d caused was wearing off, a sharp feeling of regret buried itself in the pit of my stomach. I’d been wrong after all.

  We were too late.

  We’d spent too much time arguing and trying to plan when we should have just acted. If we were too late to save all the changelings, how could I be so certain that the same thing wouldn’t happen with Prue? What if the queen got tired of waiting, or thought we only had to believe Prue was still alive?

  What if—

  Enough, Prosperity. My sister is
cruel, but she is far more cunning than even I knew. As you said, she would not harm the girl, knowing she is the only way to bend you—and therefore me—to her will. Now stop being a fool and see to the witchling, who fears for the vermin. Her devastation tastes of lavender, and you know my dislike of florals.

  He was right—Nell’s knees looked like they might buckle. She kept shaking her head, staring at that empty cage. I reached out and grabbed her arm, shocked at how cold she could feel in the smoky, scorching-hot kitchen.

  “I think Toad is okay,” I explained quickly. “The chef said something about Nightlock having a special request for him, and Toad being forced to watch as the others were eaten. I’m going to go look for him right now.”

  “I’ll go with you—”

  I shook my head, cutting her off. Adrenaline surged through me. I could do this. “You and Flora can just . . . think of a backup plan. Find a good place to hide until Nightlock separates himself from the others. He’s bound to come investigate why no more food is coming, right? We’ll grab him then.”

  “We should go together,” Flora insisted. “Together is terrific, especially against many unfriendly fiends.”

  “No,” I said sharply, ending the conversation. We didn’t have time for this. I would and could do this. Alone.

  Nell looked askance at me, opening her mouth to say something, but I interrupted her again, my impatience finally boiling over. “I’ll do it. If something happens and you freeze again, it could be deadly—”

  The instant the words were out, I wanted to take them back. Nell flinched like I had slapped her across the face. Flora lowered her chin, her eyes narrowing as she looked up at me.

  “I mean,” I said, scrambling for a way to soften my words. “Listen, it’s just—I was only trying to—”

  Do not surrender on what was spoken in truth, Alastor said.

  “Excuse me,” Zachariah interrupted, glowering at us. “I was under the impression you were in a bit of a hurry. By my count, you’ve ten minutes left to carry out your next horrifically idiotic plan.”