The Last Life of Prince Alastor

by Alexandra Bracken

  Redhood had always belonged to the Reddings. Our ancestors had founded it on blood, and everyone who had followed had, wittingly or unwittingly, helped in covering up the truth of how it had come to be. What they did to the girl they’d used to trap Alastor. To the Bellegraves. To anyone who threatened to shatter that life and legacy.

  Including me.

  To be a Redding was to inherit history, but also the shared responsibility of guilt.

  The beginning of this story was Redhood. The end of it would be Redhood.

  Sacrificing myself wouldn’t restore the lives that had been lost, but I could at least save those who were still living.

  “Ah,” Grandmother said. “I see.”

  “No, you don’t,” I said sharply. “All you see and care about is yourself. About the Reddings. Even now, you were only here to get me and Prue, right? Were you going to try to bring the whole town to safety, too?”

  She turned, staring at the mirror. The darkness at the center of the portal. “Don’t be ridiculous, Prosperity. Family always comes first.”

  “Don’t you get it? That’s the whole problem!” I said. “Thinking that way is the reason that we got into this mess in the first place! We can’t keep running from what we did—we can’t keep trying to hide it by closing ranks to anyone who doesn’t share our last name. Redhood is ours to take care of, and that includes all the people who live here.”

  My family had disappointed me so many times, I don’t know why her silence now hurt me the way it did. Maybe she was just incapable of changing.

  “Where are Mom and Dad?” I asked. “Are they at the Cottage?”

  Grandmother shook her head. “They left for Salem this morning. After we’d tracked where Prudence had disappeared to, we were able to piece together what happened. They were to wait for you there, in case you should return through the mirror you used to leave. I, however, had a feeling that the malefactor would bring you back to Redhood.”

  “Then you knew better than I did,” I muttered, swaying a little on my feet. I suddenly felt very hot.

  “You must sit down, child,” Grandmother said, without a hint of warmth in her voice. “You’re about to faint.”

  “No I’m not—”

  Blackness snapped over my vision, drowning out Alastor’s frustrated groan of Not now!

  When I opened my eyes again, I was belly down on the floor, one of the Heart2Heart foundation’s fund-raising pillows stuck under my face.

  Finally! Alastor snapped.

  I couldn’t have been out for long. The sunlight filtering into the room was just as strong as it had been before I’d fallen. I shifted, trying to work out the kinks in my sore muscles. A cool breeze from the window slipped beneath the collar of my shirt—meaning that the cloak had been taken off. My shoulder was stiff—too stiff to move. I reached back, feeling the bandage that had been put in place.

  What the . . .

  The last few hours slammed back through my memory and I gasped, twisting around. I hadn’t dreamed it. Grandmother was still standing in front of the open mirror portal, humming softly as she arranged a few stones on the floor in front of it.

  “Let’s banish you, shall we?” she said.

  No . . . Alastor breathed out.

  I jumped to my feet, swaying as all the blood left my head again in one go.

  A witch. My grandmother, the one who tormented anyone who broke her stupid rules or shattered her image of matriarchal perfection. Who never smiled, except at someone else’s expense.

  This whole time, she’d been an actual witch, not just the figurative kind.

  This explained so much, and yet . . . this still didn’t really explain most things. But when I looked at Grandmother again, I saw her.

  She wore her usual tight bun, but instead of a dress suit, she was garbed in a long green velvet coat. Beside Prue’s bed was her own sewing basket. And just in case anyone wasn’t sure who it belonged to, she had monogrammed her initials, CWR, on it.

  Grandmother snapped her fingers at me, indicating I should retrieve it for her. I stooped down, surprised at how much its weight strained my already sore arms. Instead of the soft string and pins I would have expected, metal clacked against glass as I passed it to her.

  Grandmother flipped the lid open and rummaged through the contents. A single wrinkle appeared between her gray eyebrows as she pulled out a long decorative knife.

  I took a generous step back.

  Grandmother looked up. “After that speech you gave, I would hate for you to lose your courage now. This blade is used for ceremonial spells only—bring the willow bark, please.”

  Thankfully, the bottles in the sewing basket were labeled. I passed the right one to her and watched as she arranged a variety of plants and electric-blue dust across the ground in front of the mirror. The distant shadows of approaching fiends suddenly were not so distant.

  She cannot close a mirror I’ve opened, Alastor said. I shall enjoy watching her futile attempts. It does not matter, anyway. Pyra has brought the blood key with her. I feel its seething presence in this realm.

  A very bad word my grandmother definitely wouldn’t have approved of flickered through my mind. Of course she’d brought the key with her. Pyra wasn’t stupid. She wouldn’t let something so valuable out of her sight.

  My shoulders slumped as I released a heavy breath. “I thought only a malefactor could open and close the portals.”

  Nell’s trick to reopen the portal to Downstairs had worked because she’d been able to repeat Alastor’s spell. Casting the same spell now would be pointless with the portal already open. Which made it very curious that Grandmother took her ceremonial blade in her right hand and planted herself directly in the path of any monster about to explode out of the rippling silver surface.

  “I’m not closing the portal,” my grandmother said. “I’m banishing it to another dimension.”

  No, she is certainly not! The hot rush of Alastor seizing control of my legs and right arm came on so quick, it burned the air out of my lungs. Before I could wrest control back from him, my arm was swinging up, my fist flaring with snarling power as it came toward the back of my grandmother’s head.

  No!

  Two cold metal bands snapped down over my wrists and locked. Grandmother hadn’t even needed to turn around to float the cuffs out of her basket and direct them toward me. Alastor’s power faded from my arm, leaving it feeling as if all the blood had been drained out of it at once.

  This—this—pig-nosed wench!

  Grandmother bowed her head, thrusting the ceremonial dagger forward. “Goddess of travel, goddess of light, take this accursed object into the darkness, give it flight.”

  She dragged the blade around the outer edges of the old mirror’s frame. As it moved, the blade lit with emerald magic from tip to hilt. The air around the mirror blackened as it peeled away, curling into itself like damp paper.

  “Take this accursed object into the darkness,” Grandmother repeated. A horde of lycans took shape in the center of the mirror, clawing at the ground to run faster and faster as their door into Redhood disappeared. “Give it flight!”

  Grandmother gave one last shove, right in the center of what remained of the mirror, and the darkness swirled, swallowing and swallowing, until only a pinprick of black remained where the mirror had been, then nothing at all.

  That is hardly impressive, Alastor said, the words giving a faint tremble.

  “Holy crap,” I said. “That was amazing.”

  My grandmother kicked the spell’s ingredients aside, strolling through the carnage of ruined clothing and mauled books with her shoulders back and her head held high.

  “I need you to understand something,” she said, leaning one hand against the post of Prue’s bed. “I have never been good with matters of the heart. I have rarely granted myself permission to be soft, not since my own mother died fighting fiends. To protect this family, I have always been on guard. But I have taken things too far, clearly. Eve
n now, I see that you are frightened of me.”

  “You did come after me with a knife,” I reminded her. “Without explaining what was happening. That would alarm pretty much anyone.” Except, I realized, her.

  “I did. And when I said that I’d hoped it was you who carried the burden of the malefactor, I spoke in anger and fear, and for that, I apologize.”

  I . . . did not know what to do with that.

  “That’s not the only time,” I told her, hating the thickness in my throat. “Nothing I do has ever been good enough for you or for anyone else in this family.”

  “All I have ever wanted was for you and your sister to be strong enough to face the trials of life, supernatural or otherwise. I have always feared Prudence’s heart condition was a result of the malefactor feeding upon her life. Even after she’d recovered, I remained worried that she did not have the strength to bear the brunt of this unfortunate task, and she might relapse, or we might lose her because I could not figure out a way to stop this.”

  I released a shaky breath. “And you seriously thought I could handle it?”

  “It is one of the few things I have been unquestionably correct about,” she said. “That was reaffirmed not just when I learned you’d followed her Downstairs, but this past afternoon, when you were willing to return to that place alone to face its darkness. It made me wonder what I might have done in your position. You have shown me my own monstrous pride, and how it very likely might have caused our fall.”

  I never imagined I would get an acknowledgment of the way she and the rest of my family had treated me over the years, let alone a true apology. I wanted to live in the moment a bit, and relish it, but there wasn’t time. It wasn’t that the past didn’t matter, it was that the future was at stake.

  Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap!

  We both swung around to the room’s window. Something moved along the edges of the frame, testing.

  I strode over to it, waving Grandmother back. She raised her brows in my direction before pushing me behind her, her hand raised and already sparking with magic. The window swung open on its own. Her face lost all color as she stared at the brightly colored parrot that landed on the sill.

  “Ribbit,” she breathed out.

  The changeling turned its head to the side, studying her. Grandmother stared back, her hands trembling as she reached out.

  Realization thundered down around me.

  Even Alastor sounded shocked. The changeling was hers?

  For a second no one moved. Then Ribbit let out a quiet cooing sound and floated up from the sill, flying past my grandmother’s fingers to land on her shoulder. The changeling rubbed her feathered head against Grandmother’s cheek, and I could have sworn those were tears in the woman’s eyes.

  And to think this whole time I’d thought she’d had her tear ducts surgically removed.

  “Yes,” she said, clearly agreeing with something Ribbit told her. “I’ll summon the coven, apologize for the cruel things I said as I broke from them, and see if they’ll come to our aid. Then we’ll end this. Together.”

  “My darling Catherine,” came a new voice from the doorway. “We are already here.”

  Elma Hazelwood, the eighty-year-old who lived in the crooked house on Mather Street and was commonly believed to have a pet squirrel, stood in the doorway.

  Tucked over her arm was a wicker basket, identical to the one my grandmother had. Her shock of white hair curled up around her forehead and ears, giving her the appearance of wearing an old-fashioned bonnet. “Goodness. It really would be easier if we flew around on broomsticks. Oh, hello, dearie!” Elma gave me a fond smile. “It looks as though you’ve seen a spot of trouble.”

  “Elma,” my grandmother said, her tone one of shock. “But how did you . . . ?”

  “A rather panicked group of changelings found me in my garden. And, well, I heard the screams of terror. The others sent me to suss out your location,” Ms. Hazelwood said. “They’ll be glad to see you, Catherine.”

  My grandmother did not look completely certain of that as she raised her chin and gave a curt nod. I trailed behind the two women as we wound our way through the woods behind the house. Five other women were gathered there in their own green coats. All of them fell silent as we approached.

  “Well,” said one who looked suspiciously like TV chef Agatha “the Sandwich Witch” Dennard. “It’s been an age. Is that heart of yours still as ugly as a wart?”

  Grandmother stroked a finger down Ribbit’s soft feathered chest. “Is your curse work still as sloppy as a burst boil?”

  “Aw! Just like old times, ladies!” called a brash voice.

  I recognized this woman, too . . . her name was . . . Barbie. That’s right. Barbie lived in a town called Glenbrook, which had more trees than people. She ran her own small moving company.

  I was less surprised to see her than I was to see her massive flamingo-pink truck parked along the boundary road that divided Redhood from its nearest neighbor. She sat in the driver’s seat of her twelve-wheeler, resting her chin on her hand as she watched other members of the coven stacking stones into a small pyramid.

  “Don’t forget the petals, y’all!” she shouted.

  “When have I ever forgotten part of a spell?” Mrs. Wu, the town’s librarian, called back. “When, Barb?”

  “Ladies,” Grandmother said, her tone measured. “Are the other protection cairns complete?”

  Ms. Dennard looked relieved to have a change of topic. “Yes, of course. One in each of the town’s corners. We only need to complete the incantation.”

  “Is that the li’l guy the changelings told us about?” Barbie called, hanging out of the driver’s side of the semi-truck’s cab. Her hair was such a deep red it could almost be classified as a purple. She’d cut off the sleeves of her long velvet coat, baring her truly impressive guns and collection of tattoos on her dark skin. The shirt she wore under the coat was also sleeveless, and bore the same logo as her truck: BARBIE’S SCOOTIN’-HOOTIN’ HAULIN’.

  Grandmother walked me over to the truck, her hands still clasped around her sewing basket’s woven handle.

  “This is Mrs. Barbara Elderflower,” Grandmother said. “You’ll accompany her to retrieve the townspeople and bring them to the Cottage.”

  “Why the Cottage?”

  Alastor blew out a sigh of disgust, which made me that much more curious to hear the answer.

  “Thanks to the original contract with the malefactor, the Cottage and all of its land are protected. The fiends cannot cross the boundary walls of the estate.”

  “How am I going to cross the boundary, though?” I asked. Wait, actually . . . “How have I been able to cross it?”

  Grandmother let out a small huff of impatience. “I fed the house a drop of your blood when you were an infant so that it would recognize you always as a member of our family.”

  “Oh. Wait—what? You took a drop . . . You fed the house . . . what?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I can rescind your invitation at any point, however. As long as you keep the iron bracelets on, we should not have any problems.”

  I looked between her and the enormous truck and, with a sinking feeling, realized how we were going to collect the townspeople. “What about you, though? What are you trying to do out here?”

  “That’s not for you to worry about. Go on, now,” Grandmother said, turning on her heel to walk over to the others.

  Barbie seemed to take pity on me as I climbed up into the cab of the truck. “It’s a protection spell on steroids. The fiends won’t be able to get out, and nothing else will be able to get in. Now buckle up, we’re going off-roading.”

  “What do you mean, they won’t be able to get out?” I asked.

  “It’s just as I said, hon,” Barbie said, turning the keys in the ignition. “We’re shifting this town outside the normal flow of time, creating a kind of bubble of vast, physics-defying nothingness around it.”

  I didn’t see how that was possible,
but in that moment I didn’t care. If nothing else, Mom and Dad would be safe outside of Redhood. Good.

  I released a shaky breath as she pulled off the shoulder and onto the road, watching as the rest of the sewing circle raised their arms into the air. A small crocodile with a feathered head—Barbie’s changeling—jumped from the dashboard to her sewing basket. Hers looked a bit more worn, but was otherwise identical. It wasn’t until I scanned over her initials that I froze.

  BZE.

  “Wait . . . Barbara Z. Elderflower?” I said slowly.

  “Barbara Zelda Elderflower, if you want to be specific, hon,” she said. “What’s with that face?”

  “The author of Toil and Trouble: A Witch’s Guide to Navigating Mischief and Mayhem, second edition?” I clarified.

  “Oh, that old thing?” Barbie lit up. “How’d you find a copy? The Supreme Coven took it out of print—said it promoted ‘dangerous whims and irresponsible curiosity,’ pshaw.”

  “My friend is a huge fan,” I explained. Nell was going to die.

  Um, figuratively.

  “Grand! You’ll have to introduce me.” The line of bobblehead Red Sox players on her dashboard quivered as she picked up speed. My seat bounced and I was thrown to the left as she gunned the gas. Within minutes, we hit the first cobblestones of Main Street.

  “All right, hang on—things are about to get loud and ugly, and if something catches on fire please tell your grannie it’s not my fault—” Barbie rolled down her window, leaning out as far as she could. “Run if you value your evil little lives, you magic-sucking mosquitoes!”

  She leaned back into the cab, reaching over to push the play button on her stereo. Church bells—clanging, beautiful church bells—blared out of the speakers mounted in the truck.

  ARGH! Alastor shriveled, thrashing inside my skull.

  “Make it louder!” I shouted to her.

  Barbie winked, snapping her fingers. The spark of magic jumped from her fingers to the dashboard, and the sound of the bells intensified until I had to cover my ears.