The Last Life of Prince Alastor

by Alexandra Bracken

  “Hold on!” she shouted.

  Ogres dove out of the street as the truck barreled down it. The fiends sorting through their stolen bounty outside the shops crumpled at the sound of the bells. The tires smoked as Barbie hit the brakes and sent us sliding across the cobblestones in a move I had only ever seen in a Fast and Furious movie. The massive truck rocked as we came to a stop at the curb alongside the town square.

  “Stay here!” Barbie said, unbuckling her seat belt and jumping down to the blackened sidewalk. “All right, load up, folks!”

  The truck swayed as the witch opened the back and people poured into it. I kept watch on the dashboard clock, my fingers tightening around the armrests, my heart rising in my throat. Finally, the trailer’s door slammed shut.

  “Well, that was a bucket of fun,” Barbie said, breathless, as she climbed back inside. I was thrown back into my seat as she floored the gas again.

  The roads narrowed as we left the center of town, winding around through the trees. Barbie turned hard and quick enough to make me clutch my chest.

  The change came so subtly, it wasn’t until we were deep into the woods surrounding the Cottage that I noticed that the world had darkened. The witch in the driver’s seat leaned forward, craning her neck to catch a glimpse of the sky through the trees. A green bolt of lightning crackled over the heavy underbelly of the clouds.

  “Is that your spell?” I asked, having to shout over the bells.

  “ ’Fraid not!” Barbie urged the truck faster, until the engine was quaking and clattering inside the hood.

  “Careful!” I said. The people in the back had no seat belts or anything to hold on to. What was the good of saving them if everyone came out of there with a collection of broken bones?

  A screech went up through the forest, shrill enough to drown out the bells blaring from the truck.

  Dark shadows raced through the uneven rows of trees around us. Their lanky forms ate up the ground, covering the distance at nearly the same speed as the truck. One veered off from the others, taking a flying leap toward the passenger door of the truck. All I had to see was the long wisp of hair, the eight eyes, and the mouth that nearly encircled its head—my body reacted before my brain could.

  I opened the door, twisting in my seat to kick it out as hard as I could. Barbie caught on quickly, veering sharply to the right. The fiend—the ghoul—clung to the door, swinging it back out with its weight. Another ghoul bounded toward me, a vicious blade in one hand, the other outstretched. This close, I saw where they had stuffed their ears with cloth and leaves, nullifying the effects of the bells.

  Barbie jerked the wheel to the right again, catching the door against one of the centuries-old maple trees. I twisted back toward the dashboard as the first ghoul was knocked off the door like a bug and thrown under the wheels. My stomach turned as the wheels of the truck jumped, taking the unnatural speed bump.

  As she made the last turn onto Redding Lane, Barbie didn’t wait for the security gates of the Cottage to open. She blew right through them.

  The other ghouls were flung away if they’d hit a closing door that we’d been able to slip through. The air around the fence pulsated with power, but it was nothing compared to the light show in the sky.

  “Now that,” Barbie said, pointing up at the blanket of sparkling green magic that burned through the unnatural clouds like an ocean of flames, “is our spell.”

  The residents of Redhood were all a bit green in the face as they were helped down out of the back of the truck. But they were, thankfully, in one piece.

  I climbed down slowly, letting the sound of the recorded bells wash over me. It rang out over the wooded land that surrounded the house, driving out some of the shadows. Just not the one inside me.

  With a deep breath, I looked up at the grand house in front of us. After the weeks I’d spent going between a legitimately haunted house and jagged, skull-adorned prisons, the three stories of the Cottage no longer sent a trickle of dread through me. As I walked up the gravel of the driveway toward the front door, I wondered if the house had somehow become smaller in the time that I’d been away.

  Redhood’s residents wandered around the front of the house in a daze. Very few of them had likely ever passed the boundary gate in all their decades of living in town.

  “I thought there was supposed to be a gold statue of Old Lady Redding right by the door?” someone whispered.

  “I mean . . . there’s like eighty percent less gargoyles than I was expecting, given how evil they are,” came another voice.

  “What are we even doing here? This is their fault, isn’t it? They brought the monsters—”

  “No, they have always been the monsters.”

  I glanced back over my shoulder. The people of Redhood hesitated on the drive, even with Barbie’s arm waving them toward the inviting open door of the house. Most looked as if terror had drained the life out of them, as they gazed back toward where dark shapes moved beyond the iron fences in the distance.

  Three thuds from the entryway announced the arrival of the Cottage’s white-haired butler. Seemingly unfazed by the scratched, bruised, and filthy masses in front of him, he leaned forward on his cane and cocked his head to the side. His face never once lost the look of mild distaste.

  “Dinner has been prepared and sleeping arrangements have been organized. Should you need medical assistance, Dr. Feeny requests that you assemble in the kitchen, where he will treat you in order of need. Mrs. Redding has asked me to tell you that if you prefer to serve as another creature’s dinner rather than dine upon the fine meal we have prepared for you, you are welcome to exit through the same gate in which you entered. Otherwise, please enjoy your stay here until the matter of the monsters is settled.”

  He really hadn’t needed to say anything beyond dinner. The residents flowed around him like a river forced to change its course to accommodate a stone that had been there, unmoving, from the dawn of time.

  Barbie and I waited until the pack of humans had rushed into the house before starting up the steps ourselves. By then, the sky was edging toward night, its blue deepening to a sullen shade. The massive lantern that hung over the grand doorway flickered on as we passed beneath it.

  While Barbie cut a path around the butler, when it came time for me to do the same, Rayburn stepped directly in my path. I tried to move, and he shifted with me. This close to him, the tufts of white hair in his ears and nostrils were very noticeable.

  “Hey, Rayburn,” I said slowly. “It’s been, ah, a while, huh?”

  If he didn’t remember our interaction in Salem, when Nell had blown a fistful of dizzy dust in his face on the playground, someone had clearly told him what had happened. Instead of looking at me like a fly that needed to be shooed away, I was now no better than a poisonous spider that had to be crushed at all costs.

  “Prosper!”

  I darted around Rayburn, ducking under his outstretched arm and moving into the house’s warmth and its familiar smell: vaguely musty, polished wood, old carpet.

  Nell rushed toward me down the great hall, unbothered by the residents removing their coats and accepting bundles of food from the staff. Toad, back to his usual size, galloped at her heels to keep up.

  I barely had a chance to brace myself before she slammed into me, throwing her arms around my neck. Her hair was cold and damp from the shower she must have taken, and she was wearing a set of my sister’s clothes.

  “Is Prue here, too?” I asked her.

  “Yes! Where did you go? It was bad enough Flora and Zachariah wandered off, but we were freaking out when you disappeared! Toad insisted on flying us over here and then kept us here as his prisoners. But, seriously, where did you go?”

  I pulled back, deciding to avoid the question rather than outright lie. “Did you get ahold of Missy?”

  “The magic is interfering with everyone’s cell signal,” Nell said. “Our orders are to get something to eat and go to sleep.”

  I gave h
er an incredulous look.

  “I know. But they’re not wrong.” Nell let out a soft sigh. “Prue ate a sandwich and fell asleep in the library in the middle of arguing why we didn’t need to rest. And it’s going to take a few hours at least before my powers are back to their full strength. Also”—she reached up and pinched my arm hard enough to make me yelp—“how could you not tell me your grandmother was part of the famous Ravenfeather coven? How did I not put that together?”

  “How did you know that?” I asked.

  “I recognized the other members—also, Ribbit? Wow. I did not see that one coming.”

  “Me either,” I confessed as we walked back toward the house. “Is the Ravenfeather coven famous or something?”

  “Yes! They can trace their lineage all the way back to the founding of Massachusetts! I thought they had moved farther west, but I guess not. Missy is going to be so jealous. She loves Agatha Dennard’s essays—”

  We rounded the side of the mansion and found ourselves on the driveway again. Barbie had climbed back into the cab of her truck to retrieve her sewing basket and was just locking up when she caught sight of us.

  Nell froze.

  “That’s—” she whispered.

  “I know,” I said.

  “No, you don’t understand. That’s—”

  “I know.”

  Nell looked like she was either going to faint or start clawing at her face.

  “Hello again, my slightly smelly dumplin’,” Barbie said, coming over to us. “Is this your friend you mentioned?”

  Nell kept her hands pressed to her mouth, like she was too scared of what might come out. Right now all she was managing to utter was a high-pitched note.

  “This is Nell Bishop,” I explained. “Her mom was a member of the Salem coven, and her other mom still is.”

  “Oooh, you must be Tabitha’s daughter,” Barbie said, adjusting the basket from one arm to the other so she could stick out her hand. “I’d heard your sweet mom had passed. I’m awful sorry about that, little witch. I lost my own mom before I took my trials, too.”

  Nell slowly drew her hands away from her face, her mouth tightening into a pained line. Barbie put a hand on her shoulder, drawing her in closer.

  “How about you help me go through my supplies and see what else we might need?” she suggested. “I’d love to hear more about your mom and what’s what.”

  Nell nodded, but caught herself. She turned to look at me.

  “I’m just going to find Prue and check on her—make sure nothing truly awful happened to her Downstairs,” I said. “You also need to update Barbie on all the new things we found out so she has it straight in her next book.”

  Over the top of Nell’s curls, Barbie winked at me.

  The three of us walked into the house together, but soon split off in different directions. Barbie and Nell went to the smaller front sitting room, usually reserved for greeting guests Grandmother didn’t like and wanted to make sure they knew it. I continued past the many sitting rooms filled with families wrapped in blankets in front of glowing fireplaces. It reminded me in an uncomfortable way of the fiend families we had seen in the prison.

  Prue had mentioned in Salem that the Reddings had spread out looking for me, and it didn’t seem like many of them had made it back to Redhood before the fiends invaded. I saw a few second cousins here and there, most of them giving me horrified looks as I passed by, but none of my aunts or first cousins.

  I kept my gaze forward as I walked to the stairs, ignoring the press of unseen eyes against me. At the edge of my vision, the candle flames along the walls shivered.

  There are no candles lit.

  I swung my gaze back, but the glimmers of light were gone. A faint chill crept down my spine as I took each step. Whispered voices carried through the hall, following me up the stairs like a bitterly cold breeze.

  I just couldn’t tell if they were coming from the living, or the Cottage’s watchful dead.

  Even with a house full of powerful witches and the protection spell, my mind wouldn’t let me sleep. I took a shower, changed, then just walked. Up and down the floors, in and out of rooms, from attic to basement. It had been hours since people had been sent to bed with full bellies and a gentle explanation of what the fiends were. Which was why I was surprised to find someone else awake in the great hall.

  Nell sat in the center of the room’s plush carpet, beneath the skylight. The soft, silvery moonlight fell over her as she absorbed the full impact of the hundreds of Redding family portraits crammed onto the soaring walls. She glanced my way as I came toward her, her expression unreadable.

  “Wow. Your family . . .” she said quietly. “It’s so . . . big.”

  “That’s one word for it,” I said dryly.

  Nell didn’t laugh. She ran her fingers along the worn carpet. “It was always just me, Mom, and Missy—and their coven, too. Henry claims to be the last of the Bellegraves, but I guess that would actually be me?”

  Despite the age of the Bellegrave family and how early they’d been established in America, there would be no walls of storied ancestors for them. There would be no paintings done by the famous artists in the family. There would be no family home for them to gather for the holidays each and every year.

  Alastor and Honor Redding had seen to that.

  Instead of sitting, I moved to a portrait in a massive gold frame, the one with a section all to itself. The iron bracelet around my right wrist slid down as I reached for the pen resting on the guestbook Grandmother insisted on keeping. I uncapped it, tapping the pen against my lips.

  Before I could stop myself, I rolled up onto my toes and drew horns and a curly mustache on Honor Redding’s scowling face.

  When Nell gasped out a laugh, I added a pointy tail behind him for good measure.

  “There,” I said. “It finally captures the real man.”

  I plopped down onto the carpet beside her, admiring my work. For a while, neither of us said anything.

  Nell hugged her knees to her chest, looking down at her turquoise-painted toes. “I . . . I talked everything through with Barbie. She convinced me to own up to my mistakes and face the Supreme Coven, come what may. She said she and the whole Ravenfeather coven would put in a good word for me, too.”

  “That’s great,” I said, meaning it sincerely.

  “It will be slightly less great if they decide to strip my powers rather than send me to Crescent Academy for a while,” she said. “But Barbie said something that made me rethink the way I’d been framing this in my head. She told me she knew my mom because they’d both had to go in front of the Supreme Coven on the same day and explain their actions—Barbie had snuck Downstairs but was able to get off with only a temporary magic suppression because her information was so useful. But my mom was there because she’d used her power to help heal a lycan caught in our world, so he could return Downstairs.”

  “You didn’t know that?” I asked.

  Nell shook her head. “No. It just made me realize how rigid and outdated the rules are. She did something they’d decided hundreds of years ago was ‘bad,’ but they refused to see she did it with good intentions and ultimately got the lycan back Downstairs.”

  “Did they punish her?” I asked.

  “Yeah. She had been nominated to join the Supreme Coven—the youngest member ever. But they withdrew that nomination due to her ‘poor judgment.’ I don’t know that they’ll have mercy on me, but at least I can tell them what I think of their rules when I see them in person. I can argue for change on behalf of all witches.”

  “If there’s one person that can give a well-reasoned, impassioned, perfectly executed speech, it’s you,” I said. “Do you want moral support? Could I be moral support, or is their building cursed to turn intruders into frogs as soon as they step through the door?”

  Nell rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “You’re a good friend, Prosper Redding.”

  “You’re a better friend, Nell Bishop,” I
told her. “You were right to call me out in the sewers. I’m sorry. I just . . . wanted to be different this time. I wanted to do the right thing, and the only thing I succeeded at was being a jerk.”

  Nell bumped her shoulder into mine. “I know. But for what it’s worth, there was nothing wrong with the old Prosper. If you don’t mind, could I have that one back?”

  I closed my eyes, wriggling my hands in front of my face. “And . . . done.”

  When I opened them again, the unhappy, humorless faces of the many Reddings who had come before me glared back from their gilded frames. The lightness in my chest faded as I remembered something.

  “Before I forget or another horde of fiends invades, there’s something else I have to tell you,” I confessed. “I figured out Alastor’s true name.”

  Inside me, I felt Alastor’s presence coil tighter.

  Nell sat up straighter. “What? When?”

  “In the tower. It was one of the names scratched onto the floor. I almost used it to compel him to open the mirror portal. I could have used it to force him to shut it. And I didn’t. I had to force him using the terms of our deal.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  I ran my hand back through my hair, clutching it in my hands. “I don’t know—it was something that he said, about how I was turning into Honor. I just . . . couldn’t do it. I’m sorry.”

  “I understand.”

  “I know I’m being ridiculous—”

  “You’re not,” Nell said. “I keep thinking about what Flora said, about how the fiends were once part of us. I don’t know that they’re capable of genuine good, but I know we are. Choosing not to enslave another creature and bend it to your will doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you Prosper. And besides . . . the coven wants to try to get as many fiends as we can back Downstairs and then wait out the Void. Maybe the contracts will automatically be nullified if . . .”

  “That whole realm is destroyed?” I finished. “That doesn’t feel right either.”

  “No,” she agreed, rubbing at her forehead. “It doesn’t.”

  I lay back on the rug, staring up at the shimmering blanket of the protection spell through the hall’s skylight. Nell did the same, resting her hands on her stomach.