It hissed, flashing two vampire-sharp teeth as it sank two sets of claws into my chest.
“Ow!” My body reacted before my brain, jerking in surprise. The fluff ball—a kitten?—darted to safety beneath the couch, quick as a shadow. I crashed to the floor a second later, sending up an explosion of dust as I hit the rug. In between trying to hack up my lung and sneeze out my brains, I waited for the black blotches in my vision to clear and the unfamiliar room to appear.
I pressed my hurt arm tight to my chest, trying to breathe through the pain. My breath whistled in and out through my teeth as I looked around me.
Crap, crap, crap. Not a nightmare. Not a nightmare.
The ceiling above me was low and slanted upward sharply at the center. I wouldn’t be able to stand at the edges of it, but that didn’t matter much, considering all four sides of the room were crammed with furniture. The dark wooden beams loomed over old, broken furniture—all of which had been repurposed into something else. A table leg had been replaced with a stack of thick old leather-bound books. The back of a wooden chair hung from the wall, various vines draped over it like dark velvet ribbons. An old armoire’s drawers were pulled out and stuffed with dirt and small herbs, while bottles filled with murky yellow and brown mixtures and copper pots spilled over the upper shelves.
In the far corner, just beside a desk overflowing with books and sheets of paper starting to curl like fingernails, was a spiderweb-ridden spinning wheel.
A pop of orange unknown to nature caught my eye, and my gaze drifted down, slowly, until…Yes. I was wearing a bright orange shirt—one I definitely didn’t own. I pulled it out farther with my right hand, trying to see what was printed on it.
An enormous grinning jack-o’-lantern face. I didn’t know what was worse—that, or the fluffy knit socks protecting my toes from the chill. TRICK had been stitched on the right foot, TREAT on the other. And boxers. Boxers that drooped down to my knees, with hundreds of little green witches flying around on their broomsticks printed all over them.
More important, though, was the white bandage, wrapped neatly around my left arm, just under my elbow. An angry cloud of blood had soaked up through it, just like the red ink had through the pages of the book.
The night came back in flashes of smoke and light: The book. The knife. The voice. The stranger. And—
Prue! I dragged myself to my knees. I held my throbbing arm to my chest, and tried really, really, really hard to stay vertical. This wasn’t my house, and it wasn’t the Cottage either. And if I was here, where was Prue? Had the stranger grabbed her too?
My legs shook, but I got them under me, leaning back against the powder-blue couch I’d fallen off of. Wild ivy sidled its way through the open windows and cracks in the wall from the outside, as if seeking warmth. Their leaves curled as they withered with the turning season, the branches spread out like veins against the dark wood of the walls. For a second, I just stared at them, trying to match their colors to the paint I had hidden in a box under my bed. The late-afternoon sun flushed the room with pure cider-colored light, almost enough to brighten the soot on the old candle-crammed fireplace.
There was a cracked full-length mirror at the other end of the room, rimmed with a dusty gold frame. I hobbled over to it, tripping through piles of clothes and overflowing black trash bags leaning against the walls. When I was finally standing in front of it, I needed a full second to realize I was staring at myself.
It wasn’t just the bruise down the side of my face, blue and black and almost green in places. I poked a finger at the center of it and immediately wished I hadn’t. My dark hair was standing straight up, like tufts of raven feathers. I turned around, searching for a comb or water to try to pat it down, before remembering I had no idea where I was, and what I looked like and was wearing shouldn’t matter because of the real, looming chance I could be murdered.
Every Redding is known for something, you see. It would be just my luck to be the Redding Who Died While Dressed as a Giant Pumpkin.
I needed to get out of here, wherever that was. I limped over to an old rickety broom. It had been left leaning against a bookshelf that looked to be on the verge of vomiting up a thousand sheets of crumpled and torn pages. The knotted, curving wood of the handle was smooth to the touch, but the bristles themselves looked more like old straw bound together with twine. Thinking twice about hitting an attacker with what basically amounted to a dried-out twig, I picked up one of the copper pots instead.
There were two skinny beds pushed together in an L shape on the other side of the room, just next to where a stack of old leather trunks were piled up, separating that space from the small kitchen next to it. Actually, could you even call one sink, a metal cart, a mini fridge, and a microwave a kitchen?
From beneath the couch, the ball of fluff hissed again. All I could see were its big, round glowing eyes.
“Yeah, well,” I said lamely, “I don’t like you either. So…there.”
It cocked its head to the side, and for a second, all I could think of was the enormous panther stalking through my dream. This kitten was so small, so overwhelmed by its own coat, it looked like a fur ball the nightmare creature had coughed up.
The unpolished floors creaked under my bare feet. Once my nose got past the sweet smells of the crisp outside air and the herbs and flowers hung up to dry over the desk, new stenches blossomed. Dust, mold, and sour milk. A single red leaf scurried across the unpolished floor, dancing with a loose newspaper clipping around the stained woven rug.
What was this place? Where was this place?
I didn’t notice them before, not when everything in the small space seemed to be piled onto something else. But the next breeze forced its way through the window, and I saw where the small cutout article had come from. There were rows of them tacked up across the wall, over one of the beds. I hugged the copper pot to my chest as I took a few steps forward. The wind ruffled them, and they rose and fell together as one, making it look like the walls were breathing. Mixed in with the articles were photographs, dozens of them, but not of the stranger or anyone in his family.
Oh no, they were pictures of my family.
Photoshoots from magazines. A super-stalkerish picture of me and Prue from last year’s Founder’s Day, just before I was pushed off the school float into the mud. Five years’ worth of family Christmas cards. Even snaps of Mom and Dad when they were younger—only a few years older than me.
REDDING FAMILY SETS NEW RECORD
ONE FAMILY’S FORTUNE IS A TOWN’S TREASURE
THE COTTAGE OF REDHOOD