The creature sniffed, adjusting its position so that its legs dangled over Nell’s shoulder and it could cross its furry little arms, the way a human would. Panic began skittering around my brain again at the unreal sight. I was hallucinating. Clearly.
“How rude,” Nell said, pulling a small piece of carrot out of her pocket. The creature snatched it between its paws and fluttered off to devour it on the dummy corpse. “Toad is over a hundred years old. And he’s not a kitten. He’s a changeling. This is the form he’s decided on for now. I just enchanted him so any human would see him as a plain black cat—including B, so don’t tell him, you hear me? Toad has been known to turn into chain saws when angry.”
I slid down the wall, narrowly avoiding the zombie nurse as she swung out with a handful of syringes filled with bubbling crimson syrup. Pressing my face into my hands, I tried counting backward from ten to keep from throwing up. Or worse.
But when I opened my eyes, Nell, the CatBat, and the zombies were all still there.
“Okay, seriously—where am I, who are we waiting for, and why is the skeleton in the corner doing the Macarena?”
“The Macarena?” Nell spun round. “I said the Danse Macabre! Listen to my voice as I say to thee—Oh, never mind, I’ll fix it later.”
She snapped her fingers and the fake skeleton’s shoulder seemed to slump a bit as its bones clattered back into an open, waiting coffin.
“What is happening?” I moaned. “What is my life right now?”
Nell cocked a dark, unimpressed eyebrow. “You’re more dramatic than I am, and that’s saying something. You’re in Salem. In the House of Seven Terrors, a haunted house show. And it’s all going to be okay.”
Salem? Salem? Redhood was over two hours south of Salem, on Cape Cod. It might as well have been in a different country for all I knew of how I’d be able to get back.
Nell crouched in front of me, peering at me through her strange glasses. I couldn’t help it. My cheeks flushed with embarrassment and anger. It felt like my insides were boiling, and I was sweating again despite the cold, dry air coming through the front door. I had the stupidest urge to cry.
“Okay,” I repeated. “Okay? Of course I’m not okay! My entire extended family tried to murder me, my parents are stuck in China, and my sister—”
A surge of energy burst through me at the thought of my family. My real one. Not the cousins, or my grandmother, or any of the other strangers I just so happened to share DNA with. Where were Mom and Dad? Where was Prue?
Nell turned her back to me for only a second, but I took my chance. I jumped to my feet and shoved her out of the way, bolting for the hallway door. I heard the sound of a clap, and before I could take another step, something hooked around my neck and dragged me back. I went sliding through the fake dried blood on the floor, yanked right back to where she stood. Nell let out a huff and gave me an unimpressed look.
“Yeah.” Nell rolled her eyes. “Like that was going to work.”
I tried to sit up, but her finger flicked toward me, and I was none-too-gently shoved back down. I brought my hurt arm up against my chest, ignoring the way it burned.
“Can’t…blame a guy for trying…?” I wheezed out.
“You’re a bit clumsier than I expected, given your father,” said another voice. “But I see you’ve perfected the Redding cower.”
A pair of dusty boots came steadily toward me, parking inches from my nose. My eyes traveled up the man’s stockings, to his old-fashioned trousers, to his billowing shirt—right up to his ponytail of blond hair. The stranger, even stranger now.
“No,” I said, finally breaking free from whatever had been holding me down. I lurched away, stumbling. “Get away from me!”
“Prosperity—”
“I’ll take care of him—” Nell began.
“No!” the stranger said. “No more magic, you’ve frightened him enough!”
I tried to run again, but I didn’t make it half as far. The guy grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and held me tight against his chest. I kicked and stomped my feet, trying to aim for his toes like one of the security guards at the Cottage had taught me. But the guy might as well have been made of stone. He took all my hits like I was throwing feathers at him. I dug my feet into the carpet, trying to keep him from dragging me out to the back of the house to murder me, until, with a sigh, the stranger reached down and threw me over his shoulder. Again.
“What did you do with Prue?” I shouted, pounding his back with my fists as we made our way back upstairs. “Hey! Hey! Let me go!”
Nell trailed behind us, watching me with a look that said, Are you two years old?
By the time we got back up to the attic, all of my limbs felt like they had been turned into lead. I was exhausted, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, it felt like I was burning up again. The fire started in my belly, pulsing and crackling through every single vein. To add insult to injury, Toad came prancing in behind us, just as I was dumped back on the couch. The creature flicked his tail and shut the door behind him.
“You’re safe,” was the first thing the stranger said. The cushions dipped as he sat down next to me. “Cornelia and I got you out of there just in time.”
“Nell,” the girl got out between gritted teeth. She was right about that—she was definitely more of a Nell than a Cornelia.
“They—” I began. “Wait…that actually happened?”
Instead of answering me, the stranger took my left wrist and lifted my arm. The bandage was redder than before.
“Iron,” the man explained, setting my arm down. “A cursed blade did this to you. The wound may never fully heal, but we’ll work on it.”
“Who are you?” I demanded when I finally found the words I was looking for.
“I’m your uncle Barnabas,” the man said with a sad smile. “Though I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of me?”
Not only had I heard of Uncle Barnabas, I had spent pretty much all twelve or so years of my life trying to figure out how he managed to get himself pruned off the family tree. Dad had only mentioned his brother once or twice that I could remember, and usually only as a slip. He didn’t have any stories like, When my brother and I were little, we used to fish in the stream behind the Cottage. There were no questions like, I wonder what your uncle would think of this? There weren’t even calls on birthdays.
No one dared to breathe his name in front of Grandmother. Mom claimed that Dad loved his brother very, very much, but I wasn’t sure I bought that. If you really loved someone, why would you let anyone else tell you how to treat them?
“Oh.”
“Oh yes.” Barnabas shook his head. “The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
“No one said you had died,” I assured him. “Just that you’re a waiter in a casino in Las Vegas, trying to get an audition to be a dancer in that Beatles show, and selling self-portraits of you in elf costumes on the Strip.”
Which, to Grandmonster, was probably a fate worse than death.