“Don’t pretend like you’re actually upset,” Nell said icily. “Aren’t servants invisible to you people? Only good for how well they polish the silver?”
Anger flooded me. “You don’t know anything about my family. And yeah, I’m upset! She was an innocent person, and she shouldn’t have had to die because some guy got scared and made a terrible mistake—”
“Guys, guys,” Uncle Barnabas said. “We’re all in agreement. It was a terrible act. The important thing is what came next. Nell, perhaps you’d like to explain?”
She was still giving me a shifty eye, as if she was trying to find a lie in my face, but she nodded. “Somehow, the casting was messed up. When the servant girl and the malefactor were near death, Alastor warned the family that he would survive the fire and bide his time until he could return to this world, reborn inside of one of Honor Redding’s descendants. When he regained his full power, he would take back everything he had given them.”
No, but this…this was too strange. This was unreal.
And what happened to that book wasn’t?
“Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “What do you mean, he could return? How could he do that?”
Nell shifted uncomfortably, and seemed reluctant to explain. “A witch’s magic is tied to her bloodline, and a spell only lasts as long as the witch’s descendants walk the earth. We think he fed on the servant girl’s pain and fear and what was left of his power to retreat into the Inbetween, a shadow world between life and death. As long as one of Prufrock’s heirs was alive, Alastor was barred from returning unless he wanted to die.”
“How many are left?” I whispered. “How many of her descendants?”
“None,” Nell said. “The last one died thirteen years ago.”
“Oh, well, then, I’m only twelve,” I said. “It can’t be me.”
“Your birthday is in two weeks, is it not?” Uncle Barnabas asked gently.
It was. It was.
My heart slammed against my ribs. Every inch of my skin shivered with panic, pricking painfully with realization.
“Goody Prufrock explained that it would likely take a full thirteen years of feeding off the energy of his host for the malefactor to regain his strength and escape whoever that might be to gain his vengeance against the Reddings. Have you felt tired over the years? Did you experience any unusual weakness?”
I couldn’t breathe. I just nodded.
“Your grandmother went through and tested all of the extended family herself as they reached thirteen, checking to see if the curse was upon them, growing more and more certain that Prufrock’s theory was correct, and that the timing would align the way she predicted. The family you saw in that dungeon all believe that destroying the malefactor will save them from ruin, and they’re desperate to protect themselves and their wealth. You and your sister were the only ones left to be tested. Your parents had always refused, thinking the whole thing was an absurd myth, but the wily old woman knew she was running out of time before the malefactor might make an appearance.”
“What was that book?” I asked. My palms were drenched in sweat, but I didn’t want either of them to see me wipe them off. “That was the test, wasn’t it? I could read it, and Prue couldn’t.”
“That was Goody Prufrock’s grimoire—her book of spells. It was enchanted in such a way that no fiend would ever be able to open it, let alone destroy it.”
“And when I touched it, and it caught fire—when the words appeared”—my mouth was racing faster than my brain—“it proved to them that—”
“You,” Nell finished, “are one doomed Redding.”
I was no stranger to lies. In fact, I think if you were to line up all the lies I’d been told in my life, the ugly chain of them would probably stretch from Redhood to Jupiter. Every day I had to deal with little lies from my cousins, like when David convinced me that eating broccoli would make trees grow in my stomach. Big ones too, from Mom and Dad, like, Oh, Prosper, of course your grandmother loves you, and you will get better, and the enormous panther you see in your dreams isn’t real. By now, I could spot a lie the second someone spat it out.
But the longer I stared at Uncle Barnabas, the longer I waited for my internal lie detector to start beeping, the slower the blood ran in my veins, until it seemed to stop completely.
“Is he going to faint again?” Nell leaned close, peering at my face.
“He won’t faint,” Uncle Barnabas said, patting my back. “Though I imagine you’re very tired after your ordeal. We’ll leave you now to—”
Ordeal. Try nightmare.
“Wait,” I breathed out. “Wait!”
You know, I might not have been the sharpest pencil in the drawer, but I got what they were saying. Some part of my brain knew what they were implying, even if I didn’t see how it was possible. My family had tried to destroy the malefactor by trapping it in a human body. They screwed up. The malefactor said it would come back for vengeance. They wanted to get rid of it again. To do that, they had to get rid of me before he could escape and ruin them. Human host. Dead meat.
“Does this mean that they’re not going to stop until I’m dead?” I only had to see their faces to get confirmation on that one. “Oh. Great.”
“You don’t have anything to be afraid of,” Uncle Barnabas said, putting on a fake smile. “Not while you’re with us. Unlike the rest of the family, I’ve never believed that killing the carrier was the solution. Hence, why I’m no longer invited to the Cottage.”
“How do you fix it?” I asked. “How do I get it out?”
The idea that I had some kind of pest…some parasite crawling around inside me, hiding in my bones, made me feel like a million ants were roaming beneath my skin. I started scratching my arm, even though it didn’t itch.
Uncle Barnabas stared at me for a second, smoothing a hand over his low ponytail. I got an answer—just not from him.
Ye might ask me yourself, came the cold, prim voice in my mind, thou mangled sheep-biting scut.
Over the past twenty-four hours, a few things about my family had finally started making sense.
Grandmother’s hatred of me and all of my cousins, for one. Why she never wanted to talk about Uncle Barnabas. What exactly was in the dungeon. You know, typical family stuff.
And now that I was standing in front of the cracked floor-length mirror, its clawed feet near my own toes, I had a very new understanding of where that superstition about mirrors in Redhood had come from.
I followed the fiend’s instructions exactly. Find a candle and light it. Find a mirror, and stand in front of it holding the lit candle. Continue to stand there. Easy enough.