After a second I nodded, wiping a trickle of blood off my cheek. My face and hands stung from where a few pieces of glass had cut me.
“I believe I asked you to refill the salt,” Uncle Barnabas said, turning to Nell. She had faded into the background with Toad, watching me from behind her glasses. “Grab the healing tincture off the shelf before you go, will you? We can’t have our guest wandering around with cuts and bruises.”
“But—”
“Now, Cornelia. And don’t forget the mirrors.”
With a noise of frustration, Nell jumped to her feet, clearly aware of the fact she was being dismissed. She plucked a small silver jar off the armoire shelf and all but shoved it at my chest. The top popped open on its own, and the smell of aloe and peppermint rose from it, curling pleasantly in my nose. I touched the pale pink cream and began to pat it on my face, hands, and arms. Within seconds, the aches disappeared, and my skin was pulling itself back together. My insides squirmed again at the sight.
Unreal. All of this was just…unreal.
Nell crossed the room and snatched the bucket up off the floor. For the first time, I noticed the stars had fallen out of her hair and had scattered onto the floor, forgotten.
“You’re welcome,” she hissed, clutching the blue plastic to her chest.
Oh man—what brand of jerk was I that I hadn’t even thought to thank her for saving my life? Right after, the only thing I’d thought of was the fact she’d had to save me while I curled up on the floor like a shrimp. I have some pride, you know? Not a whole lot, thankfully.
Before I could try, she disappeared out the door with a fuming “Come on, Toad.”
The CatBat started to fly after her, only to remember he had an audience. His flight turned into an abnormally large leap that Uncle Barnabas was completely oblivious to. But even after the two had disappeared downstairs, Nell’s anger stayed behind, hanging like a thundercloud in the doorway.
I waited until the stairs stopped creaking before asking, “What will hanging up the mask do?”
“It’ll ward off any other hags who might take an interest in you and the malefactor’s power,” Uncle Barnabas said.
“Do you really think we might have gained a little time? That the hag drained enough power from him to make a difference?”
“Hopefully. We should know more soon, I think,” Uncle Barnabas said. “I know…I know I might not have any right to say so, given that we have only just become reacquainted, but…I’m proud of you for how well you’re handling this.”
I’m proud of you. When was the last time I’d heard those words?
Years. It had been years. When Prue had gone into shock at home, and I’d called all the right people, in the right order, and the 911 dispatcher taught me how to do CPR.
“Thanks,” I said, meaning it. “I’m trying. It’s just…a lot. And I’m worried. I don’t really get how I can be both a host and a prison for the malefactor.”
I wonder that myself.
“Shut up,” I grumbled.
“Excuse me?” Uncle Barnabas blinked. “Oh. Is he…speaking with you, then?”
Like a flame which has already burned itself out, so is this man’s wit. Were he any more loggerheaded—
“Guess what?” I said, cutting him off. “No one likes your fancy English.”
“What is he saying?” Uncle Barnabas pressed. “Is he talking about the curse?”
Foul-tongued wretch! Alastor spat. Thou will not speak to me in such an informal manner. I am thy lord and master! I am prince of the—
“Well, thee is being a huge jerk,” I said, then turned toward my uncle. “Seriously. Is there a way to force him to go to sleep?”
“None that I know of,” Uncle Barnabas said, rubbing his finger down the bridge of his nose in thought. “But there is one trick that always seems to work.”
“And it is…?”
“It’s like with any bully,” he said, reaching down to haul me up off the floor. “You just ignore them and they’ll go away eventually.”
Yeah. Because that trick had worked so well for me over the past twelve years.
About three hours later, I was wide-awake, staring up at the ceiling. All kinds of horrible screams and shrieks were drifting up through the cracks in the floorboards. I had the timing of the fright house’s different animatronics down by the third tour group, though. The zombie nurse’s cackling, the thumping from whatever was chained up in the room downstairs, the fake bats’ shrieking, and, less than two minutes later—Nell jumping out at them from a hidden compartment at the top of the stairs with a deafening, “Gimme brainsssss!”
One of the guests screamed so sharply I thought the glass windows would crack. Even Toad winced from where he was perched on the edge of the couch, watching me with such hawk-like intensity, for a moment I saw his button-like nose shift into a beak. His bulbous eyes were slits, unblinking as his tail swished back and forth, back and forth, like the arm of an old grandfather clock.
All that was almost loud enough to drown out the singing fiend in my head. He had composed a very special song for me, set to the tune of what sounded like “My Country, ’Tis of Thee.”
Pull off their fingers and toes, he crooned, bury them where no one knows—or roast them alive!
The whole room was dark and freezing. When Nell and Uncle Barnabas had gone downstairs to finish setting up for the night’s tourists and suckers, they’d left the window open. Apparently I needed “fresh air.”
Here was a list of things I actually needed:
1. My hypoallergenic pillow.
2. A tall glass of skim milk.
3. Something sharp to jab into my ears.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come down and watch?” Nell had asked. She was part of the show, but no one bothered to tell me that until she popped out from behind the couch in her skeleton costume. When I cringed, it wasn’t because I was scared—it was because her makeup was just that bad. It looked like she had drawn a moon on her face and squiggled some black lines through it.
“I could help you with that…” I began. So far I hadn’t done anything other than give Nell and Uncle Barnabas a headache and force them to smash the rest of the mirrors in the house. My fingers went numb at the thought of them laughing, or Nell mocking me again.
And, sure enough, her face screwed up at the suggestion, like I’d thrown up at her feet.
“It was just an offer, take it or leave it,” I muttered, crossing my arms and looking away. What was her problem, anyway? Maybe if she had grown up within the family, she would have seen that my little corner of it wasn’t nearly as awful as the rest. In fact, Mom, Dad, and Prue were the best of them.
Don’t think about them, I thought. Not when that tightness was back in my throat, and all I could picture was my comfy bed back home, and the late-night snack Mom would have made me if she caught me still up at this hour. We would have watched a movie, just the two of us, or she would have told me a story I’d never heard before, about her scientist parents exploring the Amazon.