Where was she now—still in China? Had Mom and Dad come home once they realized what had happened? Maybe Prue was with them….
“I could use your help, Prosper,” Uncle Barnabas had said, offering me the palette of face paint. His costume was something like that of the undead ringleader of a circus, complete with a blood-splattered top hat. “Let’s see if you put that paint set to good use over the years.”
I studied his face for a moment, staring at his long nose and bright blue eyes. And, just to prove a point to Nell, I settled on a ghoulish skeleton face, mixing a bit of green into the white that covered him from forehead to chin, just to be that much more putrid. I patted black, ringed with a bit of purple, into the dips and dimples of his skin, added a tiny bit of red, like blood, to the stitches I drew along either side of his mouth.
Finished, I sat back. Since there were no mirrors, he turned to Nell for her assessment.
“How do I look?” he asked.
“Creepy,” she had admitted, dragging the word out reluctantly, like it was coated in thorns. Wrapped up in her arms, Toad had lifted a paw and patted her hand.
Another scream. This time a girl, in the eardrum-piercing range. Uncle Barnabas’s loud, booming fake laughter followed, then, like clockwork, the screeching sirens on the second floor went off, and another set of kids lost it.
“More satisfied customers!” His voice sounded deeper as it came through the microphone. And weirdly Irish.
—douse them with boiling tar, crack them o’er the head with a saw! Alastor was still singing in a cheery voice.
“That doesn’t even rhyme,” I growled, pushing myself off the makeshift bed. “Try bar.”
When pacing did nothing but make my stomach churn and cause Toad to cling to my ankle by his teeth, I limped over to Uncle Barnabas’s bookshelves and began to pull books down, flipping through them. The spines were all shades of leather—brown, black, blue—and soft from being handled so much.
I arranged them by color as I put them back, Toad watching me like the old nanny Prue and I used to have—the one that would slap the inside of my hand whenever I was bad or silly or trying so it wouldn’t leave an obvious mark. The second Mom figured out how that nanny was disciplining us, she kicked her to the curb so hard that the old lady practically got whiplash.
Grandmother had hired her.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m putting them back, don’t worry,” I muttered, absently rubbing my hand at the memory. “Can’t read them anyway, they’re all in Latin. Oh—crap!”
The last book was so old and brittle, the binding all but fell apart in my hand. A chunk of the paper landed on the dusty floor with a thwack loud enough to make me jump. I glanced around, making sure Nell and Uncle Barnabas hadn’t come back, accepting a swat on the nose from Toad in punishment.
My hand stilled. The pages had flipped open to another engraving, this one a circle of inky monsters with horns and tails.
“Nominibus daemonum,” I read from the title page. “Nominibus…?”
The meaning is plain, if thou—you—possessed the smallest measure of wit. Thou clearly does not even speak thine own ancient language, Alastor scoffed in disgust. The names of—
There was something in the sharp silence, the way he cut himself off quickly, that made me curious. Dangerously curious.
“The names of?” I pressed. “The names of…daemons…demons? The names of fiends? Why would there be a whole book listing just names?”
Alastor, for the first time in hours, remained strangely quiet.
I turned the page to a picture of a huge black snarling demon and decided to shut the book. I’d have to ask Nell and Uncle Barnabas about it tomorrow, to see why my heart had given a little quiver, even though I wasn’t nervous at all.
It took another hour before my brain went fuzzy enough around the edges to go to sleep. I was starting to drift off into dreamland when I felt the first twitch in my toes.
Then they curled and stretched and curled again. On their own.
I sat straight up, yanking the blanket up to my chin. The moonlight streaming in through the window was all the light I needed to watch my toes start wiggling.
“Could you not?” I hissed. “Seriously!”
Toad lifted his sleepy face from where he’d buried it in the blankets.
It felt like my feet were buried in a pound of sand. I couldn’t move them myself or make them stop as they tapped against the couch cushion. One-two-three-four-five, over and over.
“Holy crap—stop!”
Shall I? I think it best to explore my new habitat.
Alastor let out a low laugh and continued to play with each finger and toe. They were only little movements, but it felt like hot pins were streaming through my veins. My right arm burned like nothing else as it suddenly began to flop around on its own. The sensation was in my left arm, too, making the cut there hurt like you-know-what…but it didn’t budge.
The fiend grunted with the effort.
Iron, he hissed. That malt-worm dared cut me with a cursed blade?
“Uh, last time I checked she cut me, not you,” I said. I lifted the bandage so it was directly in front of my face. “Does that mean…if she had cut my other arm and my legs, you wouldn’t be able to control them either?”
The idea that my icicle of a grandmother had done me a favor—whether she meant to or not—was too ridiculous for me to believe. I pushed the thought away.
Alastor was silent again, and I was starting to suspect this was a very bad thing.
Uncle Barnabas had asked me a million and a half questions about Alastor while we ate our cold pizza dinner. Each time I had to answer, the words felt clogged in my throat. The truth was, I couldn’t feel the fiend inside of me in the normal sense. He wasn’t a little beetle roaming around under my skin. It was more…it was more like someone had forced me to swallow a thundercloud. It growled and rumbled and every once in a while felt a bit gusty. I could tell when he was frustrated or angry, because I felt frustrated and angry too.
It doesn’t matter, I told myself. I’ll get him out soon.
Alastor’s voice came slithering out. We shall see about that, no?
I scooted down the couch and kicked off the blanket. I was hot and sticky with sweat. Feverish, almost. Even with the wind, the night sky was breathing in through the open window. I was miserable and wide-awake. It was a good thing there wasn’t a phone or computer, because I’m not sure I could have resisted calling my dad’s cell phone, just to hear his voice for a second. I would have broken Nell’s spell in a heartbeat if it meant I could sneak off and hide back inside my own house and know for certain that Prue was safe.
“Did you always hate my family this much?” I asked him. “Do you have to hurt everyone? We weren’t even alive back then to try to stop them.”
Not that thou would have, came the rumbling response. Every Redding heart is poisoned by greed.