“Shut up, Alastor,” I said. I looked at Nell, all of a sudden feeling very determined. I folded the paper over one last time, until it was the size of a pill. “What now?”
Nell stood, her shoulders hunched, and went to get a candle and a mug from the kitchen. She snapped her fingers and lit the wick. “Light it on fire and drop it in the bowl—yeah, like that. Now repeat after me. Your control is slipping. I bind thee back.”
As stupid as I felt saying it, repeating it, the pocket spell worked fast.
Like magic.
Nooooooo! Alastor wailed. Stop, curse thee, stop!
I couldn’t get the words out fast enough. I kept repeating that one line, I bind thee back, over and over, until the fiend stopped sniveling and hollering and the paper burned itself through. Nell leaned over the bowl and stuck a finger in the black ash. Before I could stop her, she swiped it against my forehead.
I have no clue what I was supposed to feel, but my stomach had stopped jumping around like a grasshopper and I couldn’t feel the prickle of Alastor’s presence inside me. Nell’s bright eyes watched me from behind her glasses, Toad climbing up her back to perch on her shoulder. He gave her cheek an approving lick. She even smiled a little when I did. Maybe it wasn’t real magic like Uncle Barnabas had said, but it had been something.
“Well, that’s enough excitement for one night. It’s time for you both to hit the sack.” Uncle Barnabas stood and stretched. “You have a busy day tomorrow—”
“I know,” I said, smiling dreamily at the thought of dusting the bookshelves and finding blank, clean paper to sketch the attic. A day at home with nothing to do but draw. Heaven.
“—a new school is always a challenge, but I have faith you’ll do well.”
It felt like he had reached over and punched me in the throat. “Wait—what—why?”
“Because one of us needs to keep tabs on you at all times, to make sure no one tries to take you, or the fiend starts acting up,” Uncle Barnabas said. “I’ve been training Cornelia to handle such a situation, and since she is required by law to attend school, so must you. Besides, the local coven put a heavy protection spell around the school grounds. It’s the one place we’re guaranteed no fiend, or anyone with ill intentions, will be able to enter. And it’ll go a long way in establishing a new identity for you here.”
“Plus, they have a sprinkler system,” Nell said casually, “in case we try any spells after school and they, uh, misfire.”
I stretched myself back over the couch, pulling the blanket up to my chin. My gaze drifted over to Uncle Barnabas. “Can’t I just go to work with you?”
“Spoken like someone used to always getting their own way,” Nell muttered.
“I’m afraid not,” Uncle Barnabas said. “We’ll have plenty of time to experiment after I do some research in the archive. I have this under control.”
Nell stepped out of the bathroom in her pink pj’s. She passed by her father without looking at him, even as he told her he’d wake us up in the morning. I waited until Uncle Barnabas was in the bathroom and the shower water was running before I turned to face her bed. Nell braided her hair, glaring at the opposite wall. I tried to figure out what she was trying to kill with her eye daggers when the overhead light suddenly snapped off.
As I pressed my face to the pillow, I suddenly remembered the book I’d found. “Is there some kind of importance to a fiend’s name?”
Nell had been arranging her blankets, but stopped at my question. “That’s random. Why do you ask?”
“I just saw one of the books earlier, and Alastor had kind of a weird reaction to it,” I said.
“You already know his name,” Nell said sharply. “That’s just…an encyclopedia of known and vanquished fiends. Don’t try to pretend like you know anything about this world.”
“I wasn’t trying to,” I shot back. Why did she have to make every conversation feel like walking through thorny brambles? “By the way…I thought the pocket spell was awesome. I don’t care what Uncle B says.”
I wasn’t even sure why I felt like I had to say the words to begin with. It was just that I had seen her face earlier, when Uncle Barnabas mentioned her mother, and for that one single second, it felt like I had seen a secret corner of her heart. One that was very dark, and very sad.
“Did your mom teach you?” I asked. “Before she…?”
“Yeah.” I had to strain my ears to hear her. “She taught me a lot, but not enough to make him happy, I guess.”
“Well…I think it’s cool,” I offered. “It’s more than most people can do, right?”
The shower water cut off with a loud groan from the pipes. I could hear Uncle Barnabas muttering to himself, but couldn’t understand a word of what he was saying.
“Prosper?” Nell whispered. “It will work. I promise.”
I shut my eyes, waiting for Al’s cackle or the humming sound of his breath in my ears. But there was only the silence of deep sleep, of the bright moon hovering high over us.
“It already did.”
It did not, in fact, work, but Alastor couldn’t blame the little witch for trying. Pathetic as the attempt was.
He had been worried that his little performance earlier had been too dramatic to be believed, but he was pleased to discover that his host was, as suspected, as dull as an old doorknob. The boy’s spirit slipped down into dark sleep, and Alastor’s rose up to its rightful place.
It might have been careless of him to reveal his ability to control the boy’s body, but the temptation to frighten him into submission had simply been too great. Making him squirm, feeling his heart grow heavy with dread—truly, it was a delicious thing. He fed off the boy’s misery to replace what energy the disgusting leech of a hag had taken.
Possessing a body had once been as easy as sliding a hand into a silk glove. Now it took far more concentration. He hated the solidness of the boy, the cramped quarters, his human stench. More than anything, he hated feeling young and weak again, when he still had his past lifetime’s long memories.
Over eight hundred years old and trapped in the body of a boy who couldn’t tell the difference between a tharborough and a theorick! The Fates were so unkind!
Still, it was intriguing to look through the boy’s memories. Horrifying, however, to see what had become of the human world. He had learned much in a few short hours and almost wished he hadn’t seen the truth at all.
Alastor swung the human’s legs off the couch and planted them carefully on the ground, mindful of the sleeping figures in the beds across from him and the annoying changeling dozing upon the witch’s chest. How easy, he thought, it would be to make a run for it, heading straight back to Redhood to finish the curse he had begun years ago.