“Milord, milord,” the hob wailed. “I be so very sorry. Ask this hob for anything else, to do anything, and he is your servant until the realms collapse!”
“Nonsense,” Alastor said, turning to pick up Longsharp. His mind spun with possibilities. His father? No—why would he need a curse? Fiends feared him already. One of his brothers, then, or perhaps a family rival? It sounded like a witch’s curse, but there was no way that could be true. When a witch traveled Downstairs, her power quickly waned to nothing.
When he turned back around, Nightlock was no longer crying or snarfing, and the adorable glob of snot dribbling from his nose had slowed to one long strand. Nightlock was no longer afraid to lift his gaze from the ground. He stared at Longsharp, his bright yellow eyes bulging out of his perfectly round skull.
“If milord requires a doll, I can craft a magnificent one,” he said, practically trembling in anticipation of it. “My last mistress loved toys. It is one of my many skills.”
A toy? Alastor looked down on the face of the vampyre again. The eyes, which had seemed so red and glossy and perfect before, now looked like nothing more than glass. He licked one to be sure.
“I see,” Alastor said in a prim voice, letting the doll fall to the ground by his feet. The hob quickly and carefully set it aside, finding a new place for it.
“Are you hungry, Master?” the hob asked, filling the silence between them. He reached for a bag, labeled with the words KITTY LITTER, and offered Alastor a handful of shimmering, coarse sand. The malefactor licked it out of the boy’s palm, humming thoughtfully.
“Now, servant, we must begin to plot a course of action. The boy whose body I reside in must agree to a contract within twelve nights. As it stands, he has refused.”
The hob made a startled sound, his spittle flying through the air. “He has refused your offering? He has a will so strong? Your persuasion is legendary, milord—”
“Yes, yes,” Alastor said, flicking a hand dismissively. “The urchin has not given in to fear, nor has he bowed to threats. Perhaps if I were to keep at it…make the threats all the more terrifying…”
“What does he desire, milord?” the hob asked, handing him another scoop of the crunchy kitty litter.
“One thing too pitiful to name,” Alastor responded. Acceptance. Little did the boy know that the pursuit of such a thing would mean he’d remain forever unhappy.
“Then…maybe…does this urchin know what else you can give him?” Nightlock asked. “Is it not the case with these humans that they must be shown they desire something before they know they desire it?”
Alastor looked to the moon, thumping the boy’s fist against his chest. He was a genius of the first order, a true prince. “The solution has just come to me, Nightlock. Dost thou—do you know that humans often do not know they wish for a worldly good until they see it?”
“No, milord,” the hob said quickly, “this hob knew no such thing.”
Alastor gripped his cap and set his cape to twirling as he spun back toward the little witch’s house, a new plan spinning and swirling like a poison inside him. “Come, servant. The moon sets, and this fiend rises.”
I woke up the next morning feeling like I hadn’t slept at all.
For a few minutes I just lay there on the couch under a mountain of blankets, watching the sun reluctantly come out and brighten the attic. I closed my eyes, waiting to hear Mom’s voice call up to me that it was time to get ready. The only sounds in the room were Toad’s trumpet-like snores and Nell tossing around in her bed.
“Come on, get up,” I muttered, thinking of what Dad always said. “The sooner you start, the sooner you finish.”
Another first day of school. My stomach lurched at the realization as I stumbled toward the bathroom. I felt heavy at my center, like dread had planted itself inside me and was taking root with its crawling, dark limbs.
That’s it, Maggot, the fiend said cheerfully. Your sadness is all I require. Revel in it, drown in it…
I locked the bathroom door and turned the shower on, icy water spraying my bare arm. It hurt, deep in my heart. The clash of frustration and sadness slamming together left a ringing sound in my ears. I pressed my fists to my forehead, filling my lungs with the moist, warming air rising from the claw-foot tub.
If I couldn’t think of my family without feeding Alastor more of my power, then I would do everything to avoid bringing them to mind for as long as I could. And, really, any day that didn’t start with a malefactor singing about all the ways he could pickle my brain was bound to be a good one, right?
I jumped into the water, quickly washing my hair and scrubbing my skin with an alarmingly black bar of soap peppered with tiny flowers and herbs. The tincture that they’d given me hadn’t taken care of all of the thin, angry scratches on my hands and arms—unless Toad had clawed me at some point in the night, which didn’t seem too farfetched. Dirt and grime swirled off my feet, dancing down the drain. I squinted down at it through the misty condensation, wondering how it was possible for the attic floors to have been that filthy.
By the time I finished and dressed in the jeans, T-shirt, and hoodie I’d found folded at the foot of the couch, I wondered where and how I’d get a school uniform, only to realize there probably wasn’t one.
No uniform. For the first time ever—no uniform.
Toad was the first to wake, yawning. Rather than stay under the covers, he flew over to the window and nudged it open, slipping outside and flying away. To do…his business? Find food?
The floor was freezing under my wet toes. I hopped from foot to foot in front of the heater, trying to wake the thing up to its usual warm grumbles. When it became clear Nell probably had to use some magic to get it working, I gave up and headed for the fridge, shivering.
Mom taught me and Prue a lot about cooking, so I did think I could whip something up. It was just…there wasn’t a whole lot to whip. Three eggs and one yogurt that smelled like it had enticed a rat to crawl inside of it and die.
Most of the house’s pots and pans were in use, either to grow some little plant or catch rain from holes in the roof. The ones that weren’t were covered in a mysterious, sticky gunk. I picked up a few from the desk and sniffed them. They smelled like old, wilted vegetables. I ended up cracking the eggs, dividing them between three chipped mugs, and zapping them to maximum fluffiness in the microwave.
It was the machine’s beeping and the smell of food that finally got the mole creatures out of their nest of bedding. I took a step back as they came stumbling toward me, their hands blindly reaching for the hot mugs like a matching set of zombies.