“Nell?” I called, chasing after her. “Nell, what’s wrong—?”
She stood frozen in the middle of the entry hall, her face turned toward the zombie operating room. Or what had been the zombie operating room.
The wall that was once drenched with fake blood had been scrubbed clean, leaving only a faint pink stain behind. The gooey guts previously dribbling out of the fake corpse’s body had been pulled up from the floor. They were now neatly coiled on the dummy’s stomach, wiped clean. Everything was. The metal gurney and fake silver knives and saws were sparkling. Not even I could have done a better job.
“He didn’t,” she breathed out. “I can’t believe this—”
Nell bolted up the rickety staircase. The whole house groaned under her pounding steps. She hit the second floor and flipped on the overhead lights.
The giant spiders were stacked neatly in the far right corner. All the fake cobwebs had been yanked down from the trees, the leaves littering the ground had been swept up, and the stuffed werewolves had been shoved out of sight in the hallway closet.
Every room was the same: the fake blood vanished, the creatures piled up, the guts and gore and mummies and axes and swords—all of them organized, dusted, brushed, polished. All the scrubbing I had done up in the attic was nothing compared to this. It was nothing compared to what the house looked like now. The floor and walls were practically three shades lighter.
“Would someone steal all your garbage and decorations?” I asked, my mind suddenly spinning with the investigative crime shows I sometimes watched after school. “Do you think it was a rival haunted house? Someone with a grudge against shrieking children?”
“No! No, that’s not what I—” Nell was shaking. “Don’t you get it? Whoever did this messed everything up. There’s no way we can get the rooms back in shape before the run-through tonight—and all of the spells my mom used to enchant everything, they’re—”
Gone.
Everything she and her mother had made was gone.
“Why would he do this, tonight of all nights?” Nell said, her fingers clenched in her hair. The lights over us, all throughout the house, began to flicker dangerously, the electricity surging until the bulb just over my head burst with the force of it.
“Uncle B?” I asked. “What does he have to do with this? Hasn’t he been at work all day?”
Nell was fighting so hard—so hard—not to cry. I saw it in the tightness of her face and the way her hands clenched and unclenched at her side. The room began to take on a gray, silvery tint, as actual storm clouds formed over our heads.
“He never wanted to run the House of Seven Terrors,” she said. “He only saw it as a temporary thing, a place where we could hide out with you when the time came.” There was no anger in her words, but I winced all the same. “But he’s been talking about selling it. I bet he even canceled the tours tonight without telling me. All I wanted was to show him that we could turn a good profit—that we didn’t have to sell the house.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “What can I do to help?”
She sucked in a deep breath through her nose. Her posture straightened as slivers of electricity crackled over her curly hair. When she looked at me again, her eyes were glowing—not literally, though. Just with determination.
“You can stay here,” she said. “And not leave the house. I’m going to talk to Uncle B, even if it means interrupting one of his precious historical lectures.”
“I don’t know if that’s”—the front door slammed behind her—“a good idea.”
Why does the witchling cry? Alastor asked, sounding flabbergasted.
“It’s a human thing,” I said as I started the climb up to the attic. “You wouldn’t get it.”
No, Maggot, I ask: Why does the little witch cry when you could easily set it to rights?
The attic looked perfect to me. Clean. Fit for human habitation. But if Nell had been here, I knew all she would have seen was what was missing: the plants, the pots, the cobwebs.
“Me? What in the past forty-eight hours has got you convinced I could put the house back together that quickly? And why would I, if Uncle Barnabas is so against it?”
But I already had three reasons: Because it was important to Nell. Because Nell had saved my life more than once. Because Nell, like me, wasn’t one of life’s lucky ones.
Okay, four: Because it would make her happy.
How often did I really make people happy in my own life, never mind proud? My parents said I did, but what else were they supposed to do, lock me in the dungeon whenever I fell asleep in class or was overheard by an undercover reporter suggesting my grandmother was a lizard alien wearing human skin?
My stomach rumbled, so I wandered over to the refrigerator. There were still a few bottles in it, but not much else. Ketchup, maple syrup, soy sauce. I grabbed a half-empty bag of chips from the top of the microwave and sat down on my couch-bed, sick to my stomach.
As bad as things were for me now, I never had to worry about stuff like this. About empty refrigerators or jobs or losing the things I cared about. At least not before the malefactor.
“You’ve been pretty quiet, Alastor,” I said around a mouthful of chip crumbs. “Did you have something to do with this?”
Even as I asked, I knew it was stupid—impossible. Where I went, he went. That was part of the whole deal. Also, the stupid parasite had no limbs. Well, except mine. But I think I would have remembered him taking over.
You insult me. Alastor’s voice was thin. I would never lower myself to such a baseless act as cleaning human filth. I would, however, consider helping you put things to rights.
“In exchange for a contract,” I said. “Yeah, no.”
Not for a contract, simply a favor, and the promise that you will do nothing to endanger us before I am able to ascend out of the prison of your puny body.
“What kind of favor is this?” I asked. “If it involves my death, destruction, or mayhem, that’s an even harder no from me.”
I would like for you to ask the witchling what news she and the coven of this town have heard about the state of Downstairs—in particular, the fiend on the throne there.
“Isn’t that your dad? Are you worried they’ve redecorated your palace in your absence?” I asked. “Gave away some of your human heads mounted on spikes?”
Consider this carefully, Prosperity Redding: I am confounded by your inclination to help the witch and her dimwit, snaggletoothed father. I can only assume you feel a debt, or this is a passing disorder of the mind.
“Or, you know, compassion, but go on,” I said.
I have the strength, the speed, and the resilience you need to work quickly. I have memories to show you of my breathtaking home of terrors Downstairs, of which this is a mere shadow. You seem to possess some…