“No—no!”
The words ripped out of my throat. Nell’s eyes bulged as she tried to push my arm away. Her lips were moving, but the blood was thundering too hard in my ears, the fiend was laughing too loudly for me to hear what she was saying.
You understand now what I am capable of. Al’s voice sounded unnaturally high. I felt his fear and desperation like it was my own. You claim to only wish to save your family. Your only hope for her survival is to sign a contract with me. Agree, Maggot—agree!
“Screw. You,” I gritted out. No contract now, no contract ever!
She will die, just as your whole family will—
A burst of warm energy struck me dead center in the chest, shocking my entire body into numbness as it shoved me back down the steps and across the yard.
No, I thought, still feeling dazed from the blow. You don’t know Nell.
“I’ve got more of that, you parasite!” Nell was saying as she advanced toward the gate, one glowing fist still raised. The howler let out a tooth-snapping growl that was met in kind by one from Toad, who launched off the porch like a bolt of lightning.
A hot rush of pins and needles filled my limbs. My hand twitched closer to a sharp rock, and I could see it so clearly, how Alastor would use it to hurt Nell or Toad.
“No!”
It felt like jamming a cap back on a bottle of exploding soda. That horrible fizzing sensation eased up, and Alastor’s cries of frustration started.
“Are you okay?” Nell asked at the same time I said, “I’m sorry! I’m so, so, so sorry!”
“What’s going on?” Nell looked like she wanted to punch me. “How could you be so stupid as to leave the house?”
The truth exploded out of me: “It wasn’t by choice!”
She took a wide-eyed step back. “What do you mean?”
“He’s been…he’s been taking my body out for a ride at night,” I admitted. “I had no idea.”
“Obviously,” Nell said, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Okay…okay…we’ll figure this out….”
I almost forgot about the ugly little gremlin I had carried back with me. Nell couldn’t see him sprawled out on the porch, but she heard him snarfing, sucking up his dribbling electric-blue snot and drool.
“Slip from the shadows into sight,” Nell whispered, “reveal yourself in the light.”
A ball of light tracked over to him, hovering no matter how far away from it he tried to get. I knew when she finally saw him. She shook her head, but didn’t look all that surprised.
“A hob?” she asked, looking straight at me. “You couldn’t survive a few weeks without a slave to attend to you?”
“Hey, I would never—” Oh. She was talking to the bratty malefactor. Not me.
I will not dignify that with a response. I am a Prince of the Third Realm.
“We need to get Uncle B,” I said, finally feeling strong enough to push myself off the ground.
“No!” she whispered. “No! We can’t tell him about this—not the malefactor taking over your body, not the howler you saw. I told you, we’ll be trapped in the house—”
“What does that matter if we’re dead?” I asked. “Is this about the play?”
A hurt expression flashed on her face. “Of course not. But if I can’t leave the house, I can’t…get to some of the things Mom left me to take care of. Things I could use to protect us.”
She looked so upset that I believed her. “Well, what are we going to do about…that?” I nodded to the little fiend and his round belly.
Nell bent over and picked him up like an oversize stuffed animal. “Can you walk?”
Not super-steady, but yeah. Instead of going upstairs, she took us down. It was my first time being in the basement, and right away I knew I wouldn’t be back. It was cramped, filled with barrels of salt, cardboard boxes, and mostly broken furniture.
She moved to the other side of the room, where something long and rectangular was hidden beneath a dirty bedsheet. The little fiend—the hob, or whatever—was left stretched out on the top of a dresser at the other end of the room.
“Tell your fiend friend we need to talk,” Nell said, whipping off the bedsheet. A long, elaborate gold mirror was hiding there—very fancy, very old. Very forbidden.
“Uncle Barnabas said to destroy all the mirrors,” I said. “That howler came through shards of one. Isn’t this dangerous?”
She hesitated for a moment.
“If the malefactor is powerful enough to control your body, he’s strong enough to hold back whatever tries to come through to get him. We’ll break the connection at the first sign of trouble,” she said. “I’m going to get a candle—don’t move.”
Like her wish could be command enough to stop me.
The prickling, tingling sensation raced along my good arm. All I had to do, though, was picture Nell’s face when Alastor forced me to attack her, and I shut it down. I guess my anger was stronger than whatever powers he did have.
Al didn’t have a comeback to that one. He didn’t want to talk at all.
I don’t know how long the three of us stared at one another in the mirror. Long enough for the white wax to start dripping down onto my hands. I held the candle tight between my fingers, trying to push away the uneasy feeling I got when I noticed the white fox had grown. It wasn’t a fuzzy little cub anymore. Even though his voice sounded young, Alastor looked…older.
“What were you doing?” I asked, finally. “Out in the graveyard?”
Nell’s head whipped toward me. “Which one? Describe exactly what was happening.”
So I did. And I watched Nell’s face go from white to pink to a furious cherry red in seconds. “You were trying to swipe witch magic. You thought it would work for you? You thought you could just use our gift, and that would be enough to fully awaken yours?”
The fox only stared. One blue eye. One black. Neither of them blinking.
“Well, it wouldn’t have!” Nell said. “Witch magic and fiend magic don’t mix. I don’t know where you got your information from, but they lied.”
“I do not know who told you that we cannot harness your power under special conditions,” Alastor said, and it was nice to hear his voice outside of my head for once. “But they are the ones that lied.”
“How many times?” I asked. “How many times have you slipped out of the house?”
The fox licked its paw innocently.
“Once? Twice?” I tried. “More than that? Since the beginning?”
Alastor’s little chin nodded, just slightly.
“Holy crap.”
“You have no memory of it?” Nell asked. “You haven’t been feeling tired?”
“I mean, I have a few more bruises and cuts, but I feel fine. I felt fine.”
“You could feel better than fine. I’ve tried to make a contract with you. I tried to reason with you. You could have power of your own. All I would have asked in exchange—aside from your spirit’s eternal servitude, of course—would have been the freedom to do what I must to understand what is happening.”
“What do you mean?” Nell asked. “What’s happening?”