“Missy’s is closest!” I shouted, dodging through the trees.
Let me run! Let me run! I can save us, just—
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Nell, get on my back!”
She shot me a strange look. “Excuse me?”
“Piggyback! Now!”
It was awkward considering she was two inches taller than me, but the second I felt her arms around my neck, Al was ready.
I wasn’t about to ask any questions, and neither was Al. It was like being at the wheel of a speeding car. He was the engine, and I was the driver, and somehow we were working together perfectly.
I didn’t look back when I heard the howling start. The second my feet hit the next street, I launched into a jump. Al knew what I wanted to do and kicked in the power I needed. We went soaring over a house and people shoveling snow in their backyards, arcing across the moon itself before landing on the other side of it.
Everything looked different in the dark. Nell pointed us in the right direction, through the right cluster of trees. I tore through them, letting the branches snap against my face. The old Victorian house was a glowing blur in front of us, getting bigger by the second.
The windows were lit but the curtains were drawn. I leaped up the stairs, grateful that Missy’s protection spell let me pass without trouble. We went crashing through her front door, spilling into a heap amid the stacks of books.
“—dare tell her, I will destroy you—”
“Destroy me? As if you could—”
That sounded like…
“Barnabas,” Nell muttered, closing her eyes.
But instead of hearing the whimper of a big, ugly dog getting thrown around by Missy’s rosebushes, there was a heavy click, click, click of claws against her porch. When Nell and I looked back, we could see one of the howlers standing on its hind legs, peering down at us through the glass of her front door. Another one of them pushed the first down to get a look into the shop.
“Who’s there?” a woman called. “Nell, is that you?”
Nell darted forward, turning the lock. The howlers banged their heavy bodies against it, splintering the wood.
They are here for me.
“For us,” I muttered.
I was right—it was Uncle Barnabas. He stormed down the stairs after Missy, his face red with fury at the sight of us there, in her shop, where he’d expressly forbidden Nell to go.
“I can…I can explain,” I tried. “But—”
The glass door shattered into a million pieces when the first howler crashed through it.
Make haste! Alastor yelled. Leave this place!
Uncle Barnabas threw himself against the wall, nearly falling over himself to get back upstairs. Missy dove forward, reaching for Nell as she all but climbed a mountain of books, knocking over a pile of them. “Nell!”
“Here! Missy, I need your help! I can’t reach it—”
The howler growled, pawing at the glass. The other two followed it inside, all slinking muscles and moon-white teeth.
“Nell…” I called. “Whatever you’re doing, can you please hurry it up!”
“Distract them!”
“Seriously?” I said. “Seriously?!”
I did the only thing I could—I started throwing whatever was in reach, which happened to be books, and lots of them. I might as well have been tossing feather pillows. The books whacked into their skulls, all right, but the howlers didn’t even flinch. In fact, I kind of thought they were…laughing at me. They made this awful chu-chu-chu noise, tossing their heads. One even caught a book between its teeth and snapped it clear in two.
The leader of the pack went stiff, its ears perking up. Then it pounced. My skull knocked flat against the tile, making stars explode in front of my eyes. It didn’t matter. All I could see were teeth—hundreds of sharp, slobbering teeth. The howler’s claws pinned me where I was, sinking into my shoulders until I couldn’t hold in my cry.
“Those who trespass in our land”—Nell’s voice rang out clear behind me, along with the older woman’s—“now be blocked by my hand.”
I craned my neck back, trying to see what was going on. The two of them stood there, Missy with a silver hand bell, Nell with a big leather book open in her hands.
There was a pause as a bell rang three times. Alastor groaned in my ears, but that was nothing compared to the dogs’ reactions. They howled and yelped like they were being beaten. Even the one on me backed away. Nell wasn’t finished, though.
“I bind you back to your realm, I send you back to your realm, I banish you to your realm!” The bell rang three times, and it was like a tornado dropped on my head. A black wind whirled free and wild, tossing books around, lifting the howlers off the ground, and sucking them down, down, down, into a thick blackness I wasn’t awake long enough to see.
I drifted in and out of sleep, too exhausted to open my eyes, when I heard Nell and Missy whisper to one another.
“While he’s still upstairs, please, let us leave, it’s not too late. The coven will protect you. We can end this now—”
“You wouldn’t do anything, you refused to help, this is the only way—”
“If you’re afraid of that man, then leave. Come to us, we’ll care for you—”
“How could I? You know…” Nell sounded like she was in tears. “You know who he is. I have to stay.”
“And this boy,” Missy began, her voice shaking. “This is not what our magic is meant for. How can you possibly untangle yourself from it all?”
“I can’t,” Nell said. “It’s already too late.”
Nell was right. Once Uncle Barnabas found out what was going on, everything changed.
“You betrayed my trust! Not only that, but you have endangered yourselves and everything we’ve been working toward! How dare you? How dare you, when you know what the consequences are?”
Since we’d been sneaking around behind his back for the last week, it only seemed fair that we let him spend a few hours lecturing us about it. I probably would have felt a little better about the decision if my skull wasn’t pounding so hard I thought it would explode.
“Do you know what went through my head when I learned you’d been visiting that witch in secret? When I saw you pursued by the howlers?” he continued, pacing in front of us. Nell and I were slumped on the couch, looking like we had been dragged through a field of mud before being tossed out into a thunderstorm.
“I’m sorry,” Nell said for the tenth time. “We’re both so sorry. You just have so much on your plate, and we didn’t want to worry you. We didn’t expect—”
“You didn’t expect to be attacked by fiends? You didn’t expect anyone else to come after the malefactor? After Prosper?”
We hadn’t even told him everything, and he was already this mad. Nothing about Rayburn, or Al taking control of my body, or the hob.
Nell flinched, rearing back.
“What are we going to do now?” I asked, trying to change the subject.
“If you had taken care to get yourselves safely home, you would already know this.” Uncle Barnabas went to the desk, which had quickly regained most of its clutter after being ruthlessly cleaned. He retrieved a small cigar box and opened the lid, revealing three small, shriveled prunes.