Stop this! Let me speak to my sister, this must be a misunderstanding, one of my brothers has surely put her up to this.
“Shut up, Al!” I shouted. “Nell, finish!”
“I send you back to your realm, I banish you—”
“Nice trick, witch,” Pyra growled, sweeping her tail against the ground. Fire followed. “It’ll be the hard way for us, then, Alastor.”
It was like watching someone else’s dream. The air was burning hot in my lungs, warping and smearing the room in front of me. For a second, it looked like Pyra bit into Prue’s arm. It looked like she yanked my sister toward the cracking mirror.
It looked like she pulled Prue into the dark.
Time sped back up and slammed into me. I knew I was screaming as I ran across the room after her. “Prue—Prue! Give her back! Give her back!”
I slammed my fists against the glass, and Prue did the same from the other side. I could see her shouting something, but only Pyra’s voice came through.
“If you want her back, you’ll have to come play in my realm,” she said through the glass. “What will it be? Her life, or my brother’s?”
Al’s voice leaped to my lips. “Pyra! Stop this madness! Even if you opened the gate to the realm of Ancients, all you’d succeed in doing is collapsing all the worlds! It would be chaos and darkness!”
“We’ll see about that,” she said as the black came forward and devoured her and my sister whole.
“No! No, please! Bring her back! Bring her back!” I shouted, ignoring the flames licking at my shoes. “Prue!”
“Let me go!” Nell shrieked. I turned around, watching as Henry threw his daughter over his shoulder and rammed his way out of the room. “Prosper! Prosper!”
With the door open, the smoke filtered out into the hall. The fire alarms began to shriek, and the overhead sprinklers kicked in. I heard surprised yells from the auditorium—but people were already heading for the doors. The fire department would be here any minute.
I ran back to the dressing room, taking in small patches of flames that were still burning under the water, the field of candles, the drowned ashes of what had once been a witch’s book of spells.
Despair. I finally knew what that word truly meant. It was smears of charcoal-like soot, the blue heart of a flickering flame. It was Prosperity Oceanus Redding standing alone, staring at a dozen versions of himself in the room’s many mirrors.
Except…I wasn’t alone, and suddenly I knew exactly what I had to do.
“Al,” I whispered. “Are you still there?”
Yes.
His voice sounded heavy to me. Maybe he already knew what I was about to say.
“I want a contract.” When he didn’t answer, I continued, “Here are my terms: If you help me get Downstairs to rescue Prue, I’ll help you take down your sister. I’ll…even sign away my spirit to you, if that’s what it takes.”
I could feel myself shaking, but I forced myself to stand up straight. I thought for sure he would laugh at me, call me some stupid name, pat himself on the back for finally getting me hook, line, and sinker.
This is for Prue, I thought. Please, please, please don’t let me be too late to save her.
“Al?” I whispered.
I felt him shift like a thunderstorm inside my chest.
Light a candle and step close to the looking glass. Time is short, and we cannot delay.
I took a step forward, my sneakers sloshing through the water on the floor. Alastor’s power raced through me, and when my arm lifted and my finger touched the mirror’s shimmering surface, I couldn’t tell which one of us had actually done it. My image distorted, stretching and shivering as the glass suddenly rippled like liquid silver.
Maybe it was true that we never really escape our histories. That revenge is a poison that stays in the hearts of families, reborn with each generation. I was nothing like my family, but I was still a Redding. I didn’t get to choose my family, or this curse, but I couldn’t run away from them. Honor had tried to escape the consequences of his bad choice, and all it had done was hurt others by bringing fear and pain into the world. No more.
Warm steam belched out of the mirror as its surface parted just enough to see the darkness beyond it. The stench of sulfur and rotting garbage rolled out around me. I should have been afraid, but I wasn’t. Instead, I kept thinking of the quote Nell had written on the gray bag she gave me, which now felt more like a warning than a simple line from Shakespeare: What’s past is prologue.
The blackness beyond the glass gazed back at me like a moonless sky. I took a deep breath and stepped through.
It was finally time to write a new chapter of this story.