“Pyra.”

The world seemed to drop out from under us.

Pyra? As in your sister, Pyra? As in your sweet little sister that, oh no, could never be involved in this?

The panther took a step toward us and nodded at Henry. The man released me and pushed me toward her. Prue got there faster, grabbing my arm.

“Alastor, how charming. You’ve made a friend,” Pyra purred. “It pains me to see you in such a form, living with such creatures as these.”

“What are you doing here?” I felt Alastor’s words leaving my mouth, his words ringing in my ears. Prue looked startled, but didn’t let go of my arm. “Have you come to take me home? You’ve finally manifested your animal form—how brilliant. I assure you the protectors will not be necessary once I’m free.”

Al, I thought at him, this is the creature I saw in my dreams—

But I swear—I swear I felt Alastor swell with pride inside of me. My skin prickled, static racing along my arms, my neck, my face.

No! Al, think about this—if she’s here, it means she’s the one that’s behind all of this! She made the deal with the Bellegraves, she betrayed you to Honor! Listen to me!

“Oh, my poor, stupid brother…” Pyra began to weave in and out of the candles, circling around the ogres. They stood like stone, guarding the mirror. The glass there rippled, signaling that the portal was still open. “I’m not here to take you home. I’m here to take what should have been mine over three hundred years ago.”

If Alastor had been in full control of my body, we could have…I don’t know, we could have at least made it harder for the ogres to swipe me off the ground and dangle me from my right foot like I was some kind of bug they were about to eat. I should have taken the iron bracelets off when I had the chance.

“Prosper!”

I forced Al back down. “Stay back, Prue! It’s okay—just—stay back!”

For one second, I actually felt bad for Alastor. I could feel a storm of emotions raging in my chest, and all of them belonged to him. Blood rushed to my head, but so did anger, embarrassment, confusion—he was stunned. Too stunned to even speak.

“You must be asking yourself, how? How did it come to this?” Pyra circled back, her tail curling in the air and smoke. “It started when Father announced that you would be heir. When you allowed our father to lock me in the tower, in a prison. I was your shame, was I not?”

“Never!” Al said. “Never. I only agreed with Father for your protection—Bune and the others might have killed you otherwise!”

“It turned out well for me. There, I met a host of fiends, the kinds you scorned as servants and lessers for the roles our father had forced on them. The ones he’d enslaved to fight his battles and do his work. Do you remember our old nannyhob? Oh, how that hob grew to despise you. Without so much as a nudge, she revealed your true name, overheard at birth. At the time, I did not have the power to manifest my animal form because you and my other precious brothers would not allow me to make contracts. I thought if I could take your magic, your power, it would be enough to allow me to shift.”

“Pyra…” Alastor sounded as though he was being torn in two. “You only needed to ask for my help, and it would have been granted!”

“Liar!” the panther growled. “It took time, what with you spoiling my original plan, but as soon as I’d enough power to shift, I’d gathered the other prisoners and unleashed them Downstairs. Under my leadership, the lowest of the low rose higher and higher, slaying all those who stood in our way. Not only is the Black Throne mine, but I’ve proven my might to our realm. They call me Pyra the Conqueror. I will do what all of you feared to.”

“Congratulations, Pyra the Conqueror,” I snapped, “but why go through all of this trouble now? If you have everything you dreamed of, why not just have Henry kill us from the start?”

“Because, human,” Pyra said, stopping in front of my face. Her tongue darted out, licking the tip of my nose. “I had to wait for my brother to regain as much of his power as he could, otherwise there’d be no point in stealing it.”

“The magic in the human realm is fading with each year. The fiends require a new, purer source of power, and she intends to unlock the gate to the realm of Ancients to get it,” Henry said like a proud father would. “She required the sacrifice of all her brothers’ lives and magic to form the necessary key.”

I tried to right myself, but the ogre swung me around, still upside down.

“What are you talking about?” poor Prue asked. “What realm?”

“That’s not what you said,” Nell interrupted, “you said…You promised that she was just going to use the power to help the fiends Downstairs, to encourage them not to escape into our world!”

“Perhaps you should have asked to read his actual contract, witch,” Pyra said. “Now get on with it. The full spell should be in that book, yes?”

“Did you send me that notebook?” Prue interrupted. Clearly she was adapting to the situation a lot quicker than I had. She hadn’t even blinked at the talking panther. “You tricked me into coming here—why?”

“I did no such thing. My brother played a trick on you, likely thinking he could convince the human he resides in to form a contract with him—one last attempt to save himself, I’m sure. And now I can use it to my own advantage,” Pyra said. “To strike pure fear in your own brother’s heart, should he disobey me. Come out, dear friend, for you truly deserve the credit. Take a bow for this magnificent performance.”

I saw the horn first as the hob leaned around one of the mirrors surrounding us. He had been tucked just out of sight, and now that he had shown himself, he was almost unrecognizable. His skin was clean, his claws filed, and his one horn polished. Nightlock wore gold silk robes that shimmered as he came toward the candlelight.

“You!” Alastor’s voice ripped out of my throat. “You dare betray—”

“My lord and master?” Nightlock said. All of a sudden his voice was clear and almost refined. “My only lord and master is Her Majesty, Pyra the Conqueror. She bade me to watch your movements in this realm and report back, oh yes. How easy you were to fool, how quickly you assumed I was feebleminded. And yet you did not suspect that I told Her Majesty to send the howlers to keep you in check, to keep you from running away long enough to escape the boy. I removed each obstacle to her journey here, including the changelings.”

No—what did that mean? What had happened to Toad?

Nell made a noise of distress, looking up from the grimoire again. I swung my loose foot at the ogre to dislodge myself, but it was like kicking a cement wall.

“You knew about Nightlock all along?” I turned back to Henry. Even Nell looked shocked by this turn of events.

“Of course,” Henry said. “He removed his glamour for me months ago, during our preparations. Nightlock was meant to watch the two of you when I could not. To keep you close to the house. Everything was meant to frighten you into behaving—into believing the only way to stay alive was to stay with me.”

“Imbecile!” Alastor wailed. “Filthy traitor! I’ll have your horn for this!”

“Oh no,” the hob said with a crooked little smile. “I think not.”

“You may return now, Nightlock,” Pyra said. “You have earned your place at the palace again.”

The ogres let him pass. The hob didn’t even look back as he stepped through the mirror and disappeared completely.

—

Okay, Al, what do we do?

I don’t know—I just need a moment to think, to gather…to gather my thoughts!

We didn’t have time for that. My head was pounding and it was hard to piece together thoughts when I felt so disoriented. The candlelight blurred. I blinked to clear my eyes.

Pyra lifted a paw, batting at my upside-down face. Toying with me.

“This spell,” Nell continued, “what really happens during it? Is it even true that Alastor will be transferred to another living creature?”

“Not quite,” Henry said. “It will remove Alastor’s powers and bind him to Prosper forever. Remember what I told you, Cornelia—that our lives depend on this now too.”

“But you said that all three of your brothers’ magic and lives were needed…” Nell began, the candlelight reflecting in her glasses.

“Clever witch,” Pyra said, turning back toward her. “Indeed it does. But since you’ve been so loyal, so very good to me, I will endeavor to make his suffering short. I take this claw and I gut him from here”—the panther pointed to my stomach, then my chin—“to here.”

“Try it!” Prue snapped. “I’ll turn you into a rug!”

“By the realms, that’s terrifying,” Pyra said, giving me—or rather Al—a wink. “Siblings who like each other. Can you imagine the horror of it all?”

The other ogre stomped forward, creating a wall between her and me. When Prue tried to dodge around his thick, hairy legs, the ogre caught her by the hair and held her. Prue yelped in pain.

I struggled against the ogre again. The fiend shook me out like a rug, but finally dropped me headfirst on the tile. I saw stars. A burst of black, black stars.

“Finish it, Cornelia,” Henry said. “Now.”

“My name,” she said between gritted teeth. “Is Nell. Prosper—catch!”

My brain caught up two seconds too late to keep from catching the heavy book she threw at me. The second it touched my hands, the second it sensed that a fiend had it in its grasp, Tabitha Bishop’s grimoire burst into flames and began to devour itself.

“NO!” Pyra shrieked, leaping toward it.

The book exploded into ash between my fingers.

“What did you do?” Henry roared at Nell. He raised a hand toward her, but Nell was faster. She threw him across the room, cracking against the opposite wall. Even Pyra was thrown back by the force of the windstorm that was building around Nell, whipping up the ash and smoke into a tornado around her.

“Those who trespass in our land,” Nell was chanting, “now be blocked by my hand.”

The ogres began to groan, stumbling around. They clutched at their heads and knocked into one another. Instead of the floor opening like it had for the howlers, however, the mirror reached out with silver hands and grabbed them. They were squeezed back through the frame, one at a time, disappearing back into the black.

“Stop!” Henry begged. “Stop this! We must finish the contract! We have to see it through, or we’ll lose everything! I staked your life on this contract, as well as mine!”

I scrambled back onto my feet. The air around Pyra wavered, smoke rising off her body. Then it wasn’t just smoke—there was fire racing out under her claws, heading straight for Nell. I shoved her to the ground, knocking her out of the way. I hit the tile hard enough to rattle my brain.

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.