The Last Life of Prince Alastor

by Alexandra Bracken

  And as the magic kissed their foreheads, their cheeks, the shades retreated to the mirror, slipping through it, until only Zachariah remained.

  “I shall likely see you soon,” he said, in the instant before he disappeared, “but not too soon, I hope.”

  I swallowed, and nodded.

  The clearing fell dark. Silent.

  I stepped back, leaning against Nell. She cast a worried look toward me, but said nothing, not even as the members of the coven made their way through the sleeping fiends and approached us.

  “Well?” Grandmother prompted, not one to ever chase a point. “I assume you require our assistance in removing the malefactor’s power. The spell Goody Prufrock created will do that, of course, but if you intend to carry the magic forth yourself, I suggest some sort of container, so you will not accidentally consume it for yourself.”

  The elder gave her a long look that my grandmother chose to return with one of her own. “I assure you, Goody Redding, I am more than capable of doing such a thing.”

  “That’s our gal,” Barbie muttered. “Always picking fights with mythological forces of creation.”

  Flora waved her hands, removing the roots from around Pyra. The panther padded forward, her head held high as she awaited her punishment.

  “Wait,” Alastor said, stepping forward on unsteady legs. His gaze passed between his sister and the elder. “I would like to offer you a different bargain.”

  “Do not test my patience, fiend,” the elder warned.

  “I know a good deal, you see, having made so many myself. I think you shall find the terms to be equally appealing, perhaps more so,” Alastor said, “and it will not violate the terms of your vow to Silence Redding.”

  The Ancient gazed back, unmoving. “Go on.”

  “Instead of taking Pyra’s power,” Alastor said, bending his front paws to bow, “I offer you what remains of my own.”

  “What?”

  Nell spun toward me, also stunned. “Did I hear that right?”

  “Al,” I said with a nervous laugh. “You can’t. Don’t be an idiot.”

  “Never, brother,” Pyra swore. “I can accept my own punishment. I do not need your protection—”

  “You do not need my protection,” Alastor agreed. “And you likely never have. However, the other fiends need you. The realm needs you. Perhaps I would have been a glorious king, one held in terror and despair, but even I see that I am . . . extraneous now.”

  Extraneous? This had to be a trick. He had to have come up with some kind of clever way out of this, or he’d found a loophole to escape punishment.

  “Very funny, Alastor,” I said. “This whole time, all along, all you’ve wanted is to get your kingdom back. That was the whole point of helping me, wasn’t it? I still haven’t helped you do that, remember?”

  “You still wish to end the contract, do you not?”

  “Well, yeah, but—”

  Alastor just stared back at me, one eye light, the other dark. “Then we are in agreement. I release you from the duties specified in our contract. I dissolve any expectations of service. I release you. I release you. I release you.”

  A wash of sparkling heat washed from the top of my head down to my toes. “What—Alastor—”

  He only turned away.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Nell told him, crouching down to look the fox in the face. She held out a hand, and it passed through his ghostly form. Flora approached behind her, returning to her normal form. This time, she quickly put together what had happened in her other state.

  “Maleficent malefactor,” Flora said. “All that’s left of you is your magic. You have not manifested a full physical form, not yet. If you do this, you will disappear. You will not come back.”

  Nell turned, looking at the witches for confirmation. They huddled together, a mass of green velvet, consulting. Finally, Grandmother nodded.

  “This is ridiculous,” I said sharply. “Has everyone lost their minds?”

  Toad landed on my shoulder, balancing there. He pressed a paw to my cheek and gave a slight shake of his head.

  Alastor angled his head toward the elder. “Is that agreeable to you? Goody Redding, will you stand in place of your family’s ancestor and consent to the amended deal?”

  “It is,” the elder said.

  “I will,” Grandmother said, her eyes narrowed. “And good riddance to you, I might add.”

  A sound like static filled my ears. I watched the scene play out in front of me in growing horror, and still it didn’t feel real.

  “Wait!” I said. Why didn’t anyone see that this was wrong?

  What is happening? Alastor!

  He wouldn’t look at me.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Pyra asked. “Why would you do such a thing?”

  “It is not much . . .” Alastor told her. “I did not have the time to restore it all, but perhaps it will allow something in our home to be mended. And it will, perhaps, serve as my apology for not helping you all those centuries ago, when you needed me most.”

  “Brother . . .”

  “Allow me to do this one thing,” he said. “And take a small portion of my magic to revive our brothers. They are depressingly feeble in intelligence and taste, but they, too, deserve the opportunity to change.”

  No—no—this wasn’t right—

  “The hour grows late, and this town must be restored to the humans.” The elder approached Alastor. “Kneel, creature.”

  The coven gathered in a circle around them. Nell looked back at me before linking her hands with Barbie and my grandmother. Blood roared in my head until I couldn’t make out the words of the spell they chanted.

  Magic rose from somewhere inside them, knotting together at the center of their circle. The elves drifted toward the mirror, jumping through it to begin the journey Downstairs. Soon only the elder and Flora remained. The elf gave me a small, sad smile.

  I tore my gaze away from her and returned it to Alastor. He lifted his small head, sitting regally on the autumn leaves, his tail curled around him like a question mark. From a short distance away, Pyra released a low, mournful sound.

  Nell and the other witches began to chant. I took a step forward, reaching for his flickering shape, but Prue jumped forward, banding her arm over my chest. I tried to shove back against her, to wrench myself free, but she held firm.

  “He tried to destroy our family,” she reminded me. “He would have killed you.”

  But he didn’t. He hadn’t.

  “It’s not right,” I said, my eyes hot and stinging. “It’s not right!”

  Alastor’s shape began to blur. To fade.

  Don’t go.

  The first time I had seen him, Alastor had been reflected in the surface of dark glass. He’d glowed brighter than the flame of the candle in my hand. Alastor had seemed so small then, his fur standing on end, his fangs flashing. He’d been feral with hate.

  Now, as he finally turned to look at me, he was as quiet and still as the moon at midnight.

  I needed to ask him why. I needed to know why he was doing this—

  Don’t go, I said again. Don’t go. . . .

  There wasn’t enough time.

  There was never enough time.

  No—there had to be another way—there was—I could—I could save him—

  In the last instant before he disappeared, I heard his voice drift across my mind one final time.

  Farewell, Prosper Redding. You are not what your family might have made you, and, it seems, neither am I.

  It was a strange thing, to die.

  Alastor had never thought about it. Not in any true way. He supposed he knew that death would one day lay a bony hand on his shoulder, he’d feel a prick of cold, and that would be that. But he’d always possessed a stubborn denial that he was anything but infallible. He had all but refused to believe that death might run a con he’d fall for. Even as the Reddings had tried to turn him to ash, he had refused to fully r
elinquish his grip on life.

  No, he decided. Never mind. It wasn’t a strange thing to die. Eventually, everyone reached the end of their life, whether that was hours, days, years, decades, or centuries. All things that began naturally came to an end. It was, however, a strange thing to give in to the urge to slip away. To take one last breath and surrender to the Next.

  Well, if fiends were allowed into the Next. That was another thing he had never thought about, even when he was trapped in the Inbetween, where nothing lived nor died, but was kept like a long-held breath.

  For the moment, there was nothing surrounding him—no sound, no light, no air to breathe, no ground to rest his feet upon. He flowed back, drifting and drifting.

  Listen to me, a voice whispered in his ear.

  He brushed it aside, focusing on the slow current leading him forward. Why did it have to be so infuriatingly slow?

  You don’t want to go.

  Of course he didn’t want to go, but he’d agreed to it. It was perhaps the only good choice he’d made in his many centuries, and the many different lives he’d had within them all. He’d been a prince, yes, but in his first century he had been a student, in other centuries a swordsman, and in more recent ones a contractor of shades. There were a number of things he might have tried with a few more lives. Such as . . . a sculptor! A sculptor of fine little ponies, in all sorts of marvelous war poses.

  You can live all of those lives. More. You just have to come back.

  Ugh. Was he to spend all eternity with an unwelcome, bratty-sounding conscience? Why did it have to sound so much like . . . like . . .

  The name was there, on the tip of his tongue. The memory of a face hovered close behind. Mildly ratlike, but then, that was true of all humans.

  Alastor! Listen to me! Don’t go!

  “Why wouldn’t I?” he whispered to the nothing. There was no place for him, not anymore. A kingdom that did not need him, a human world he no longer understood or cared to vanquish.

  Not everything is handed to you in life—we have to decide who we’re going to be and make our own place in the world.

  That sounded tedious, and yet . . .

  Alastor tried to turn back, to find the source of the words. To tug on the last mental thread that connected them. He grasped for it in the blackness, finding nothing but air. Nothing to slow himself. Nothing to stop the way he felt himself dissolving into air and dust.

  I command you to return. The boy’s voice echoed through the darkness. I command you to return to us.

  It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t going to be enough—Alastor felt one last pull at his center, and then—

  Stingingbow, I command you to return.

  He heard him.

  Stingingbow, I command you to return!

  He could not refuse him.

  As the endless darkness exhaled, pushing him back the way he’d come, Alastor supposed there was at least one more life left to be lived, after all.

  He took shape out of the fog, swirling together with the flecks of magic that still hovered nearby, refusing to be carried off by the breeze. Alastor, despite being dragged back into the human realm, was fainter than he had been before, and even smaller—the size of a newborn pup. His eyes remained closed, as if he might drift from a deep sleep into an eternal one again at any moment. The rise and fall of his breath came too fast, too quick.

  Prue gasped. Her arms went slack enough for me to finally pull myself free. I dropped down to my knees beside him. I didn’t even look up as the elder took Alastor’s magic and vanished through the mirror, all but dragging a reluctant Flora after him.

  “Come on,” I breathed out. Alastor was no longer inside me, and his “death” had seemingly severed the last bit of mental connection we’d had. The last trace of his presence, the tether that had let me command him to return to life, had snapped as he’d turned back. The force of it had been like a bolt of lightning racing from the top of my skull to my toes. “Come on, Al . . . wake up and yell at me . . . tell me how stupid I am for not listening to your wishes . . . for breaking my promise that I wouldn’t use it. . . .”

  “How is this possible?” Nell asked, looking around. The other witches seemed just as startled by his reappearance.

  “Is he alive?” Pyra asked bounding forward. She pawed gently at her brother, trying to rouse him. “Brother? Brother, can you hear me?”

  “Barely,” I whispered.

  Her gaze fixed on me. “You summoned him back. You used his true name. Even I did not think to do so.”

  “I tried,” I told her. “It looks like he’s about to go again, though—”

  The rustling of leaves and sudden deep groans sent a spiky chill down my back. The fiends stirred from their unnatural sleep.

  “What happened—?” an ogre rumbled, staggering up from the ground. “Who— Witches! What have you done? Where is the queen?”

  A lycan beat his paw against his chest, rallying the others around him with a piercing howl.

  Pyra threw her head back and shouted, “Stand down at once!”

  “The blood key!” one of the fiends cried—a hob. She began scouring the nearby ground, trying to sniff out the fragments of the stone.

  “Look—the fox!” another snarled. “It is the lost prince!”

  A goblin flipped forward over the heads of the ogres, landing a foot away from us. He brandished his claws for the queen’s inspection.

  “How shall I gut him for you, Your Majesty?”

  Pyra leaped over Al’s prone form, snarling. “My brother has saved us all. You will treat him with respect as we return Downstairs using the mirror the witches have provided. The Ancients are there, waiting for us.”

  It looked like she’d dropped a boulder on the heads of her subjects.

  “Dinner?” one of the lycans asked hopefully.

  The queen shook her head.

  “Your Majesty?” one of the ogres said, glancing down at his club. “But . . . the mayhem? The pandemonium?”

  “Is at its end,” Pyra said. “We depart now, before the sun rises.”

  Despite Alastor’s insubstantial form, Pyra was still able to pick him up by the scruff of his neck.

  “Wait,” I said, reaching for him.

  The panther looked back over her shoulder. “I cannot. He needs to be returned to our realm to heal. Otherwise, he’ll simply fade away once more. Your command is the only reason he held on to a wisp of magic to survive.”

  “How am I going to know that he’s okay?” I asked.

  Pyra tilted her head. “Somehow, Prosperity Redding, I suspect you will know.”

  The fiends filed out of the woods, each visibly more disappointed than the next. A few lunged at the witches for show, growling at their impassive faces. Others scratched at the already damaged trees, petulantly trying to kick them over.

  “Oh—witchling,” Pyra said, turning just as she and Alastor were about to step through the mirror. “You’ll find that your father’s contract has been voided. He, however, remains your curse to bear.”

  “Ah yes,” Grandmother said coldly. She strolled past us, following the path Henry Bellegrave had taken as he ran. “I suspect he’ll turn up soon enough.”

  “What will you do to him?” Nell asked, hugging her arms to her chest.

  Grandmother turned to her. She wasn’t a soft woman; she would never be that snowy-haired granny that baked cookies and taught you how to knit and garden. But she didn’t have to be. At her core, my grandmother was made of steel, and that was all the better for protecting the family. “I will hunt your father with all of my resources and bring him to justice, if not in a human court of law then in the court of the Supreme Coven. I cannot forgive him, not after he tried to kill my grandson.”

  Nell nodded, swallowing.

  “However,” Grandmother continued, “I would like to try to soothe past miseries by offering you, the last heir of the Bellegraves, anything you desire. Any amount of money. Any dream you long to have fulfilled.”<
br />
  Nell looked stunned for a moment, but it didn’t take her much longer than that to make her request. “All I want is for him to give up his legal custody of me so Missy can be declared my guardian. Officially. I don’t know if even you have that much power, though.”

  “Regardless, I will try,” Grandmother said. “Someone has inspired me to turn the page of our family’s long book of history. I am looking forward to the many possibilities of a blank sheet, and all the wonders it may one day hold.”

  “There are so many good ways to start it off,” Nell said. “ ‘Threescore and many years ago,’ ‘Once upon a time,’ ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,’ ‘Now is the winter of our discontent’ . . .”

  I put a hand on Nell’s shoulder as we turned back toward the Cottage. “How about just ‘What’s past is prologue’?”

  But as I glanced back over my shoulder and took in Grandmother’s approving nod, the words themselves seemed to matter less than knowing I’d have a hand in writing that history.

  Prue and half of the coven returned to the Cottage to tell the townspeople that it would be safe to return to their homes within the hour, though I really didn’t see how that was possible given the state of things. Grandmother had only flicked a hand and given strict instructions that everyone there should be served tea steeped at exactly two hundred and twelve degrees and provided with whatever they wanted for breakfast.

  Elma had the unfortunate task of coming up with some sort of explanation for what had happened, and the last I heard, she was torn between a mass hallucination caused by an epic gas leak, or the only slightly less believable truth. In the end, the coven agreed against casting a spell of forgetting on the town. What we all needed now was to remember.