The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding (The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding #1)(9)

I started down after her, my feet thundering down the first two steps. I tried to squeeze between them, stretching out my hand as far as I could to catch hers. But I was moving too fast, and my balance was all wrong. I gripped her fingers hard and yanked both of us back to keep from stumbling forward into Bartholomew. My vision flashed to black as we fell against the stairs in a tangled mess.

“Sorry,” I gasped out. “Sorry, but, Prue—”

She pushed me off her and stood, her face bright pink with anger. “What’s your deal? I don’t need you to hold my hand anymore—I don’t need your help. God, can you just grow up?”

I took a step back, feeling the sting of her words right down to my guts, but she only glared and turned away. My whole body jerked as Great-Uncle Theodore wrapped one arm around my shoulders, squeezing me hard enough to make my spine crack. I sagged against him, looking at the family-crest pin he had on his ivory jacket instead of the back of Prue’s hair.

Which was why I didn’t notice we were heading to the dungeon until we were already there.


When I was little, I used to think the Cottage had its own secret voice. One that would slither up to you when the lamps were switched off and you only had a night-light to protect you from the darkness. It whispered about the people who had lived within its bones, died in its beds; it groaned under the weight of the centuries it saw. Come downstairs, it would hiss, come down, and down, and down, and down… Down the hidden servant passages, down past the darkened kitchen, down to the basement where things were left to be forgotten. Down to the heavy door that was locked every day, every second, always.

To the dungeon.

It was supposed to be a joke, but why did it have to stay locked all the time if it was just for storage? What did Grandmother put down there that she didn’t want the rest of us to see? In the long, long, long life of the Cottage, I wondered how many people had actually been down there, and how few had ever held its heavy iron key.

Rayburn had a weird sixth sense about that locked door, and he had the totally terrifying habit of jumping out of the shadows whenever anyone got within breathing distance of it. And even if he wasn’t there, there were four—count ’em, four—steel locks on the door, each needing a different key. David liked to tell me about all the torture devices that were down there that Grandmother was only waiting to use on me. She’ll pop you into the armor that’s filled with spikes. She’ll see if you can lie down on the bed of nails without them sinking into your guts. She’ll strap you in and turn a wheel until your limbs are ripped off and blood is splattered across the walls—

I really hated the Cottage. And I extra-hated David.

Great-Uncle Bartholomew grunted as he shoved me through the door. I tried to catch the frame with my arms, but he was way bigger and way heavier, and I didn’t want my arms pulled out of my sockets. I might need them in the near future.

The steps were uneven and slippery soft, like they’d been ground down by a steady stream of feet. But that didn’t make sense, did it? Unless—unless…this was part of the original foundation of the house. Back when it was growing from just a little seventeenth-century cottage to what it was now. The simple candle sconces on the wall seemed to back up that guess. No electricity. Or heat, apparently.

The damp chill passed through me, icing my bones. As we reached the landing, voices rose from below, flickering in strength like the candles on the wall. My throat felt swollen with the smell of wax and dust and something else—something like rotten eggs—I was gulping down. My thoughts scattered through my mind like spiders, too quick to catch.

But in the end, the dungeon was just an empty, windowless room with nothing more than a small table and fifty of my relatives. With so many people crammed down there, there was barely room for shadows, never mind me and Prue. I watched, my heart thumping painfully in my chest, as one of my great-uncles, the creepy one who never stopped smiling, helped her forward. He cleared a path through the tightly packed room. Great-Uncle Bartholomew nudged me forward until I was directly behind her. I tried to ignore the press of everyone’s eyes, the flicking of their fingers as they twisted away to avoid so much as brushing me.

Get out, get out, I thought, I need to get out—

A small, velvet-draped table had been positioned at the front of the room. I turned back toward the rest of the family, trying to read their faces. The warm orange glow of hundreds of candles caught on the white clothes around us. If I’d had the time to draw the scene, I would have sketched them in lightly, like ghosts floating at the edge of your vision.

Prue elbowed me hard in the ribs to get my attention and pointed to the strange lump on the table in front of us. The silky black fabric could have been a spill of ink.

Oh, crap, I thought, trying to take a step back. My family really is a cult.

That guy with the website had been right.

“Now,” Grandmother began. “Our family’s tradition has long held—”

“Just get on with it!” Great-Uncle Bartholomew snarled behind her. “We all know why we’re here. There’s no sense in putting things off any longer.”

“Perhaps you would like to hold your tongue while I cut it out for you?” she hissed. The raised blue veins on the back of Grandmother’s hands pulsed as she moved her fingers over the black cloth. “No? Then be silent.”

I swallowed hard.