Eerie Island was not like any prison Alexandra had heard of or seen on TV. Her only previous knowledge of wizard prisons came from Anna, whose father had been imprisoned for several months beneath Mt. Diablo in Northern California. Mr. Chu had not told his daughter much about the prison, though — only that he spent most of his time in solitary confinement and had been permitted a few things to read and nothing else.

Alexandra's first morning in her cell, she woke up to find her clothes had disappeared and been replaced by clean, plain robes, several layers of them, suitable for winter, and stockings and thick slippers. She had been so exhausted, she'd never heard anyone enter her cell. She shuddered. It was cold, and she could still feel the freezing water of the lake.

The wizard in the cell next to hers, an old man named Oren, emerged in breeches, a high-collared long-sleeved black shirt, and a pilgrim-style black hat. He sniffed with more dignity and condescension than any prisoner had a right to, Alexandra thought — it wasn't as if he were any less a prisoner than her.

Oren told her that the witches generally showered at dawn, and since she'd slept in, she'd just have to wait until the next morning if she wanted to join them. He didn't smell as if he showered very often.

The somber presence of her neighbor seemed to stifle most of the jeering this morning. Alexandra followed behind him and his Doomguard, assuming he would lead her to breakfast.

All the prisoners headed into a long room with open tables. They filed through the doorway one by one — prisoner, Doomguard, prisoner, Doomguard, prisoner, Doomguard. Everyone seemed accustomed to this procession and nobody got jammed up, blocked the way, or even jostled one another. The pairing of animated armor golems with prisoners was a very efficient means of maintaining order. Alexandra guessed that those inclined to cut in line or otherwise cause trouble quickly fell prey to what Edna had warned her about.

Remembering the way someone had efficiently replaced her clothes with clean ones during the night, she wondered if she would see food simply materialize on the tables like in Charmbridge. Perhaps the prison was served by house-elves?

Instead, all the prisoners lined up to collect bowls full of oatmeal from a large cauldron. There was also a pile of dry, stale-looking doughnuts. Serving the oatmeal, and periodically bringing out more bags full of doughnuts which they dumped on the pile, were not elves, but goblins. At a separate table, a goblin in a hooded jacket ladled watery pumpkin juice into glasses.

Alexandra watched them with a neutral expression, trying not to make her scrutiny obvious. The goblins were a weathered, black-eyed, surly lot, and there were no words exchanged between them and those they served; indeed, the goblins didn't even talk to each other much.

She carried her bowl of oatmeal, a spoon, a doughnut, and a glass of pumpkin juice to the end of a table that hadn't filled yet. Her Doomguard came to a stop behind her. She could feel it looming over her as she ate. Ready to yank her head back and slit her throat if she tried to cast a spell, or bolted for the exit, or maybe if she threw her doughnut at someone.

"Ah, our newest guest," said a man with handsome, swarthy features and a gleaming grin beneath a thick handlebar mustache. He stood on the other side of the table holding his own bowl. "Greetings. My name is Pasquale Mercurio. I take it no one has welcomed you to our private island community yet?"

"Actually, a sphinx and a lamia did," Alexandra said. She felt little apprehension about any of these people, even with so many eyes on her. Hoots and whistles floated across the tables when the man sat down across from her, but if what Edna had told her was true, there wasn't much anyone could do to her. The Doomguard at Mercurio's back, like the one at hers, meant all he could do was talk.

He nodded. "Our wardens will have told you what not to do to avoid —" He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at his Doomguard, then drew a hand across his throat and made a "kk-kk-kk" sound. "But you don't know how things work here."

"No," Alexandra said warily.

"There are really only two rules. First, don't do any of the things Edna told you not to do. The Doomguards will kill you. The first time you see it, you'll be convinced."

This had been repeated often enough that Alexandra already believed it, but she nodded.

"Second, the primary punishment inflicted upon those of us confined here is boredom and discomfort. You can alleviate this, if you are lucky enough to have friends or family on the outside."

Alexandra remembered Edna saying something about getting books and writing materials. "And if I do?"

Mercurio's grin broadened and he leaned toward her a little. "Our beloved wardens are eminently influenceable — to a point. You saw Edna's collection of objects d'art? All 'gifts.' She also has a fondness for crossword puzzle books and something called seppuku."

"I think you mean sudoku."

Mercurio waved a hand. "Muggle puzzles. She and Typhon get bored too, you see."

"So, assuming I can get my family and friends to send me stuff…"

"Then you can get better food, better clothes, library privileges, furnishings for your cell…" He sighed. "Life is much better here for those who have friends."

Alexandra sampled the oatmeal. It was thin and almost tasteless. "Do you have friends?"

Mercurio's handsome mustache drooped slightly. "Ah, you see the cause of my grief. Sadly, it turns out that loyalty and honor among thieves is rare, and my friends have proven to be the sort who forget their friend Pasquale once he's been sent across the lake."

"That sucks. Why are you telling me this?" Alexandra asked.

Pasquale Mercurio shifted in his seat and squared his shoulders. Speaking gravely, but now in a much lower voice, he said, "You are the youngest prisoner I've ever seen here. You may be taken advantage of by older, predatory rogues who see a naive young witch, an easy mark —" He glanced to his left, where other prisoners filled the other end of the table. They had given Alexandra and Pasquale a little space, but not enough not to be overheard.

"Not like you," Alexandra said.

"I would be pleased to offer my experience and protection."

"Protection from what? If everything you've told me is true, no one but the Doomguards can hurt me."

Mercurio hesitated. "It is useful to have friends on the inside as well as on the outside."

"What do you want?" Alexandra asked flatly.

The mustached wizard leaned forward and whispered, "I want to join the Dark Convention."

Alexandra stiffened. "What?"

"Don't worry about the Doomguards. They are automata without intelligence. Isn't that right, you rusty, hulking piece of mindless junk metal?"

Neither his Doomguard nor Alexandra's reacted, which she did not find terribly convincing.

"We know about your father," Mercurio said, lowering his voice to a whisper again.

"Everyone knows about my father," Alexandra said. "It pretty much stopped being a secret when I was twelve. And who's 'we'?"

Looking put off, Pasquale Mercurio studied her a moment. "Why would the daughter of Abraham Thorn allow herself to be imprisoned here? Why would he allow it?"

Alexandra studied him back. Did he think she could just send Aurors and Inquisitors blowing away in the wind? Or that she was only here on some secret mission for her father and could leave any time she liked? His question did make her wonder whether her father knew she was here. Well, of course he did. Could he get her out of here? And did she want him to? She definitely wanted out of here, but she didn't want to discuss her father with Mr. Mercurio.

"That's a pretty personal question," she said, hoping she sounded sarcastic and not defensive.

"Perhaps," Mercurio continued, still whispering, "you are being used as bait. I'll wager the charms and wards have been increased seven-fold since your arrival." His mustache sagged slightly while he pondered this.

Alexandra pondered this also. Was it possible that she had been sent here because the Confederation hoped her father would try to rescue her?

If so, surely he wouldn't fall for such an obvious trap. Which brought her back to the question of whether she wanted to believe her father would, in fact, take action to free her. She had renounced him and his war against the Confederation. It was too late for second thoughts, and she couldn't go begging for his help.

She still wasn't sure what Pasquale Mercurio wanted, though.

"We thought —" Mercurio whispered, and he stopped. His expression drooped. "Well. I apologize for interrupting your breakfast." He started to get up.

We. Was there some gang here in the prison after all? A secret coven? What use did they have for her? Alexandra thought quickly. It might be foolish to get caught up with criminal warlocks, but was it worse than being dismissed as a hapless teenager?

"I'm sure you would like to join the Dark Convention, if it means getting out of here," she whispered. "Just like everyone else. What's in it for them? Or me?"

Mercurio settled back into his seat, his eyebrows rising.

"I don't expect my father to break me out of here," she said. This was easier to say with assurance, since it was true.

Mercurio frowned.

"That doesn't mean I don't have… connections," she said. "But I'm not telling you anything more until I have some reason to believe you're worth talking to."

If Pasquale Mercurio and whatever compatriots comprised his "we" thought she was valuable enough to befriend, maybe they were valuable enough to let them befriend her. Alexandra had no idea where this might get her, but after one day on Eerie Island, she was ready to pursue any possibility of not spending the rest of her short life here.

"Then get yourself library privileges," said the mustachioed wizard. "If you can do that, we'll meet there."

"How did you get yourself library privileges, without friends?" Alexandra asked.

He grinned. "Simple. I won a riddle contest." He placed both hands on the table, pushed himself to his feet, and walked away, his Doomguard clanking behind him.

Eerie Island was mostly run by the inmates. As far as Alexandra could tell, the only staff consisted of Edna, Typhon, the Doomguards, and a handful of goblins. The goblins served food and did the laundry. They were a poor and surly substitute for house-elves, and their attitudes didn't suggest their service was any more voluntary.

Everything else was done by the prisoners, and this seemed to be mostly a self-organized effort. Everyone cleaned their own cells, and some system had evolved to assign the jobs of sweeping common areas and courtyards and scrubbing the showers. The prison was small and Alexandra didn't think there were more than a hundred people here, so there wasn't that much work.

Some of the inmates didn't work at all. Alexandra suspected a few of them had gone mad.

An old woman in tattered robes whose hair stuck out from her head in stiff, gray strands like a bush walked around muttering, but sometimes she waved her fists at the sky and cursed the Stars Above. Someone told Alexandra that Mad Haddie claimed she could summon Powers. Obviously she hadn't, as she was still here and the Doomguards hadn't killed her.

The wizard down her cell block who'd greeted her on her first night began following her around. He was tall and extraordinarily thin under his cowled robe. He ignored her when she told him to leave her alone. She knew he couldn't do anything to her, but she couldn't do anything to him either.

When not doing chores, most of the prisoners strolled or sat around all day, played wizard chess or Witches' Whist or whatever other games they'd managed to acquire, or read books. One wizard spent his days assembling odd sculptures from rocks and bones and feathers. The more privileged inmates had quills, and they wrote or drew. There was a tiny garden, which Alexandra was told had only a few plots, which were rarely available.

They were all expected to return to their cells after dinner; Alexandra was told those who didn't found themselves facing Typhon or Edna, and sometimes never returned to their cells at all. The cell doors locked magically, and unlocked in the morning. Goblins, apparently, could enter and leave their locked cells at will, and brought laundry and occasionally things sent from friends or family on the outside.

Other than the ever-present Doomguards and the silent, scurrying goblins, there was little sign of their overseers. In her first week after arrival, Alexandra didn't see the lamia or the sphinx again.

On her seventh day on Eerie Island, as she sat on a bench in the prison courtyard, depressed and beginning to despair of ever receiving word from the outside, a hush fell around her. She looked up, expecting to see Typhon or Edna. Instead everyone's attention was focused on the inner wall of the courtyard.

A bald man in the same prison-issue robes most of them wore had scaled halfway up the wall. His hands and feet stuck to the stone as if he were a spider. He was moving quickly, already out of reach of the Doomguard below him, and Alexandra watched with everyone else, silently rooting for him though she had no idea who he was or what he'd done to be sent here.

Standing a few feet from the wall, his Doomguard raised its sword and flung it with one arm. The sword spun through the air and skewered the wall-climbing wizard.

There was an awful moment of silence, and then the man fell to the ground, struck it with a thud, and lay there, lifeless.

The Doomguard bent over, grabbed his ankle, and dragged his body away, smearing a trail of blood along behind it.

Everyone in the courtyard returned to their conversations, card games, or silent brooding, treating the death of a fellow prisoner like just a moment's distraction.

"What happens to the bodies?" Alexandra asked the creepy, cowled wizard with the gravelly voice, who was, as usual, only a few yards away.

"The goblins take them away," he said, grinning as if he found the whole thing very entertaining. "It's the only way most of us leave here."

Alexandra received no letters. She finally asked her neighbor, Oren, about owls. He snorted and said that no birds were allowed to land on Eerie Island. This made Alexandra worry about Charlie again. She knew the raven was still out there, though never close enough to heed her command to fly away. Or perhaps her familiar simply continued to refuse to hear it. There must have been islands nearby where the raven could take shelter. Seagulls sometimes flew overhead, though she'd never seen any land.

Letters, Oren said, came with the weekly goblin packet. He told her not to be surprised if most of her correspondence never made it to her.

During the time she spent wandering the small courtyard and dining commons that were the extent of her world outside her cell, she studied Eerie Island with her Witch's Sight. She wasn't able to see much that was magic, aside from the Doomguards, which she could now sense even with her eyes closed.

It was on her eighth day on the island, in which she paced back and forth along an X-shaped path, forming doggerel verses in her head just for the practice while wondering how long it would take before she'd go mad with boredom, that she jerked to a halt. Behind her, her Doomguard stopped instantly.

She'd been unconsciously tracing a path she sensed with something other than her Witch's Sight. Once she realized what she was looking for, she saw it. Like the lines of magic beneath the Ozarks and Chicago, and the one that ran through Larkin Mills, there were cracks in the world beneath Eerie Island. Two cracks, and they intersected beneath her feet. They were deep — much deeper than the other ones, down below where the island rose from the bottom of the lake. That's why it had taken her a while to sense them… but they were there.

She looked up at her stalker, the cowled wizard, and gave him a creepy smile of her own. He tilted his head, bemused.

The next day, letters came flying down the rows between the locked cells in the predawn hour. Alexandra leaped to her feet when one sailed past the Doomguard and between the bars of her cell. She almost cried with eagerness as she opened the envelope, hoping it was from Anna or Julia or even Claudia — really, anyone she knew in the outside world, someone who knew where she was and had not forgotten her.

Instead, it was a one-line note, unsigned. Alexandra thought the handwriting looked familiar, but she barely had time to read it —

The wardens are prisoners too.

— before it burst into flames.

Alexandra dropped it and shook her fingers, and watched as fine black ash drifted to the floor. The Doomguard did not stir.

She thought about the note for the rest of the day.

Just before sunset, she went to the arch at the front of the main courtyard that led to the entrance, where prisoners knocked on the gate if they wanted to speak to the wardens. The cowled wizard followed her, as usual, but held back when she walked directly to the gate.

Many eyes followed her. Pasquale Mercurio watched her, sitting next to a thin, weasel-faced woman with short hair and hard, knotty hands. Alexandra hadn't spoken to Mercurio since their first conversation, but she had seen him and the woman and another wizard walking in and out of the library. From what she could tell, fewer than a dozen prisoners had library privileges.

The courtyard beyond echoed with a dull clonk when she knocked against the gate. There was an immense yawn, followed by heavy, padding footsteps, and suddenly a human face surrounded by a lion's mane descended into view upside down, peering at her between the bars of the gate. The sphinx was leaning over from the level above hers.

"What is it?" asked Typhon.

"I'd like to request library privileges," Alexandra said.

Typhon snorted. "See Edna. She handles those things."

"I understand you can grant them too."

Typhon snorted again, and showed his triangular teeth in a grin. "I can, but I don't think you want them that badly."

"You like riddles," Alexandra said.

Typhon's head disappeared. Then the massive leonine figure fell from above, landing on the stone courtyard on the other side of the gate with almost no sound despite his size. He walked in a tight circle, as if pursuing his own tail, until he stood before her looking down at her through the iron bars.

"You failed the first challenge I gave you," the sphinx said, "and that was an easy one."

"I was starving, frozen, and barely awake," Alexandra said. "I'd just been dragged away from home, hit over the head, dunked in a freezing lake, and hauled off to prison all in one day. It was hardly a fair contest."

"I really will eat you."

"I thought we don't taste good."

"You don't. But traditions must be observed." The sphinx's tail swished across the stones of the front courtyard lazily. "Also, I need an occasional meal of manflesh. Or girlflesh. It's part of my nature, and thus part of my contract."

Alexandra smiled slightly at the tiny confirmation. Typhon was in some way bound here.

"I want library privileges," she said.

The sphinx opened his mouth and startled her with a roar that silenced all noise in the prisoners' courtyard behind her.

"You're a slight thing and too young to throw yourself into my jaws," said the sphinx. "There's no one here sentimental. Whatever tragic part you've cast for yourself, abandon it. I don't care if you are the daughter of a great Dark Wizard, I fear him not, and your wit is no match for mine. Go back to your dreary days scratching things on the walls of your cell, and have your father send Edna something nice in gold and wormwood."

"I challenge you to a riddle contest," Alexandra said, in a loud, carrying voice. "For library privileges."

The sphinx's expression didn't change, but his eyes, in the long silence that followed, were embers that lit ancient terrors in her brain, as if she'd just recalled a thousand generations of hiding from things that ate young girls.

The gate before her grated upward. When it was fully raised, Typhon said, "Enter."

Alexandra stepped through, trying not to shake, followed by her Doomguard.

"Little fool," Typhon said. "But a monster must eat." The gate dropped behind her with a clang.

Alexandra glanced over her shoulder. Behind the Doomguard and the closed gate, the prisoners she'd left behind in the common courtyard moved toward the arch, wanting to see the spectacle. Alexandra wondered if they'd be taking bets, and how many times they'd watched Typhon devour someone. Her creepy, cowled stalker stared at her.

"The first to miss a riddle loses," Typhon said, "and I always go first."

"Fine." Alexandra tried to ignore the thudding of her increased heartbeat. She was pretty good at riddles. There were books of them in the Charmbridge library. But the sphinx had nothing better to do all day than lie around and think up new riddles. How old was he, anyway?

Typhon said, "A maiden can slip her finger inside it, and fiddle with it when she's bored. But though a bride has the same one forever, the best man always has it before the groom. What is it?"

Alexandra crossed her arms and screwed her face up in disgust. "Dirty old monster. The answer is a wedding ring."

Typhon grinned sharply. "Your turn. This is just a warm-up round."

"What?" Alexandra dropped her arms to her side and clenched her fists. "That's not fair!"

"First round doesn't count." The sphinx lowered his head until his teeth flashed before her eyes and his hot breath was in her face. "My game, my prison, my rules."

He plays dirty too, Alexandra thought. Fine. She had thought of a number of hard riddles, figuring that she might have to go more than one round. She said:

"A man who was not a man,
Saw a bird that was not a bird,
On a branch that was not a branch,
And hit it and did not hit it,
With a stone that was not a stone.
How is this possible?"

Typhon tossed his head back and roared laughter.

"By Plato's beard, girl, what sort of fool are you to test me with such an ancient riddle?" He shook his mane. "A near-sighted eunuch threw a pumice stone at a bat on a reed and missed. Pathetic!"

Alexandra clenched her jaw. "Your turn. This one counts."

"So be it." Typhon nodded.

"The beginning of sorrow, but necessary for happiness,
Always in risk, never in danger,
Seen in sunlight, but always in darkness,
What am I?"

Alexandra closed her eyes and ran through the words in her mind.

"Well?" Typhon demanded.

"Do you have to be so impatient?" Alexandra opened her eyes and gave him her most fearful look. "Best two out of three?"

The sphinx slowly extended a paw, and it settled on the ground in front of her. He moved forward until he loomed over her, casting a shadow over her and her Doomguard, and his eyes glowed faintly, eerily red.

"No," he growled, in a voice that came from somewhere very deep, and Alexandra thought she could actually hear him salivating. It raised gooseflesh on her arms.

He was not playing now.

"Well then," she said. "The letter 's'."

The sphinx settled back on his haunches. He growled.

"Your turn." All pretense of humor was gone now.

Alexandra took a breath. Now for the real thing.

"What's directly beneath your feet, but farther than you can ever reach?"

The sphinx looked down, thought a moment, then looked back up at her with a smile.

"The center of the Earth," he said.

"Wrong," Alexandra said.

The sphinx blinked. "What do you mean, wrong? It's a perfectly good answer!"

"It's not the right answer," Alexandra said.

Typhon almost lunged at her this time, and once more loomed over her threateningly, with his clawed forefeet on either side of her and his hot breath stirring the hair on her head. "You don't get to disqualify answers, girl! If a riddle has more than one answer, it's a poor riddle!"

"Like the riddle you gave me when I first got here?" she said. "You cheat!"

"My game, my rules," said Typhon. "And you'll recall I didn't eat you, even though you didn't give the right answer."

"Well then, you don't get the real answer," Alexandra said.

The sphinx glared at her and growled. His tail lashed.

He was a riddling beast. She was counting on his curiosity.

Finally he said, "Very well. Tell me your answer, and I'll decide if it's a valid one and better than mine."

Alexandra glanced back over her shoulder again. Witches and wizards were pressed against the metal bars behind her, listening to the exchange. Their Doomguards formed a solid armored line behind them. She turned to Typhon, and gestured for him to come closer.

"I'll whisper it in your ear," she said.

The sphinx narrowed his eyes, but lowered his head.

Alexandra cupped a hand to his ear and said, "The World Away."

Typhon pulled away and looked down at her with an expression of confusion and suspicion. "What?"

"You know what I mean," Alexandra said. She smiled, and spoke in a whisper, so that the sphinx once more had to lower his head to hear her.

"You're a prisoner here too," she said. "There are cracks beneath your feet, cracks in the world, but you can't reach them."

She closed her eyes and concentrated, and with all her will, focused on the lines that stretched across the great lake to intersect at this one place.

Far below, in the ground beneath the island and below the water of the lake, the cracks fissured open, like lips parting, and where they intersected, magic shot out into the world, until the pulse of disturbance subsided.

The island did not shake, as if with a tremor, but it seemed to tilt, just for a moment, or slide sideways. Not an inch, not even a fraction of an inch, but a movement one would never sense without magic. She felt it, and when she opened her eyes again, she saw that the sphinx had too.

Now if only she didn't get cut down by the Doomguard — could it sense what she had just done? Would Typhon stay it? The air had a peculiar smell to it. The sphinx's nose wrinkled as if he smelled it too.

"How…?" he asked. His voice was a growl from somewhere deep, the word almost hidden in the sound of his wonder, and she saw lust and longing in his eyes, but not for her flesh, or the answer to a riddle.

She said, "I want library privileges. And mail and lighthouse privileges. And something besides these rough robes to wear."

The monster's eyes pulsed blood-red. Alexandra dared to lay a hand on his great mane and lean closer, even as his claws scoured the stones by her feet.

"Not yet," she whispered, so softly that the sphinx's ear had to twitch in her direction even though her lips were only inches away. "But soon — give me what I want, and both of us will be free."