Exiting the dining commons, Alexandra almost walked into Harriet Isingrim and her friends.
For a moment, everyone stared each other down. Alexandra could practically feel the tension crackling against her skin. She was itching to draw her wand, and knew Harriet was, too.
Then she saw Archibald Mudd standing by the elevators, fiddling with his crystal widget.
She shoved past Harriet. Let them attack her in plain sight — maybe Mudd would actually report the incident. Of course, she thought, he'd probably write that she started it.
No hexes hit her from behind. She stomped up to the reporter and said, "Mr. Mudd!"
He looked up, and his eyes widened in recognition.
He was young, and had a rather pleasant, ordinary face. He could easily have been called nondescript, which Alexandra thought was fitting for someone who liked to sneak around and secretly report on people. His Snitch and Eye-Spy dangled on tethers from his belt, but he reached for something else. Alexandra tensed, expecting him to draw his wand, but instead he produced something more dangerous — his microphone.
"Why are you writing all these bullshit stories about me?" she demanded.
Mr. Mudd raised an eyebrow. "Bullshit, Miss Quick? What have I reported that's untrue?"
"'Enemy's Daughter Racks Points Ruthlessly'? What does my father have to do with me competing in the Decathlon? And I wasn't any more ruthless than anyone else!"
"I think many people suspect he has a great deal to do with you being a Decathlon champion despite being expelled from two schools," Mr. Mudd said. "How did you get the Ozarkers to enter you, anyway? And would you care to comment on the rumors that you escaped from Eerie Island?"
"This is off the record. I'm just talking to you." Alexandra held up her wand. "Put that thing away or I'll blast it."
Mr. Mudd lowered his microphone. "Will you? I'll press charges, and you'll be disqualified, like the unfortunate Miss Isingrim."
"What about taking pictures of me at the ball? Why does anyone care who I dance with? And you made me out to be a… a…"
Mr. Mudd just stood there, with a raised eyebrow and a quizzical smile, evidently hoping she would finish the sentence herself.
"You should have left Anna out of it," she said in a lower voice.
"Anna Chu is a Congressman's daughter, in a relationship with the daughter of —"
"We're not in a relationship!" Alexandra said, then winced and lowered her voice. "And whose business is it anyway?"
"The public has an interest in you whether you like it or not, Miss Quick."
Alexandra's jaw clenched as tightly as her fists. "I want you to stop slandering me, and stop reporting on me."
Mr. Mudd shook his head. "The term is 'libel.' Feel free to complain to the Office of Press Matters. Perhaps you can even file a magelaw suit.
"You must not know what happens to people who write about Abraham Thorn's daughters. Haven't you heard about Jerwig Findlewell?"
"Are you threatening me, Miss Quick?"
"No. I'm just curious why you're not afraid of my father."
"Oh, I see." Mr. Mudd gave her another patronizing smile. "Your father is a very powerful man, and he's proven he won't hesitate to quash the free press and anyone else who stands in his way. But he's not the most powerful man in the Confederation, and there are defenders of truth who believe it should be reported. Even if — especially if — it angers Abraham Thorn."
"So you're just another one of the Governor-General's lackeys," Alexandra said.
"I am not connected in any way with the Governor-General's office," Mr. Mudd said. "Good luck in your next challenge, Miss Quick. You'd better hurry, or you'll be late."
Furiously, Alexandra walked past the journalist and entered the elevator. She didn't know what to expect in the Mysteries challenge, except that Anna would probably be in danger. Alexandra desperately wanted to speak to her before the challenge began. The only thing more terrible than letting something happen to Anna would be if it happened before she could apologize — before she could somehow make things right.
The Mysteries challenge was in the New Amsterdam Arcanum Library, a marble building near the Governor-General's mansion. As the champions entered, a wizard in blue robes decorated with moon symbols directed them down stairs leading to the library's basement.
The basement was a large storage area, evident by all the shelves lining the walls and crates that had been stacked to the ceiling. Alexandra also saw stone urns and bronze sculptures, large picture frames draped with silk covers, and what looked like a sarcophagus. All of this was roped off, and further protected with a highly visible ward inscribed on the floor. Standing in the shadows, where it could almost blend in with the miscellaneous items around it, was a suit of black plate armor, holding a sword.
Even with part of the room filled with random junk, the free space that remained was nearly the size of Charmbridge's auditorium, and the Decathlon officials had erected a wooden stage in the middle of it. All of the special visitors who had been brought in to participate in this challenge stood together in a circle on the stage.
Anna was among them, along with Vanessa Lightwood's boyfriend in his BMI uniform, Awesome Blaze, Adela Iturbide, Hela's grandmother, Albert-Louis's little sister, Jonah Crawley's friend, a teenage girl in Salem Traditionalist garb like Rebecca Good's, a bald old Japanese man in a kimono, a plump witch with enormous hoop earrings and gaudy rings, dressed in colorful multi-layered robes adorned with bells, and half a dozen others.
Ringing the edge of the stage, standing unsupported, were empty wooden frames, like doorways without doors, one behind each of the companions.
A row of seats for the judges had been conjured and lined up a couple of yards back from the raised platform. Behind the seated judges stood a row of wizards wearing deep blue robes with cowls drawn over their heads, hiding their faces in shadow. Closer to the stage was a bookish-looking wizard in plain brown and gray robes. Alexandra wasn't sure if he was a judge, some sort of official, or just one of the New Amsterdam professors. He held a flat stone slab, like a figure out of one of those Old Testament stories Alexandra had been forced to read during her terrible summer at Vacation Bible School. He stood apart from the judges and the mysterious blue-robed wizards, and seemed to be looking at nothing in particular.
Professor Haster stood somberly, waiting for all the champions to line up at the edge of the stage, outside the circle of free-standing doorframes. Alexandra shuffled into place, looking unhappily at Anna, who avoided meeting her eyes.
"Today, there is only one event, as it may be the most intense challenge you face," said Professor Haster. He turned to the cowled wizards. "As is traditional, the Mysteries challenge is designed by Analysts from the Research Office."
"Spooks," muttered Vanessa Lightwood. She folded her arms.
One of the wizards in blue stepped forward. Standing at floor level, below the assembled Decathlon challengers, he faced them and spoke in a clear baritone, sounding almost friendly despite the sinister cowl concealing his face.
"It takes a special aptitude to uncover the deepest Mysteries of the magical world," he said. "For every Junior Wizarding Decathlon, we design a series of unique puzzles to be unlocked by the brightest young minds of the Confederation."
He held up a glowing sphere that reminded Alexandra of a snow globe.
"Each of you will venture through these doorways," he said, "to unlock a puzzle only you can solve. Each one is connected to the friend, family member, or loved one who has volunteered to participate with you in this event."
Adela Iturbide tossed her head and sniffed loudly enough to be heard across the room. Alexandra risked a glance at Larry; he appeared to be grinding his teeth.
As the wizard from the Research Office spoke, the other Analysts raised their hands, and all the companions of the champions began to emit a soft golden glow. The aura around each person seemed to gather near their chests and then extend from them, like bright golden tentacles which thinned to ropes stretching behind them, and then to threads that extended through the nearest doorway. As the golden threads passed through the frames, they disappeared, as if cut off by an invisible barrier.
"These threads will lead you back to your companion… if you can find the way." Beneath his cowl, the wizard's mouth turned up in a smile. He gestured, and the polished wooden surface of the stage turned dark, as if it were sucking in light. The people on the stage looked nervous, and Alexandra wondered how much they'd been told about their part in this challenge.
The Analyst who'd been speaking turned around and ascended the steps to the stage. When he reached the edge of the inky darkness under the feet of the volunteers, he held out the glowing sphere.
There was a flash, and then a whoosh of air. Like an afterimage burned into her retinas, Alexandra had the impression of everyone being hurled into space, where they hovered for a moment, suspended in a fuzzy amber-like glow, and then shrank, shrank, and shrank some more.
The blue-robed Analyst held his arm outstretched over the black pool of darkness. In his hand, the glowing snow globe was now flecked with tiny figures suspended in the bright light at its center. The golden threads terminating at each doorway all converged on the sphere of light.
Alexandra was not the only one who gasped when the Analyst released the sphere. It fell into the darkness, and kept falling, until it was a tiny speck of light.
Alexandra heard soft sounds, like whispers, coming from the stage now. She looked right and left, and saw from their reactions that the other champions heard them too.
"What have you done?" cried Rebecca. Even some of the judges looked nervous. But not Governor-General Hucksteen.
"Don't worry," said the Analyst, in a soothing voice that did not sooth them. "Your friends are all safe, placed within a sphere of protection that will preserve them beyond the Veil. The threads that tether them are indestructible."
Someone next to Alexandra — it might have been Vanessa, it might have been Albert-Louis — drew in a deep breath.
"Now go," the Analyst said. "Find the other end of the thread."
"What if we don't?" asked Hela.
The Analyst's smile was creepy, with his face hidden in the shadows beneath his cowl. "Fear not, we'll bring everyone back."
Alexandra walked with everyone else onto the stage, and traced the thread from where Anna had stood, now leading into the whispering darkness at one end, and an empty doorway on the other. Magnificent stood at the doorway next to hers, and just before he stepped through it, he said, "This is not righteous."
"No kidding," Alexandra said. She stepped through the doorway.
There was no sense of movement, neither the whoosh and dislocation of Apparition nor the yank in her midsection that she experienced when traveling by Portkey. This was some other mode of transportation. She wondered how the doorways had been created, and why such transportation wasn't used in more places.
Her curiosity vanished as soon as she realized where she was. She was standing in a cemetery. It was old and choked with weeds, abandoned to every appearance. Gravestones stuck out of the tall grass and brambles all around her. A few yards away was a rusty iron fence. Beyond that, she saw trees in all directions. The sun was overhead, so she guessed she was either still in New Amsterdam or somewhere not too far from there, but she couldn't see any buildings or signs of life, Muggle or wizard. Except for the wooden doorframe through which she'd come. It stood in the middle of the green and brown vegetation and forgotten headstones, upright and unsupported as it did in the Arcanum Library basement.
Alexandra looked down and saw, faintly visible in the daylight, a golden thread running along the ground at her feet.
Maybe this wouldn't so hard, she thought. But when she looked up, Richard Raspire was standing in front of her.
She raised her wand. The bald wizard shook his head, as if disappointed. "I wouldn't act too precipitously, Miss Quick." He held up a large pair of iron shears. They were enormous, crude things, black with age. But hanging off the intersection where their open jaws hinged was the golden thread Alexandra had been following.
He gripped the shears in one hand, while he held his own wand lightly in the other. "What my colleague from the Research Office said was not quite true. The threads anchoring the souls of your friends are indestructible to any mortal force. But, as I believe you know, there are Powers more ancient than the wizarding world. The Abhorred Shears were crafted by one of those Powers."
"What do you want?" Alexandra asked, still pointing her wand at him. It took an effort to keep her voice and hand steady.
"I want you to throw your wand aside," Raspire said. He wiggled the shears. "It won't take much. Snip."
Alexandra tossed her wand into the brush.
"The other one also," Raspire said. "No more tricks. No clever gambits, no hidden wands, no doggerel verse, no troublesome stunts."
Alexandra slowly reached into her sleeve and withdrew the yew wand, while Raspire watched attentively. She threw it into the bushes, a few feet from her hickory wand.
"All right," she said. "Do you want me to beg? You can do whatever you want to me, just leave Anna alone."
Raspire laughed. "Oh, you foolish child. You're such a vicious little thing, threatening and headstrong, so full of self-importance."
Alexandra said nothing, just kept her eyes on those shears, and the tiny golden thread dangling between them.
"You know, don't you, that you could be killed at any time? I know you believe you're protected by your father, but no one is unreachable, not even the Enemy of the Confederation, and certainly not his children. You've been an annoying, troublesome pest since you first entered the wizarding world, but until now, that's all you were. You were watched in case you might provide information about your father and his plans, but nobody really cared about you, Miss Quick. If you were ever deemed an actual threat, you would have been removed. Whether at Charmbridge Academy, or in Larkin Mills, or while you were living with your trashy black marketeer sisters in New England, or visiting the Kings at Croatoa, or even traipsing around the Ozarks, there's nowhere you're safe. Not you, not your family, not your friends. You haven't been touched because no one cared enough to do anything to you. Even after you escaped from Eerie Island — after you set free two of the most terrible monsters ever imprisoned in the New World — it was less trouble to keep it quiet than to let everyone know what sort of chaos you've unleashed."
Alexandra stayed silent, though her hands twitched. She composed verses in her head, even contemplated charging Raspire, but she knew in her head and in her heart that any such reckless action would be futile.
Raspire smiled with a satisfaction that made Alexandra wish him dead so powerfully, he surely would have died if her wand were in her hand.
"It's hard to bite your tongue, isn't it?" he said. "You want to threaten me, or try to bluff your way out of this, or at least make one of your sarcastic comments. That's what got you into trouble, you see. The last straw was when you taunted Elias Hucksteen with his dead daughter's name."
"I wasn't taunting him!" Alexandra protested. "I didn't even know who she was. She gave me her name!"
"Tell your story to someone who might believe you, someone who cares," Raspire said coldly. We don't know if you dredged up her name on your own, or if your father provided it to you, but now you've finally earned the Governor-General's personal wrath."
Alexandra felt herself beginning to tremble. "Then do what you want to me," she said. "But Anna isn't important either, is she? You don't need to hurt her." She was almost begging now. She hated herself for it. But she would beg, grovel, fall to her knees, if that was what it took to save Anna.
"Ah, but you see, the Governor-General doesn't want you hurt. He wants you broken."
Raspire closed his hand, and the shears snipped shut, severing the golden thread. Alexandra almost felt her own heart stop, and cried out as her entire body went cold. The thread faded into insubstantiality and disappeared.
"The fact that this will also break Geming Chu, who's been another persistent thorn in our side, is an added bonus," Raspire said. "Now return to the Arcanum Library, Miss Quick. Go ahead and peddle your persecution complex and conspiracy theories, if you want to. Tell the world that the Governor-General had your friend killed." He studied her face, and smiled with satisfaction as tears ran down her cheeks. "Most won't believe you, and those who do are the sort of troublemaking rabble who should fear us. Remember that this happened because you caused it. And remember that next time, it could be you, or your sisters, or your friends… anyone."
He reversed the shears in his grip, and lowered his hand. With a final mocking smile, he Disapparated with a pop.
Alexandra stood numbly for a moment, and then cleared her throat.
"You won't break me," she said hoarsely. Then she repeated it. "You won't break us."
She'd lost Max. She could never get him back. She'd done everything she could, but it hadn't been enough. She didn't have the knowledge, or the power. But she had to believe Anna wasn't gone yet. Raspire thought Anna was lost, but Alexandra had been to the Lands Beyond before, and she'd returned. She knew it was possible. And she knew a lot more now than she did last time.
I'm coming for you, Anna.
She retrieved her wands from the bushes, and then stepped back through the doorway.
The judges, including the Governor-General, still sat in the front row of chairs. The blue-robed Analysts, however, had ascended the steps to the raised stage and were gathered around the circle of darkness. Fifteen threads still stretched from doorways circling the stage into the darkness, but there was none leading from the doorway out of which Alexandra had emerged. The wizard who'd dropped the glowing sphere with Anna and everyone else into the darkness stood in her path, and demanded, "What have you done?"
"Get out of my way," Alexandra said.
Remarkably, he did. He stood aside and consulted with one of his colleagues while Alexandra removed her charm bracelet. When she stepped to the edge of the void, one of the Analysts said, "Stand back from there. You can't enter without the protection we gave them. You'll die."
"I know." Alexandra held the silver raven charm in the palm of one hand.
Please let this work, she thought.
She didn't attempt doggerel verse. She didn't pray, either, but she invested every bit of love she felt for Anna into the raven charm, and then held up her wand and tethered the charm to her. She couldn't recreate the golden threads the Research Office wizards had crafted, but she thought she understood a little about the magic that had created them, from books in Lucilla and Drucilla's library. She'd been exposed to the Lands Beyond before, had held an obol in her hand, and this wasn't her first time bringing someone back to the land of the living. It wasn't the same, and she was improvising as she'd never done before, but if it didn't work and she died, it would be better than living without having tried.
The raven symbol glowed softly, then rose into the air, trailing the tiniest of silver threads behind it.
"What…?" said one of the Analysts.
They started whispering excitedly, but Alexandra ignored them. She tossed the raven charm into the void, and it arrowed through the darkness toward the distant glow that was, she hoped, Anna, preserved along with everyone else who'd been sent through the Veil.
As the thread unwound, she realized the problem with her plan. Her charm might reach Anna, and if she hadn't badly miscalculated, she could follow the thread while remaining tethered to her. But who would tether her? How would she return to the living world? It wasn't as if she could just tie the other end around one of the doorframes. She had no idea how the blue-robed wizards had done what they'd done, and even if they'd tell her, there wouldn't be time to replicate it.
"Impressive casting," said the first Analyst, as if he understood what Alexandra was attempting. "But it won't work. I don't know how your friend's tether was broken. I'm sorry. But…"
Alexandra said, "If you can't help me, then leave me alone."
The man's mouth closed, and after a moment, he backed away.
One of the other golden threads disappeared. Magnificent stepped through his doorway. Awesome clung to him, looking shaken but unharmed.
"Well done, Mr. Blaze," said Professor Haster, who had listened without comment to Alexandra's exchange with the Analyst. "You're the first… er, to successfully complete the challenge."
Magnificent frowned, and came over to Alexandra, taking in her tear-streaked face and her wide-eyed resolute expression. "Yo, chickee, where's your girlfriend?"
Alexandra looked at him. "I need your help."
He nodded. "Anything I can do, right?"
Alexandra held up the end of the silver thread. It glowed against her palm.
"I can only return if I have a path back," she said. "I need you to provide that path. And keep anyone else —" she inclined her head toward the judges "— from interfering."
Magnificent frowned at all the other wizards. "I don't understand what you're doing, right? This isn't like the puzzle I had to decipher to find Awesome at all."
"It's a life connection," Alexandra said. "It anchors and connects two souls, and I think it will work with Anna, but I don't know about you, because it's not like we're close. But I think the more you care, the better my chances are. I know it's a lot to ask, but I need whatever you can give me. Prayers, thoughts, good wishes, whatever."
"I've got you, chickee." Magnificent took Awesome's hand. "Awesome will help too. He has a wicked crush on you, right?"
"Magnificent!" Awesome turned red.
"If you do, then embrace it, because right now, I need that," Alexandra said, looking at the younger Blaze. "You're still too young, and what you did was almost unforgivable. But this is your chance to actually help me." She handed the end of the silver thread to Magnificent. When he took it, it seemed to flow into him. As Alexandra watched, she saw with Witch's Sight the silver thread running through him to Awesome.
"I think this will work," she said. "Maybe." She turned back to the edge of the dark veil.
"It might," said the Analyst, who had been listening silently to Alexandra and the Blazes. "There are legends of such feats, but we've never actually recorded someone returning from an Orpheus Journey. I hope you succeed, Miss Quick, but you realize that if you fail, you will be lost forever along with your friend."
"Then I'd better not fail," Alexandra said. She plunged into the darkness.