Alexandra walked upstairs. Hela was examining the refrigerator, holding her wand as if she suspected something in it might attack her. She turned around quickly when Alexandra appeared.

"Did you do it?" Hela asked. "Did you pass your father's test?"

"We were both being tested," Alexandra said.

Hela's expression was dark and apprehensive. "You're a murderer now."

Discovering the other girl wasn't as cold-blooded as she seemed gave Alexandra no satisfaction. It was merely a reflection of her own weakness, and she didn't understand Hela's sudden qualms.

"We're done here," she said. "I'll see you back in Larkin Mills."

Hela scowled at her, then wordlessly Apparated away.

Alexandra followed her with seven-league strides. She didn't bother going to the Pruett School to see if she'd beaten Hela back. Instead, she returned to Sweetmaple Avenue.

She checked the alarums and wards around her block, and again the ones around her house. She entered it, stood in the threshold, and cast a spell to activate all the protective charms. Then she went upstairs to her room and collapsed onto her bed, brooding about her failure, and imagining Bonnie's ghost haunting her, demanding vengeance.

When she felt a presence behind her, she didn't look up. Only one person could bypass her father's wards.

"I couldn't do it," she said. "You knew I'd fail."

"You did not fail," her father said.

"Didn't I?" Alexandra rolled over. Abraham Thorn wore his usual black cloak over black robes. It was odd to see him here in her bedroom. As far as she knew, this was the first time he'd set foot inside the house.

He gave her a grim smile. "I knew you wouldn't be ready to apply yourself to other tasks until you had avenged yourself against Franklin Percival Brown. I understand the need to settle scores, Alexandra. Believe me, I do."

"But you knew I wouldn't have the guts to do it."

He sighed. "There are many things you lack, my child—wisdom, experience, perspective, sometimes discretion and tact—but certainly not 'guts.' There will come a time when you must kill, and I will ask you to do so, when refusing is not an option. But you were not prepared to murder a helpless Squib in cold blood."

He leaned forward and took her hands, pulling her to her feet.

"You have been quite judgmental about my willingness to sacrifice others, including innocents. It didn't surprise me that you balked at murder. Don't mistake me. You are capable of it. But you haven't been brought to it yet. I'm glad for that, but you will have to overcome your aversion."

It was ironic—she had failed to do something she'd wanted to do, and which her father had asked her to do, and he was trying to comfort her for her failure. She didn't feel like she'd proven anything or passed a test. Quite the opposite. It was as if she'd just proven all her juvenile fantasies about being Dark Queen Alexandra had been just that, the grandiose delusions of a little girl who didn't know anything.

"So now what?" she asked.

"Now," he said, "I would like you to begin learning things you couldn't learn in school, or even from Lucilla and Drucilla. I have a great deal to teach you, Alexandra. Had we the time for a proper apprenticeship, I would put you on the path to greatness, but unfortunately, we have a war to fight. But I want you—I need you—by my side. You said you were ready to commit to this course. Are you still?"

She raised her eyes to meet his. "Yes."

"You will still remain here, in Larkin Mills, when you are not with me or performing some task. Larkin Mills is special—here, you are protected from both the Confederation and the Muggle authorities."

"I didn't feel very protected when Ms. Shirtliffe grabbed me, or when Richard Raspire almost killed me right on the front lawn."

"Indeed. You will have to be more careful. Still, one of the most formidable wizards in the Confederation died, struck down by a Muggle firearm. I think the spells I placed on you and Claudia and your home had something to do with that. Though perhaps, like Richard Raspire, I merely underestimated my own daughters."

Alexandra shook her head. "It would have been nice to know about this supposed protection before."

"How would it have helped you? More likely it would have encouraged your recklessness."

"If I'm going to be helpful to you, don't you think it's time you started explaining things to me, instead of keeping secrets I only find out about years later?" Alexandra knew she was pushing her luck—her father didn't like it when she challenged him. But his expression didn't change. He nodded slowly.

"Larkin Mills has some protection as well," he said. "Mostly because of its connection with you. I have taken certain actions to deter any more attempts on your life."

Certain actions, Alexandra thought. Abraham Thorn had worked hard to make his name feared throughout the Confederation, and if that had helped protect his children, it had also cast a terrible shadow over them.

"What about the Dark Convention?" she asked. "Why did they want me? I thought they're your allies."

"I've told you before, the Dark Convention is a chaotic collective, everyone with their own agenda. I'm allied with them only insofar as I can persuade some of them to cooperate. I've also taken action to… discourage their more radical elements.

"As for the Muggle authorities—they are aware of you, but whatever Mary Shirtliffe was up to, I think it was on her own initiative. I am still unsure which agencies within the Muggle government she was in contact with. Muggle bureaucracy is even more complicated than ours. They have a department for dealing with wizards that has long cooperated, after a fashion, with the Governor-General's office, but I am now in communication with certain other officials. They are aware that the Confederation is shaken, and I have made sure they are fully aware now of the Deathly Regiment, and what it means for them. They're hedging by talking to both of us, but I'm sure the Muggles would prefer to stay out of the affairs of wizards and see how our conflict resolves itself. They may be watching you, but they know better than to harm you."

"This is pretty confusing," Alexandra said.

"Indeed. You thought a wizard war would involve finding an enemy and smiting him? Sometimes it is that. But you've only ever seen my more overt activities, not the many years I've spent forging relationships, gathering information, cultivating allies and agents, weakening my opposition, sowing seeds and preparing the ground. That is what we call politics, my dear. It is less exciting than your adventures, perhaps, but sometimes equally dangerous."

"So what do you want me to do?" Alexandra asked uncertainly. "Politics? I don't think I'd be very good at that."

"On the contrary, I think you could be very good at politics. But that is for another day. What I need you to do now is to master the magic you command when you step in and out of the World Away."

"I've never found any instructions. Are you going to teach me?"

"I cannot do what you do," her father said seriously. "But we are going to learn together."

"How does this help us bring down the Confederation?"

"We'll discuss that once you're closer to being able to do what we need."

Alexandra was tempted to ask if he meant what we needed or what he needed. Her father was still—still—only sharing what he had to, and still using her. She didn't doubt he actually cared about her. She was sure that wasn't all a lie. But the attention she was suddenly getting from him was because he saw her as a more valuable asset in his war.

She was okay with that.

He held out his hand, and she took it. After all these years, she finally had her father's undivided attention. He was going to spend time with her, teaching her magic and making her great. It was in service to his own ambitions, and there was always more that her father wasn't telling her. She should have been angry or resentful, but she felt like she had more to prove than ever, and a Confederation to bring down.

Alexandra and her father stood on the shore of small, gray lake. Though it was August, the sky was dark and the wind was stirring the water. They were somewhere farther north than Chicago. No human habitations were in sight, but there were many, many cracks in the world, radiating away from this otherwise unremarkable lake. Cracks like the ones she'd opened to free Typhon and Edna from Eerie Island, and to slip in and out of Storm King Mountain. Her father had done something to the weather, and she could see more cracks flashing in the sky.

"Every storm carries something terrible in its heart," he said. "Something more powerful than any mortal, even a wizard. Do you see it, Alexandra? There is a reason that tales of crossing between worlds often happen during storms. Somehow…" He looked down at her, and she felt valued and appraised at the same time. She knew she was more than a weapon to him, she was his daughter also, but she could not tell which held the greater importance. "Somehow you can do what you do even without a storm. I am not sure I can do what you do even with one."

"Can you teach me to summon storms like this?"

"No one can summon a storm. You can only call them, and see if they answer."

"What's the difference?"

"Later, my dear. Today, you will teach me. Open your cracks in the world."

She opened them repeatedly, giving her and her father many different glimpses into the World Away. They saw a red desert scoured by roaring winds. In the distance was a great city that gleamed like brass in the sun. Through another crack was an endless black ocean. Another showed a poisonous brown sky above a mud-covered land in which enormous, slimy beasts with long necks and flipper-like limbs crawled about.

Other cracks showed only blinding brilliance or utter darkness. Alexandra began to realize how lucky she'd been that she'd survived her previous jaunts to the World Away and back.

"Not only luck," her father told her. "Whatever gift you have protects you in the same way children and idiots are protected when they first do magic."

Alexandra wasn't flattered by this comparison, but her father continued speaking as he conjured floating spheres that acted like crystal balls looking into each place she had opened in her experimentation.

"Wizards have known that there are worlds beyond ours for ages," he said. "All those tales of other realms, places beyond the Veil: Elfland, the Lands Below, Valhalla and Elysium, Hades and Xibalba, are just places we've glimpsed and occasionally visited."

"Wait, Hades and Valhalla are real? Does that mean Thor and Zeus are real too?"

Her father smiled. "Powers are real, as you know. Muggles called them gods for lack of a better term. And they told fanciful stories about them, based on what kernels of truth filtered to their world, just like the stories they tell of witches and wizards and other magical beings. You know how accurate most of their stories are." His floating crystal balls floated like tiny worlds in themselves.

"Most of them look pretty terrible," Alexandra said.

"Indeed. The great Arithmancer and natural philosopher Kemal ibn Fayed al-Shamza calculated that there are exactly 667 worlds, including ours. No more, no less." Abraham Thorn rested his fingers on a globe shining with brilliant sunlight that made it resemble a glowing fruit. He spun it, and something like a continent took form within. "Others dispute Kemal ibn Fayed's calculations, and have argued that that is merely the number accessible from this world. Some contemporary wizardly scholars, integrating Muggle physiks into their disciplines, hypothesize that everything you call the World Away is in fact one realm, one world, of infinite variety. Esteemed Supreme Mugwump Albus Dumbledore believed that there are actually infinite Worlds Away—it was one of the last papers he published before he passed on."

"Uh huh," Alexandra said. "How does this help us?"

Her father smiled. "Ah, Alexandra. How little you know how fascinated I was with such theories when I was younger. Had I the temperament for it, I might have become a professor rather than a politician. You have something of my curiosity and ambition for knowledge, but you are more hard-headed and pragmatic—like your mother. She also was less interested in knowledge for its own sake than what ends we might put it to."

Alexandra held her tongue. Her father rarely spoke about her mother, so she didn't want to interrupt him. But she was disappointed when that seemed to be all he was going to say about Hecate.

"How does this help us, indeed?" he went on. "You're aware that I gained the ability to travel to the Lands Below, thanks to the obol you brought back."

"Thanks to Max's sacrifice, you mean," Alexandra said in a low voice.

"It wasn't the price I intended to pay," he replied, meeting her gaze. "But even that price only allows a few of us to slip back and forth, and not anywhere at any time."

It was good enough to sabotage the Wizardrail, Alexandra thought, but again she didn't interrupt.

"If you can hold open a crack in the world and let others pass through it—as you did for Harriet Isingrim—you will make it possible to pass through any barrier, take our friends and allies to safety no matter where they are, even provide refuges from the Confederation."

"Like the World Away that the Ozarkers want to go to," Alexandra said. "But I don't know how to find the world they want to go to. If it's one of 667, it's going to take me a long time to find the right one. And also, what I did with Harriet, and at Storm King Mountain—I didn't know what I was doing, really."

He nodded. "You've done a lot of magic at an impressively early age when you didn't know what you were doing. And how did you come to command it with more skill and control over time?"

Alexandra looked at the floating crystal balls again. "Practice."

"Indeed." He pushed a ball at her. The view inside was pastoral, with purple grass and silver trees. "We are going to practice, you and I. We're going to practice until you can open a way for us and hold it open long enough for us to march an army through."

"An army?" Alexandra exclaimed.

"Of sorts. Do you remember the Doomguards on Eerie Island?"

"Of course I remember them! I spent months—okay, fine, weeks—being followed by one 24/7, knowing it would cut my head off if I tried anything. Those things are like Terminators."

"Terminators?" Her father smiled at the unfamiliar word. "An apt term. I suppose you could call them that. Well my dear, though I know you may not be eager to go back to Eerie Island, that is where we will go, after you've had more practice opening these 'cracks,' as you call them. And with your help, we're going to liberate its remaining prisoners… and all those Doomguards."

Thunder rumbled in the sky as the storm finally burst overhead. Alexandra turned her face up into the rain, and saw something dark flashing above the clouds, like a great, terrible shape casting lighting off its wings.

Opening cracks in the world was difficult, every time. Her father was patient, in a way Henry Tsotsie had been, but also demanding, in a way Henry Tsotsie hadn't been. Henry hid things from her that were private, but he taught her for her benefit. There had never been any self-interest in his taking her on as an apprentice. Her father, on the other hand, hid things from her until he thought she needed to know them, and his tutoring was entirely self-interested. Or rather, in the interest of his campaign against the Confederation, which suited Alexandra because that was her cause too, now. Still, though he never berated her for her failures or called her weak, she couldn't help feeling she was disappointing him. She'd never felt that way with Henry.

She already knew that opening a crack in the world for more than a few moments required more magic than she could muster on her own. It depended a great deal on factors she'd learned from the books her father had given her—"alignment" and "orientation" and "aspect" and other terms that meant totally different things when applied to the art of geomancy. She had more control over the cracks in Larkin Mills, particularly around Old Larkin Pond, because she had become affined to that place. She had witnessed the great Unworking of the Ozarkers and so been able to manipulate cracks in the world while infused with all their years of stockpiled magic. With luck and determination, she could force herself through a seam between worlds, and perhaps drag someone else along, like the hapless Harriet Isingrim. But going to some strange place and tearing open a rift that would stay open for others wasn't something she could do without help. Or preparation.

After many days of practice, she was getting better. She and her father visited a world of endless ice and glaciers, haunted by giant faceless humanoids. They stepped into, and immediately out of, a world of fire and bubbling acid, protected only by the charms her father had cast beforehand. Then, once Alexandra was able to repeat the experiment three times successfully, he brought Medea along as they walked across a black-pebbled beach beneath a sky with many stars but no moon, beside a waveless ocean.

Alexandra still didn't think she could hold open a crack long enough to march an army through.

In the evenings, she sometimes visited Brian, and sometimes spoke to Claudia, who had finally softened Archie to their sisters' proposal. The four of them were making plans to flee America and join Valeria in France. Claudia still wanted Alexandra to come along, though Lucilla and Drucilla had given up trying to persuade her.

They were going to leave in the first week of September, taking a plane to Europe. Alexandra wanted to visit and say good-bye, but told herself it would be too dangerous, for her and for them. The real reason was that she just didn't want to say good-bye, and she also didn't want to explain to Claudia and Archie what she was doing with the Thorn Circle.

She would visit them in Europe someday, she told herself. After the war was over.

Just a few days before the Greens and the Whites were to leave America, Alexandra's father told her they were ready to assault Eerie Island. She didn't feel ready, but she didn't argue. She would do whatever she had to; they had a Confederation to tear down.