Alexandra had seen places in the World Away that were dark and stormy, places that were bright and scorched beneath a strangely-colored sun, places covered with forests of giant mushrooms, and endless purple plains. She had never fallen into darkness before. For a moment she panicked, thinking she had sent herself and Lucilla into the Lands Beyond. There would be no return, not without an obol or a thread of silver to find her way back.
It was cold, but not like the Lands Beyond. There was no chorus of whispers from spirits of the dead, and when Alexandra looked around, she saw that there were stars.
Lucilla was still with her, though her hand was cold and limp. She showed no reaction to their situation.
They could not be floating in space in the darkness between stars, but it seemed to Alexandra that that was where they were. She opened her eyes further, hoping to see some glimmer of magic, or a crack she could open again, but there was nothing.
She opened her mouth. "Hello?"
Her voice was swallowed in an infinite space without echoes.
Panic and despair warred within her. She wanted to blame it on the Dementors, but both feelings were very real. Lucilla was helpless and gone. They were both lost.
She stared up at the distant stars, licked her lips, and began reciting an incantation that Forbearance had once used:
"Occident and Orient, Pole and Anti-Pole,
Stand at the four corners, of land and deep and shoal.
Lie they all beneath the sky; there is no war or love
That seen by night, evades the sight, of th'eternal Stars Above.
By ev'ry Power in the sky, by Earth and Sun and Moon,
By Romulus and Sirius, by Pluto and Neptune;
By Kesil, Ash, and Kemah, by Jupiter and Mars,
I call to thee, my plea: convene the Parliament of Stars!"
The voice that answered from the darkness was not one of the Stars Above.
"Well. Well. Well."
Striding out of the shadows, though there was nothing to stride upon, a great monstrous form with wings that stretched across the sky opened a maw with teeth longer than Alexandra was tall, and said, "Hello. Little girl."
Alexandra swallowed with a mouth gone dry. "Typhon."
Once Typhon had been merely a sphinx—a sphinx the size of an elephant, but still just a great beast. When Alexandra had freed him and his wife, Edna, from Eerie Island, they had disappeared into the World Away, and revealed their true natures. Alexandra had hoped she wouldn't see them again.
Typhon's laughter filled the universe. "Were you really trying to summon the Stars Above with that doggerel verse?"
"Not doggerel verse," Alexandra said, trying not to let her voice shake. "Ozarker."
"Bah." Typhon's eyes were tiny red baleful suns. "All your rhymes, all your verses, all your riddles, all your mortal wisdom, is a drop of spit. Your magic is all that makes you notable to any Power, and that's not much."
"Not much," Alexandra agreed.
Typhon's teeth came together in an enormous, triangular smile. "Now… however you came to be here, little girl, how will you return? For Edna and I have wandered in the darkness between the stars before, long and long, and it is tiresome."
"Aren't you Powers?" Alexandra asked. "What keeps you here?"
Typhon's teeth slid together like great grinding stones, and the sphinx ceased smiling. "We too are bound by ancient compacts. We cannot move between worlds. We can only be called or sent. We… need… you, you small things, to cross over."
"We would return," said a sibilant voice from the darkness. "But not to be bound in service to wizards as we were before."
Alexandra turned around, but though the back of her neck crawled, she could not see Edna, only the endless sea of stars surrounding herself and Typhon.
"We saw you open a crack in the world," Typhon said. "We heard the stars whispering about you and your petty power."
"The Stars Above?" Alexandra could hear sounds in the darkness, but they sounded more like chitters and rasps and slurps and gulps, the sounds of teeth clicking and scales dragging and tongues sliding… not at all like the whispers of the Stars Above.
"Do it again." The voice was Edna's, sharp and hushed. "Open the way and return us. We and all our children."
And Alexandra realized that she'd never been looking at stars at all. She was looking at eyes. A sea of eyes that blinked at her with ferocious hunger.
She was no longer able to gauge distance or direction or scale. Whether it was this unplanned tumble into the World Away to be confronted by her former jailers, or everything that had gone before it, she felt her sanity crumbling along with her courage.
"I… I couldn't take you back if I wanted to," she said. "There are no cracks here."
"You can!" hissed Edna.
"You will!" said Typhon, "Or I will devour you both, you and your nearly-soulless sister!"
The thought of Typhon and Edna and their thousand-eyed children being let back into the world made her shudder harder than the thought of being devoured. But then her mind seized on the last thing Typhon had said.
"W—What do you mean, nearly soulless?" she asked.
Typhon snorted. "Is the Confederation using Dementors now? It must go dire for them indeed. I at least only devoured the condemned. But this one placed a piece of herself elsewhere. A paltry mortal trick."
Alexandra drew in a breath. She felt the faintest glimmer of hope. "Yes," she said. "Her soul… a piece of her soul… help me follow it home."
"Help you?" Typhon growled.
"I need a silver thread," Alexandra said. "But if that's too fine a task for you, then… then let me be, and I'll work it out. Or devour us both, and stay here in the darkness between the stars."
Typhon's fiery red eyes opened wider and took on a brighter luminance.
"I am a Power of storms and I do not do fine work." His next words were a roar. "AID HER!"
"Shall I?" Edna sounded annoyed. Alexandra heard a sound like metal scratching grooves in stone. Serpentine coils, each one thicker than she was tall, undulated around her, encircling her. Reptilian green eyes shone down upon her, as if from a great height. "Trivial, trifling pretension of a Power, you haven't the eyes to see and you haven't the magic to do. I think you are wasting our time."
The snaky form descended towards Alexandra and Lucilla. Alexandra squeezed Lucilla's hand.
"Yet I freed you," Alexandra said, summoning her last reserves of calm. Only her death-grip on Lucilla's hand betrayed her fear, and Lucilla didn't react. "Here I am again, after breaking out of another place I shouldn't have been able to break out of. My sisters and I are pretty good at doing what we shouldn't be able to do. What do you have to lose? I've been to the Lands Below and the Lands Beyond and the World Away and I've always found my way back. I can find my way back from here, too. I just need… a little help."
Edna drifted closer. Her upper body was that of a beautiful naked woman, green and scaly, weaving about hypnotically. And behind her, her children chittered and howled and their thousand eyes blinked and glowed.
Edna reached out a hand and closed it over Lucilla's face. Alexandra tried to grab the scaly arm, but one of Edna's massive coils knocked her aside.
The snake-woman drew her hand back, with her fingers pressed together as if she were pulling a thread. And for a moment, Alexandra could see it—a faint trace of magic, almost like a wisp of steam curling out of Lucilla. Alexandra forced herself back to her sister's side, trying not to flinch away from Edna's sharp talons.
"Lucilla," she said. "Sister."
Lucilla didn't respond. But Alexandra could see the spider-thin tracery of magic connecting Lucilla to where she had bottled a tiny piece of her soul.
Of course, Alexandra thought. The house. The house with seven gables.
It was so far away—it might as well have been across the universe. But it was a place. It was real and there and Alexandra could feel it, a beacon of something in this endless nothingness.
"I will follow you, sister," Alexandra said.
"Follow her—and what of us?" asked Edna. "How does this help you open the way?"
"I'll show you." Alexandra put her arms around Lucilla, much as she had put her arms around Anna when carrying her out of the Lands Beyond. There was no crack in the world. They were somewhere beyond the World Away, and Alexandra was seizing upon the most fragile figment of all—hope.
"Show us—what?" Edna exclaimed, as Alexandra and Lucilla began to fade. Then Typhon's deafening roar obliterated all other sound. Alexandra closed her eyes. Lucilla didn't. Together, they fell out of the darkness.
They were not at the seven-gabled house.
Alexandra lay on a damp, chilly bed of leaves, wearing nothing but the cotton shift the jailers had given her. It was very cold here—she could see frost on the branches overhead.
It was also dark. The frost reflected moonlight. Alexandra struggled to stand. She was already shivering.
Lucilla lay on the ground at her feet.
"Lucilla," Alexandra said.
Lucilla's eyes were open, but she saw nothing. She didn't seem to care about the cold, and didn't respond when Alexandra shook her.
"Lucy," Alexandra said. "I'll… I'll fix you, Lucy. We'll restore you. Me and Drucilla and Father, with Livia's help…"
Lucilla was empty; there was nothing behind her vacant eyes. Alexandra threw her head back and wailed her grief, then covered her face in her hands, and only when the cold seeped deeper into her bones did she drop them and force herself to think about survival. It was always easier to focus on solving an immediate problem.
She had no wand. She had nothing but the clothes on her back.
And Charlie. She pulled the shift down off her shoulder, and called Charlie forth. The raven flapped and cawed in agitation before settling on her shoulder, with talons digging into her unprotected skin. She barely felt it.
"Troublesome," Charlie said, in a mournful tone.
"Ch-Charlie," Alexandra said. Her teeth were chattering. "Fly. I need to know where we are. We need to find… someone. Anything."
"Fly, fly," said Charlie, and took off.
Alexandra disliked sending Charlie into the night. Ravens were not night birds, and owls were. But she couldn't drag Lucilla through a forest, which was all she could see around her.
She scooped leaves and wet branches together, trying to make a pile, then said through teeth clenched together to keep from chattering:
"Double, double, toil and trouble,
Let blood burn and anger bubble,
I'll return with vengeance dire,
But first make a proper fire."
The leaves ignited, moisture blasting off of them with cracks and pops, and then the whole mound of damp vegetation burned with unnatural bright flames.
Alexandra dragged Lucilla closer to the fire. Lucilla remained indifferent to heat or cold. Alexandra squatted by the flames, head bowed, cold and miserable and with a heart full of rage and grief.
Charlie had to fly high to see any lights. They were deep in the wilds, somewhere even more sparsely inhabited than the Ozarks.
Alexandra shivered. The fire barely warmed her.
Maybe I can try to call my father with doggerel verse. A little more of her spirit broke at the thought. He'd told her not to ask him for help again, and she'd agreed.
She looked at Lucilla, a death-like corpse in the moonlight, a corpse in all ways except that she still breathed.
For herself, Alexandra would freeze to death out here before calling her father again, but for Lucilla, she would swallow her pride, even kneel before him.
But she didn't have so much as a pocket mirror or a token to call him with. It was said Abraham Thorn could hear his name on the wind. If he hadn't completely hardened his heart to her, would he hear his daughter?
She focused on the fire. Brigitte Jumeau had told her even the wandless could turn pain into magic, and Alexandra knew that wizards in ancient times had used fires to communicate.
"Abraham Thorn," she said. "Father."
She held out a hand, and thrust it into the fire.
The flames licked at her skin. She couldn't cast a Flame-Freezing Charm without a wand. The pain became intense immediately.
"Father!" she said, trying to transform her pain into a spell. Would he be able to hear her? Did he need a fire near him?
Her skin began to blister. She didn't move. "Father!" she cried, as tears streamed down her face.
She was still a witch. Magic would protect even fools and children. But she had never tried to deliberately hurt herself like this before. If her father didn't answer, her flesh could still burn. Yet she persisted. "Abraham Thorn! Hear your last-born! Father—please!" Her voice was a scream of pain now.
The wind whistled around her, and distantly, she heard Charlie cawing, returning to her.
A hand grabbed her wrist and yanked it out of the flames. The relief was so overwhelming, Alexandra was breathless for several seconds. The air was cold and she knew she'd feel the burns soon, but for a few seconds the mere absence of pain was a blessing.
"Father?" she gasped.
The voice that answered was not his. "I doubt he can hear you. He is in Texarkana. There is going to be a great battle."
It was Hela standing over her. She released Alexandra's wrist.
"I thought Colonials prohibited such magic," she said.
Alexandra jumped to her feet, and almost fell down again. The light from the fire flickered against Hela's dark features.
"You aren't mocking my furs now, are you?" Hela said. She was wearing her fur parka and a long coat underneath, with fur-lined sealskin boots. She looked at Lucilla, and stepped back in horror. "What happened to her?"
"The Dementor's Kiss," Alexandra whispered.
Hela's eyes showed whites in the moonlight. She muttered something in her language, and then turned slowly to Alexandra once more.
Barefoot and covered only in a plain robe, with her hand throbbing in pain, it took the last of Alexandra's willpower to stand there and speak without shaking.
"If you want payback," she said, "you'll never get a better chance."
Alexandra couldn't see what thoughts were turning over in the other witch's mind. Hela had her wand in her hand. Alexandra had nothing.
Finally Hela said, "It is not time yet. You haven't done what you're meant to do."
Alexandra coughed and shivered. "What's that?"
At that moment, Charlie descended from the sky and landed on Alexandra's shoulder.
"Crazy! Crazy!" said the raven.
"Shh. It's fine, Charlie. It's fine." Alexandra put her blistered hand up, and almost pressed her familiar back into her skin, never taking her eyes off Hela.
Hela shook her head, and pointed her wand. Alexandra tensed, but Hela spoke in the strange consonants of her language, and Alexandra was suddenly wrapped in furs that smelled as if they had very recently been worn by their original owners. Lucilla, too, was draped in wolf skins, and looked even wilder and stranger, a gaunt specter crouched in front of the fire, like something out of a horrific fairy tale.
Hela reached into a pouch under her parka. "Give me your hand."
Alexandra held out her burned hand. Hela uncorked a small bottle and poured a thick viscous oil onto it. Alexandra recognized the unguent, one of the first things she'd learned to make in Mr. Grue's alchemy class. She rubbed it on both sides of her hand, trying not to let her relief show.
"How did this happen?" Hela asked. "How are you here?"
"I was sent to The Castle, and I… escaped. With Lucilla. How are you here? How did you find me?"
"I tracked you. It was not easy."
"I don't understand… weren't you with Blake?"
"I was. Then I returned to Larkin Mills, at your father's request. I spoke to Mrs. Wilborough first. She called you, and then I tried to call you, and then you vanished…" Hela sighed. "I am tired, Alexandra. You make things very difficult."
"Where are we?"
"Almost in Hudson Territory."
"I need to return Lucilla home."
"Home? Do you mean the hidden house, in New England?"
"Yes." Alexandra nodded. "I don't suppose you can Apparate that far?"
"No." Hela reached down and effortlessly lifted Lucilla to her feet. Lucilla didn't resist, and remained standing.
"Let us walk," Hela said. "Lead your sister and follow me. We can travel quickly, until we encounter Muggles, but you must follow closely. It is not quite like your Seven-League Boots, but I have my own way of covering great distance in the wilds. I think I can get us as far as New England, and from there, we will find your sister's house."
Alexandra took Lucilla's hand, which was cold and clammy. Lucilla's face was expressionless, and her eyes were hollow. But she was able to walk, and she followed mindlessly as Alexandra pulled her along. They walked after Hela, who led them through woods that seemed darker and deeper the farther they walked. In the distance, wolves howled.
They walked until Alexandra could barely keep walking. She forced herself to keep going and not show weakness. Lucilla seemed tireless; Alexandra thought she could probably keep walking until her feet wore out.
They finally stopped when they found a highway in their path.
Hela scowled. "We can go no further. It is very hard to bypass Muggles nowadays. They cut through everything, what they haven't paved over."
Alexandra recognized the highway. They were near the town with the submarine base. They had crossed leagues and several Territories, not as quickly as with Alexandra's Seven-League Boots, but farther than anyone could have walked in one night.
"How did you do that?" Alexandra asked.
Hela shrugged. "When allowed to go my own way and follow the world, it takes me where I wish. Sometimes."
Another time, Alexandra would have found this interesting and wanted to know more. Now, she said only, "We have to go a little further. Those marshes across the highway, if we go through them we'll find Lucilla and Drucilla's house."
"Very well," Hela said.
The ground was cold and sodden, and the temperature was biting cold, though there wasn't yet any snow. Even through her furs, Alexandra shivered, but she didn't ask Hela to cast a Warming Charm. She glanced at Lucilla now and then, for signs of discomfort, or recognition, or anything, but Lucilla remained an empty shell capable of walking where she was led but not much else.
As they trudged through the uneven terrain that led to the Whites' home, Alexandra asked, "What did you mean back there, about what I'm meant to do?"
Hela didn't answer.
Alexandra persisted. "You said it like you've heard something, or you know something."
"I've heard many things, Alexandra. I know many things. Isn't tearing down the Confederation what you want to do? Especially now?"
Alexandra clenched her teeth. "Yes. But… what does this have to do with what I'm meant to do? Do you know something about my prophecy?"
Alexandra thought she'd refuse to answer again. But finally, Hela said, "They say it is what you were born for."
Alexandra felt a chill unlike that caused by the cold. It was the same thing John Manuelito had said to her.
"They, who?" she demanded.
"They say," Hela said quietly, "that you were meant to die, to end the Confederation. So you can see how many in the Dark Convention have certain ideas about what is to be done."
Alexandra stopped walking. "But not you?"
Hela turned slowly to face her, with a hard expression. "I am not in the Dark Convention."
"Your people…"
"Like your father, my people make allies of convenience." Hela's voice was flat. "I was told that prophecies are unreliable, confusing things, easy to misinterpret. According to my elders, the only fool greater than one who tries to escape her fate is one who thinks she understands it."
Alexandra wasn't sure what else to ask, or what Hela might know that she hadn't said, but she suddenly became aware that Lucilla was still walking… on her own.
"Lucilla?" Alexandra said.
Lucilla shuffled through the mists and the mud like a zombie, but this was the first time she had done anything at all other than breathe in and out and occasionally blink, without being prodded by Alexandra or Hela. Hela, wide-eyed, backed away from her.
"Lucilla," Alexandra repeated. She followed Lucilla, without touching her.
Ahead of them, rising like a ghost in the mists, was a large shadow that slowly took the shape of a great, gabled house.
"Lucilla," Alexandra said again. "We're home. Do you recognize it? Can you say something, Lucy? Please?"
Lucilla walked to the porch, at which point Alexandra realized that her sister might be about to walk into a house full of ghosts and poltergeists and Boggarts and Dementors. Then she laughed bitterly. What could they do to Lucilla now?
This only unnerved Hela more. "What is she doing?"
"We're here," Alexandra said. And then realized that of course Hela couldn't see the house because of the Fidelius Charm.
Lucilla was slowly stepping up onto the porch, and Alexandra hastened to catch up to her and grab her by the shoulder, when the door opened. Alexandra instinctively reached for the wand she didn't have, and then gasped.
Drucilla stood in the entrance, as pale and gaunt as she had been less than a day earlier. Her eyes and mouth were wide open as she stared at her twin.
"Lucy!" she cried out, and rushed forward to pull Lucilla into an embrace. Lucilla simply stood there, arms hanging loosely at her sides, and yet, as Alexandra stared, she thought she saw… something.
Drucilla turned to Alexandra. Always the more reserved of the twins, Drucilla looked like death warmed over, and to see her breaking down into sobs twisted Alexandra's heart even more.
"How?" Drucilla asked.
"We escaped," Alexandra said. "I brought her out, but…"
"That's impossible," Drucilla said. She shook her head, and then with one arm, grabbed Alexandra to sweep her into a hug as well. "Oh, my foolish, reckless sister, what have you done?"
Alexandra struggled to hold back tears, and found she couldn't. "I tried," she said, in a small voice. "I tried to save her. I thought I had a plan. I didn't know… I didn't know about the Dementors…" Her voice choked.
They stood like that for several long moments. Then Drucilla stepped back, still with a hand on Lucilla's arm. Lucilla had stopped trying to move forward, but for the first time, her head moved slowly side to side.
"Who is this?" Drucilla asked at last.
Alexandra turned to Hela, standing a few yards away. Hela was watching the three of them in suspicion and confusion. She couldn't see the house, so Alexandra supposed it looked to her as if Drucilla had simply appeared out of nowhere and they were having this reunion in the middle of a marsh.
"This is Hela," Alexandra said. "She's been working with our father. She brought me here. She's…" Alexandra hesitated. Her eyes met Hela's. She could read nothing there. "She's a friend."
Hela's expression didn't change. Drucilla said, "Well." She took a breath. "Hela, if you'll take my hand, I'll let you into the house."
Hela frowned, and walked forward cautiously.
"I don't suppose you have a wand?" Drucilla asked Alexandra.
Alexandra shook her head.
"Well, we'll have to get you one. I started cleaning out the house, but I'm barely in shape to handle a simple Boggart myself, and I haven't dared go too far inside. We left the house haunted, of course, but it should have been easier for either one of us to exorcise it if we ever came back, but…" Drucilla looked at Lucilla, and her voice choked.
"Drucilla, I'm so sorry," Alexandra said.
"This wasn't your doing."
"I'm not so sure. I think… I think they did this to Lucy because of me."
Drucilla, still holding Lucilla's hand, took Hela's hand in her other. She gave Alexandra a bleak look, and the four of them walked inside.
The front entrance was as Alexandra remembered it. Candles were lit, but the interior of the house was dark. Hela didn't look particularly spooked, but she was wary. "There are spirits here," she said.
"There are worse than that," Drucilla said. "And we'll have to purge them all before we can find what's left of Lucilla."
It was the first thing Alexandra had heard that gave her the slightest glimmer of hope. "She—she's not gone?"
Drucilla wiped at her face with the back of her hand. "We never anticipated this, certainly not… not Dementors. But there's a reason I came back here immediately. Before we left for Europe, we left a little piece of ourselves here."
"A piece of yourselves?" Alexandra asked.
"Our souls." They moved through the front sitting room. Drucilla had a wand—Alexandra supposed she must have stashed one away, just as she had stashed away a piece of herself. "We put a piece of our souls in the house itself. It's a very old spell, and not one we'd ever tried before, for obvious reasons. It's hard to find reliable accounts of anyone doing it within the last four hundred years. But it was an insurance policy we hoped might save us if… if something happened."
"A piece of your souls?" Alexandra stared at Drucilla, and then Lucilla.
"That is Dark magic," Hela said.
"You know that there's really no such thing as 'Dark magic,' right?" Drucilla said. "So-called Dark magic isn't some different and special kind of magic. It's Dark because we call it Dark. It's a moral judgment, not a mystical property. But I know what you're thinking. We didn't sacrifice anyone or take any other lives for this ritual. The Spiritus Loci spell endangered only our own souls. And… it might just save Lucilla's."
Alexandra was wary with every step into the seven-gabled house. She told Drucilla about her previous encounter, while Hela listened with dismay.
"Foolish girl," Drucilla said softly. "You're lucky you made it out at all. Don't worry, I've cleared the Boggarts out of these first few rooms. Well, I think so. Be careful opening cupboards."
"What about Lucy's, um, boyfriend?"
Lucilla was still silent and slack-faced, but Alexandra was encouraged that her eyes moved about. She didn't respond to Alexandra's words, but Drucilla did. "Boyfriend? Do you mean Jack?"
"Whatever his name was. He, um, apparently he killed himself after Father put a curse on him."
"He's the one who sold us out," Drucilla said. "Lucy actually brought him here, the fool." She shook her head and gave her twin a disapproving look that immediately melted into grief again.
"Well, apparently now he's haunting this house. I Banished him, but he'll probably be back."
"I'll make him wish I only Banished him," Drucilla said. Tears ran down her cheeks. "Dementors, you said? That shouldn't have happened, but it's probably a side effect of the Spiritus Loci spell connecting the house to us, when we were confined in The Castle…" She closed her eyes and shuddered.
Alexandra was disquieted by the realization that Drucilla, despite keeping up a steady stream of conversation, was obviously not all right, and struggling to hold herself together.
Hela said, "I am not going to fight Dementors. I don't know the Patronus Charm, and that is the only thing that can kill them."
"Actually, Doomguards can kill them," Drucilla said.
"They can?" Alexandra said.
"That was their original purpose. But a corporeal Patronus works too."
"Is your Floo still working?" Alexandra asked.
"It should be."
Alexandra grinned. It was all teeth and no humor. "Then let me return to Larkin Mills, and I'll be back… with my wand, and a corporeal Patronus. And then…" Her expression turned darker. "We're going to see about those Dementors in The Castle."
"We're going to do what, now?" Drucilla said.
"Later." Alexandra watched Lucilla. "Tell me about this Spiritus Loci spell. Can it really restore Lucilla?"
"It's not that simple." Drucilla sounded weary. "Preserving a piece of our souls in the house left a little piece of Lucilla that wasn't destroyed by the Dementors. You can see that she's become somewhat more…"
"Alive?"
"Yes. She's still not here, not really, but a piece of her is, and with a recast Spiritus Loci ritual, we can transfer the piece of her soul that's in the house back to her body." The anguish in Drucilla's voice matched her expression. "She'll never be the same, Alexandra. And she might not be able to leave the house. At least, not for a while. Maybe not for a long time."
"But she'll be alive," Alexandra said. "And… she'll be her again."
"Not entirely. But she'll be… more than this."
Lucilla still showed no more awareness of the discussion around her than a piece of furniture.
"Dark magic," Hela muttered again.
Drucilla ignored her, but Alexandra said, "It was Dark magic that did this to her." She glared at Hela, wanting to call out her hypocrisy, but she really wasn't in a position to do so, and she had been through too much and owed the other girl too much. Hela avoided her gaze.
"I'm going back to Larkin Mills," Alexandra said. "You can come if you like, or stay here. Whichever you prefer."
"I prefer to return to Larkin Mills," Hela said.
They encountered a Boggart in the sitting room where the Floo fireplace was located. Drucilla saw it first, and Alexandra saw a Dementor, before Drucilla pointed her wand and said, "Riddikulus!" and the Dementor turned into a cartoonish ghost with a squiggly tail, before vanishing. Alexandra found it heartening that Drucilla could banish Boggarts so quickly—she wasn't sure if she would be able to right now, even with a wand.
"You'll be okay here by yourself, just for a little while?" Alexandra asked, as she opened the canister of Floo Powder.
"Lucy and I will be fine," Drucilla said.
"You won't go Dementor-hunting by yourself, or anything else foolish? Jack won't be able to hurt you if he comes back?"
Drucilla actually managed to smile. "Our reckless little sister urging caution and worried we'll get into trouble without her." Her voice faltered. "Do come back quickly, Alexandra. I will need your help."
"Just as long as it takes to get my wand," Alexandra said. She threw the powder into the fireplace and said, "207 Sweetmaple Avenue, Larkin Mills."
She had only been gone for a day. It felt like it had been a lifetime. Green powder settled on the rug and furniture as Alexandra and Hela stepped into the living room.
Hela looked around with curiosity, and did not seem impressed by what she saw.
"You just left your wand in this house, where any Muggle burglar could find it?" she asked. "Or an Inquisitor? I don't understand why the Confederation never bothered you here."
"It's a long story," Alexandra said. "But we definitely don't need to worry about Muggle burglars. If you want to stay here…"
"I do not." Hela paused. "I will stay with you. You seem determined to keep running about doing reckless things, and you will probably need help again."
"Is this still about doing what my father told you to do, or your elders?"
"Yes. It is duty. Something you do not understand."
"I understand duty," Alexandra said, but Hela interrupted her.
"No. You do not. You understand loyalty, and responsibility, and vengeance, and sacrifice, and many other things. But you do nothing out of duty. You do whatever you think is right. Some might find that admirable." Hela shrugged. "You would tell me, go home because my people need me more than you do, and I have no reason to keep taking orders from your father. You would not be wrong, but I have a duty to perform, and I will do it unto death."
"Whatever," Alexandra said. "Wait here. I'll be back down in a few minutes."
"One more thing," Hela said.
Alexandra already had one foot on the stairs up to her room, but she paused and turned around. Hela looked as out of place and uncomfortable as ever, standing in the middle of Alexandra's living room in a thick arctic parka and wrapped in furs.
There was something in her eyes, like suppressed wrath, or controlled fear, or both, when she spoke again. "We are not friends."
They stared at each other, and Alexandra could feel Hela trying to hold her gaze steady. Even now, when she had a wand and Alexandra was defenseless. But before Hela looked away, Alexandra nodded. "Yeah, okay. I can live with that."
Upstairs, she first shed the furs Hela had conjured, and took off the shift she'd been given in The Castle and dropped it on the floor as if it were soaked in bubotuber pus. She put on regular clothes, then pulled out the ladder that gave her access to the crawlspace above her room, and found the yew wand where she'd left it. It snarled in her grasp, as if resentful at being abandoned. Alexandra flicked it experimentally a few times, and winced when she cracked the mirror on her wall and shattered the light bulb in the ceiling, while paint blistered around the room. She waved the wand and spoke incantations for repair charms, but only managed to melt the shattered bits of mirror glass back into place and smudge over the cracks in the paint.
She pointed it at the pile of discarded clothing on the floor and cast a Vanishing spell that made them explode into nothingness with a cloud of smoke and a sulfurous stench.
She came back downstairs. Hela had moved only a few feet from where she'd been standing before. At first Alexandra thought she was staring at the refrigerator, and then realized her head was bent over and she was holding her phone.
"Might want to put that away," Alexandra said. "I'm about to do magic."
Hela glanced at the yew wand in Alexandra's hand, and slipped the phone back into a pocket.
Alexandra pointed her wand at the floor and said "Defodio!" Hela stepped back further as Alexandra blasted a hole and made it bigger. She stared with disbelief as Alexandra tunneled down into the dirt, making a terrible mess as the yew wand cooperated with the destruction much more willingly than it had done anything constructive.
At last she reached her buried backpack, and Summoned it to her. She tucked the yew wand down the front of her shirt, and took the black hickory wand out of her pack. It settled into her hand like a friend that had missed her, and Alexandra began cleaning up the mess. Hela just watched, without offering to help.
When she was done, Alexandra said, "All right. Let's go back to Lucy and Dru's house."
"You are not going to call Mrs. Wilborough?" Hela asked. "Or your boy?"
"I have… responsibilities, to both of them," Alexandra said. "But I have a duty to my sisters. That's what I'm going to attend to right now. And then…." She closed the distance between them with slow, measured steps, until she was face to face with Hela. "We're going to talk about vengeance. I've got some more of that to dish out, and I want your help. Whether it's loyalty or duty, I don't care. You down for that?"
Hela nodded slowly. "I am… down."
