"It was so obvious," Alexandra said. "I never saw him actually cast a spell."
Brown's threats and bullying had always been physical, such as when he'd backhanded her in the office of the Pruett School. Whenever she drew her own wand, he quailed and blustered.
"Those teacups you carried around," she said. "Those were Portkeys. Because you can't Apparate, or even take the Floo by yourself." She shook her head, feeling stupid that she hadn't figured it out before.
Franklin Percival Brown slowly pulled himself to a sitting position on the floor, surrounded by pizza boxes, takeout sandwich wrappers, and soda bottles and beer cans. He was a bedraggled mess, and from the smell of him, he hadn't showered recently either. Alexandra and Hela exchanged looks, and then stared down at the enormous man, who had tears running down his face.
"So what happened, Mr. Brown?" Alexandra asked. "Did you get fired from your job as an Accountant, and kicked off the Confederation Census?"
"It wasn't my fault!" Brown blubbered. "I can't be held responsible for every minor discrepancy! That's why we implemented redundancy plans and—" He cringed as Alexandra's wand crackled.
"Redundancy," she said slowly. "Is that what you call it when you kill an extra child in case you don't meet your quota?"
"It's not nearly that simple," Brown said. "We were given complicated actuarial tables to follow, and selecting proper candidates was as much art as science—"
"Feordupois," Alexandra said, through clenched teeth. The Deadweight Spell slammed Brown onto his back with another thud. He whimpered as he lay immobilized, unable even to lift his head.
"What happened?" Alexandra repeated. "Stop justifying yourself or telling me how killing kids was just your job. Why are you here, hiding from the wizarding world?"
"They said I was guilty of malfeasance," Brown said, in a weak, trembling voice. "They said… that I, I, Franklin Percival Brown, submitted a false report and almost triggered an accounting error. But that's a perfidious lie! I did not!"
"So you screwed up." Alexandra's rage was back, and it felt good. Hela, for once, was silent. "You killed my friend. Is that what triggered your 'accounting error'?"
"I don't know what you mean," Brown whimpered.
Alexandra walked around his massive belly, until she was pointing her wand down at his face.
"Bonnie Seabury," she said. "Do you remember her?"
Brown's eyes widened in his large, round face.
"She was my friend," Alexandra said. She focused on her anger to block the tears. "She was innocent. She was just a little girl, and you killed her, you fat fuck. You killed her to get at me."
"No," Brown said. His entire body trembled now. "That's not true."
"Don't lie to me!" Alexandra screamed. Brown twitched, and even Hela jumped. "You killed a Muggle girl who had nothing to do with the wizarding world, just because she was my friend!"
"S-she ap-ppeared on my tables," Brown stammered. "She was an appropriately qualified… an appropriate…" His eyes became even more huge, as Alexandra's face turned red. And then her wand crackled and popped and Brown screamed, though Alexandra hadn't cast a spell. In the sheath she kept tucked up the back of her shirt, her mother's yew wand was reacting to her anger. The air itself turned red and had a charred smell.
"Was that your screw-up?" Alexandra asked, while she struggled to quell the yew wand and make her hickory wand stop being pulled by the other wand's influence.
"No," Brown said. "It was the other one with which they said I erred. The boy."
"The boy?" Alexandra was confused now.
"The… the boy who was a student at that ill-conceived training ground for Muggle-born bad seeds…"
"Roger." Roger Darby, whose name had been missing from the Deathly Register she'd brought to her father. "What do you mean you erred?"
"I didn't! I took him where he was supposed to go! I don't know what happened!"
"Where he was supposed to—?" Alexandra clenched her hickory wand in her fist, but her yew wand growled again, and Brown screamed. Blood spurted from his nose.
Hela watched her uneasily.
"How did a Squib become an Accountant?" Alexandra asked, trying to calm both herself and the yew wand. "Why would you do that, when your father was Muggle-born? What sort of sick bastard are you, that you were willing to sacrifice children?"
"The sacrifices are necessary!" Brown cried. "If we do not hold back the forces of pagan antiquity, unspeakable horrors will erupt upon the wizarding and Muggle worlds alike! And prudent pruning of the population is—"
"Prudent pruning…?" Alexandra raised her wand. Brown whimpered. "Do you live here alone? Do you have any surviving family?"
"None," Brown gasped.
"Good," Alexandra said. "Because I'm about to end the Brown line."
Hela looked away.
"No, please!" Brown's voice was tremulous and panicky. "You don't understand, I performed a useful and necessary service for the community that only a select few—"
"Say their names," Alexandra said.
Brown's mouth flapped open. "What?"
"How many kids did you kill?" Alexandra asked. "Can you remember any of their names?"
He stared up at her, terrified.
"I'll give you two." Alexandra's hickory wand purred in her hand, its underwater panther whisker core resonating with her anger and vengefulness. At her back, the yew wand, also imbued with the power of an underwater panther, was growling, ready to be called upon to smite. Alexandra pointed her black hickory wand at Brown's face. "Roger Darby, and Bonnie Elizabeth Seabury. Say their names."
Brown was silent, and Alexandra ignited his beard. He screamed. "Say their names!" she yelled.
"R-r-r-roger Darby and B-b-bonnie Elizaspeth Seabub-buh-buh-bury!" he stammered. "Please, please don't do this!"
"Did they beg?" Alexandra asked. "Did they know what you were going to do to them? Did you enjoy it?"
Brown was writhing and twitching as his beard burned, trying to raise his hands to slap out the flames, but the Deadweight Spell kept his arms pinned. Alexandra wanted to watch the fire consume his face, but something twisted in her gut. Disgustedly, she flicked her wand and extinguished the flames.
Brown quivered and moaned. "Please, please, please…"
"Shut up," Alexandra said. "Just shut up."
Brown continued whimpering, his face wet with tears and blood and snot, while his beard smoked.
Alexandra tried to call back the rage she'd felt before. It was still there, deep and unsatisfied and waiting for release, and here was its cause, a monster who killed children, who'd killed her friend.
She raised her wand again, considering all the spells she could use. A Lightning Spell. A Severing Charm. She could strangle him, poison him, impale him, set him on fire, turn him inside out, transform him into an ant and step on him, the possibilities were endless. He was helpless and at her mercy, and he deserved to die. If anyone she'd ever faced deserved to die, it was him.
A Killing Curse, she thought. Might as well do it right.
"Whatever you're going to do, hurry up," Hela said. "It smells bad here and I want to leave."
Alexandra fixed her eyes on Hela, who took a step back.
"Do you have a problem?" Alexandra asked.
"No," Hela said.
"Why don't you do it, then?"
Hela frowned.
"This is what my father sent us to do," Alexandra said. "Kill the Accountant."
"Noooo!" Brown screamed.
"You are the one who wanted vengeance," Hela said.
"Yes," Alexandra said, "but my father also wants to see that you can do what you're supposed to. Can you?"
She couldn't, Alexandra realized. Maybe Hela could transform a hag, and unleash a dragon on hapless Muggles, and she was an underhanded, backstabbing little sneak, but she had probably never gotten her hands dirty like this. Neither had Alexandra, but Hela didn't need to know that.
"Do it," Alexandra said, as if issuing a command. She gestured at Mr. Brown. "Kill him."
"Please, please, please, please…" Brown begged.
"You kill him," Hela said. "Your father sent us to do this. It's your job."
"You can't do it," Alexandra said. "You're useless to me. You're useless to my father too. Get out."
Hela's mouth opened. For a moment, Alexandra thought she would argue. Then Hela looked at Brown again, and her nose wrinkled. Without another word, she stalked out of the room and up the stairs.
Alexandra turned back to her captive.
"Any last words?" she asked.
She thought about curses, about afflicting him with boils and blisters that would never heal, about chopping off his fat fingers, about shaving his entire head and then conjuring worms to dig into his scalp, or dragging him naked out of the house and dumping him on the freeway. A hundred tortures and torments, and that was only the beginning of what he deserved.
Crucio, she thought, and almost said the word. She could cast the Cruciatus Curse on him until he was mindless.
She just stood there for a long minute, listening to Brown mewl and whimper and plead. Then with a scream of rage she whirled and blasted the entertainment center apart. She sent the pizza boxes flaming across the room. She animated the couch and sent it running into the wall, and made it unravel into an enormous pile of loose thread. Every beer can and soda bottle in the room simultaneously compressed flat with a collective whoosh of air, and when Alexandra waved her wand again, the house shook and cracks appeared in the walls.
Brown blubbered in terror.
Breathing rapidly, Alexandra gripped her wand and glared at Brown again, eyes blazing with fury.
They stared at each other for a long time. Finally, Alexandra turned away.
"It's not so easy, is it?" said a voice from the corner of the room. Alexandra jumped and spun around, to face a shadow that seemed to have emerged out of nowhere. She stared at the old woman leaning on a cane. Ancient, wrinkled, sleepy-eyed, dressed in baggy black robes, she was as unimpressive and disarming a figure here, in this unexpected place, as she'd been when teaching at the Pruett School.
"Madam Erdglass?" Alexandra said.
"Madam Erdglass?" Brown repeated. He struggled to lift his head, but couldn't. "Madam Erdglass, is that you?"
"What are you doing here?" Alexandra asked the old woman.
Madam Erdglass smiled. "Your father sent me, to check up on you."
"My father?" Alexandra stared, even more confused.
Carmela Erdglass stepped over a smoldering pizza box and slowly shuffled over to stand on the other side of Franklin Percival Brown. Brown, able to see her now, began pleading with her. "Madam Erdglass! Thank Merlin you're here! You can see what an appalling predicament I'm in, assaulted and ambushed in my very own home by this lawless, renegade sorceress in service to the Enemy of the Confederation! For all the heavenly Powers, Madam, save me from this mad witch—"
"Sshhh," Madam Erdglass said, and Brown fell silent as if he'd lost the power of speech.
Alexandra was still staring at her. "You… you're a member of the Thorn Circle?"
"Well," Madam Erdglass said. "In a manner of speaking."
"How can you be?" Alexandra asked. "The Wizard Justice Department knows all their names!"
Except they hadn't known Mrs. Wilborough's name. Had Carmela Erdglass been a member under some other name? But she was ancient… she'd been working for Central Territory since before the Thorn Circle had existed.
Madam Erdglass smiled, as if reading Alexandra's thoughts.
"You don't quite have the right of it, dear," she said. "You see, I've been an enemy of the Confederation much longer than your father."
"Please, explain this to me," Alexandra said. "If you know my father, then you know I'm always finding out things I should have known a long time ago that adults have been keeping from me, and I really hate it."
The old woman chuckled. "I had nothing to do with any of that. The first time I ever laid eyes on you was your appeal hearing. That was something you brought upon yourself, now wasn't it? Just like that bit of trouble you got into the last time, over Franklin." She looked down at the helpless Mr. Brown, her expression placid and unreadable.
"I brought that on myself? Getting sent to Eerie Island? While Mr. Brown was killing children for the Deathly Regiment? And you knew!" Now Alexandra had a new focus for her fury, but Madam Erdglass was unmoved.
"Yes, I knew," the old woman said. "I did what I could to protect you, Miss Quick, but you don't make it easy."
"What about protecting the other kids!" Alexandra demanded. "What about… what about Roger?"
"Yes, Roger." Madam Erdglass nodded her head slowly. "It took some skullduggery to save him."
"What?" Alexandra gasped, while Mr. Brown's eyes looked as if they would bulge out of his face, though his mouth still made no sounds.
Madam Erdglass looked down at Mr. Brown. "I'm afraid I'm the cause of your misfortune, Franklin. You see, when you thought you'd collected Roger… well, I interfered."
Alexandra's eyes became almost as wide as Brown's.
"Then I had to send him and his family away, of course," Madam Erdglass went on. "I couldn't have the Accounting Office finding them again. It required unscrupulous craft, I'm afraid. Roger's parents are a perfectly lovely couple, but they didn't quite grasp the gravity of the situation. It's hard for Muggles to understand the wizarding world and I didn't really have the time or wherewithal to educate them, so…" She shrugged. "I gave them an overwhelming desire to go hide themselves, and a bit of advice to Roger, about avoiding attention."
"You Imperiused them," Alexandra said.
"You sound so indignant. Considering your situation, perhaps you shouldn't be so judgmental."
"What about Bonnie?" Alexandra asked, her voice almost breaking.
The old woman's face softened. "I'm sorry, dear. Truly I am. But there's only so much I could do. I can't save everyone. I'm no more omniscient than your father is."
"But you're working for my father."
Madam Erdglass chuckled again. "It would please him to think so. But I've been playing a very long game, Miss Quick. Longer than your father's been alive." All humor faded from her expression. "Since I lost my daughter to the Deathly Regiment."
Alexandra's mouth opened, though she didn't know what to say.
"It was a very long time ago," Madam Erdglass said, and now the only outward sign of feeling was the way her gnarled hands tightened their grip on her cane, and her distant expression. "When I found out the true cost of preserving the Confederation, I swore that I would end it." Her gaze focused on Alexandra again. "That was the grandiose ambition of a foolish, grief-stricken mother. I was quite mad for a while, but eventually I realized that ending the Deathly Regiment was well beyond my capability.
"Oh, I had ideas, schemes, plans for vengeance. But I'm no revolutionary. I'm not a leader, or a strategist. I'm just a very patient woman. I became a little cog in the machine, a tiny fly in the ointment. I might have caused a bit of trouble over the years. A little meddling here, some sabotage there, all waiting, watching, biding my time.
"And then along came your father, Abraham Thorn. I admit, I didn't think much of him at first. He wasn't the first reformer to turn revolutionary. Charismatic, zealous men draw followers and talk grandly, but how many really accomplish anything? I'd seen it before. But your father turned out to be different. My, he stirred things up! I realized he actually knew what was what, and moreover, he seemed to have a plan and the ability to do something about it." Madam Erdglass smiled. "I didn't make myself known to him at first. Not until after he was already the Enemy of the Confederation. And I was never a member of the Thorn Circle. No one else knew about me, not even your father's closest confidantes. So when the Thorn Circle was broken up and went into hiding, only your father knew that I was still hiding in plain sight, still doing my little part, in the belly of the beast. And when you came along, and then gave up the Thorn Circle to the Wizard Justice Department… well, my name was never known to any of them but Abraham. I've been waiting patiently, and this is the first time your father has asked me directly to intervene."
"How did you know I was here?" Alexandra asked.
"Why, from Mr. Bagby in the Census Office."
Alexandra frowned. "Why did my father send you?"
Madam Erdglass looked down at Mr. Brown. "I know what he sent you to do. But he suspected that you might not be ready to kill in cold blood."
Alexandra made a choking sound.
"Don't feel badly, dear," Madam Erdglass said gently. "It's nothing to be ashamed of. I assure you, your father isn't going to think less of you. He has plenty of confidence in you. But he sent you to commit murder. And you aren't a murderer, are you?"
"Not murder," Alexandra said. "An execution."
Mr. Brown shuddered.
"An execution, then," Madam Erdglass said. "You're quite a fierce little thing. Both of you are. He told me about her, too." She indicated the upstairs, where Hela had gone, with her cane. "Could you kill someone who's trying to kill you? I think you could. But slaying a hapless, sniveling wretch who doesn't even have magic of his own? No, Miss Quick. You are not an executioner. I guess the other girl isn't either. It's harder than it seems, isn't it?"
Alexandra didn't look away from those deceptively sleepy eyes, though she was glad Hela wasn't here.
"So, Franklin, what are we going to do with you?" Madam Erdglass said. "You really are a terrible man."
Brown made a strangled sound through whatever spell Madam Erdglass had put on him.
"You kill children," Madam Erdglass said. Her voice became low, and there was nothing kindly about it now. "You steal their futures. You take from them everything they'll ever be or could have been, and leave an empty hole that will never be filled. And you do it because someone made a note in a ledger somewhere. Oh, you were told tales about Indian warlocks and monsters from the Lands Below, but you didn't do it for the greater good, or because it gave you some sense of pride that a Squib like you could serve a useful purpose. You did it because you're a nasty little man with a tiny soul, like all those scurrying, scuttling functionaries carrying out evil a little bit at a time and telling themselves they are doing what must be done. The Confederation needs blood and souls to remain hidden in this world, all those Colonials living pretty little lives with their children… and that was a job you were happy to do. No one cares why you did it, Franklin. Certainly not I."
Madam Erdglass lifted her cane, and set it lightly on Brown's nose. "But," she said, "I am not an executioner either."
"He deserves to die," Alexandra said.
"Don't ask me to do something you won't," Madam Erdglass said.
Alexandra did look away then.
"But I am going to end his life, in a manner of speaking," Madam Erdglass said.
Franklin Percival Brown's entire body shuddered, and then he shrank. His hair stiffened, shortened, and turned bristly as his skin wrinkled, just before he disappeared inside the enormous folds of his T-shirt and bathrobe. For a moment, there was just a squirming lump covered with terrycloth. And then a startled squeal filled the room.
A fat, pink pig emerged from under Brown's clothes, looking dazed.
Carmela Erdglass leaned over and patted the pig on its head. It raised its snout and gazed around with confused, porcine eyes.
"There's a good piggy," said Madam Erdglass. "I daresay you might be a much better pig than you ever were a man. Come along, Franklin. I'm going to take you home and give you a bath." She walked toward the nearest wall, and the pig followed her.
"Wait," Alexandra said. "What are we supposed to do?"
Madam Erdglass looked over her shoulder. "Do try not to burn down the school before class starts, won't you?"
She and Franklin the pig disappeared, leaving Alexandra alone in the ruined basement.