They're alright. Black mist only touched a few blocks near the lake
I'm really glad, David
A lotta people died
I heard
So… u staying with ur parents now?
No
Did u fix their memories?
No
So… what r u gonna do?
David?
Alexandra wanted to call David a jerk when he stopped responding, but he didn't need any more grief from her, and she wasn't the one to give him advice about dealing with estranged parents.
She was worried about her own family. Claudia and Archie were safe, and so were Lucilla and Drucilla as long as they stayed in their house, but Livia's family was still in hiding, and Julia and her mother, like the Whites, were effectively confined to their home.
Julia, in the one phone call she managed before the island's pay phone stopped working, sounded as if the sparkle and cheer that usually carried across hundreds of miles of phone lines had been flattened out of her voice, and it worried Alexandra so much that she almost set off for Roanoke Territory in her Seven-League Boots. But if the Kings had been left alone so far—if pureblood privilege and fear of Abraham Thorn had kept the Governor of Roanoke from threatening them—a visit from an Enemy of the Confederation might change that.
She busied herself walking the perimeter of Larkin Mills casting wards and Repelling Charms. Tomo and Madam Minemata had only spent a little time teaching her the charms the Majokai had cast on Mahomachi, and the Majokai had been protecting Mahomachi for generations. Alexandra knew she couldn't do nearly as much by herself. But it was a start.
Hela helped, sullenly tracing and marking crossroads and walking deosil in opposition to Alexandra's widdershins circles.
She had mostly avoided being accosted, though Brian told her that sightings of her in Larkin Mills had been reported on the Internet. She couldn't get used to the idea that she was "famous" now. She was more worried that there had been one death and one disappearance in the last week attributed to little men with red caps.
Now she was looking for Redcaps herself. Brian had not reacted well when Alexandra tried to dissuade him from hunting them. He'd said some angry things about what she thought "marking" him meant, and accused her of making up the MACUSA. The screech his car's tires made when he left her house had caused Mrs. Wilborough to pull back her curtains to peek disapprovingly across the street.
Alexandra had left a message for Anna, again, requesting that the MACUSA send someone to Larkin Mills. Then she'd put on her Seven-League Boots and headed for Old Larkin Pond.
Redcaps were supposed to haunt battlefields, especially where wizards had died. And Alexandra knew of only one such place in Larkin Mills.
The pond, and the town's plans to build a golf course, had been abandoned. The area had been called haunted for years. Some of that was Alexandra's doing, but now Sergeant Ridenour told her that even the police hated having to go near the old pond.
Alexandra walked under the underpass and across the field at dusk, the best time to encounter sinister creatures. It was December and the first snow of the season was falling. Charlie flew ahead, not very happy about the cold.
Alexandra had her wand at the ready, but it wasn't a Redcap who confronted her as she trudged across dead brown grass towards the iced-over pond. It was a ghost.
"You!" howled the ghost in anger. He drifted over the grass, nearly transparent in the gloom. He wore tattered robes and a hat with holes burned in it, and his face looked pocked and scarred, and probably had been even before he died. He wasn't wearing a ROC uniform, so Alexandra assumed he had been one of the Dark Convention's warlocks.
"Why are you haunting this place?" she asked.
"Because I died here, you stupid twat," the ghost warlock said. "This is your fault!"
Alexandra pointed her wand at him. "Call me a twat again."
The ghost called her that and a few more names. Alexandra cast a Banishing spell that sent him billowing into the aether with an outraged howl. She immediately regretted letting him goad her—she wanted to ask a few questions.
"He's right, you know." A second ghost appeared even as the first one vanished. This spirit wore a ROC Mage-Captain's uniform.
As Alexandra pointed her wand at him, he said hastily, "Not about… what he called you. But about this being your fault."
More spirits gathered. A surprising number—Alexandra had not seen this many ghosts outside of Roanoke and Mahomachi.
Charlie descended from the sky to land on her shoulder, and the ghosts as one backed away from her.
"Wicked," Charlie said.
"Excuse me, but I didn't ask for the Dark Convention to attack Larkin Mills," Alexandra said. "If a bunch of warlocks want to kill me, how is that my fault? I'm really tired of being blamed for stuff that happens just because I'm still alive." She glared particularly at the Dark Convention ghosts, which seemed to be most of them. They glared back at her with ominous, scowling faces.
The Mage-Captain said, "I don't mean that either. I mean the fact that we're here."
"What, haunting Old Larkin Pond? I'm sorry you died, but I didn't kill you, and you should have passed on. If you chose to stay, that's your fault." When the Confederation was still functioning, Alexandra thought, the Bureau of Hauntings would have already relocated them elsewhere.
"What do you know about it?" demanded a ghostly witch with facial piercings and half her skull shaved. No, it wasn't shaved—Alexandra realized with a shudder that half her skull was missing.
"Ignorant brat!" spat another ghostly witch, who could have been mistaken for a hag except that her face was too pale and her teeth and fingernails were too small. "You know nothing of why we're here!"
"I can make you go somewhere else," Alexandra said, brandishing her wand. "You're here because you intended to kill me and the people of this town, so I'd be more respectful if I were you."
"Troublesome!" Charlie said, with a sound that was almost a cackle.
"The world's not right," said another Regimental Officer, glowering at her while trying to hold himself together. He'd literally been split in half, and whenever the ghost stopped wrapping his arms around himself, his body started sliding apart with a messy squishing sound. It was both disgusting and fascinating.
"Yeah, tell me something I don't know," Alexandra said. "Like why are so many of you haunting this place? And where are the Redcaps?"
"You probably brought them here too," one of the angry witches said.
"So much death," the bisected ghost said as his top half slid messily askew, splitting his face and neck and chest open. He pulled himself back together.
"I. Didn't. Do. This," Alexandra said, jabbing her wand at them to punctuate each word. Some of the ghosts flinched. Others just continued to glower at her.
"Yes. You. Did," retorted the witch with the partially missing skull. "You didn't kill us. But we wouldn't all be haunting this place if not for you."
"How?" Alexandra demanded. "How is this my fault? What did I do?"
"Ask yourself that question," the Mage-Captain said.
Ben Journey, Simon Grayson, Absalom Thorn, and every other ghost Alexandra had ever spoken to had been vague about details of the afterlife and only gave out information reluctantly. Ghosts seemed to be unhelpful by nature, but Alexandra tried again. "Why did the Dark Convention want me dead?" She looked at the warlocks and witches who outnumbered the ROC ghosts. "You were allied with my father, but you tried to kill me—why?"
"You have to die," said a tall, bearded warlock wearing a wide-brimmed black hat. His knuckles were covered with many rings that glittered ethereally. "The Great Work to set free all ills, release the shackles upon us and break the Deathly Regiment once and for all can only happen with your death."
Alexandra scowled. "Says who? What shackles? What are you talking about?"
"It's your prophecy," the spitting witch said. "Why don't you ask your father?"
"Ask what you were born for," said the bearded warlock.
Those words again. John Manuelito had said them, and so had Hela. She wanted to retort that she had asked her father, but she didn't want to give them the satisfaction.
"If you won't help me, and you won't tell me anything useful, then I'm just going to start Banishing you," she said. "I'll send you away to bother some other place."
"Colonel Shirtliffe said you were your father's daughter," the Mage-Captain said. "She was trying to protect you, you know."
"Well, she did a crappy job. And I'm tired of cryptic comments that tell me nothing. Say good-bye to the living world." Alexandra turned her wrist, preparing to sweep her wand forward in a Greater Banishing.
"We'll help you find the Redcaps," the Mage-Captain said quickly. "At least, Mage-Lieutenant Thickerson and I will." He pointed at the ghost who'd been split in half. "But you have to help us."
"Help you do what?" Alexandra asked.
"Move on," the ghost said.
Alexandra lowered her wand. "How am I supposed to do that?" She thought of Ben Journey, still trapped, so far as she knew, at Charmbridge Academy. "I can't control your fate." She didn't even know if ghosts could move on.
"The Deathly Regiment," the ghostly Mage-Captain said. "Now that the Thorn Circle is interfering with it, things are happening on the Other Side. And we cannot move on."
"What, like the doorway to the afterlife is closed?"
All of the ghosts had stopped wailing and waving their fists in agitation. Now they stood glum and pale, fading with the light of the setting sun.
"A crude metaphor, and not exactly right," said the ghost of the Mage-Captain.
"But now we're trapped by the Deathly Regiment," said the warlock with the black hat. "Thanks to you and your father."
"The Deathly Regiment only ends when you do," said the nasty hag-like witch.
Alexandra shook her head. "None of that makes sense. We're trying to end the Deathly Regiment…"
"Try harder," said the bisected Mage-Lieutenant, forcing the halves of his head back together so that his lips could form words again. He still sounded like he was sputtering. "Nothing will be right until you do."
All the ghosts began fading.
"Don't haunt Muggles!" she shouted as they became insubstantial shadows, then the faintest of outlines, and then nothing. "Or I'll Banish you all!"
She stood in an empty field. She looked around, wondering if there were Redcaps hiding here, watching her. But no, Charlie would have seen them, and the ghosts would probably have scared them away.
"Troublesome vexes, Troublesome woes," Charlie said.
"There's more to that than Troublesome knows," Alexandra said. "And it's really starting to bother me. I need some answers, Charlie."
"Clever girl," Charlie said.
"We'll see." Alexandra let Charlie stay on her shoulder as she trudged home through the snow.
Not for the first time, Alexandra questioned her decision to set off on her own. She wasn't sure anything she was doing was making Larkin Mills safer. Her father saw the big picture and had plans he'd never shared with her, and she knew the Thorn Circle was weakening the Confederation, day by day. Yet wasn't the Deathly Regiment still happening, day after day? Why couldn't Abraham Thorn stop that? Why hadn't he told her what they needed to do to stop it?
Mrs. Wilborough was no help, she couldn't talk to Drucilla or Lucilla, Anna was rarely able to answer her phone, and David… Alexandra wasn't sure what David was doing. Her other sisters would just tell her to come join them in hiding. Brian didn't really understand magic. This left her only one person to talk to.
Hela had resumed sleeping in the Pruett School, in what had once been Alexandra's studio on the third floor. Alexandra found her there the next morning, eating something that looked raw and bloody.
"Are we putting more wards around the town today?" Hela asked. She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. Her lips were smeared. "I don't think we can make this place like Mahomachi."
"Not yet," Alexandra said. "But I don't think we're the first. Haven't you noticed that there were wards already here? I think maybe my father has been protecting this town since my mo-Claudia and I first came here."
She had first noticed wards in the neighborhood around Sweetmaple Avenue two years ago, with her nascent Witch's Sight. She had never actually asked her father about the significance, assuming that it was part of the magic he'd also placed on the house where his daughters lived.
"You said you're good at necromancy," Alexandra said.
The other girl's large forehead wrinkled. It was a touchy subject, given how their joint necromancy ritual in New Amsterdam had turned out.
"What necromancy do you wish to do?" Hela asked.
Alexandra told Hela about the ghosts at Old Larkin Pond.
"I know no more about the Deathly Regiment than you do," Hela said. "I do not understand what they mean. But ghosts should not linger on this side. The Confederation has always been too tolerant of them. You think they are the shades of the persons they were in life, but they are all accursed souls with too much wickedness to pass over. We'd be doing them a favor by Banishing them properly."
"What else would keep them from moving on?" Alexandra asked.
"Sometimes a spirit can be held against its will. That is very Dark magic. To hold so many, would be a greater feat than I think any wizard is capable of."
"But not greater than what the Deathly Regiment is capable of."
Hela frowned. "I don't understand why the Confederation would do that."
"Neither do I. But I think it's more important than ever that we end the Deathly Regiment."
Hela's expression was unreadable. Perhaps she thought Alexandra was a fool. Perhaps she thought Alexandra was stating the obvious. Perhaps she knew more than she was saying.
"Tonight, we should return to Old Larkin Pond, and talk to the ghosts and see if they can help us find those Redcaps," Alexandra said.
"Better we should Banish the ghosts and find the Redcaps ourselves."
"We can Banish them afterwards. Or help them move on."
A country music ringtone echoed in the large room. Hela looked at the far windowsill, where her phone sat, away from her fur parka hanging by the door and the cauldrons lined up on a shelf.
"Seriously?" Alexandra said. "Is that Billy?"
Hela said nothing, while the phone continued playing the country song.
"Are you going to answer that?" Alexandra asked.
"Are we done talking?" Hela asked.
"Whatever." Alexandra walked back downstairs.
The problem of the Deathly Regiment still bothered her. It was still counting off its deadly toll, every day, Accountants and Estimators still "balancing the figures"…
Alexandra paused. The Thorn Circle was killing Accountants, but what about the people who did the work in the Accounting Office, the ones who did all that calculating and decided who should die?
"Why haven't you burned the Accounting Office down?" she asked aloud, though she doubted her father was listening.
The Central Territory Accounting Office was in the Headquarters Building, in the middle of Chicago. The Thorn Circle had destroyed New Amsterdam Academy and the Governor-General's Mansion, in the middle of New Amsterdam. No doubt the Central Territory Headquarters Building was heavily protected now that the Confederation was at war, but her father could still have struck there, especially with…
"Madam Erdglass," Alexandra said aloud again.
She went home and took out her magic mirror. Setting it on the counter, ignoring its flattering reflection, she waved her wand and said, "Imago, Imago, Carmela Erdglass."
Nothing happened. Alexandra supposed it was too much to hope that Madam Erdglass had her own magic mirror.
Next she called David. He answered immediately.
"Wassup?" he asked, trying to sound jaunty.
"Where are you, and what are you doing?" she asked.
"Jeez Mom, I swear, I'm not hanging out with any bad kids. I promise I won't stay out late."
"Funny, dork. But seriously."
There was a pause. She thought he'd come back with another wisecrack, or maybe just hang up on her. Instead, he said, "There are ghosts all over Detroit."
"Really?" Alexandra looked around with a shiver, as if expecting ghosts to manifest in her house, which was ridiculous and also not something that normally bothered her. "I didn't know a lot of wizards died there recently."
"Not a lot. But it seems the ones who have are sticking around. And some of 'em don't even care 'bout bein' seen by No-Majes. Some are actually trying to freak people out."
"Boo, scary."
"They've caused at least two car crashes and one heart attack, so far."
"Oh." Alexandra thought about what Hela had said. "So you're, what, taking over for the Bureau of Hauntings now?"
"Some of 'em will be reasonable if the alternative is Banishing. Which is good, 'cause I ain't really learned Banishing. Aren't you pretty good at that?"
"Look, David, maybe I can help you later, but I think these ghosts are related to the Deathly Regiment somehow. I think it's more important we stop that."
David laughed bitterly. "Yeah, Alex, I thought that's what you and your old man were up to."
"It was, kind of. I think he's still trying to do that. And so am I."
"You were s'pposed to be working together."
Alexandra ignored that. "I need you to send an owl for me."
"A what?"
"An owl. The kind that carries mail."
"And you can't do this because—?"
"If the Owl Post is still running, you can send one easier than I can. I'll be recognized anywhere in Chicago, and I don't know Detroit. And while I'm waiting, I'm looking for Redcaps here in Larkin Mills."
"Redcaps? For real?"
"For real."
"All right, Alex. Who do you want to send an owl to, and what message?"
"I'll text you. And David—be careful." She didn't tell him she wanted him to find somewhere safe and stay there, she wanted him to stay away from the wizard war, she wanted him to go back to his parents. She had learned to be less of a hypocrite, at least.
It was Billy and Brian who found the Redcaps.
Alexandra was taking a shower when Charlie cawed an alarm from her room. Alexandra quickly emerged and wrapped a towel around herself, holding her wand and ready for a fight.
But even ghosts apparently couldn't pass the charms around her house. Mage-Lieutenant Thickerson stood in her backyard, dripping ghostly blood onto the thin layer of snow before he pushed his split sides together again. He stared up at her bedroom window in a haunting way.
"Wicked," Charlie said.
"It's fine," Alexandra said. She hastily dressed and walked downstairs and outside, with Charlie on her shoulder.
The ghost's head was split open again, one half falling away from his body, brains spilling out the other half. He sputtered something unintelligible at her with his bloody half-mouth. Alexandra glanced around to see if any of the neighbors might be looking out their windows, while Thickerson pushed the two halves of his skull back together.
"Your friends are in danger," he said, still sounding bubbly and lispy.
"What? Who? Where?" Alexandra demanded.
"Those Muggle boys. On the road west of town, by the windmill next to that old rotting barn…"
Alexandra was there in her Seven-League Boots before Thickerson could finish his sentence, pausing just long enough for Charlie to leave her shoulder.
She found Billy's truck idling by the side of a road whose name she didn't remember. It ran past what everyone called the old Steener farm, even though there had been no farm or Steeners there since before Alexandra was born.
Billy was leaning against the front of the truck, drinking from a can of beer. A shotgun was propped against the fender.
Brian, bathed in the headlights, sat on an old tree stump that jutted out of the frosty ground. His elbows were on his knees and his head was bowed. He was holding a baseball bat.
Alexandra didn't notice the small bodies in the snow until she came closer. Brian's bat was stained red.
"Hey, Alex," Billy said. He raised his beer can. "We got the little bastards. No wands needed, right Brian, my man?"
Brian didn't move. Alexandra walked over to him. He finally looked up at the sound of her feet crunching on the thin layer of ice on the ground. He had blood spattered on his face.
"Are you all right?" Alexandra asked.
He nodded. His hands were shaking.
"Did the ghosts lead you to the Redcaps?" Alexandra asked angrily. She glared at the spirits who were now circling them.
Billy looked around. "What ghosts?" Brian's gaze was still glassy-eyed.
"What were you two idiots thinking?" she asked.
"Sorry, does being Marked mean you're the boss of me?" Brian asked.
Alexandra was spared from answering by the sound of a pop. She turned to see Hela, looking around with her own wand out. "Begone!" she shouted at the ghosts. "Begone or I will Banish you, even if Alexandra will not!"
The ghosts sullenly retreated, fading into the winter gloom.
"Hela!" said Billy. He tossed away the beer can. "Look! We killed them! I mean, some of them. I think a couple got away. I got three, but Brian had to finish one off with his bat. Man, Brian, didn't think you had it in you! You should've seen its head—"
Brian doubled over and retched.
The look Hela gave Billy was possessive, fond, and contemptuous at the same time.
Alexandra put a hand on Brian's shoulder.
Hela shook her head. "Such brave idiots," she said.
Brian spent the night with Alexandra, but they argued in the morning. She didn't want him out hunting Dark creatures. He asked angrily if she was going to use a spell to stop him. She watched helplessly as he drove away, wondering if this was how she had made Anna and her other friends feel.
Killing a Redcap had shaken him. It wasn't like him. The boy she'd known could never have taken a bat to a living thing's skull, but he'd become someone who didn't know how to avenge his sister, and so he stayed angry. Alexandra felt like she understood how he felt, and also that she had no idea what to tell him that would make him stop being angry.
She went to the Pruett School, hoping that since Hela seemed to have Billy wrapped around her finger, maybe through Billy she could limit their fantastic beast-hunting expeditions in the future.
She found Madam Erdglass seated on one of the benches in the room with the wrecked boiler. The old woman's knobby hands rested lightly on her cane. Franklin was with her, and immediately made a squealing sound when he saw Alexandra.
"My Alarm Spell didn't work," Alexandra said, displeased.
"I'm old. And I had plenty of time to get to know this building," Madam Erdglass said.
"So what have you been doing now that the Pruett School is closed?" Alexandra asked.
"Oh, just biding my time. Not many Magical Department of Education hearings nowadays. In fact, the Headquarters Building is almost empty most days."
"You don't say."
"Indeed. You'd think almost anyone could simply walk in and stroll around. Except of course that's not true. Security is tighter than it's ever been. So many Alarm Spells, Wards, Eye-Spies and tattletale portraits, even magical traps."
"Did my father send you?"
"No, dear. You sent for me, remember? I understand you're no longer doing your father's bidding. So what exactly is it you want to do?"
"Stop the Deathly Regiment. Which is what my father is supposed to be doing."
"Ah." Madam Erdglass closed her eyes, which made them nearly vanish beneath the wrinkles around them. For a moment Alexandra thought she might have fallen asleep, until Franklin made an anxious snuffling sound and Erdglass opened her eyes again.
"The Thorn Circle is burning down every Confederation institution they can reach," the old witch said, as if there had been no break in the conversation. "The Dark Convention is a pestilence on the land, and now the MACUSA movement is eating away at more Territories every day. Yet the Deathly Regiment continues. Your father has exacted a ruinous cost to maintain it. A collapse is coming, and soon all ills will be set free. But every day, the Accounting Office is still working assiduously, one might even say diligently. Another life each day."
"So the Thorn Circle hasn't managed to kill off all the Accountants yet?" Alexandra asked.
Franklin squealed.
"As long as they have the books and records and accounting tables, they can continue their dreadful work," Madam Erdglass said.
"Why hasn't the Thorn Circle destroyed the Census Office in Central Territory?"
"The Headquarters Building is probably the most heavily guarded place in Central Territory now, and it's in the middle of Chicago. It wouldn't be easy, even for your father."
"The Thorn Circle burned down the Governor-General's Mansion and half of New Amsterdam."
"Indeed," Madam Erdglass said. "Well. I'm sure he has his reasons. He is wreaking havoc elsewhere."
"I want to destroy the Accounting Office."
"Really?" Madam Erdglass looked curious. "How do you plan to do that, dear?"
"I need to get inside, to the 13th floor again."
"And then you'll do what?"
"Set it on fire!" Alexandra was frustrated with the old woman's obtuseness, feigned or not.
Erdglass made a dry coughing sound that Alexandra realized after a moment was laughter.
"Just walk in and set the Accounting Office on fire," Madam Erdglass said. "As if there aren't charms all over the place to prevent such casual destruction."
"I was hoping… you might be able to get me in."
The ancient witch studied Alexandra for a long time, her eyes not quite closing in their wrinkled folds. Finally she said, "Getting in isn't so difficult. It will be getting out again that's a trick. But I understand you have a particular talent."
"My father told you? About the cracks in the world?"
Erdglass made a rasping chuckle-like sound again. "Do you really think you and your father are the first to ever discover them?"
"No, Kemal ibn Fayed wrote about them hundreds of years ago. And probably the ancients knew about them before that. But something happened to me, and now I can open them."
"Yes," Madam Erdglass said slowly. "Yes, and if you can crack them open inside the Headquarters building…"
"We can escape," Alexandra said. "I mean, I can. You too, but if they don't know you were involved, no need for them to know about your long game."
"Yes," Madam Erdglass repeated, making the word long and drawn out. She looked down at Franklin, and patted him on the head.
"The Headquarters Building is skeletally staffed nowadays," she said. "This coming sabbath, it will be mostly empty, and I happen to know none of the Accounting Office staff will be there."
"Great! That sounds like the perfect time. Except…" Alexandra frowned. "If what you say is true that the Accounting Office is immune to regular Conflagration spells…" She thought about all the other ways to unleash destruction—surely all those books and parchments wouldn't be impervious to everything?
Madam Erdglass's face shifted again into a rearrangement of wrinkles that formed a ghastly, unsettling smile.
"I do believe," she said, in a dry voice, "that the two of us can cause a little calamity. Tell me, dear, have you ever heard of Fiendfyre?"
Two days later, Alexandra and Madam Erdglass walked down a familiar tunnel beneath the streets of Chicago. It was dark and dank, illuminated only by their wands. Franklin stayed close by Madam Erdglass's side, almost hugging the hem of her robes, occasionally making frightened squealing sounds. Distantly, they could hear the rumble and honk of Muggle activity above. Alexandra wore her Seven-League Boots, and was carrying her broom, just in case. Charlie waited on the streets above. Alexandra needed the raven's eyes on the outside, but she suspected her familiar knew the real reason: she wanted Charlie to survive if anything happened to her.
Madam Erdglass walked at a pace that made Alexandra wonder how the old woman ever got anywhere without Apparating. Even without her Seven-League Boots, Alexandra could have been there and back five times over, and she really wanted to get out of this tunnel, which had unpleasant memories for her.
"I still think Polyjuice Potion and walking in with you as an apprentice or something would be faster," Alexandra said. On their right, along the brick walkway, ran a silent black waterway on which Alexandra had once been carried away in a boat manned by goblins. There were no boats or goblins in sight now, but Alexandra wondered what else might lurk down here. New Amsterdam had giant crocodiles and rat-people…
"Faster, but not smarter," Madam Erdglass said. "It won't be nearly as easy to pull off a trick like that again, and you were luckier than you deserved."
"I've heard that before."
At last they reached a short set of brick stairs going up to a solid wooden door with no handles, knockers, hinges, or any other features on their side. Alexandra stepped aside, allowing Madam Erdglass to ascend the stairs one laborious step at a time. She was surprised when, rather than casting an Unlocking Spell or producing a magical key, Madam Erdglass simply rapped on the door with her cane, in three short taps followed by two solid thumps.
"You didn't tell me someone was going to let us in," Alexandra said.
"No sense exposing our collaborator beforehand," Madam Erdglass said.
The door swung inward. Alexandra could see only a shadowy silhouette. Franklin squealed in terror and hid behind Madam Erdglass.
Madam Erdglass shuffled up, past the figure on the other side. "Hello, Thomas. Franklin! Come along."
The pig followed her reluctantly, pressing itself against the opposite wall.
Alexandra followed after Madam Erdglass, and held her wand out with its Light Spell still flaring at the tip. The gaunt man who'd opened the door held out a hand between the wand and his face.
"Do you mind?" he asked, in a dour tone.
"Mr. Bagby?" Alexandra exclaimed.
"Please, put out that light," the vampire said.
"The better to eat us in the dark?"
"I'm closing the door." Mr. Bagby began pushing it shut.
Alexandra said, "Nox," extinguishing her wand, and squeezed past Mr. Bagby in the narrow stairwell.
"You should have told me we were going to meet him," she whispered to Madam Erdglass. "What makes you think we can trust him?"
"I can hear you," Mr. Bagby said.
Madam Erdglass took her time moving up the stairs ahead of her. Franklin continued making nervous snuffling sounds.
"So are you a member of the Thorn Circle too?" Alexandra asked, then remembered that if he was, he wouldn't be able to say so.
"Hardly," Mr. Bagby said. "But Madam Erdglass has been very kind to me over the years. I don't have a lot of friends."
"No vampire buddies in your support group?"
Madam Erdglass opened a door that led into a basement corridor, though not one Alexandra was familiar with. It was dark until Erdglass caused the end of her cane to glow, and Alexandra cast another Light Spell, this time holding it away from Mr. Bagby. When she looked over her shoulder, she saw his dark eyes glittering inhumanly in the shadows.
They reached an elevator, and to Alexandra's surprise, Mr. Bagby entered it with them.
Madam Erdglass told the elevator, "13th Floor." The doors closed and it began moving without interrogating her as it did whenever Alexandra tried to take it somewhere.
"I thought the plan—" Alexandra whispered, and realized it was pointless to whisper with Bagby standing in the elevator with them. "I thought you were only taking me to the 13th floor."
"You can take Mr. Bagby with you when you leave, can't you?" Madam Erdglass asked.
"You're assuming a lot." Alexandra looked at Bagby. "Why don't you just go hide in your cave?"
"Fourteen thousand six hundred twenty-three," the vampire said.
"What?"
"That's how many grains of millet I counted, before they got the door open and found me."
The elevator came to a halt and the doors opened. Alexandra recognized this corridor. She'd walked it as Franklin Percival Brown, on her last trip to the 13th floor.
They exited the elevator, and Madam Erdglass looked around. "What do you see, dear?"
Alexandra looked with her Witch's Sight, and saw wards and locks and alarums and Repelling Charms everywhere. Magical cracks in the world ran right up the building into the thirteenth floor, and spread out beyond its walls.
"They're here," she said. "Cracks in the world, all running through this place."
"And you can open them, to escape what you're about to unleash?"
"I really don't like this part of your plan," Bagby said. "I'd much rather just leave through the basement exit—"
Erdglass shushed him.
Alexandra closed her eyes, feeling the cracks, which were particularly vibrant and close here. She opened them again. "Yeah. Pretty sure."
"That's not very reassuring," Bagby said.
"It will have to do," Erdglass said. "Go, and be quick about it. This floor and the one below aren't completely unoccupied."
"Hope they know to run when they hear fire alarms," Alexandra muttered. She left Madam Erdglass standing with Mr. Bagby as she rounded the corner into the next hallway and walked to the door at the end, behind which was a nondescript office that contained the accounts, the lists of names, the records that the Accounting Office used to continue the Deathly Regiment.
She knew it would be locked, and a spell told her it was cursed as well. Central Territory had become much more paranoid since her last visit. She began using all her skill at Unlocking Charms, and a few tricks Henry Tsotsie had taught her. She was hardly an Auror-level curse-breaker, but this curse was only meant to stop someone wandering into a room they weren't meant to be in, the last line in a series of defenses that should have kept someone like her from getting this far in the first place. With a purple wisp of smoke, the curse yielded to Alexandra's counter, and with a clack, the door opened to her.
Alexandra smiled triumphantly, put away her hickory wand, and drew her mother's yew. It practically snarled in her hand.
She pushed open the door to the Accounting Office. It was dark inside.
Alexandra thought about all those records. The bland functionaries she'd seen last time. The mundanity of their work, as if they were just clerks recording numbers. That's probably what they felt they were doing—just balancing numbers.
Alexandra pointed her yew wand into the interior of the room, and let it feel all her anger and grief.
She'd learned the incantation for Fiendfyre from a book of Auror spells she'd stolen the last time she was here, but until Madam Erdglass taught her the proper casting instructions, she'd never dared to try it.
Flames spilled from her wand, gushing out in a fiery torrent that lit up the room. For a moment Alexandra could see the metal shelves and racks of scrolls and neatly lined desks in a brilliant flash of light, and then the fire was roaring and igniting everything.
"Awesome!" she said. She was surprised by the form the flames took—chimeras and serpents and bat-like creatures with fluttering wings of flame, snapping at everything in sight and setting it on fire. Madam Erdglass hadn't told her the fire would be so… animated.
She flicked her wand and cast the counter spell. Fire continued to stream out of the wand, hot enough for Alexandra to feel it on her face and arms. Fire filled the Census Office now, and Alexandra had to step back from the heat radiating out of it. Flaming creatures began rushing toward the door. A fiery rooster was the first to emerge, practically at her feet. Its burning talons ignited the carpet.
Alexandra backed away. The flames came after her. Fiendfyre still streamed out of her wand, ignoring her efforts to stop it. She could hear a high pitched shriek overhead.
She continued to retreat before the blazing creatures that emerged from the Census Office with red-hot eyes and bodies that crackled and glowed.
Stop, dammit! she mentally commanded her wand, but the Census Office was an inferno. The flames were so thick that all Alexandra could see inside now was an orange-white glow. The heat was making her sweat. Her wand sputtered a little, but still spat flames, each one whooshing into existence and immediately taking on a life of its own.
As she wrangled with her wand, it twisted in her hand and for just a moment, pointed down the corridor. Almost instantly the entire hallway leading away from the Accounting Office was engulfed in flames. Alexandra watched with horror as a door opened, someone screamed, and then the flames surged through the open door. The shrieking of some sort of alarm continued.
She finally forced the yew wand to stop producing flames, and she turned and ran back towards the elevators, with the living flames hot on her heels. She rounded the corner and found Madam Erdglass and Mr. Bagby standing where she'd left them, Madam Erdglass looking perfectly calm despite the commotion, Bagby less so. Franklin was squealing loudly as heat and smoke began pouring out of the corridor Alexandra had just emerged from.
"I couldn't control the Fiendfyre!" Alexandra said. "It's already spreading, and… I think someone was trapped back there…" She couldn't forget the scream she'd heard.
"Indeed," Madam Erdglass said. "Well. You controlled it well enough to get away, at least." She stood with her hands clutching the head of her cane, her face in shadow from the wide-brimmed witch's hat on her head. "You and Thomas need to go."
"We all need to go," Alexandra said. She focused on the cracks splitting the Central Territory Headquarters and downtown Chicago. She opened one as flames began roaring into the space in front of the elevators. It was scary how fast they were moving. The crack made the elevators waver and shimmer like mirages, and Alexandra turned back to Madam Erdglass, Mr. Bagby, and Franklin the pig.
Madam Erdglass was completing some sort of spell that spread all around them, as if the old witch had woven her own cracks throughout the Headquarters Building. She cackled, and it was not a kindly sound.
Franklin was squealing in terror as the flames were almost upon them. Bagby had retreated to the far wall, looking more like a trapped animal than Franklin.
"Mr. Bagby, come here!" Alexandra shouted, holding out her hand. "Madam Erdglass—"
"Franklin and I are staying," Madam Erdglass said. She tilted her cane forward, and for a moment, the roaring Fiendfyre was pushed back. "That crack you made broke the last spells that were preventing me from finishing the work I began so many years ago. Now go. I can't keep the Fiendfyre back for long."
"Madam Erdglass," Alexandra repeated, as Mr. Bagby walked over to her uncertainly, looking from the old woman to the shimmering crack splitting the world in front of the elevators, and then at the roaring Fiendfyre that now had the form of a menagerie of angry beasts held back by an invisible barrier.
"Over a lifetime, I've been here," Madam Erdglass said, her voice creaking with age, yet clear over the roaring of the inferno. "Walking these hallways, riding the elevators, even climbing up and down the stairs when I was younger…" She sighed. "Shush, Franklin." Abruptly, the pig's squealing was silenced, though Franklin was still frantically running in circles in the little pocket of safety in which they all stood. Alexandra could already feel the broiling heat and see smoke trickling across the ceiling.
"I've been in every room on every floor of this building," Erdglass continued. "For more years than you can imagine. Casting my little spells. Year after year after year, unnoticed. Waiting for this moment. Thank you for your help, dear. You solved a number of tricky problems for me."
"What are you doing?" Alexandra asked.
"Isn't it obvious?" Madam Erdglass smiled. "I'm going to see that this building and everything in it burns to the ground."
Alexandra was too shocked to be angry, and the Fiendfyre was inching closer, pushing against Madam Erdglass's spell. "There are still people in here," Alexandra said.
"People who all knew about the Deathly Regiment—knew everything—and still stayed." Madam Erdglass looked at Mr. Bagby. "You were different, Thomas. I don't blame you. That's why I was hoping Miss Quick would be able to get you out of here."
"Carmela, you can't mean to stay," Bagby said.
"Come on!" Alexandra said to both of them. "We have to go!"
Carmela Erdglass shook her head. "I'm old. I'm old even for a witch. I lost my Sigrun over a century ago. I've been biding my time ever since. I've waited, and waited, until now. It's time." She raised her cane. "Now go, dears. I'm about to cause a little calamity."
Alexandra wasn't sure what was about to happen, but she could see all the spells the old witch had cast, over the course of multiple lifetimes, gathering around her in her moment of power. She grabbed Mr. Bagby's hand. The vampire looked terrified by the fire but he was reaching for Madam Erdglass.
Madam Erdglass brought her cane down to strike the floor, and the building shook. A flash of brilliance almost blinded Alexandra, followed by a rush of heat as the Fiendfyre exploded past her and spread in all directions, straight through the walls and floor. Alexandra yanked hard on Mr. Bagby's hand, pulling him with her into the crack she'd opened. For a moment, she thought he'd resist. Then he followed, and the Central Headquarters Territory Building disappeared behind them as they fell into a World Away that felt blessedly cooler than the one they'd just escaped.
The World Away was cold indeed—Alexandra had dressed for a Chicago winter, but the world they slid and fell through was icy, blue, and barren, and when she and Bagby both tumbled out of it onto a concrete walkway near the river, her fingers and lips were numb.
It was morning. Dark rainclouds blanketed the sky, but the sun was visible just over the horizon. Bagby screamed and held up his hands over his face.
Alexandra rose to her feet. "I cast a Shade Spell, you big baby. Stop screaming."
Bagby lowered his hands and turned them over. Alexandra had cast an unnatural circle of shade over them, but it was already dark and overcast, and the early morning pedestrians and drivers hadn't even noticed the two people tumbling out of another world onto one of Chicago's wharfs. Instead, they were staring southwards, in the direction of the Central Territory Headquarters Building.
Alexandra could just see it at the end of a long avenue of skyscrapers. It glowed like a candle in the drizzly morning chill. Cars were stopping and people were shouting. Sirens wailed. Even Muggles noticed the Headquarters Building burning in their midst.
Of course they do, Alexandra thought. Madam Erdglass had done something, used the cracks Alexandra had opened somehow, and broken all the protective spells around the building, including the Muggle-Repelling Charms.
Then Alexandra realized with horror that just as the Headquarters Building was no longer shielded from the No-Maj world, the No-Maj world was no longer shielded from it… and the Fiendfyre was spreading.
"Oh my God," she said. Animated flames leapt from rooftop to rooftop. The rumble of thunder overhead was like an ironic joke—as rain started to fall, Alexandra could see the buildings on either side of the Headquarters building catching fire.
Bagby stood next to her, staring at the fire down the block.
"This is bad," Alexandra said. "Really, really bad."
"Indeed." The vampire shuffled nervously. Rain began pelting them in earnest. Alexandra didn't even bother to cast an Umbrella Charm.
Charlie found her, descending from the sky and almost flopping onto her shoulder. "Fire!" croaked the raven, and then tried to shed the rain with a flutter of wings.
Thunder boomed again. Alexandra looked up.
Moving behind the clouds, she saw the enormous shape of a dark bird. Lightning flashed, outlining it.
She turned to Bagby. "Is it dark enough for you to make it to that subway station?" The station was across the street, and the clouds were now blocking the sun.
"Yes," Bagby said. He looked hardly more bedraggled soaking wet than he normally did. "What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to try to catch the attention of a big bird."
"What?" the vampire asked, but Alexandra was already on her broom and ascending into the sky. Maybe a few people saw her rising into the air, but she thought most of them were staring at the fire.
Charlie hopped onto the broomstick just above where Alexandra gripped it and crouched almost flat with wings spread, balancing on it as wind and rain rushed past. The raven eyed her suspiciously. "Crazy!"
"Yeah, probably." Alexandra paused, high above the streets of downtown Chicago, and looked down.
"Oh God," she said.
The Fiendfyre continued to jump from building to building, leaping over streets and spreading across block after block.
Chicago was burning.
Flashing lights were everywhere as firetrucks mobilized from dozens of stations, but Alexandra doubted Muggle firefighters would be able to put out Fiendfyre. Had Madam Erdglass even thought about this? She'd used Alexandra for the last move in her long game, but now she wasn't just burning down the Headquarters Building—it appeared she might burn down the city.
And I helped her do it.
Alexandra looked back up at the sky. She saw only storm clouds and rain, but lightning continued to flash up there. Had she really seen a Thunderbird? What did she imagine she could do to attract its attention?
She pointed her wand upwards, and hard as it was to focus on happy thoughts right now, she thought about Julia, and Lucilla and Drucilla, and Anna, and David, and Constance and Forbearance—she was going to see them all again.
"Expecto Patronum!" she cried, and a silver stormcrow emerged from her wand. Charlie cawed, and her Patronus shot up into the sky, faster than her and her broom. It ascended like a reverse shooting star until it disappeared into the clouds, and still Alexandra kept climbing. It was bitterly cold and wet up here and getting colder. The winds were stronger too, and she was having trouble holding her broom steady. Charlie fell off, flapped to catch up to her, and fell behind.
"Wait below, Charlie!" Alexandra called, as she kept flying higher and higher, faster than Charlie could keep up. There was too much wind and rain, too much lightning, and what she was doing was crazy.
Charlie cried out in protest. She'd definitely hear about it later. But she preferred her familiar have a chance at flying away if what she was doing proved to be her final, fatal mistake.
She hadn't cast any other protective spells. The wind battered and buffeted her, and rain lashed her face. A crack of lightning followed by a boom blinded and deafened her. She spun on her broom, afraid for a moment she'd just be struck by lightning and blasted to charcoal. When she could see again, she thought there was something moving near her in the clouds. She shivered, and winced as another flash of lighting crackled past her. The boom this time was less deafening only because her ears were still ringing from the last one.
"Please!" she called out, and realized how silly that was. No one could possibly hear her in this storm. But she continued shouting anyway. "I call on thee! Hear my plea!"
Her Patronus came back to her, a tiny silver spark in the clouds. It was a tiny thing up here, compared to the lightning flashing around her, but the sight of it cheered Alexandra, just a little.
It was suddenly blocked from sight by a vast black shape with wings that stretched so far in either direction that they disappeared into the clouds. A pair of bright yellow eyes burned with terrifying intensity. Alexandra couldn't even see its beak until it opened and lightning flashed from it, splitting the sky and almost knocking her off her broom with the thunder that followed. She had a deathgrip on the broom, and her hands were going numb. Her teeth chattered as she tried to speak.
"A boon!" she said. "I beg a boon! Please, you helped me once!"
She was a fool. Her morale faded along with her Patronus. This was almost certainly not the same Thunderbird she'd seen in California. How could it be? And she didn't know if that Thunderbird had truly been helping them. Nor did she know if Thunderbirds could even understand speech. She sensed she was in the presence of something as ancient and powerful as Typhon, but that didn't mean it was intelligent.
It shrieked, in a language of thunder and lightning. The glow from its beak as lightning coursed out of it was the most terrifying sight Alexandra had seen yet, like being in the presence of a storm incarnate.
There was a question in the terrible noise it made, but it wasn't formed with words. Alexandra had trouble concentrating. Thunder rumbled, echoing the query, and Alexandra tried to make sense of it.
"Wh… why?" she asked. "Are you asking why you should help?"
The Thunderbird rolled in midair, and a wing that could have swatted Alexandra out of the sky if it so much as brushed her swept so close that her hair stood up from the electrical charge. Lightning coruscated over its feathers.
"People will die," Alexandra said.
The booming reply was as indifferent as a storm, and seemed to mock her.
"What do you want?" Alexandra shouted. "What will you take?"
What could a Thunderbird possibly want from her?
A fierce avian eye, yellow as the sun, was suddenly close enough to touch. Alexandra could see herself reflected in the shimmering glasslike surface above its pupil, but she didn't dare try to touch it. Still she stared back at the Thunderbird, her two eyes making contact with the one turned toward her. Lightning flickered in its iris. It was taking all her effort just to hold her position in the winds surging around the creature. Yet she felt herself being peered at, examined. The scrutiny was not friendly, but not exactly hostile. The Thunderbird was curious, but also, Alexandra sensed, there was something it wanted.
She felt her hickory wand growling. She'd stuck it into its sheath after casting her Patronus Charm, and now it seemed restive in the presence of the Thunderbird. Tucked down the front of her shirt, magically concealed, she could also feel her yew wand snarling in its core.
What had Hela told her? Thunderbirds were enemies of the underwater panthers, and the panther hair cores of her wands were somehow reacting to the presence of their nemesis… and, Alexandra realized, the Thunderbird could sense them.
"You're warring with the underwater panthers!" she said. She drew her hickory wand, and the Thunderbird's pupil dilated ominously. More lightning rippled across its feathers.
"I slew an underwater panther for this!" she shouted. She suspected that like the message she heard in the storm, the Thunderbird did not really understand her words—she could only hope her meaning got through nonetheless. With her wand she conjured an image of a great horned fire-breathing panther. It was a ghostly thing up here in the clouds, but the Thunderbird screeched and thunder boomed.
"I'll get rid of them!" she said. "The underwater panthers out on the lake—I'll send them back where they came from!" To illustrate, she made the image of the underwater panther plummet straight down, fading from sight below them. "I will deal with your enemy!"
The Thunderbird glowed and lightning crackled around them in all directions. Alexandra once more sensed meaning in the flashes and booms, nothing as articulate as words, but sending a message all the same.
"I can!" she insisted. "I swear it! If I do not, I will break my mother's wand!" She drew the second wand, the yew one, and held it up next to her hickory wand. "I ask such a little thing from you, what have you got to lose? Take my wands and smite me if I fail!"
A rumble filled the sky. Alexandra couldn't tell if it was agreement, denial, laughter, or just more noise.
With a roar, the Thunderbird spread its wings and descended, and the vortex it left behind spun Alexandra end over end on her broom. Barely, she forced the broom to carry her away from the rush of wind in the Thunderbird's wake, and descend away from it. She could barely see through the clouds and the rain and the lightning, but she could see the glow of fires—so many fires—lighting up downtown Chicago. And at the heart of the conflagration was a single building that was a red-hot inferno from its top floor to the ground. Even at this distance, Alexandra saw monstrous heads writhing in the flames.
Then thick clouds like a blanket of feathers fell over the entirety of downtown Chicago, blacking out the sky and bringing a deluge that seemed to rise from the nearby lakes and rivers as much as it fell from the sky.