Then Pip, who settled down beside me, gave me a welcome distraction. “By the way,” he said, with an awful lot of good cheer for someone in a demon king’s cell, “the Good Witch is over there.”

I followed the line of his finger to the cell right beside ours. A wall of bars separated the two, and, on the other side, I could see a young woman lying on her back on a thin cot and humming to herself.

“Hello,” I called.

She looked across at me. Her eyes were a bright purple, glittering like amethysts in a dark, pretty face crowned with long, thick dark hair. The set of her mouth and her hair reminded me of my mother.

“It’s you,” she said. “The whimsical architect of our world.”

I gave her a tiny smile. “How long have you been here?”

“A thousand lives of a moon apple, a hundred turns of a golden goose, and three flashes of sapphire,” she replied.

“And what is that in human time?” I asked tentatively.

She sighed, as if this was a very unreasonable request. “Seven weeks.”

“That’s the kind of thing she’s said to pretty much every question I’ve asked her,” Pip told me. He paused, and reconsidered. “Except for when I asked her if she could get us out of here using some kind of witchy witchery. She didn’t answer that one at all.”

“Such foolery did not deserve a response,” said the Good Witch, her nose in the air. “Would I still be here if I could get myself out?”

“I’m not sure her name suits her,” Pip said to me. “The Mean Witch seems more like it.”

In spite of myself, I giggled.

“Where are the other prisoners?” I asked the Good Witch. “Are you the only one?”

“They’re in the land of stars and honey,” said the Good Witch. At my blank look, she rolled her eyes and translated: “The other prisoners are dead. They’re never here for long.”

“How did you make it to seven weeks?” Pip wanted to know.

“My witchy witchery, as you put it,” she said. “He makes me cast spells for him every now and then.”

“Was one of those spells a locator spell on a burned desk or ruined curtains?” I asked.

“It was not.”

So he hadn’t asked her to find me. Why not?

“Now, if you don’t mind,” the Good Witch went on, “I am much too busy examining the insides of my eyelids to answer any more questions.”

So now was not a good time to ask her if she could help us get into Mysore Palace, then. Not that it mattered. We were all stuck here.

Hours passed. There were no windows in the cells, only dim lamps, so it was impossible to tell what time it was. Pip and I dozed on and off, waking in fits and starts.

“Why do you think we’re still here?” Pip asked me at one point. “I don’t get it. They killed the other prisoners. Why keep us?”