Perenelle Flamel stepped off the last rung of the rusting ladder and tilted back her head to look at the tiny circle of pale blue sky high above her. Then she frowned. What looked like a cloud was falling toward her, coming straight down the long shaft that connected the surface of Alcatraz to the old smugglers’ tunnel deep beneath the island. The cloud twisted and coiled in on itself, then solidified into Juan Manuel de Ayala.

“Madame Perenelle?” the sailor asked in formal Spanish. “What are you doing down here?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” Perenelle admitted. “I thought I might visit the Crow Goddess.” Yesterday-was it only yesterday?-Perenelle and Areop-Enap had defeated the Morrigan, the Crow Goddess, and her army of birds. The Old Spider had wanted to feed the Morrigan to some of its bird-eating spiders, but Perenelle had refused and instead had asked the Elder to carry the thread-bound creature to the lightless cell deep under the island.

When Perenelle had originally freed Areop-Enap from the prison, she had dismantled an intricate pattern of spears set into the muddy floor outside the door. Each spearhead had been painted with an ancient Word of Power, which created a barrier unbreakable by any of the Elder race. When Areop-Enap had brought the tightly wrapped Morrigan into the cell, Perenelle had drawn upon her extraordinary memory to re-create the pattern of spears around the cave mouth. Then, using mud and shells, she had redrawn the complex patterns on the flat spearheads, locking the Morrigan behind Words of Power and symbols that predated the Elders. Only a human could free her; an Elder or Next Generation could not even approach the invisible and deadly spell spun by the primeval hex.

“Madame,” de Ayala said urgently. “We need to get you off the island.”

“I know,” Perenelle said, lips curling in disgust as her foot sank up to the ankle in stinking fishy mud. “I’m working on it. Did you see any Nereids?”

“There were a dozen sunning themselves on the seaward rocks, and I saw another two around by the landing dock. I saw no sign of their father, Nereus, though I know he must be close by.” Wisps of the ghost streamed away as he wrapped his arms tightly around his body. “They cannot come ashore… but he can. And will.”

Perenelle took a dozen squelching steps down the corridor. She glanced back at the ghost, surprised. “I did not know that.”

“The Nereids have women’s bodies but the tails of fish. Nereus has legs of a sort. He sometimes comes ashore in lonely fishing villages to… to eat, or he’ll creep aboard a boat at night and snatch an unwary sailor.”