The main ballroom was now draped in the sagging black-and-white crepe paper and partly deflated black-and-white balloons that Carlos had pilfered from a sad stack of dusty boxes stashed in his building’s basement. Those few boxes, stamped De Vil Industries, were all that remained of the former De Vil fashion empire—the merest scraps of a better life that had long since faded away.
His mother, of course, would be furious when she saw that Carlos had gotten into her boxes again—“My stolen treasures,” she’d scream, “my lost babies!”—but Carlos was a pragmatist, and a scavenger.
Why his mother had ever been obsessed with black-and-white Dalmatian puppies, he had no idea. He was terrified of those things; but she had been prepared to own one hundred and one of them, so there was a lot of stuff to scavenge.
Over the years, he’d repurposed more than a few empty crates—scientists requiring bookshelves as they did—abandoned leashes—nylon withstanding the elements as it did—and unsqueaked squeaky toys—rubber repelling electricity as it did—that had fallen by the wayside when his mother’s plans were foiled.
An AP Evil scientist and inventor like Carlos couldn’t afford to be choosy. He needed materials for his research.
“Why did you agree to this party? Easy. Because Mal asked you to,” Carlos’s second-best friend Harry said, shaking his head as he wiggled his fingers, tape dangling from each one. “Maybe you should try, for your next invention, to build something that would free us all from her mind control.”
His third-best friend, Jace, tried to take a piece of tape but only succeeded in taping himself to Harry. “Yeah, right. No one can stand up to Mal,” said Jace. “As if.”
Harry (Harold) and Jace (Jason) were the sons of Horace and Jasper, Cruella’s loyal minions, the two blundering thieves who had attempted to kidnap the one hundred and one Dalmatian puppies for her and failed miserably. Just like their fathers, Harry and Jace tried to look like they were more capable and less nervous than they actually were.
But Carlos knew otherwise.
Harry, as short and fat as his father, could barely reach to fasten his side of the ebony streamer. Jace, taller even than his own tall, scrawny father, didn’t have that same problem but, as previously mentioned, couldn’t manage to figure out the tape dispenser. Between them, they didn’t exactly constitute a brain trust. More like a brain mis-trust.
Carlos wouldn’t have chosen them as his friends—his mother chose them for him, just like she did everything else.
“They’re all we’ve got,” Cruella would say. “Even when we have nothing else, we’ll always have…”
“Friends?” Carlos had guessed.
“Friends?!” Cruella had laughed. “Who needs friends when you have minions to do your bidding!”
Cruella certainly ruled Jasper and Horace with an iron leash, but one could hardly say that Harry and Jace did Carlos’s bidding. They only seemed to hang around because their fathers made them, and only because they were all scared of Carlos’s mother.
Which was why he considered them only his second- and third-best friends. He didn’t have a first best friend, but he knew enough about the concept of friendship, even without having any proper ones of his own, to know that an actual best friend would have to be able to do something more than follow him around, tripping over his feet and repeating his not-worth-saying-the-first-time jokes.
All the same, it was good to have some help for the party, and it was Harry who nodded sadly at him now. “If Mal doesn’t like this party, we’re doomed.”
“Doomed,” echoed Jace.
Carlos surveyed the rest of the room. Every piece of broken-down old furniture was covered in a dusty white linen cloth. Every few feet of plaster wallboard was punctured by a crumbling hole that revealed the plywood and plaster underneath.
The overachiever in him bristled. He could do better than this! He had to. He rushed upstairs and dug out his mother’s antique brass candelabras and rigged them up around the room. With the lights off, the candles glimmered and flickered as if they were floating in midair.
Next, was the chandelier swing—a staple at any Isle party, or so he’d heard. He had Jace climb up a makeshift ladder and tie a rope swing to the light fixture. Harry jumped off from one of the sheet-covered couches to test it out, which caused a cloud of dust to settle over the whole room. Carlos approved—it kind of looked like a fresh snowfall had been sprinkled over the hall.
He picked up the rotary phone and called his cousin Diego De Vil, who was the lead singer in a local band called the Bad Apples.
“You guys want a gig tonight?”
“Do we ever! Heard Mal’s having a full-moon howler!”
The band arrived not too long after, setting up the drum set by the window and practicing their songs. Their music was loud and fast, and Diego, a tall, skinny guy who sported a black-and-white Mohawk, sang out of tune. It was marvelous. The perfect soundtrack for the evening.
Next up, Carlos dug out an old-fashioned instant Polaroid camera he’d found in the attic. He fashioned a private booth by removing the sheet from a couch and rigging it on a rod in a secluded corner. “Photo booth! You take their photo,” he said to Jace. “And you hand it to them,” he told Harry.
Carlos admired his handiwork. “Not too shabby,” he said. “Now we’re talking.”
“And it’s about to get a whole lot better,” said an unfamiliar voice.
Carlos turned to see Jay entering the room holding four huge grocery bags filled with all manner of party snacks: stinky cheese and withered grapes, deviled eggs (so appropriate) and wings (sinfully spicy), and more. Jay pulled a bottle of the island’s best spicy cider out of his jacket and dumped it into the cracked punch bowl on the coffee table.
“Wait! Stop! I don’t want things to get out of hand,” Carlos said, trying to grab the bottle and cap it. “How did you get your hands on all of that sugar!”
“Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong,” Jay said, grinning. “Better your party gets out of hand than Mal gets out of sorts.”
Jay sank to the couch, putting his combat boots up by the punch bowl. The minions shrugged, and Carlos sighed.
The guy had a point.
As the clock struck midnight, Mal’s guests began to arrive in force. There were no gourd-like carriages or rodent-like servants to be seen, not anywhere. Nothing had been transformed into anything, especially not what anyone would consider a cool ride.
There were only feet, in varying degrees of shoddy footwear. Perhaps because their feet were the largest, the Gastons arrived first, as usual. They never risked a late entrance, so as not to miss a buffet table full of food they might swallow whole before anyone else got a taste.
During the awkward silence that followed the Gastons head-butting their hellos and competitively slamming pitchers of smuggled root beer, a whole ship’s worth of Harriet Hook’s pirate crew came marauding through the door.
As Carlos stood against the faded wallpaper nursing his spicy punch, the Gastons and the pirate posse busied themselves with chasing the next group of guests through the house. This happened to be an entire cackling slew of evil step-granddaughters, festooned with raggedy ribbons and droopy curls, elbowing their way around the corners at top speed. “Don’t chase us!” they begged, just waiting to be chased. “You’re horrible!” they screamed, horribly. “Sto-o-o-o-o-o-p,” they said, refusing to stop.
Their cousin, Anthony Tremaine followed them into the room, rolling his eyes.
The band struck up a rollicking tune. Dark-haired Ginny Gothel arrived with a bushel of wormy apples, and a game of bob-for-the-wormiest-apple broke out in the tub. Everybody wanted a turn on the chandelier swing, and the rest of the guests were engaged in a serious dance-off over by the band. All in all, it was shaping up to be a wicked good time.
More than an hour after the party had officially started, there was a sharp knock on the door. It wasn’t clear what made this knock different from all the others, but different it was. C
arlos leapt to his feet like a soldier suddenly called to attention. Jay stopped dancing with a posse of evil step-granddaughters. The Gastons looked up from the buffet table. Little Sammy Smee held an apple between his teeth questioningly.
Carlos steadied his nerves and opened the door. “Go away!” he yelled, using the island’s traditional greeting.
Mal stood in the doorway. Backlit by the dim hall light, in shiny purple leather from head to toe, she appeared to have not so much a halo as a shimmer, like the lead vocalist of a band during a particularly well-lit rock concert—the kind with smoke and neon and bits of sparkly nonsense in the air.
Carlos half-expected her to start belting a tune with the band. Perhaps he should have felt excited that such an infamous personality had decided to come to his party.
Er, her party.
There would be no unplugging this party like one of his rebuilt stereos, not once it had begun, especially not the sort of party Mal seemed to have in mind.
“Hey, Carlos,” she drawled. “Am I late?”
“Not at all,” said Carlos. “Come in.”
“Excited to see me?” Mal asked with a smile.
He nodded yes. Except that Carlos wasn’t excited.
He was terrified.
Somewhere, deep down, he even wanted his mommy.
“Toad’s-blood shots!” declared Mal, leaping into the room as if she were just another guest. “For everyone!”
And just like that, the party began again, as quickly as it had stopped. It was like the entire room exhaled in one relieved breath. Mal isn’t mad. Mal isn’t banning us from the streets. Mal isn’t renaming us Slop.
Not yet.
Mal could see their relief on their faces, and she didn’t blame them. They were right. The way she’d been feeling lately, it was certainly something to celebrate.
So the crowd cheered, and toad’s-blood shots splashed across the room by the cupful, and Mal, in a show of generous sportsmanship, chugged a slimy cup right along with the rest.
She circled the party¸ pilfering a wallet from one of the Gastons, stopping to share a mean giggle with Ginny Gothel about the dress Harriet Hook was wearing, ducking under an overenthusiastic pirate swinging from the chandelier, taking a bite out of someone else’s devil dog and grabbing a mouthful of dry popcorn. She walked into the hallway and bumped into Jay, who was out of breath after winning the latest dance-off.
“Having fun?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Where’d Carlos go?”
Jay laughed and pointed toward a pair of black shoes poking out from behind a sheet covering the biggest of the bookcases. “Hiding from his own party. Typical.”
Mal knew how Carlos felt, though she’d never admit it. Truly, she’d rather be almost anywhere on the whole Isle than at this party. Like her mother, she hated the sights and sounds of revelry. Fun made her uncomfortable. Laughter? Gave her hives. But a vendetta was a vendetta, and she had more planned for this evening than just Deep, Dark, Secret or Death-Defying Dare.
“Come on,” said Jay. “They’re playing pin the tail on the minion over there, and Jace has like, ten tails. Let’s see if we can make it a dozen.”
“Maybe in a minute. Where’s Princess Blueberry?” Mal asked. “I did a whole loop of this party, and I didn’t see her anywhere.”
“You mean Evie? She’s not here yet. Nobody seems to know if she’s coming or not.” Jay shrugged. “Castle kids.”
“She has to come. She’s the whole point. She’s the only reason I’m even having this stupid party.” Mal hated when her evil schemes didn’t go exactly as planned. This was the first step in Operation Take Down Evie, Or Else, and it had to work. She sighed, staring at the door. Pretending to be having fun at a party when you hated parties was the most tiresome thing in the world.
Mal had to agree with her mother on that one.
“What are you two doing?” asked Anthony Tremaine, Lady Tremaine’s sixteen-year-old grandson, a tall, elegant boy with dark hair swept off a haughty forehead. His clothes were as worn and ragged as everyone else’s on the Isle, but somehow he always looked as if he was wearing custom tailoring. His dark leather coat was cut perfectly, his jeans the right dark wash. Maybe it was because Anthony had noble blood, and would probably have lived in Auradon except for his grandmother’s being, you know, evil and banished. At one point he’d tried to get everyone on the Isle to call him Lord Tremaine, but the villain kids had all just laughed in his face.
“Just talking,” said Mal.
“Evil plotting,” said Jay.
They looked at each other.
Something about Anthony’s handsome face brought to Mal’s mind another handsome boy—the prince from her dream. He’d said he was her friend. His smile was kind and his voice gentle. Mal shuddered.
“Do you want something?” Mal asked Anthony coolly.
“Yes. To dance.” Anthony looked at her expectantly.
She looked at him, confused. “Wait—with me?” Nobody had ever asked her before. But she’d never really been to a party before either.
“Well, I didn’t mean him,” Anthony said, looking awkwardly at Jay. “No offense, man.”
“None taken.” Jay grinned broadly, knowing how uncomfortable this made Mal. He found it hilarious. “You two kids go have fun out there. Anthony, make sure you pick a slow song,” he said, as he slid away. “I have a step-granddaughter waiting for me.”
Mal could feel her cheeks turning pink, which was embarrassing, because she wasn’t afraid of anything, least of all dancing with snotty Anthony Tremaine.
So why are you blushing? she thought.
“I’m not really a dancer,” she said lamely.
“I can show you,” he said with a smooth smile.
Mal bristled. “I mean, I don’t dance with anyone. Ever.”
“Why not?”
Why not, indeed?
Mal thought about it. Her mind flashed back to earlier that evening. She’d been getting ready for the party, trying to choose between violet-hued holey or mauve patchwork jeans, when her mother had made a rare appearance at her door.
“Where on this dreadful island could you possibly be going?” Maleficent asked.
“To a party,” Mal said.
Maleficent let out an exasperated sigh. “Mal, what have I told you about parties?”
“I’m not going to have fun, Mother. I’m going so I can make someone miserable.” She almost wanted to share Operation Evie Scheme right then, but thought better of it. She would tell her mother once she had completed it successfully, lest she disappoint her once more. Maleficent never failed to remind Mal that sometimes it just didn’t seem like Mal was evil enough to be her daughter. At your age I cursing entire kingdoms was a familiar phrase Mal had grown up hearing.
“So you’re off to make someone miserable?” her mother cooed.
“Wretched, really!” enthused Mal.
A slow smile formed on Maleficent’s thin red lips. She crossed the room and stood in front of Mal, reaching out to trace a long nail along Mal’s cheek. “That’s a nasty little girl,” she said. Mal swore she saw a glimmer of pride flicker in her mother’s cold, emerald-green eyes.
Mal snapped back to reality as the band finished a punk rock number with clashing cymbals and a drum roll. Anthony Tremaine was still staring at her.
“So why don’t you dance, again?”
Because I don’t have time to dance when I have evil schemes to hatch, Mal wanted to say. One that will make my mother proud of me, finally.
She turned up her nose. “I don’t have to have a reason.”
“You don’t. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have one.”
He caught her by surprise, because he was right.
Because she did have a reason, a very good reason to stay clear of any kind of activity that might hint at or lead to romance. Her missing father. Otherwise known as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named-in-Maleficent’s-Presence.
So Anthony had her there. Mal had
to give him that. But instead, she glared at him. Then she glared at him again, for good measure. “Maybe I just like to be alone.” Because maybe I’m so tired of my mother looking at me like I’m weak, just because I came from her own moment of weakness.
Because maybe I need to show her that I’m strong enough and evil enough to prove to her that I’m not like my weak, human father.
That I can be just like her.
Maybe I don’t want to dance because I don’t want to have anything human about me.
“That can’t be it.” Anthony said, picking lint off his jacket. His voice was uncommonly low and pleasant, which once again brought back to Mal’s mind the handsome prince by the enchanted lake. Except that Anthony wasn’t quite as handsome as the boy in her dream had been, not that she thought that boy handsome, mind you. Not that she thought about him at all. “Nobody likes to be alone.”
“Well, I do,” she insisted. It was true.
“And besides, everybody wants to dance with a lord,” he said smugly.
“Nope, not me!”
“Fine, have it your way,” Anthony said, finally backing away, his head held high. In a hot second, he had already asked Harriet Hook to dance, and she’d accepted with a delighted shriek.
Mal exhaled. Phew. Boys. Dreams. Princes. It was all too much for one day.
“Mal. Mal. Earth to Mal?” Jay waved a hand in front of her face. “You okay?”
Mal nodded but didn’t answer. For a moment she had been lost in the memory of that awful dream again. Except that this time it didn’t seem so much a dream as a premonition? That one day she might just find herself in Auradon? But how could that be?
Jay frowned, holding out a cup of cider. “Here. It’s like you’ve powered down, or something.”
Mal realized that she hadn’t moved from the front hall. She’d been standing there, stupidly frozen, ever since Anthony had left her side. That was three songs ago, and the Bad Apples were playing their current hit, “Call Me Never.”