“I can take care of myself,” Agatha said. “Look, the Ball is less than two months away and things with Tedros are getting worse. We have to try a new—”
“He’s my prince,” Sophie stiffened. “And I’ll handle him myself.”
Agatha didn’t bother arguing. When Sophie was ready, she’d listen.
While both schools went off with Castor and Uma to free their henchmen back to the Blue Forest, Sophie stole away to the Library of Vice.
It took all of her will not to run out the moment she came in. Perched atop Vice’s top floor, the Library of Vice was like a normal library, only after a flood, fire, and tornado had swept through. Its rusty iron bookshelves were skewed at odd angles, with thousands of fallen books all over the floor. The walls were furry green with mold, the brown carpet was moist and sticky, and the room smelled like a mix of smoke and sour milk.
Behind a desk in the corner was a gelatinous toad, puffing a cigar and stamping books one after one before tossing them on the floor.
“Subject of interest,” he burped.
“Love spells,” Sophie said, trying not to breathe.
The toad nodded to a dank shelf in the corner. There were only three books left on it:
Thorns, Not Roses: Why Love Is a Curse by Baron Dracul
A Never’s Guide to Ending True Love by Dr. Walter Bartoli
Foolproof Love Spells & Potions by Glinda Gooch
Sophie threw open the third, ran down its list of spells until she found “Spell 53: The True Love Heart Hex.”
She ripped out the page and fled before she fainted from the stench.
Dot, Hester, and Anadil hunched over it during lunch. “‘Once a boy is under this spell, he will instantly fall in love with you and do whatever you ask,’” Anadil read. “‘Works particularly well with eliciting proposals of marriage and invitations to Balls.’”
“All you have to do is mix the prescribed potion into a bullet and shoot it at your true love’s heart!” Sophie read excitedly.
“It won’t work,” Hester crabbed.
“You’re just mad because I found it.”
Hester snatched a heap of letters from her bag. “‘Dear Hester, I don’t know of any love spells that work’—‘Dear Hester, love spells are notoriously dodgy’—‘Dear Hester, love spells are dangerous. Use a bad spell and you can warp someone permanently’—”
“It’s ‘foolproof’!” Dot said.
“Says who? Glinda GOOCH?”
“I say it’s worth a try if it means we don’t have to talk about Balls and kisses anymore,” Anadil said, red eyes studying the recipe. “Bat heart, lodestones, cat bone . . . These are all standard ingredients. Oh. We need a drop of Tedros’ ‘scent.’”
“How are we going to get that?” Dot said. “If a Never even gets near an Ever, the wolves are on us. We need an Ever to do it.”
Agatha plopped down in a heap of pink. “What’d I miss?”
Sophie only got five words out.
“No! No spells. No hexes. No tricks!” Agatha scolded. “It has to be true love!”
“But look!” Sophie held up the page and its painting of a prince and princess kissing at a Ball. The caption: “ONLY AUTHENTIC SUBSTITUTE FOR TRUE LOVE!”
Agatha crumpled the page and dumped it in Sophie’s pail. “I don’t want to hear about it again.”
Sophie spent the rest of lunch picking at her loaf of cheese.
Two days later, Hester felt a jab in the middle of the night. She stirred to see Sophie standing over her bed, sniffing a blue tie with a gold T.
“Smells like heaven. I’m sure there’s enough here.”
For a moment, Hester looked confused. Then her cheeks swelled, ready to detonate—
“What about a Villain’s Choir?” Sophie said. “I think that’ll be my second proposal as Captain.”
Hester stayed up all night mixing the ingredients. Using her mother’s old crockery, she blended them into a frothy pink potion, distilled the love potion into shimmering gas, and poured the gas into a heart-shaped bullet over the fireplace.
“Just hope he doesn’t die,” Hester growled, handing it over.
Sophie practiced her aim for two days before she knew she was ready. She waited until Surviving Fairy Tales, when Yuba and the group were climbing trees to study “Forest Flora.” When Tedros reached for a blue hornbeam branch, she saw her chance and drew the bullet into her slingshot—
“You’re mine,” Sophie whispered.
The pink heart shot off the sling and flew straight for the silver swan on Tedros’ heart, only to turn crimson, ricochet off him like rubber, and smash back into her with a violent, alien scream. The whole group spun in shock.
Sophie’s black robes were splashed with a giant, bloody letter F.
“For Failing to abide by the rules.” Yuba glowered from a tree. “No spells until after the Unlocking.”
Beatrix picked the broken heart bullet off the ground. “A love spell? You tried a love spell on Tedros?”
The class burst into howls. Sophie turned to Tedros, who couldn’t have looked more enraged. Next to him, Agatha had the same expression. Sophie covered her face and fled, sobs echoing through the forest.
“Every year, a rascal tries something. But even the sorriest rascal knows there’s no shortcuts to love,” Yuba said. “We’ll start with proper spells next week, I assure you. But for now, on to ferns! How can we tell if a fern is actually a Never in disguise—”
Agatha didn’t follow the group to the Fernfield. Slouched against an oak, she gazed at the heart-shaped pieces in the grass, just as shattered as her dreams of home.
Hester came back from supper to find Sophie sprawled on her bed, a puddle of tears.
Sophie looked up, the red F on her robes even brighter now. “It won’t come off. I tried everything.”
Hester dumped her schoolbag on the floor. “We’re practicing our talents in the common room. Feel free to join.” She opened the door and paused.
“I warned you.”
Sophie jumped at the slam.
All night she couldn’t sleep, dreading the thought of wearing the F to lunch the next day. Finally she managed to doze off and woke to find the sun up and all her roommates gone to breakfast.
Agatha was sitting on the edge of her bed, picking dead leaves out of her pink dress.
“A wolf saw me this time. But I lost him in the tunnel.” She glanced up at a gilded mirror on a wall. “Looks nice in here.”
“Thank you for bringing it,” Sophie rasped.
“My room’s happier without it.”
Tense silence.
“I’m sorry, Agatha.”
“Sophie, I’m on your side. We have to work together if we want to get out of here alive.”
“The spell was our only hope,” Sophie said softly.
“Sophie, we can’t give up! We have to get home!”
Sophie stared into the mirror, eyes welling. “What happened to me, Agatha?”
“You want the Ball without winning your prince. You want your kiss without doing the work. Look, I had to clean plates after supper all week, so I read while doing it.” Agatha pulled a book from her dress—Winning Your Prince by Emma Anemone—and started flipping to dog-eared pages.
“According to this, winning true love is the ultimate challenge. In every fairy tale, it might seem like love at first sight, but there’s always skill behind it.”
“But I already—”
“Shut up and listen. It comes down to three things. Three things a girl has to do to win her fairy-tale prince. First, you need to ‘flaunt your strengths.’ Second, you need to ‘speak through actions, not words.’ And third, you need to ‘parade competing suitors.’ If you just do these three things and do them well, we stand a—”
Sophie raised her hand.
“What.”
“I can’t flaunt anything in this potato sack, can’t act with that she-devil in my face, and have no competing suitors except a boy who looks and
smells like a rat! Look at me, Agatha! I have an F on my chest, my hair looks like a boy’s, I have bags under my eyes, my lips are dry, and yesterday I found a blackhead on my nose!”
“And how are you going to change that?” Agatha snapped.
Sophie bowed her head. The ugly letter cast shadows on her hands. “Tell me what to do, Aggie. I’m listening.”
“Show him who you are,” Agatha said, softening.
She gazed deep into her friend’s eyes.
“Show him the real Sophie.”
Sophie saw the faith burning bright in Agatha’s smile. Then, turning to the mirror, she managed a sly smile of her own . . . a smile that matched one of a grim little cupid, trapped deep in darkness, waiting patiently to be let out.
17
The Empress’s New Clothes
News of Sophie’s failed love spell swept across both schools, and by midmorning everyone waited with bated breath to get a glimpse of her scarlet F. But when Sophie skipped all her morning classes, it was clear she was too ashamed to show her face.
“You should have heard the things Tedros called her,” Beatrix said to Evergirls at lunch.
Sitting in a heap of autumn leaves, Agatha tuned her out and looked over at Tedros and the Everboys playing rugby, silver swans glimmering on blue knit sweaters. Across the Clearing, Nevers shunned group activities and sat mostly by themselves. Hester glanced up from Spells for Suffering and read Agatha’s eyes with a shrug, as if Sophie’s whereabouts were the least of her concerns.
“Now, Teddykins, it’s not her fault,” Beatrix blathered loudly. “The poor girl thinks she’s one of us. We should feel sorry for someone so pathe—”
Her eyes bulged. Agatha saw why.
Sophie sashayed into the Clearing, dumpy black sack refashioned into a strapless bodice dress, F shimmering over her chest with devil-red sequins. She’d cut her blond hair even shorter and slicked it down in a shiny bob. Her face was painted geisha white, her eyelids pink, her lips vermilion, and her glass shoes had not only been repaired but heeled even taller, which together with the extremely short dress, showed off long, creamy legs. From the shadows she swanned into sun, and light exploded off her glitter-dusted skin, bathing her in heavenly glow. Sophie strutted past Hester, who dropped her book, past Everboys, who dropped their ball, and glided right up to Hort.
“Let’s do lunch,” she said, sweeping him away like a hostage.
Across the field, Tedros’ sword fell out of its sheath.
He saw Beatrix glaring and put it back.
During Surviving Fairy Tales, Sophie ignored Yuba’s lecture on “Leaving Useful Trails” and spent the entire class cozying up to Hort and filling her Never pail with roots and herbs from the Blue Forest.
“What are you doing!” hissed Agatha.
“Can you believe it, Aggie darling? They have beetroot, willow bark, lemonwood and everything else I need to make my old potions and creams! Soon I’ll be back to my real self!”
“This wasn’t the ‘real Sophie’ I had in mind.”
“Excuse me? I’m just following your rules. Flaunt my assets, which are many, as you can see. Speak through actions—have I said a word to Tedros? No. Haven’t. And lest we forget, parade competing suitors. Do you know what it takes to survive lunch with Hort? To nuzzle that rodent every time I see Tedros looking? Eucalyptus, Agatha. I numb my nose with eucalyptus. But in the end, you were right.”
“Listen, you misun— I was?”
“You reminded me what’s important.” Sophie nodded to Tedros and Everboys ogling her across the thicket. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a Never, Ever, or whatever. In the end, the fairest of them all wins.” She glossed her lips and gave them a smack. “You’ll see. He’ll ask me to the Ball before the week’s up and you’ll get your precious kiss. So no more negativity, darling, it gives me a headache. Now, where’s that worthless Hort? I told him to stay by me at all times!” She swept away, leaving Agatha speechless.
In the School for Evil, Nevers sulked through supper, knowing they had a full night of studying ahead. With spell casting set to begin, the teachers’ tests were based less on talent now and more in tedious recall. For the next day alone, they had to memorize eighty murder schemes for Lady Lesso’s first challenge, Giant commands for Henchmen, and the Flowerground Map for Sader’s geography exam.
“How will he correct them?” Hester groused. “He can’t even see!”
At curfew, Hester, Dot, and Anadil trudged back from the common room, piled high with books, only to find their room turned into a laboratory. Dozens of brilliant-colored potions bubbled over open flames, vials of creams, soaps, and dyes littered the shelves, a mess of dried leaves, herbs, flowers blanketed the three beds . . . and in the center of it all sat Sophie, buried under sequins, ribbons, and fabric, testing new concoctions on patches of skin.
“My God, she is a witch,” Anadil gasped.
Sophie held up The Recipe Book for Good Looks. “I stole it from an Ever at lunch.”
“Shouldn’t you be studying for challenges?” Dot asked.
“Beauty is a full-time job,” sighed Sophie, lathering herself in a bright green balm.
“And you wonder why Evers are slow,” Hester said.
“Sophie is back, darlings. And she’s just getting started,” Sophie mooned. “Love is my challenge now.”
And indeed, though Sophie placed near the bottom in all three challenges the next day, she placed first in Attention, arriving to lunch with her black uniform remolded into a dazzling slit-back toga dress, sashed with blue orchids. Her heels were a full inch taller, her face shimmering bronze, her eye shadow provocative periwinkle, her lips delicious crimson, and the glittering F on the front of her dress was now complemented by sequins on the back that read: “. . . is for Fabulous.”
“That can’t be allowed,” Beatrix whined to drooling boys.
But she was wearing her uniform, Sophie insisted to teachers, while usually fierce wolves looked just as awed as the boys. Dot swore one even winked at Sophie when it filled her lunch pail.
“She’s making a mockery of villainy!” Hester fumed, black eyes flaying Sophie across the Clearing. “They should lock her in the Doom Room permanently.”
“Beast’s still missing,” Anadil yawned. “Whatever spooked him must have been pretty bad.”
The next day, Sophie flunked all her challenges again and yet somehow avoided failing out of school. Though she was clearly the worst, each time she saw a “19” pop up instead of a “20.” (“I’m just too lovable to fail,” she preened to mystified classmates.)
During Forest Groups, Sophie ignored Yuba’s lecture on “Scarecrow Survival” and scribbled busily in her notebook, while Agatha glowered at her black baby doll dress, pink lollipop, and sequins spelling “F . . . is for Fun.”
“Name something else that starts with F,” Sophie whispered.
“I’m trying to listen and so should you, since we’ll be here forever.”
“F is for ‘Forever.’ Mmm, a bit heady. How about ‘Flirty’? Or ‘Fetching’?”
“Or ‘Futile’! He hasn’t even talked to you yet!”
“F is for ‘Faith,’” Sophie said. “Which I thought you had in me.”
Agatha grumbled to herself the rest of class.
But Sophie almost made her a believer when she arrived the next day in a belly-baring black halter, poofed miniskirt, spiky pixie hairdo, and heels dyed hot pink. The Everboys spent lunch goggling at her between slobbery bites of beef. And yet, even though Sophie could see Tedros sneak peeks at her legs, grit his teeth each time she passed, and sweat when she got too close . . . he still didn’t talk to her.
“It’s not enough,” Agatha said, accosting her after Yuba’s class. “You need better assets.”
Sophie looked down at herself. “I think my assets are quite sufficient.”
“Deeper assets, you idiot! Something inside! Like compassion or charity or kindness!”
Sophie blinked. “Sometime
s you make wonderful sense, Aggie. He needs to see how Good I truly am.”
“She sees reason,” Agatha exhaled. “Now hurry. If he asks someone else to the Ball, we’ll never get home!”
Agatha proposed that Sophie sneak Tedros love limericks filled with clever rhymes or leave him secret presents that revealed depth and thought, tried-and-true strategies both outlined in Winning Your Prince. Sophie listened, nodding to all of this, so when Agatha arrived at lunch the next day, she expected to read a first draft of a verse or inspect a handmade gift. Instead, she arrived to find a group of 20 Nevergirls crowded in a corner of the Clearing.
“What’s going on over there?” Agatha asked Hester and Anadil, both studying in tree shade.
“She said it was your idea,” Hester sneered, eyes on her book.
“Bad idea,” Anadil said. “So bad we don’t want to talk to you.”
Confused, Agatha turned to the gathering. A familiar voice rang from its center—
“Fabulous, darlings! But just a little less cream!”
Agatha’s chest tightened. She forced her way through the swarm of Nevers until she stumbled into the center and almost died from shock.
Sophie sat on a tree stump, a painted wooden sign hanging from a branch above her:
All around her, Nevergirls were squeezing sticky red beetroot cream onto their pimples and warts.
“Now remember, girls. Just because you’re ugly doesn’t mean you can’t be presentable,” Sophie preached.
“I’m bringing my roommates tomorrow,” Arachne whispered to green-skinned Mona.
Agatha gaped, flabbergasted. Then she saw someone sneaking away. “Dot?”
Dot turned meekly, smothered in red cream. “Oh! Hello! I was just, you know, I thought I should check up on—you know, to see if, in case—” She looked at her feet. “Don’t tell Hester.”
Agatha had no idea what any of this had to do with winning Tedros’ love. But when she tried to corner Sophie after, three Nevergirls shoved in front of her to ask Sophie about picking the best beets. Agatha didn’t get a chance in Forest Groups either, because Yuba separated the Evers and Nevers.