Her lips curled into a grin. “Don’t forget the prize.”
Agatha saw streaks of white magically erase the stage behind Sophie, streaks she’d seen before—
“RUN!” she screamed.
White streaks erased the walls, splashed towards the aisles as screaming students fled for doors too late—
The Theater of Tales vanished in a blast of white, expelling both schools into the Good stair room. Evers smashed into pink tower staircases, Nevers into blue. As lightning and wind shattered stained glass windows, Hester and the villains fled up the Honor and Valor steps. But just as she reached the landing, Hester slid on glass and fell off the side. Dangling from the banister by one hand, she spotted Dot crawling past her—
“Dot! Dot, help!”
“Sorry,” Dot sniffed, crawling ahead. “I only help roommates.”
“Dot, please!”
“I live in a toilet! You girls are bullies and bad friends and you make me embarrassed to be a vil—”
“DOT!”
Dot grabbed Hester’s hand just as it slipped.
The Evers weren’t so lucky. As they frantically crawled up Purity and Charity, Sophie sang them a searing note and the two glass staircases exploded, sending beautiful boys and girls crashing to marble. Sophie went one note higher. The foyer quaked beneath their feet, cracked like thin ice, and split open in a hundred places. Stunned Evers fell into each other and tumbled towards the yawning rifts. They tried to grip broken marble and shards of stairs, but the floor’s jagged slopes were too steep and with harrowing screams, the children careened over the edges. Just as they plunged into the cliffs, their hands found splintered horns of marble. With every last ounce of will, the Evers held on, feet kicking into deadly darkness below.
“Agatha!” Tedros screamed, leaping across rain-soaked gorges and gulfs to pull them up, growing more and more distraught.
“Agatha, where are you!”
Then across the room, high against a shattered window, he saw two pale hands clinging over a cliff of broken wall.
“Agatha! I’m coming!”
He bounded over rock craters, scaled broken stair pieces, higher and higher towards the marble bluff. With a lunging scissors-kick jump, he dove onto the jagged cliff top, scraped through glass, and grabbed her hand over the opposite edge—
Sophie pulled herself up to face him.
Tedros backed up in horror, only to find the cliff’s edge, Evers crying for help below.
“So if princes rescue princesses, now I wonder . . . ,” Sophie said, Circus Crown sparkling on rain-soaked hair. “Who rescues princes?”
“You promised—” Tedros stammered, searching for an escape. “You promised you’d change!”
“Did I?” Sophie scratched her skull. “Well. We both made promises we won’t keep.” With a scream, she unleashed her highest note yet.
The prince crumpled to his knees. Watching him whimper in pain, Sophie went a note higher. Paralyzed, Tedros felt his nose bleed, his ears sizzling. Sophie slowly leaned in and put a finger to his quivering lips. Then she smiled into his shocked blue eyes and delivered the death note—
Agatha tackled her against the open window, sending her crown flying into the storm.
Bloodied and weak, Tedros tried to help her, but Agatha glared back at him. “Save the others!”
“But—”
“Now!” Agatha yelled, pinning Sophie tighter against the window.
Mustering all his strength, Tedros leapt off the cliff for his stranded classmates. Hearing his cry below, Agatha turned from Sophie to make sure he was safe. Sophie swiftly kicked out her leg and Agatha smashed face-first into the windowsill.
She staggered up, nose bloody.
“Lady Lesso was right,” Sophie said, standing to face her. “You get stronger as I get weaker. You win as I lose. You’re my Nemesis, Agatha.”
Sophie stepped towards her. “Do you know how I know?”
Her face darkened with sadness.
“Because I’ll only be happy when you’re dead.”
Agatha backed against the window, trying to make her shaking finger glow.
Four flights up, Hester, Anadil, and Dot tore through Honor’s halls, screams and thunder echoing below.
“The Circus Crown was given!” Hester shrieked, throwing open faculty doors. “Where are they?” She swerved around the corner and found out.
Professor Anemone, Professor Dovey, and Professor Espada were frozen midrun, mouths wide open, as if they’d been ambushed by a spell just as they dashed for the stair room.
“Hester . . .”
Hester followed Anadil’s eyes out the hall window. On Halfway Bridge, lightning lit up Lady Lesso, Professor Sheeks, and Professor Manley, frozen still with the same startled expressions.
“Can we revive them?” Dot asked, paling. “It’s just a Stun Spell.”
“It isn’t a Stun Spell.” Anadil tapped on Professor Dovey’s skin, which made a thin, hollow sound.
“Petrification,” Hester said, remembering Lesso’s class. “Only the one who cast the spell can reverse it.”
“But who?” Dot squeaked.
“Someone who doesn’t want teachers interfering,” Anadil said, eyeing the silver tower over the bay.
Dot shook. “But that—that means—”
“We’re on our own,” said Hester.
On a stormy marble island raised above the demolished foyer, Agatha faced off alone against Sophie.
“We don’t have to be enemies, Sophie,” she begged, trying to ignite her finger behind her back.
“You made me like this,” Sophie breathed, sparkling with tears. “You took everything that was mine.”
Agatha saw Tedros and Evers crawling through rubble, convulsing from pain and fear. Through flashes of lightning, she saw Nevers watching them from towers across the Bay, quavering with the same expressions. Agatha’s heart hammered. It was all up to her now.
“We can find a happy ending here,” she pleaded, feeling her finger turn hot behind her. “We can both find a happy ending.”
“Here?” Sophie smiled thinly. “What happened to going home, Aggie?”
Agatha stuttered for an answer—
“Ah, I see,” Sophie said, grinning wider. “Now you have a ball to attend. Now you have a prince.”
“I just wanted to be friends, Sophie,” Agatha said, eyes welling. “That’s all I ever wanted.”
Sophie iced over. “You never wanted to be friends, Agatha. You wanted me to be the ugly one.”
Magically skin wrinkled deeper over her cheeks.
Agatha’s finger dimmed in shock. “Sophie, you’re doing this to yourself!”
“You wanted me to be the Evil one.” Sophie boiled, hands gnarling to claws.
“You can be Good, Sophie!” cried Agatha, thunder drowning her out.
“You wanted me to be the witch,” Sophie said, eyes bursting blood vessels.
“It’s not true!” Agatha backed against the window—
“Well, dearie,” Sophie smiled, teeth missing. “Wish granted.”
“No!”
With a single push, Sophie shoved Agatha into the storm. Agatha plummeted towards the shining Bridge and instant death—Tedros screamed—
A fairy flung himself under and caught Agatha with life-draining will. As he lay her safely down to flooded stone, Bane silently thanked Agatha of Gavaldon for all the Good she’d done. Then as she took her first breath, he took his last and died in her wet, open palm.
As lightning lit up the tower, Sophie looked down at Agatha, whose face was white with shock. Across the Bay, Sophie saw Nevers staring back at her, chilled to the bone. She spun to Tedros and the Evers, huddled in corners below, while Hester, Anadil, and Dot gaped in terror from the stairs.
Heart echoing the thunder, Sophie picked up a shard of glass and wiped away the rain.
Her drenched hair was completely white. Her face was spotted with swollen black warts. Her eyes bulged black as a crow
’s.
She stared into the spattered glass, frozen with panic.
But then, as Sophie looked into her mirror, panic slowly melted away and her face twisted with a strange relief, as if at last she could see beyond her reflection to what lay inside.
Her rotted lips curled into a smile, then a laugh of freedom . . . louder, higher . . .
Sophie threw down the glass, threw back her head, and unleashed a horrible cackle that promised Evil, beautiful Evil too pure to fight.
Then all at once, her eyes veered down to Agatha. With a monstrous scream of warning, she swept into her cape of snakes and vanished into night.
28
The Witch of Woods Beyond
When terrible things happen, my mother always said ‘Find what’s good in it,’” Hester puffed, sprinting past petrified Castor and Beezle through Mischief Hall.
“When terrible things happen, my daddy always said ‘Eat,’” Dot panted, turning a corner behind her. They slammed into Mona and Arachne—
“What’s happening!” Mona cried—
“Go to your room!” Hester bellowed. “Don’t come out!”
Mona and Arachne fled inside and locked the door.
Hester and Dot ran down the stairs and saw Hort, Ravan, and Vex coming up.
“Go to your room!” Dot yelled. “Don’t come out!”
The boys looked at Dot, then at Hester.
“Now!” Hester barked, and the boys scurried away.
“Suppose I’m a henchman?” pouted Dot. “Then we won’t be in the same classes next year!”
“If there’s even a school left!” Hester snapped.
They sprinted through the stair room, barking scared Nevers back to their rooms.
“I can think of one good thing,” said Dot. “No home-work!”
Hester stopped suddenly, eyes wide. “Dot, we’re not prepared for a real witch. We’re first years!”
“It’s Sophie,” Dot said. “The same girl who likes perfume and pink. We just need to calm her down.”
Hester cracked a smile. “You know, sometimes we don’t give you enough credit.”
“Come on,” Dot blushed, toddling ahead. “Maybe Anadil found her.”
After clearing the rest of Malice, the two girls limped exhausted to Room 66 and found their roommate reclining against bunched-up sheets.
“Everyone’s locked in their rooms,” Dot said, airing out her tunic.
Wiping sweat, Hester frowned at Anadil. “Did you even look for Sophie?”
“I didn’t need to,” Anadil yawned. “She’s coming here.”
“Here?” Hester snorted. “And how on earth would you know that?”
Anadil pulled back the sheets, revealing Grimm, bound and gagged.
“Because he told me.”
In the School for Good, Chaddick and Tedros stood guard outside the Valor Common Room, shirts ripped and bloodied. Inside the packed, musty den, girls snuffled in their Ball dates’ arms, while Beatrix and Reena crept to wounded boys with salve and bandages. By the time the sun came, they too were asleep.
Only Agatha didn’t dare rest. Curled in a zebra-skin chair, she thought of the girl who once brought her cucumber juice and bran-flour cookies, who took her on walks and confided her dreams.
That girl was gone. And in her place, a witch who would hunt her dead.
She looked through the window at the Bridge, dawnlit, with petrified teachers, a magical wave frozen beneath. There was no accident, no great mistake. All of this was part of the School Master’s plan. He wanted his two Readers at war.
But whose side was he on?
As sun flooded the room, Agatha kept her eyes open and waited for Sophie’s next move.
In Room 66, morning came and went. So did afternoon.
“You wouldn’t have any nibbles about?” Dot asked from her bed. Hester and Anadil stared at her, gagged Grimm grumbling between them.
“It’s just I haven’t had anything since yesterday and I can’t eat chocolate anymore since you made me live in a toilet, because chocolate reminds me of—”
Hester tore off Grimm’s gag. “Where’s Sophie.”
“Come,” Grimm spat.
“When?” Hester said.
“Wait,” said Grimm.
“What?”
“Grimm come. Grimm wait.”
Hester looked at Anadil. “This is why we’re here?”
A key turned in the door and all three girls dove under their beds.
“Grimm?”
Sophie slunk in, slipped off her black cape, and hung it on the door hook.
“Where are you?”
She scoured the room, scratching her scalp with sharp, dirty nails.
Under the beds, Hester, Dot, and Anadil gasped as clumps of white hair fell.
Sophie spun and saw the lump moving under covers. “Grimm?”
Leerily, she reached for the bed—
Three girls tackled her from behind. “Get her wrists!” Hester cried, tying Sophie’s legs to the bedpost with burnt sheets. Anadil secured Sophie’s wrists over her head next to Grimm’s, while Dot beat the cupid over the head with a pillow to make herself useful.
“Perhaps you’ve forgotten,” Sophie drawled, “but I’m on your side.”
“We’re all on the same side now,” Hester hissed. “Against you.”
“I admire such sweet intentions, Hester, but Good is not on your side.”
In the light, Hester noticed Sophie’s face ruined with wrinkles.
“You’ll rot here until we figure out how to revive the teachers,” Hester said, hiding shaking hands.
“Just know that I forgive all of you,” Sophie sighed. “Before you even have to ask.”
“We won’t ask,” Hester said, shunting Anadil and Dot away. Anadil grabbed Sophie’s cape off the hook—
“You’ll come back for me.”
They turned to Sophie, who smiled to reveal more missing teeth.
“You’ll see.”
Hester shuddered and shut the door behind them.
The door opened and Dot peeked in. “You wouldn’t happen to have any snacks?”
Hester yanked her through and slammed it.
Immediately Grimm chewed through his gag and spit it out.
“Good boy,” Sophie said, stroking him as he munched her binds away. “You did so well keeping them here.”
She opened her closet and pulled out her musty sewing kit and boxes of fabric and thread.
“I’ve been very busy, Grimm. And still more work to do.”
CRACK!
Sophie turned to the door.
CRACK! CRACK!
Outside it, Anadil hammered boards, locks, and screws into her door while Hester and Dot barred it with statues and benches from the hall. Hester caught Nevers peeking out of their rooms.
“STAY INSIDE!” she boomed, and doors closed.
“I feel awful,” Dot said. “She’s our roommate!”
“Whatever that is, it’s not our roommate,” said Hester.
Inside, Sophie hummed along to the hammer, a needle magically sewing under her lit finger. “They’ll just have to undo it,” she sighed, remembering the last time someone locked her in her room.
“All that work for nothing.”
By the early evening, the Evers grew restless and began to venture in groups to bathe. Then they moved in a vigilant mass to the Supper Hall, where the enchanted pots in the kitchen continued to cook, despite petrified nymphs around them. The students filled plates with goose curry, lentil salad, and pistachio sorbet, and ate at round tables in listless silence.
At the head table, Agatha tried to meet Tedros’ eyes, but he just gnawed on a chicken bone miserably. She had never seen him look so tired; he had bruised rims under his eyes, no color in his cheeks, and a small blemish on his jawbone. He was the only one who hadn’t taken a bath.
The silence continued until the children had nearly finished their sorbet.
“Um, I don’t know if you knew, but, um
, Good Hall?” Kiko cheeped. “It’s still, uh . . . okay.”
A hundred and nineteen heads craned up.
Kiko held the sorbet to her sweating face. “So we could, if we wanted, um, still have our, you know . . .”
She swallowed.
“Ball.”
Everyone stared at her.
“Or not,” Kiko mumbled.
Her classmates went back to their sorbet.
After a moment, Millicent put her spoon down.
“We did spend all this time preparing.”
“And we still have two hours to get ready,” Giselle said.
Reena blanched. “Is it enough time?”
“I’ll sort the music!” said Tristan.
“I’ll check on the hall!” said Tarquin.
“Everyone get dressed!” Beatrix hailed, and with a cheer, the crowd threw down spoons and leapt to its feet.
“Let me get this straight.” Agatha’s voice ripped through. “The fairies and wolves are dead, the teachers are cursed, half our school is in ruins, there’s a murderer on the loose—and you want to have a Ball?”
“We can’t give in to a witch!” Chaddick shot back.
“We can’t give up our gowns!” Reena mourned.
The Evers blew up in angry agreement—
“The teachers would be proud!”
“Good never surrenders to Evil!”
“She wants to ruin our Ball!”
“Everyone shut up.”
The room silenced. The Evers turned to Tedros, still seated.
“Agatha’s right. We can’t have the Ball now.”
His classmates slumped, nodding. Agatha exhaled.
“First we find the witch and kill her,” Tedros snarled.
Agatha’s fists balled up as Evers exploded in cheers—“Kill the witch! Kill the witch!”
“You think she’s just waiting for us?” Agatha shouted, leaping atop her chair. “You think you can stroll into Evil and kill a real witch?”
The chants ceased.
“What do you mean ‘real’ witch?” Beatrix glared up at her.