Merlin was one of the most powerful magicians in the land, and if he was allowed to use magic on such a large scale, who knew where it would lead?
Ben motioned to Lumiere to send Merlin and Artie back into the room.
“I have considered the urgency of your request,” he told them.
“Thank you, Your Highness.” Merlin looked hopeful and eager to get going.
Ben held up his hand. He wasn’t finished. “But for now, I am going to reject your petition to use magic to capture this creature.”
Merlin frowned and his face turned red behind his beard. This was certainly not the news he had been hoping for, and the old wizard was clearly used to getting his way. Artie looked particularly glum. The idea of defeating a horrible creature with ancient magic had obviously been an exciting one for the young squire.
Before Merlin could object, Ben continued. “I will travel to Camelot myself to assess the situation. I will leave with you first thing tomorrow morning.” He would have to miss a day of classes, probably two, but hopefully he would be back in Auradon by the weekend. Besides, it sounded like an adventure, and before Mal and her friends had arrived, even Ben had very few of those in Auradon.
“Very good, Sire,” said Merlin, elbowing Artie to bow like he did. “Let’s just hope Camelot is still standing when we get there.”
As one who aspired to be the fairest of them all, Evie didn’t need to advertise the fact by wearing the word fairest emblazoned all over her T-shirts, but it didn’t hurt. She was seated at her desk in her and Mal’s bedroom that afternoon, in front of their matching poster beds and frilly pink curtains that Mal so despised. The wood-paneled walls were decorated with the smiling portraits of Auradon’s past princesses, as if to remind Evie of her goals. She brushed her long dark tresses until her blue highlights shone and pursed her lips, checking her reflection with her phone’s camera. She tried out a few poses for InstaRoyal, the latest lifestyle envy-inducer that was a big hit with the Auradon set. It was all about showing off the newest and hippest fashions in glass slippers (glass mules with puffy bows were all the rage) and the plush interiors of private carriages (plump satin cushions sewn by Cinderella’s hardworking mice were the most popular upgrade). Even though she’d only signed up a few weeks ago, Evie already had a lot of “subjects” and enjoyed collecting their “bows.”
Evie much preferred InstaRoyal to ZapChat, its grungier counterpart, which was all about sharing glimpses of Auradon’s less-than-perfect side: photos of the tourney team chugging pumpkin juice, for instance, or embarrassing pictures of princesses kissing frogs—and not the type that turned into handsome princes like Prince Naveem either. She was scrolling through her royal feed when her phone began shaking in her hand as the floor rumbled with another earthquake, and she accidentally tapped on a photo. It was one that Doug had posted earlier from band practice that he’d captioned Feeling Dopey!
She texted him, Hey, did you feel that? Shake, rattle, and roll….Unlike Mal, she’d gotten used to the occasional rumble.
Evie went back to her zapps and checked the comments on her photos to see if there were any new ones. In Auradon, the compliments were always plentiful and kind. Oooh, there was a new one on an old photo she’d posted of the four of them standing together and facing down Maleficent during the attack at the Coronation. This was the moment when they had defeated the evil fairy with the power of good.
It had run in the Auradon Times and it was one of Evie’s favorite pictures, so she’d re-posted it to her account. There was something so inspiring about seeing them bravely standing together while facing the great dragon face of Maleficent. It reminded Evie that even if they were from the Isle of the Lost, they were just as good and courageous as the princes and princesses they went to school with, and that during Auradon’s darkest hour, it was the four villain kids who had been able to keep everyone safe.
She found the new comment and read it eagerly. To her surprise, it wasn’t very nice at all and had been posted by a user she didn’t follow.
There’s no place for you in Auradon! Go back where you belong! Return to the Isle of the Lost at once! Before the young moon shows its face! it read.
Ouch. That was rude. And weird. What was the deal with the moon?
She was still staring at the screen when Doug appeared at her doorway. “What’s up? Ready to grab a bite?” he asked, looking adorable in a bow tie and suspenders. He made the same funny face that he’d posted to his InstaRoyal feed.
Doug was no prince, but a prince for her own heart. He was the sweetest, nicest boyfriend a girl could ever ask for, and he could dance like nobody’s business.
“Sure!” Evie said cheerfully, putting away her phone for now. She was still upset by the mean comment, but a girl had to eat. Evie knew she would feel much better on a full stomach and she could show the comment to Mal later. Mal would know what to do about it; she always did.
Speaking of Mal, she entered the room just as Evie and Doug were about to leave. “Evie! Glad I caught you. I need to show you something!”
“Oh, Mal, I have something to show you too, but we were just about to go grab dinner,” Evie said apologetically.
“No, this can’t wait,” Mal said, shoving past Doug. “Eat later.” Her green eyes were flashing dangerously and it was obvious that she was particularly annoyed. Evie hadn’t seen Mal act this way since they’d first arrived in Auradon, when she’d scowled at everything. Even if she was in a rush, Mal shuddered at the sunlight streaming through the open window and closed the pink curtains once more, just like she had done on the first day.
Some things never changed.
Evie looked nervously at Doug, who had his eyebrows raised. “Go ahead, I’ll catch up later,” she told him. Somehow she’d already lost her appetite.
“Whatever it is, I can help….” he offered, because that was the kind of guy he was.
Mal rolled her eyes and put her hands on her hips. “Sorry, Doug, but I have to talk to Evie privately. This isn’t about mining jewels.”
“As you wish. See you later, Evie,” said Doug, who promptly left them alone, whistling as he went.
“So what’s up?” asked Evie, turning to Mal and walking over to sit at her sewing machine. Doing something with her hands always calmed her down during stressful times.
Mal didn’t answer immediately. She watched as Evie carefully pushed fabric under the needle. “Is that your Castlecoming dress?” she asked. “That color is pretty.”
“Yes,” said Evie. “You really think it’s pretty?” she asked, momentarily distracted by the compliment and running a hand over the glossy fabric and smoothing out the stitches. The dress was royal blue, her favorite color, with a deep red bodice the color of poisoned apples.
“Very,” Mal said.
“Yours is ready, I put it in your closet. Not as many ruffles this time, like you wanted. Okay, so what did you have to talk to me about?” Evie asked.
Mal removed her phone and swiped to the screen with the strange message. “This,” she said. “Look.”
Evie read the message, her face growing pale as snow for a moment. “Someone left the same message on my InstaRoyal account.” She handed Mal her phone with the offending comment on the screen. Mal studied it, frowning.
“Who do you think it’s from?” asked Evie, feeling goose bumps on her arms. That had to stop. Pebbly skin was so not attractive. “I checked and the user’s anonymous, and their account is private.”
“I have no idea,” said Mal, biting her lip.
“And by the way, why does it talk about the moon?” asked Evie.
“I don’t know. At first, I thought the comments were only meant to be mean. But since they mentioned the moon to both of us, I wonder if there is more to it than that. Maybe they actually do want us to return by a certain time?”
Evie read the message on Mal’s phone again. “Yours says it’s from M.”
“Yeah, I see that,” said Mal. “And my mother used to count
moon days rather than day days. Evil-fairy habit.”
Evie crossed her arms. In their world there was only one M that mattered. “It can’t be from her. I mean, she’s a lizard? Lizards can’t type! How can she be M?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s not her,” said Mal hopefully.
“But what if it is?” whispered Evie.
“And who else would want us to return to the Isle of the Lost so badly?” Mal said. “It has to be from…”
“Our parents?” Evie squeaked. “You really think so?”
“There’s only one way to find out. You still have your Magic Mirror, don’t you? Let’s ask it to show us our parents. If my mother is able to get out of that pedestal and turn back into herself, maybe it’ll catch her in the act.”
Evie removed the shard of the Magic Mirror that her mother had gifted her with before she left for Auradon. “Show me Maleficent!” she demanded.
The gray clouds in the mirror’s reflection parted to show a lizard snoozing peacefully under glass. Both Mal and Evie exhaled, relieved.
“What about your mom?” Mal suggested. “Just to make sure?”
Evie nodded. “Show me the Evil Queen!”
But instead of showing Evil Queen happily tweezing her eyebrows or shading in the mole on her cheek, the mirror stayed cloudy. Evie tried again. “Magic Mirror in my hand, show me my mother, I command!”
Still, the mirror’s cloudy swirls remained hazy and swirly. Evie shook it a few times, and even banged it against her lap for good measure. “This isn’t good,” she said. “It’s busted. This has never happened before.”
When she asked, the mirror wouldn’t show them Cruella de Vil or Jafar either, remaining stubbornly gray and fogged in.
“How about asking it to show us Evil Queen’s castle, Hell Hall, and the Junk Shop?” Mal suggested. “Maybe that will work.”
Evie did so, and the mirror cooperated this time, but there was still no sign of any of the three villains. The castle was empty, Hell Hall abandoned, the Junk Shop deserted.
“That’s strange,” said Evie. “It’s not like they go anywhere.” She was starting to have a dreadful feeling about this.
Mal wasn’t ready to give up quite yet. “Ask it again,” she urged.
Evie tried, but no matter what, the mirror remained cloudy. “Maybe it’s broken?” she asked hopefully.
“No, it was working otherwise,” Mal pointed out. “Something else is going on, something that might be connected to the messages we received today.”
Evie stared at Mal. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“That Cruella, Jafar, and Evil Queen are up to their old tricks on the Isle of the Lost and that Maleficent might be involved somehow? Totally,” said Mal.
Evie found she couldn’t breathe for a moment. She was glad she hadn’t eaten anything, or else she would seriously throw up right now.
“We don’t know who sent us those messages, but here’s what we do know,” said Mal, straightening her shoulders. She didn’t look frightened anymore, and Evie took comfort in her friend’s courage; it gave her back some of her own. “The villains won’t rest until they exact vengeance on Auradon….” said Mal.
“And it’s possible they’ve hidden themselves until they can put their evil plan into action,” Evie finished.
“Evie, we’ve got move fast,” said Mal.
“On it.”
“Let’s go get Carlos and Jay.”
Back in Dragon Hall, it had been school policy that the library, otherwise known as the Athenaeum of Evil, was forbidden to the average student. Carlos de Vil had never been the average student, however. Most of the reading material he’d been able to find there had consisted of last year’s TV guides for shows he’d never heard of and past issues of Carriage & Driver magazine. Knowledge was hoarded like stolen gold and plundered treasure, and was equally hard to come by.
But at Auradon Prep, the library and its abundant resources were free and open to all. After school, Carlos could usually be found in the library, admiring the leather-bound books on every subject, from How to Keep Yourself Busy for Sixteen Years Alone by Rapunzel to Genie’s Blue Planet Travel Guides: See the World in Three Wishes. He would never get tired of the place.
But today he was holed up in the room he shared with Jay, seated on his comfortable bed with the blue plaid comforter around his shoulders as he stared at his laptop, ignoring the large-screen television and its many video games. The matching blue plaid curtains were drawn shut. As it turned out, like Mal, he preferred to work in a dark room. Carlos had been there all afternoon, so lost in his research that he’d missed tourney practice.
Carlos was a naturally curious boy, and when he wanted to understand how something worked, he didn’t stop until he’d figured it out. For instance, when Auradon City was hit with several earthquakes in a row over the past weeks, he’d looked up the statistics and noticed that there had been more quakes in the last month than there had been in the last year. He kept meaning to bring it up with his Wonders of the Earth teacher but hadn’t gotten the chance yet.
This time he wasn’t merely curious, though. He was furious. Earlier that day, he had received a rather upsetting e-mail. Unlike most kids at Auradon Prep, Carlos wasn’t very active on royal media—his GraceBook account only had one old post, he never sent ZapChats. He preferred the ease of his genie-mail account, which organized his e-mails like magic.
That morning, he logged in to see if the new video game he’d ordered (Crown of Duty) was on its way and discovered a new e-mail from an unknown sender. The message, like most anonymous messages, was mean-spirited, telling him to go back where he came from and return to the Isle of the Lost by moonset. While the e-mail itself had been annoying, it really irritated him no end that he hadn’t cracked the e-mail sender’s true identity yet.
Carlos figured he was smarter than the average troll, but the only progress he’d made was to unmask the server that had routed the e-mail, and so far he hadn’t been able to hack through its security defenses.
“Dalmatians,” Carlos muttered, frustrated enough to use his mother’s favorite curse. “Sorry, Dude,” he said, apologizing to the dog on his lap. Dude whimpered and Carlos scratched him behind his ears.
The rapid-fire sound of knocking on the door startled him. “Come in!” he yelled, and looked up to see Mal and Evie entering with dark looks on their faces.
He held up a hand as they crowded around his desk. He’d been expecting them for a while now. “Don’t tell me. You’ve both received rude messages saying to return to the Isle of the Lost, haven’t you? Which is why you’re here? I got an e-mail today.”
“How did you know…never mind,” said Evie. Carlos was often a step ahead of them.
“Yes, we did,” said Mal, pulling up a chair, giving Carlos the details. “What’ve you found? Do you know where they’re from?”
“Not yet,” he said, his fingers flying over the keys. But he was getting close, he could feel it. He’d finally breached the first security firewall; now all he had to do was figure out the password. He tried to ignore the girls so he could concentrate.
“Isn’t it weird that you got an e-mail, Evie got a comment on her InstaRoyal account, and I got a text?” Mal pointed out. “Whoever’s behind it seems to know us pretty well.”
Carlos nodded. “I’m barely on royal media, you only use your phone, and everyone knows Evie’s always updating her feed. Do you think they reached Jay? He’s never online and he’s always losing his phone.”
“I’m sure they found a way,” said Mal.
“We think the messages might be from our parents,” said Evie a little breathlessly.
That was not news he wanted to hear. “What! Why?” Carlos twisted around, suddenly seized with the fear that his mother, Cruella de Vil, with her wild hair and trademark screech, was right behind him.
Dude whimpered.
“Relax, they’re not here, at least not yet,” said Mal. Then she told him h
ow Evie’s Magic Mirror had been unable to show them the villains on the island.
“Well, call me paranoid, but lately I feel like she is near. Like she’s watching me somehow. I can’t shake the feeling,” he said, panicking as he imagined Cruella appearing at his doorway. While Maleficent might be able to turn into a dragon, Cruella was a dragon.
“Nah, you’re just paranoid,” said Mal.
Carlos chewed on this new information. “Maybe so, but you’re saying there’s really a chance they’re behind these messages? Our parents? They want us to come back? But why?” he asked.
“Because they miss us and want to give us hugs?” said Evie. “I’m kidding, I’m sure my mom only wants to know if I’m keeping up with my weekly mud masks and facial massages.”
“They want us to return so we can help them get their revenge on Auradon, of course,” said Mal. “Defeat only makes villains try harder. I can just hear my mom now, saying ‘You poor simple fools, thinking you could defeat me! Me! The mistress of all evil!’” Then she cackled like Maleficent.
“You’re scarily good at that,” said Evie, shivering.
“Thank you, I think?” said Mal.
Carlos shuddered and turned back to his computer to try out a succession of common passwords. None of them worked. He stared at the blinking cursor. “Dalmatians,” he cursed again. Then he realized if Mal was correct and the villains were behind the messages, there was only one way to find out for sure.
C-A-V-E-O-F-W-O-N-D-E-R-S, he tried. Nothing.