The Last Ever After

  Sophie stared at her.

  “Remember what I told you when we spoke in my office,” the Dean said. “I want you to be a legendary queen. I want you to make Evil great again. And most of all, I want you to be happy. Because you deserve the life I never had. You deserve a love that’s right.” Her eyes sparkled with warmth. “So maybe you don’t see me as a teacher anymore. But I’ll always see you as my student, Sophie. And when you lose your way, I’ll be there in the shadows, your Evil fairy godmother, pushing you towards your destiny like a wind behind a sail. Even when you lose sight of what that destiny is.”

  Sophie could see there was more Lady Lesso wanted to say, but she was holding back. Instead, they just gazed into each other’s eyes, Sophie’s throat tightening. It was the first emotion she’d felt in days.

  Fairies shrieked through the halls.

  Sophie stamped out the emotion, like the embers of a flame. “Well, I don’t need your help,” she said, moving towards the door. “And I don’t need a ‘fairy godmother.’ This is my school, not yours, and if the young students are going to fight with black magic, well, now I’m going to let the old villains use weapons. Only fair, isn’t it? And when you hear the students’ screams, you’ll know it was your doing—”

  “Sophie.”

  She stopped. “What is it, Lady Lesso?”

  “You couldn’t kill Agatha and Tedros when they came to rescue you,” Lady Lesso said quietly. “What makes you think you can kill them now?”

  Sophie turned, ice-cold. “The same reason I returned to Evil. A heart can only fight the wind so long before it learns to embrace it.”

  Lady Lesso watched her leave, the black train of Sophie’s gown slithering behind her like a snake.

  “Well said, my child,” the Dean smiled. She went back to her work. “Well said.”

  It wasn’t long before young screams pierced the hallway again, much worse than before.

  Sophie had made good on her promise.

  29

  Failed Assignments

  Far away, in the bright sunshine of a safe haven, Agatha brainstormed ways to murder Cinderella.

  Merlin had paired her with the abominable princess, just as he’d paired up each of the other young students with an old hero. Agatha knew the wizard was going to team her with that over-rouged hellion, if only because Hester, Anadil, or Hort would have put an axe through her head. (Dot wasn’t an option; Cinderella would have squashed her like a fly.)

  Agatha couldn’t appeal the assignment, for Merlin had left the farmhouse after the group’s lunch meeting and hadn’t been seen since. At the outset, Agatha genuinely believed she could learn something from the former princess. First, Cinderella wasn’t as old as the rest of the heroes. Second, they’d both had Professor Dovey as a secret fairy godmother and third, given what she knew of Cinderella’s storybook, hadn’t they each overcome their own self-doubt to find true love?

  But as open as Agatha tried to be to her mentor during their training sessions, by late in the week, the only thing she’d learned was to count to ten every time she had the urge to disembowel her.

  “IT’S A WAND, YOU HOPELESS HALF-WIT,” Cinderella barked, jowls flapping. “FIVE DAYS OF THIS AND YOU CAN’T EVEN HOLD IT STRAIGHT!”

  “Because you’re making me nervous!” Agatha yelled, trying to steady Professor Dovey’s wand at the White Rabbit, patiently leaning against a tree while he snacked on a cheese biscuit.

  “IMAGINE HOW NERVOUS YOU’RE GONNA BE WHEN AN ENTIRE ARMY’S TRYING TO KILL YOU!”

  “If I could just speak to Merlin, he’ll see he shouldn’t have picked me for this—”

  “TOO BAD MERLIN AIN’T AROUND!”

  “But why do I have to do it?” said Agatha, the wand shaking so much she could feel her queen’s crown quivering. “Why can’t someone else?”

  “’Cause for some ungodly reason, Merlin thinks you’re the one to make Sophie destroy her ring!” Cinderella blared. “I, on the other hand, think we should fillet and fry you and serve you to Evil as a peace offering.”

  Both glowered at each other, fuming.

  “Listen to me, you overgrown milkweed. There’s no use fighting this war unless you can make Sophie shatter that ring,” Cinderella growled. “And I say the only way you can do that is by giving her the choice between living and dying. But you have to be willing to hurt her in practice, otherwise you won’t believe it when the time comes. And if you don’t believe it, she won’t believe it.”

  “But why do I have to hurt a rabbit?” Agatha argued, pointing at the one against the tree.

  “Agatha,” said Cinderella, trying to control her temper. “If you can’t hurt a rabbit, how would you hurt your best friend?”

  “Can’t I just stun him with a spell? Why do I have to use a wand—”

  “’CAUSE SHE’S NOT GONNA BE AFRAID OF A STUN SPELL! SOPHIE WON’T BE AFRAID OF ANY STUPID SCHOOL SPELLS!” roared Cinderella. “She’ll be scared of Dovey’s wand if she thinks you’re ready to shoot her with it, and Dovey’s wand works the same way all magic does in our world: by intention and conviction—both of which Merlin seems to think you have, despite all evidence to the contrary.”

  Agatha gritted her teeth and exhaled. “Once, all right? I’m only doing this once!”

  Cinderella threw up her hands. “So far you’ve been doin’ diddly-squat, so once would be an improvement!”

  Agatha ignored her and slowly raised the wand at the White Rabbit once more. She pictured armies clashing around her . . . the entire fate of this war resting on her shoulders . . .

  She held her breath, gripping the wand tighter.

  It’s for Good.

  Just once for Good.

  But now, instead of the rabbit, she saw Sophie looking back at her with emerald eyes and rosy cheeks. The Sophie who’d tried again and again to be Good, only to end up Evil.

  This is how it would end: standing in front of Sophie, willing to kill her . . . wanting Sophie to believe she could kill her . . . so she could help her be Good one last time.

  Good and Evil in a single wand stroke.

  Love and Hate.

  Friend and Enemy.

  But all Agatha could see was the Friend.

  “I can’t,” she whispered, lowering the wand. “I can’t hurt her.”

  The White Rabbit calmly finished his biscuit.

  Cinderella snatched the wand from Agatha and shot a blast of light at the rabbit, slamming him so hard against the tree that he was knocked out. The old woman dumped the wand in Agatha’s hands and glared at her.

  “And to think, for a moment, I’d mistaken you for a queen.”

  She tramped towards the house, leaving Agatha alone.

  They weren’t the only team with growing pains.

  At first Dot resented being paired with old Red Riding Hood. (“Just ’cause we both like cake doesn’t mean we’ll get along,” she grouched to Anadil.) Things got worse when Red Riding Hood didn’t seem to have anything to teach her.

  “Well, you can’t outrun the wolf or beat him in a fight and he won’t fall for any stupid tricks,” mulled Red Riding Hood. “Best if you just do what I did when I was your age and scream for help. Maybe there’ll be a woodsman nearby.”

  “That’s your advice? Wait for a woodsman to possibly pass by?”

  Red Riding Hood blushed, lost in her memory. “A handsome woodsman, who smells of leather and earth . . .”

  “Look, Miss . . . Hood, the second that wolf sees you, he’s going to come for you and try to rewrite your happy ending. I can’t let that happen,” Dot snapped, stifling the urge to bond over their similar taste in men. “If he kills you, the School Master will break the shield into the Reader World. You heard Merlin. Doesn’t need more than one of you heroes dead!”

  Red Riding Hood tapped a finger to her lips. “Chocolate, isn’t it? That’s your villain talent?”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake, do you know how much energy it takes for me to turn a toad or mouse into choco
late? I can’t possibly turn a whole wolf—”

  She saw Red Riding Hood grinning. “Who said I was talking about a whole wolf?”

  As her jolly old mentor explained her plan, Dot found herself smiling wider and wider, suddenly realizing why Merlin had paired them in the first place. And indeed Red Riding Hood’s plan was so good that by the time they’d perfected it four days later, Dot was pretending they’d come up with it together.

  Meanwhile, Hester had been teamed with Hansel and Gretel, which was as awkward as it sounds.

  “You said you didn’t have a problem with them—” Anadil started.

  “I meant I can be in the same house without killing them! Doesn’t mean I can train with them!” Hester yelled.

  The wheelchair-bound siblings had a similar revulsion to helping the daughter of the witch who’d tried to eat them. (“Does this one cook children too?” Hansel asked Gretel.)

  Yet, despite their rocky start, the three of them soon found common ground.

  “We are not friends, yes?” Hansel said to Hester. “But all of us want same thing: your mother back in grave.”

  “For the last time, that thing is not my mother,” Hester retorted.

  “Mmmm,” said Gretel thoughtfully. “And yet not-your-mother still sees you as her daughter . . .”

  Hester’s eyes widened, catching on.

  “What?” said Hansel, glancing between them. “What I’m missing?”

  But now Gretel and Hester were grinning at each other. “The plan is clear, young witch?” said Gretel.

  “Crystal,” said Hester.

  Gretel beamed at Hansel. “Merlin gave us smart one, eh?”

  Hansel still looked lost.

  “Smarter than your brother at least,” Hester cracked.

  Gretel gave her a high five.

  Across the oak grove, Anadil was rankling over having to train with both Jack and Briar Rose. (“They’re in love. Can’t blame Merlin for wanting to keep them together,” said Dot. “They can’t even take a poo apart!” Anadil miffed.)

  In addition to having to deal with double mentors (as well as their geriatric displays of affection), Anadil also had double the villains to deal with: Jack’s giant and Rose’s Evil fairy. And for Anadil, who’d been trying so valiantly to prove she was more than just Hester’s sidekick, the extra burden was worth it. It didn’t matter if she had to put up with two lovey-dovey mentors. It didn’t matter if she had to work twice as long and twice as hard as everyone else. Kill two villains and no one would call her a henchman ever again.

  But it was Hort who had the worst pairing of all. He’d been so focused on wooing Sophie these past few weeks that he’d failed to notice that one of the old men stalking about the farmhouse was his mortal enemy.

  Pan.

  Pan!

  At first he couldn’t believe it, since Peter Pan was the boy who’d vowed never to grow up, let alone grow bald, wrinkled, and frail. But then he saw Tinkerbell perched on the old man’s shoulder and his stomach went cold.

  To be matched with the hero who’d slain his father during the Battle of the Jolly Roger, the hero who’d left him an orphan at the age of six, the hero who he’d shadow-dueled in daydreams all his life . . . well, it nearly stopped the poor boy’s heart. And yet, after the shock subsided, he never felt rage, only an empty despair. For in his dreams, Hort had always imagined Peter young and cocksure, a bumptious, trash-talking sprig he could kill in a fair fight. But now, watching Pan so old and ordinary, Hort lost the will to fight him at all.

  Right then and there, he understood what made him different from the Evil School Master they were about to face. Because unlike him, Hort could see when a story was over and it was time to move on.

  So that first day of training, he and Peter slit their palms and made a blood oath to mutual respect. Hort vowed to slay Captain Hook and put him back in his tomb. And in return, Pan promised to stand beside Hort at his father’s grave when the war was done and won.

  Neither Cinderella nor Agatha showed up to training on the sixth day.

  While the others went out to the oak grove after breakfast, the old princess stayed in her nightgown and roasted marshmallows over the fireplace in the den. Agatha just lay in bed, curled towards the window, watching Lancelot and Tedros clash swords across the moors.

  Her prince had come so far with his mother since that day they’d gone off together. He sat beside Guinevere at meals now, helped her scrub dishes, and took her on private walks in the gardens each night. In fact, his kindness towards her touched Agatha so deeply that she had to stop herself from mentioning it, for fear of making Tedros self-conscious. (She’d learned that if you compliment boys for something they’ve done, they go out of their way never to do it again.) But Tedros’ willingness to let go of old resentments and start anew with his mother made Agatha realize that he wasn’t just a worthy prince and a loving son . . . but he’d make a wonderful king too.

  Agatha naturally assumed, then, that once paired with Lancelot for training, Tedros would extend the same kindness and openness to the knight as he had to his mother.

  She was wrong.

  Face red-hot, Tedros slashed and hacked at Lancelot with his father’s sword, only to be beaten again and again. Not just beaten, but humiliated, with Lancelot nicking Tedros’ ear every time he won a round, lopping off a bit of his hair, or smacking him on the backside with the flat of his blade. No doubt Merlin paired the two together knowing Tedros would benefit from the great knight’s sword skills, but by the sixth day of their sparring the prince was a deranged beast, stabbing Excalibur wildly at the knight and grunting and salivating, as if fighting not just for his pride now, but for his father’s, for his kingdom’s—

  Lancelot beat him even worse than before.

  When Tedros ended up face-first in a pile of horse manure a few bouts later, Agatha couldn’t watch anymore. She took a long bath and sauntered down to the kitchen, hoping there was food still left.

  “Shouldn’t you be out training?” Guinevere asked, laying out a spinach omelet and mug of tea for her.

  Agatha eyed Cinderella lounging in the den with curlers in her bluish hair, stuffing a cheese biscuit with roasted marshmallows. “You know how well things are going with Tedros and Lancelot?” She turned back to Guinevere. “They’re practically lovers compared to us.”

  “I NEED ANOTHER BISCUIT,” Cinderella boomed from the den. “THIS ONE BROKE.”

  Agatha ignored her. “I really need to speak to Merlin,” she said to Guinevere. “It’s been six days. Surely you know where he is—”

  “If you haven’t noticed, Merlin isn’t particularly forthcoming about his thought process or whereabouts,” said Guinevere.

  Agatha looked out the window at the silhouettes of her old and young friends in the distant oak grove. “He hasn’t even told us how he thinks we can win this war. The School Master has both the Dark Army and the students. We’re outnumbered twenty to one.”

  “Merlin wouldn’t send children off to war unless he had a plan,” Guinevere smiled.

  “Or unless he was desperate,” said Agatha.

  Guinevere’s smile wavered. She poured Agatha more tea. “Well, at least he’s left his hat!” she said, with forced cheer. “Otherwise I have no idea how I’d manage meals for such a mob. Poor thing is a bit run-down.” She glanced at the hat drooped over a houseplant and snoring softly. “Everyone seems to be helping our war effort. Except me, I mean.”

  “You’re managing almost twenty people in your house, including a half-dozen cranky old heroes and their meals, laundry, dishes, and demands. That isn’t just helping the war effort, that’s leading it,” said Agatha. “If anything, I’m the disappointment. Merlin trusted me with the most important assignment of all and I can’t even do it. And if I could just tell him, then he’d know there’s no way I can get Sophie to destroy that ring and no way for us to win this war if it’s all left to me.”

  Guinevere raised her brows. “Convenient he left, the
n, isn’t it?”

  Agatha was thinking the same thing.

  No one else seemed as concerned by Merlin’s absence, perhaps assuming that he was off forging a flawless plan to take on Evil. But once another dinner came and went without the wizard returning, panic began to set in.

  “We’re running out of time and we can’t fight all of Evil by ourselves!” Hort fretted, as he, Agatha, Tedros, and the three witches shared a midnight snack of chocolate cookies (they started as gingersnaps before Dot had her way with them). “For one thing, we don’t even have weapons! Lancelot hardly had use for them out here, so all we have are a couple of his rusty old training swords and a few carving knives that won’t stop a rat, let alone zombies that can only be killed by fire. What are we supposed to fight with? How are we supposed to win?”

  “Win? How do we even get to Evil if Merlin doesn’t come back to let us through the portal?” said Hester.

  Hort gaped at her. He swiveled to Agatha. “This is your fault! You give some highfalutin speech about young and old working together, making us all feel guilty, when Merlin never even told us the plan!”

  “My fault?” Agatha shot back. “Merlin said ‘Leave it to me’ as if he’d return with some giant army to fight behind us! How was I suppose to know that a week later, there’s no Merlin and no army—”

  “And there’ll be no army,” said Anadil. “The Ever kingdoms won’t help us, remember?”

  “It isn’t just numbers,” said Hester. “Before we broke Agatha and Tedros into school, we spent weeks with Merlin working out every detail. The stakes are far higher now and he’s nowhere to be found.”

  “What if he’s hurt?” Dot asked, paling. “What if he’s dead?”

  “Don’t be stupid!” Tedros huffed. “He’ll be back soon. Everything’s fine.”

  But Agatha noticed the prince was eating his third chocolate cookie, which meant everything wasn’t fine at all. She clasped his hand to comfort him and noticed it slick with sweat. Tedros drew it away.

  “Hot in here,” he said, even though it wasn’t.