There were boys in the painting too, if one could call them that. With black peasant rags and ogrishly distorted faces, they scooped manure, raked the a blue forest yard, and built up the towers in miserable chain gangs before retreating to filthy prison slums at the fringes of the gates. Female overseers drove them like chattel and the boys put up no fight, slaves resigned to eternal servitude. Agatha’s eyes rose to the top of the painting, where haloed in sun two women in crystal diadems surveyed their kingdom from the highest balcony. . . .
“It’s us,” Sophie gasped.
“It’s . . . this school,” scowled Agatha.
“Your true Ever After,” the Dean said, stepping between them. “Captains of these hallowed halls, leading girls to a princeless future.”
Agatha grimaced at the vision of Ever and Neverboys hated and enslaved. “This school isn’t our ending,” she said, turning to Sophie. “Tell her we have to leave!”
But Sophie was gazing at the painting, eyes wide. “How do we make it come true?”
Agatha stiffened.
“How all heroes win their happy ending, dear,” the Dean said, touching both their shoulders. “By facing the enemy.” She grinned out the window at Tedros’ tower. “And slaying him.”
Agatha and Sophie locked eyes in surprise.
“My cherished students!” The Dean swept her hand over the crowd. “Welcome our Readers back to school!”
With a roar, the mob tore off their veils and rushed the two girls.
“You’re home!” gushed Reena, embracing Agatha with freckly Millicent, while green-skinned Mona and one-eyed Arachne smooshed Sophie into a hug—
“Didn’t know we were friends—” Sophie croaked, suffocated—
“We’re on your side against Tedros,” Arachne cheered, Millicent on her arm as if Evers and Nevers were suddenly bosom buddies. “All of us!”
“You’re our heroes,” Reena said to Agatha, who noticed the Arabian princess looked a bit bigger in the bottom. “You and Sophie taught us the truth about boys!”
Agatha fumbled for words before a shrieking blur bear-hugged her and Sophie. “My roommates!” Beatrix yipped. “Aren’t you excited? The Dean put you both with me!”
Neither Sophie nor Agatha had time to process this cataclysm, because they were goggling at something more alarming—“Your hair!” Sophie cried.
“No boys means no need to look like stupid princesses,” Beatrix said, rubbing her shaved head proudly. “Think about how much time I wasted last year on Tedros and Balls and beautifying all day. And for what? Now I read, I study, I learned to speak Elf . . . I finally know what’s going on in our world!”
“But what about Beautification?” Sophie fretted—
“That’s long gone. There is no beauty or ugliness at the School for Girls!” said Reena, who, Sophie saw with horror, wasn’t wearing a shred of makeup. “We wear pants, we don’t do our nails . . . we even eat cheese!”
Sophie gagged and looked for the Dean, but butterflies were trailing her out of the gallery. “But surely some lipstick is allowed—”
“You can do whatever you want!” Arachne said, showing off a smatter of hideous blush on both cheeks. “Nevers can groom, Evers don’t have to. It’s all your choice!”
Millicent leaned in with a grin. “I haven’t washed my hair for a month.”
Sophie and Agatha both recoiled, only for the latter to be tackled by a yelping heap—
“Eeeeeeyiiiiiiii! You’re here! My best friend in the whole world!” Kiko gave Sophie a phony smile. “And you too.” Then Kiko hugged Agatha again, her brown, almond-shaped eyes tearing up. “You don’t know how much I prayed for you to come back! It’s like heaven here! Wait until you take History—the Dean teaches it and we go into the stories—and there’s dance lessons and a school newspaper and a book club and we put on a play instead of a Ball and we can sleep in each other’s rooms and—”
Kiko couldn’t finish because there were flocks of girls besieging Sophie and Agatha now, each girl acting as if she was their best friend too.
Agatha tried to fend off her horde and lunged to Sophie across the masses. “We have to get out of here right no—” She tripped and landed facefirst. “Will you sign my storybook?” Giselle asked, black hair sheared into a blue mohawk. Agatha crawled back like a crab into more clamoring fans.
As girls thrust books, cards, body parts for Sophie to sign, Beatrix forced the girls into a receiving line and let them pay tribute one by one. Sophie could hardly tell who was from Good and who from Evil anymore, since more of the Evergirls had hacked their hair and let their figures go, while a large number of Nevergirls were experimenting with makeup and diets.
Meanwhile, Agatha finally extricated herself from her gaggle. But just as she grabbed Sophie’s arm to end this idiocy, she froze still.
The dancing girl shuffled towards them in her sky-blue veil. Gangly as an egret, she didn’t so much walk as tiptoe, the heels of her white slippers never touching the ground. She pattered down the aisle, past gaping girls, until she stopped sharply in front of the two Readers. The girl raised her head and lifted the veil from her face.
Sophie and Agatha both looked very confused.
She didn’t look like any girl they’d ever seen, and yet looked almost familiar. She had a long, pointy nose, a strong jaw, and close-set blue eyes. Her neck was longer than a normal girl’s, and her cropped blouse revealed perfect stomach muscles that rippled beneath her pale, freckled skin. The girl smiled ethereally, looked into their eyes, and unleashed a deep-voiced squawk that made Sophie and Agatha jump. Then she blew them a kiss, replaced her veil, and shuffled out of the hall.
All the girls watched her in dumb silence until the mob started pushing towards Sophie and Agatha again and Beatrix blew her whistle—
“What was that?” Agatha said to Kiko as she crankily signed an autograph.
“Her name is Yara,” Kiko whispered. “No one knows how she got in! Doesn’t speak, doesn’t eat, far as we can tell, and disappears all the time. Probably has nowhere to live, poor thing. But the Dean lets her stay out of the goodness of her heart. Some people think she’s half stymph.”
Agatha frowned, thinking of the bony, carnivorous birds that hated Nevers. “How can someone be half stym—”
She lost her train of thought, because Sophie had culled the girls all to herself, smiling imperiously, signing autographs, and kissing cheeks, as if she’d finally found her way home.
“Can I help you fight boys?” Arachne hollered.
“Can I be your Vice Captain?” yelled Giselle.
“Can I be your Vice-Vice Captain?” echoed Flavia.
“Sit with my group for lunch!” Millicent called.
“No, sit with us!” Mona countered—
“How glorious it is to have fans again,” Sophie said, ignoring Agatha’s horrified look and dotting an autograph with hearts. “Here I am trying to get home where no one wants me, and instead stumble upon paradise, where everyone does.”
“If you’re miserable with Beatrix, don’t worry,” Kiko said, noticing Agatha’s glum face. “You can always stay with m—”
Agatha turned to her, and Kiko suddenly understood. “You aren’t staying, are you?” she rasped.
The crowd went silent around her.
“Now tell me about this school play,” Sophie said loudly to Reena. “Have you cast the lead par—”
She stopped, for all the students had followed Agatha’s gaze out the window. Across the bay, fog brewed thicker around the grisly red castle.
“If we stay, we’re starting war,” Agatha said to the girls. “All of you would be in danger.”
She turned to Sophie. “You heard the professors. We can fix what I’ve done without anyone dying. Not you. Not Tedros. Not anyone here. We wish for each other, and we can forget this school ever happened.” She touched her friend’s shoulder. “It’s Evil if we stay, Sophie. And you’re not Evil.”
Sophie slowly gazed up at a sea of
blameless girls, who would no doubt die at the hands of Tedros and his red hoods. Only Agatha had forgotten the Dean’s warning. They could go home as long as both of them meant their wish. But Agatha couldn’t mean a wish for her friend. Agatha couldn’t forget this school.
Because Sophie knew she wasn’t enough for Agatha anymore.
Agatha wanted a prince.
“We’ll hide in the Blue Forest and come up with a plan,” Agatha said to her quietly, anxious to get out before the Dean returned. “Maybe we can Mogrify into the Boys’ school.”
Crestfallen, Sophie said nothing—
Until she met her own eyes in the painting on the wall.
Atop the castle in her crystal crown, she looked just like someone she knew, with the same waterfall blond hair, emerald eyes, and ivory skin. Someone who too had lost her happy ending to a boy. Someone who had died all alone because of it.
“You are too beautiful for this world, Sophie.”
It was the last thing her mother had ever said.
She wanted me to find it, Sophie thought, eyes welling, this world where she wouldn’t end like her mother.
A world where she and Agatha would be happy forever.
A world where a boy could never come between them.
A world without princes.
And only one prince stood in her way, Sophie gritted.
A prince that Agatha would surely forget once he was dead.
“It isn’t Evil, Aggie,” Sophie vowed. “This school is our only hope.”
Agatha tightened. “Sophie, what are you—”
“He says he wants me?” Sophie bellowed to her waiting army. She bared teeth at Tedros’ castle.
“Then let him come for me.”
The girls let out a raucous cheer and mobbed their new leader.
“Death to Tedros!”
“Death to Boys!”
Agatha drained of color as Sophie flashed her a dark smile and vanished into the swarm.
One wish, and she’d set a war in motion. A war between two sides fighting for her heart. A war between two people she loved. A war between her best friend and a prince.
Her soul scorched with guilt, a promise to a father gone up in flames.
I need help, Agatha prayed, watching Sophie blow kisses to her soldiers.
Someone who could see through all this. Someone to tell her who was Good this time and who was Evil. As she retreated from the horde, she noticed an odd glint from the corner, hovering near the floor in Sader’s dark nook of paintings. Slowly two tiny yellow eyes floated towards her, like suspended marbles. Two more suddenly glowed next to them, then two more, as hunched shadows pattered from behind a marble column.
The three black rats glowered at Agatha as if she’d said the magic words. Then they skittered through the back doors to lead her to their master.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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7
The Witches Brew a Plan
“So let me get this straight,” Hester glared, straddling a gilded sink next to Anadil, both in their saggy black Nevers’ tunics. “Tedros wants to kill Sophie. Sophie wants to kill Tedros. And unless you find an ending with one of them now, everyone in this school dies.”
Agatha nodded weakly, leaning against one of Honor tower’s ivory bathroom stalls, fitted with a sapphire toilet and tub. She never thought she’d be so happy to see two witches in her life. Unlike the rest of the girls, neither of them had changed. Hester’s red-and-black streaked hair was greasier than ever, and the buckhorned red demon tattoo around her neck back to full color after a failed spell had weakened it the year before. Anadil, meanwhile, looked even paler than she did before, if that was possible for an albino with ghostly white skin and hair. Straddling the sink next to Hester, she dangled a live lizard to her three black rats that looked just like the ones slain in last year’s Good-Evil war.
“A prince and a witch, willing to kill each other for you,” she rasped in her scratchy voice. “It if it was me, I’d feel flattered.” She watched the rodents disembowel the lizard and lifted her hooded red eyes. “Thankfully I don’t have feelings.”
“Questionable. Who replaces dead pets with ones exactly alike?” Hester murmured.
“Look, I’m hungry, dirty, haven’t slept, and an army of boys is trying to kill my best friend,” Agatha said, voice cracking with stress. “I just want us to go home alive.”
“And yet you wished for Tedros,” Hester said in her usual sharp snarl. “Which seems to suggest you don’t want to go home at all.”
Agatha didn’t say anything for a moment. “Look, just tell me what to do so no one gets hurt.”
“As if we’re fairy godmothers, Ani,” Hester snorted, blowing smoke rings off her glowing red fingertip.
Anadil graffitied a skull in the sink with her glowing green finger. “Only not as ancient or menial.”
“Please,” Agatha begged. “You’re witches. You have to know another way to take back a wish—”
“So earnest!” Hester whirled and carved a box around Agatha’s face in the mirror with her lit finger. “Just look at that helpless, lost little soul. Still wearing black and searching for the old Agatha. . . . The Agatha who threw headless birds, farted in Evergirls’ faces, and loved her precious Sophie more than life.” Hester met Agatha’s reflected eyes and grinned. “But she’s gone, princess.”
“That’s not true,” Agatha retorted, but Reaper’s scratches seared her hand as if they were fresh.
“To think we once wanted you in our coven,” Anadil said. “And now here you are, afraid of hurting your best friend over a boy.”
“Nice to see you two haven’t changed,” Agatha muttered, trundling for the door. “Reminds me why we weren’t friends.”
“In the end, only one can make you happy,” Hester purred behind her. “The question is, who?”
Agatha turned to see the witches slide off their sinks and circle her like sharks.
“Sophie or Tedros?” Hester mulled.
“Tedros or Sophie?” Anadil stewed.
The two witches leaned against the sinks side by side. “This requires plenty of thought,” said Hester, peering at Anadil. Their heads whipped back to Agatha.
“TEDROS,” they chorused.
Agatha’s heart skipped and she squelched it in shock. “But that’s wrong! I don’t want a prince!”
Hester slid off the sink in one move. “Listen to me, you bug-eyed tramp! Unless you kiss Tedros, the schools stay the way they are,” she hissed, suddenly looking like the dangerous witch Agatha knew. “Kiss him, and everything is fixed. Prince with his Princess, Witch gone forever. Evers over here, Nevers over there. The School for Good and Evil back in time for me to be third-year Captain.”
Agatha crossed her arms. “I see. I’m worried about my best friend’s life, and you’re worried about school.”
“Do you know what you’ve done to this place, you waffling wench?” Hester snarled, black eyes storming. “Do you know what you’ve put us through?”
She flung crumpled parchment at her from her pocket. Agatha unwrinkled a schedule, barely readable under all the graffiti.
“Girls, you stupid idiot! Everything at this school is about being a girl!” Hester screeched. “Do you know how hard I’ve tried to prove I’m more than a girl and now I have to live in a castle full of them! You can’t have a school without boys! Even we know that, and we’d rather kill ourselves than touch one!”
“We did dance with them at Evil’s Ball,” Anadil corrected—
“Shut up,” Hester boomed, spinning back to Agatha. “No one likes boys! Even girls who like boys can’t stand boys! They smell, they talk too much, they mess up everything, and they always have their hands in their pants, but that doesn’t mean we can go to school without them! It’s like stymphs without bones! It’s like witches without warts! Without boys, LIFE HAS NO POINT!” r />
Echoes shivered the mirror.
Agatha held up the schedule. “Um, and the teachers are okay with this?”
“Why do you think they weren’t at your Welcoming?” Hester grouched, settling a bit. “They’re as happy about this as we are. But they have no choice. Resist, and they’ll suffer the same fate as Princess Uma.”
Agatha saw the Animal Communication teacher wasn’t on the schedule. “Where is she?”
“The Dean changed her class to Animal Hunting, since girls have to be self-sufficient and can’t depend on boys for food. Part of the Five Rules,” Anadil puffed, turning the sink faucet on to terrorize her rats. “Uma refused to teach the class, of course, on the grounds she wasn’t going to kill animals she’d spent her whole life befriending.” She stroked her quivering wet rats and looked up. “The next morning, a staircase evicted her into the Woods.”
“She’s probably better off,” Agatha said, slightly relieved that she wouldn’t have to learn more owl hoots and dog calls from the prissy pink princess. Then she saw Anadil still glaring at her.
“Do you remember what’s in the Woods?”
Agatha’s chest clamped. Princes. Vengeful, bloodthirsty princes.
“Why didn’t the Dean rescue her?” Agatha croaked. “They’ll kill her—”
“You think that’s bad?” Hester barked, blood engorging again. “Do you know how much Nevers hate bathrooms? Do you know how much our bile boils just being near one, let alone hiding in one with sapphire toilets? That’s how much we don’t want to go to the classes here.”
She glowered so hatefully Agatha swallowed her defense of Uma’s fate as the worse.
“You want Sophie to stay alive? You want to avoid war between boys and girls? You want your happy ending?” Hester’s eyes burned into Agatha. “Kiss Tedros.”
Agatha could feel her heart rebelling from its clamps. The correct ending, Professor Dovey had said.
Agatha’s cheeks splotched red. Betray her best friend? Abandon Sophie forever? After all they’d been through?