The Last Ever After (11 page)

As Agatha watched her go, Tedros slid next to his princess.
“Just hear me out. I don't mean to say you're not as good friends with Sophie as I am—”

“You barely
know
her,” Agatha fired.

“Can you listen for two seconds without trying to eat me?” Tedros shot back.

Agatha fumed quietly.

“Look, both of us know you're her best friend. That you're the one who's spent the most time with her,” said Tedros. “But you don't understand why Sophie took his ring in the first place. Sophie just wants to be
loved
, okay? She's willing to embrace the darkest Evil, all so that she doesn't end up alone. I know how much pain is inside her, because she told me. Pain she would never confess to you, because she doesn't want you to see it.”

“You think Sophie's more honest with you than with me?” asked Agatha.

“It's more complicated than that. Sophie thought I loved
her
once, Agatha. She thought I was her prince. You told me yourself: all Sophie ever wanted was a happy ending that looked just like ours. If you talk to her, she'll never destroy that ring. She'll compare herself to you and all those feelings will come up. She'll feel like a third wheel to you and me. She'll feel
alone
.”

“And let me guess: only you can make her destroy his ring,” Agatha needled.

“Yes,” Tedros said fervently. “Because I can make her see that if she comes with us, she'll still have a chance at true love one day, even if it isn't with him. I can make her see how
beautiful and vibrant and alive she is . . . how soft and clever and fun and . . .” He smiled, lost in his memory of her. “I can make her feel loved in a way you can't.”

Agatha took in her prince's glazed smile as he stared off in space. He used to look at her the same way once. Now he was talking about another girl with that very same look.

Tedros blinked out of his trance and saw Agatha burning pink.

“
I
rescue her alone. Got it?” she said, shoving past him and trundling up the path, before she stopped and glowered back. “And if you ever dare faint anywhere near me, I'm not catching you!”

Tedros snorted. “Princes don't faint!”

Agatha gritted her teeth and stormed ahead, until she caught up with her teacher.

Princess Uma gave her a look and glanced at Tedros, muttering to himself a ways behind. “Ever Afters always look so easy in storybooks, don't they?”

“Sometimes I feel like he needs a
real
princess,” murmured Agatha.

“Have you been a ghost all this time and I haven't known it?”

“You know what I mean. I feel like deep down, he wants someone pretty and bubbly and who treats him like a prince.” Agatha peeked up at her teacher. “Someone whose kids won't look so interesting.”

“I had a prince with shiny hair and a small nose like me and who I always put first,” Uma replied. “Ever After wasn't any easier.”

“You had a prince?”

“Kaveen, Prince of Shazabah. Aladdin's great-grandson. Saved me from a hive of bloodsucking bees during the Trial by Tale my first year. The bees nearly killed him and Kaveen lost his chance to win Captain . . . but in the end, he'd won me. Clarissa used to catch us hiding in the library after curfew. That tortoise was always asleep and there's this cushy little nook behind the Love Spells shelf. Our initials are still carved into the wood.” She smiled, reminiscing. “After we were married, I was kidnapped by a warlock from Netherwood, intent on ransoming me back to my prince. Part of me knew I should wait for Kaveen to come and rescue me. But I couldn't risk my prince's life! Suppose Kaveen got hurt? Suppose the warlock killed him?” Uma's caramel eyes glistened. “A white stag from the Woods answered my call for help. He ripped the warlock through his heart with his horns and battled his henchmen while I escaped. By the time Kaveen arrived, I was already free.”

“I remember seeing it in a painting,” Agatha said, for Uma had presented her storybook the first day of school. “It was your happy ending.”

“Looks like it on a page, doesn't it?” her teacher said softly. “The Storian wrote the triumph of Princess Uma for all to hear—only my prince wasn't a part of it. I became legendary for my deep friendship with the animals, while Kaveen was endlessly taunted for arriving to save his princess too late. A princess famous for all time and her prince, a failure. No one sees that in a storybook, do they?” She paused. “He never said
he blamed me, of course. But the stress slowly takes its toll, day after day, until one day you realize you're always fighting or ignoring each other and you can't go back to the way it was before. Your happy ending no longer feels happy at all.”

A hot rash rose on Agatha's neck. “What happens then?”

“Then you're both better off with someone else, aren't you? Or even alone . . .” Uma's voice cracked. “Like me.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “Once happiness is gone between two people, I don't think it ever comes back.”

“But . . . but it has to come back!” Agatha fought. “That's why Tedros and I came back—to be happy together—”

Uma smiled sadly. “Then you'll have to prove me wrong, won't you?”

Agatha shook her head. “But you're a
real
princess! If you couldn't keep your prince, then how can—”

“Does Snow White still live in the cottage?” Tedros piped, busting in between them.

Agatha cleared her throat. Uma dabbed at her eyes with her pink sleeve. “A queen in a cottage? Don't be silly,” she pooh-poohed, walking quicker. “Snow lives in the king's castle, the one you saw before. She's on her own now, since the king died of a snakebite five years back and her dwarf friends are scattered in other kingdoms, rich and well taken care of. When the School Master returned, the League offered to shelter Snow at Headquarters, but she said she was quite happy in her new life and had no intention of revisiting the old.”

“What does the League have to do with Snow White's old life?” asked Agatha.

“And why would the League protect someone whose story is
over
?” Tedros scoffed—

A chilling, high-pitched scream tore through the Woods.

The three Evers stopped dead, looking up at a long, eight-foot-high wall of wilting lilacs, stretching out at the end of the path.

The scream came from behind it.

“We'll take another route!” Uma panicked. “Let's use the—
Tedros!
What are you doing?!”

Tedros hustled towards the hedge. “Sounded like a girl's cry for help.”

Speechless, Uma whirled to Agatha. “Come, follow m—
Agatha!
”

“If he's going to rescue a random girl, I should keep my eye on him, don't you think?” said Agatha.

Uma was about to level them both with a stun spell, but it was too late; they were already clawing through the lilacs. “
‘Rescue them from a grave'
—those were my orders,” Uma puffed as she smushed through the flower wall after them. “Not ‘chase grandstanding princes' or ‘manage jealous girlfrien—'”

She came through and froze. Agatha and Tedros stood rigid next to her.

Nestled into the back of a clearing, Cottage White lay ahead, half in shadow, two stories of lumpy wood, with a coned, pink roof shaped like a princess's cap. An explosion of colorful shrubs and flowers had grown untended on the roof and first-story eaves, and rain had bled the colors into the wood, so that the house had the tint of a rainbow on all its sides. In the
front garden, amidst the unkempt blooms and a meeting post for tours, there were seven pairs of brass shoes laid out in a row, tarnished and dented, a tribute to seven old dwarves who'd gone on to new lives. Only now, as the three Evers stared out at fourteen shoes that were supposed to be empty, they saw they weren't empty at all.

Before each brass pair lay a dwarf's body, facedown in a puddle of blood. Each was dressed in a tunic of a solid color from head to toe, with matching velvet nightcaps, their tiny feet perfectly fitted into the sculpted shoes.

From the pallor of their hands and the stiffness of their legs, it was clear at once they were all dead.

“No . . . not . . . not possible—” Uma gasped, stumbling back.

“You said they were g-g-gone from here!” Agatha stuttered, recoiling against the hedge.

“For
decades
!” Uma choked out. “Someone must have—someone must have brought them back—”

“What monster would bring dwarves back just to kill them?” said Agatha.

Uma looked at her, blank.

“Well, whoever did it is gone,” rasped Tedros, scanning the Woods around them. He bucked up, struggling to act the prince. “I'll, um, check if any of them are still alive.”

Uma rushed after him. “If so, we must bring them back to the League!”

Agatha stayed behind, gaping at the bodies and bright red puddles. Death everywhere: dwarves . . . Crypt Keeper . . . her
mother . . . She spun away, bursting into chills, trying not to connect them. Heaving tight breaths, she focused on the grass under her feet, on her chapped, tingling fingers, until her mind slowed enough for her to think. Who would take all the trouble to bring seven dwarves from different places back to their old home? Who would kill them in cold blood and organize their bodies so precisely? Agatha shook her head, thinking of that horrible scream for help. Who could be so grotesque . . . so
Evil
—

Agatha's heart stopped.

That scream.

High-pitched. Female.

It hadn't been a dwarf's.

Slowly Agatha lifted her eyes to Snow White's cottage, like a moth finding a flame.

Neither her prince nor her teacher noticed her move from the hedges, nor the door creaking in the wind, as they went on from dwarf to dwarf, listening to each small heart.

By the time Tedros heard the silence of the last, Agatha was already inside.

9
The Worst Evers Ever

T
he first thing Agatha noticed about Snow White's house is that it smelled like Sophie. Standing in the shadowed doorway, she closed her eyes and inhaled the scent . . .
lavender cotton candy
. . .
vanilla-coated fog
. . .

The pink front door shivered and groaned behind her. She'd left it open and she could hear Tedros and Uma in the garden, debating what to do with the bodies. She didn't know why she hadn't made Tedros check the house with her; perhaps after their argument in the Woods, she wanted to do something without him . . . or perhaps she wanted to test if he'd even notice her gone . . . or perhaps
she'd spent so much of the journey acting touchy and weak that she wanted to make up for it. . . . Whatever the reason, here she was, all alone, looking for whoever made that scream.

Agatha opened her eyes. On a breath, she forged deeper into the house.

The living room had a snuggly feel to it, with a sooty fireplace facing big-armed calico chairs, a fluffy red-brown rug made out of hawk feathers, a shelf of gemstones, seashells, and animal eggs beneath a shut, slatted window, and a steep, stumpy wooden staircase in the back corner, barricaded with red velvet rope. Agatha peered at a brass plaque on the wall:

Behind the den, the kitchen was roped off, just like the staircase, but Agatha peeked in to see a dusty, deserted nook, no footprints on the floor or signs of life, except for a few flies milling around a leaky faucet.

“Agatha?” Tedros called outside. “Where are you?”

Agatha sighed, stomach relaxing. The scream must have been one of the dwarves' after all. She shuddered at such a morbid thought and hustled towards the front door, determined to get to League Headquarters. Whoever this League was, her mother had trusted them to help her.
“You must save Sophie as Stefan saved you,”
Callis' voice echoed—

Agatha stopped cold in the foyer.

A creak echoed somewhere upstairs . . .

Then it went quiet.

Slowly she raised her eyes to the ceiling.

She knew a sensible princess would have called her prince, but instead, she was moving into the den again, slipping off her clumps one by one before she left them on the lambskin chair. She felt her bare toes rake through the feathers of the rug, her eyes pinned on the ceiling until she squeezed under the rope at the rear of the room. She slid up the stairs on her hands and knees like a cat, taking time between steps, so the cricks and cracks of the stairs were camouflaged by the swinging squeaks of the front door.

At the top of the stairs was a narrow hallway with two rooms. Agatha rose up carefully and peeked into the first. Seven small beds lay in a cramped row, as if in an orphanage hall, each neatly made with different colored sheets, matching the tunics of the seven dead bodies outside.

Agatha felt a rush of sadness. Death had been rare to her before last night and now it followed her like a shroud. What was it like to be alive one moment—like her mother, like the
Crypt Keeper, like these seven helpers of Good—and then be gone the next? What happens to all your thoughts, your fears, your dreams? What happens to all the love you've yet to give? Her body quivered, as if she'd gone too deep, and she was suddenly aware of the stillness around her.
Why am I still here?
she berated herself, turning around. Tedros would be worried sick by now. Quickly she stepped out of the dwarves' quarters and leaned over to check the next room—

Agatha grabbed the wall in shock.

In a frost-white bedroom, a frail female's body lay facedown on the wood floor, her head hidden under the canopied bed. A crystal crown gleamed on its side nearby, as if it'd tumbled off her when she fell. But the dead woman wasn't what made Agatha gape in horror.

An old crone in black was kneeling next to the body. She had red eyes and a pig nose, a patchwork of stitches, and brown, shriveled flesh flaking off her, just like Red Riding Hood's wolf and Jack's giant in the Woods. In her clawlike hand, she clutched a musty storybook, pulled open to its last page: a painting of a prince kissing Snow White back to life, while seven dwarves smiled on blissfully, a dead witch on the ground behind them.

A dead witch that looked just like the old crone holding the storybook.

“That was the old,” the witch purred, leering at the book's last page . . .

Before Agatha's eyes, the painting magically redrew, until the old witch now crouched over Snow White's dead body
instead, the dwarves behind her all slain.

“And this is the
new
,” the witch grinned.

Agatha's focus swung back to the corpse half-hidden under the bed . . . to the royal crown askew . . . and a deep dread snaked up her spine, remembering something Jack's giant had said on Necro Ridge . . .

“
Should be out fixin' our stories like the others.
”

“
He'll give us a turn at our stories soon enough,
” Red Riding Hood's wolf had answered.

The witch snapped the storybook shut with a triumphant cackle, jolting Agatha out of her thoughts. She glanced up to see the hag rearing to her feet, her back angled to the door—

“Agatha!” Tedros' voice yelled outside.

The witch dropped the book to the floor. Before Agatha could move, she spun and met her eyes with a lethal stare.

Agatha shrank into the hall's corner, flattening against the wall.

The witch drew a thin, jewel-handled dagger from her cloak, caked with dried blood.

Agatha whirled towards the staircase. Too far to run. She spun back to see the witch prowl towards her, trapping her in the corner. Agatha's finger glowed gold with terror, the witch ten feet away, but she couldn't remember a single spell from class. Agatha opened her mouth to scream for her prince. The witch was too fast. She hurled the knife for Agatha's throat like a bullet—

With a cry, Agatha shot a ray of gold light from her finger and the knife turned into a peach-petaled daisy, floating
to the floor.

Gulping breaths, Agatha stared at the flower, thankful Sophie had used the hex against her first year. It was the only spell she'd never forget.

“Agatha!”
Tedros shouted again.

Agatha looked up urgently, but it was too late. The witch slammed her against the wall, appallingly powerful, reeking of decay, and held her up by the throat with her liver-spotted hand. Breath choked, Agatha glimpsed the charred scars across the witch's ankles and legs.
“Ordered to dance . . . until she fell dead . . . ,”
Agatha remembered, struggling to stay conscious as the witch squeezed her neck harder. She and Sophie once danced in red-hot shoes too . . . a first-year punishment from Yuba . . .
Or was it second year
? . . . Agatha could feel her mind fading, the witch's thumb crushing her windpipe. She tried to think of Sophie's face as they danced . . . her helpless face, those suffering eyes . . . Darkness strangled her, pulling her under.
No . . . please . . . not yet . . . Sophie—I'll save—you—

A bolt of will flashed through her and she sank her teeth into the witch's bony arm and bit as hard as she could. The old crone shrieked and let go. Agatha doubled over, gagging and wheezing, the witch still gaping at her, as if biting wasn't part of a Good girl's playbook, as if this greasy-haired, bug-eyed punk might be one of Evil's after all—

Agatha kneed her in the gut and dove for the stairs, about to reach the first step, only to feel the witch's boot crush the back of her leg. Agatha buckled to the floor, slamming her nose into the wood. She felt the hot blood seeping out of it and
staunched it with her hand as she twirled around to defend against the witch—

But the hallway was empty, the witch gone.

Agatha hobbled to the edge of the stairs. The den was as quiet as when she came in, the slatted window over the bookshelf wide open and blowing in the breeze.

Tedros burst through the front door, his face cherry red.
“Agatha, where are—”
He saw her on the staircase and flushed two shades redder. “DO YOU WANT ME TO HAVE A HEART ATTACK! I'M SCREAMING LIKE A FOOL, NOT KNOWING IF YOU'RE ALIVE OR DEAD, AND HERE YOU ARE PLAYING HIDE-AND-SEEK LIKE A CHILD ON A PLAYGROUND, LOOKING A HOLY BLOODY MESS AND—”

Tedros' face changed.

“Agatha,” he whispered, looking very scared. “Why are you bleeding?”

Agatha shook her head, tears welling, hyperventilating too fast to talk—

A cry came from outside.

Agatha and Tedros went rigid with twin gasps.
“Uma.”

Instantly, the prince dashed out the door, Agatha racing behind him—

Princess Uma sat against a tree, near the dwarves' corpses, her eyes spooked wide and legs out straight like a porcelain doll's.

Tedros skidded to his knees in front of her, jostling her by the shoulders. Uma didn't move. “What's wrong with her!” he cried.

Agatha landed next to him and touched Uma's face. Her
fingers made a hollow sound on her teacher's ashen skin. “Petrification,” she said, remembering the curse once used against the teachers.

“What's the counterspell?” her prince pushed.