The Last Ever After (24 page)

Then he remembered where he was, the body he was in, and what he was supposed to be doing.

His eyes jerked open.

Hobbled and hurting, he lumbered onto his legs, still unused to his girl's squishy form. He peered around the School Master's deserted chamber, licking the last chocolate off his lips.

“Sophie?” he squeaked in his girly snoot, moving deeper into the room. “Sophie, it's Essa! Essa from Bloodbrook. We met this morning? Sorry to barge in like this, but you're in terrible danger.” He imagined Agatha at his side, her spirit egging him on. “We have to leave here
now
, Sophie,” he said, confidence growing. “Before the School Master comes back. So if you'll just listen to me, girl to girl—”

A blast of pain exploded through his head, knocking him out, and he crashed face-first to the floor.

Far across the bay, inside the witch's room, Anadil and Dot gaped in horror through binoculars at Sophie, who was looming over Essa's fallen body, wielding a giant storybook like a club.

Anadil slowly turned to Dot.

“Never was much of a girl's girl, was she?” Dot quipped.

As soon as the fog started turning to chocolate, Agatha saw her chance.

She'd been hiding at one end of Halfway Bridge, trapped in her boy body, ogling ten hulking, armed shadows atop the School for Old.

None of them looked human.

Agatha's heart seized. She had no hope to get past one of
the School Master's guards, whoever they were, let alone a fleet of them—

That's when the fog over the bay started detonating into iced chocolate.

Flabbergasted, she swiveled and saw Dot's fingerglow pulsing from a dark window, high in the other school.

Shouts of shock and panic rang out from the shadowy guards over the Bridge, who flooded off the balconies into the castle, leaving the roof unattended.

Agatha smiled, hidden at the other end. Whatever Dot was doing in the School for New, it served as the perfect diversion in the School for Old.

Not a coincidence
, Agatha thought.

Merlin and his spies had done everything they could to help her and Tedros finish their missions.

The rest was up to them.

As fast as she could, Agatha darted from her hiding place and sprinted across the dim, frigid Bridge, feeling the wind on her scrawny boy chest, hands held out in front of her, knowing the barrier was coming—

Bam!
She slammed into it a quarter of the way down the span, leaving her palms stinging and her body fully exposed in the moonlight. The guards would spot her the second they returned.

“Let me through,” she begged, hands flat on the barrier.

Her crystal-clear reflection magically appeared in the mirror, dressed in Evil's uniform—only it was her usual girl self, instead of a boy.

“Old with Old,

New with New,

Back to your tower

Before—”

Her reflection peered at her. “Wait a second, lad . . . you're not a student here at all.” Her face darkened.
“Intruder.”
Her reflection opened her mouth wide.
“INTRU—”

“No! It's me!” Agatha yelped. “It's Agatha!”

“All I see is an underfed, googly-eyed boy,” her reflection said, opening her mouth again to scream—

“I'll prove it!” cried Agatha, knowing she had no choice now. She closed her eyes, visualizing the counterspell. . . . Her hair began to thicken, her jaw to round, and all at once her body eased back into her girl's shape, filling out her uniform. “See.
Me
,” she smiled, now matching the reflection in the barrier. “So let me pass—”

“Oh.
You
,” her reflection growled, not smiling back. “You nearly got me destroyed for confusing the sides the past two years. First you convinced me you were Evil, when you were Good. Then you convinced me you were a Boy, when you were a Girl. No way are you getting past me a third time. So listen clear:

“Old with Old,

New with New,

Back to your tower

Before I call You-Know-Who.”

Agatha tightened. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the chocolate patterns in the sky starting to evaporate. The sound of guards storming to the rooftop amplified inside the castle.

“And how do you know I'm not supposed to be on the Old side instead of the New?” Agatha asked her reflection, trying to stay calm.

“Easy,” her image huffed. “Because you're as young as me and I'm as young as you.”

“So if I'm young, I can't be old?”

“Have you ever met an old person who's young?” her reflection fleered.

“Well. Would a newborn baby see me as young or old?” said Agatha.

“Old, but that's because it doesn't know any better—”

“So what about a child?”

“Depends on how old the child is,” her reflection snapped.

“So how young or old you are ‘depends' on things?” Agatha asked.

“No! It's obvious to anything that's full-grown!”

“What about a full-grown flower? Or a full-grown fish?”

“Don't be stupid. A flower or fish can't see age,” said her reflection.

“But you said anything full-grown—”

“A full-grown person!”

“So
you're
a person, if it's obvious to you,” reasoned Agatha. “Yet you've been on this Bridge for thousands of years. So what does that make you? Young or old?”

“Old, of course,” her reflection puffed.

“And if you're me and I'm you, then what does that make me?” Agatha said, lips curling to a smile.

Her reflection gasped, realizing the answer. “
Definitely old.
”

Agatha's mirror image could only gape in anguish, fading into night, as the real Agatha reached her fingers through the barrier and felt the cold, empty wind.

Seconds later, the monstrous shadows swarmed to their post and saw nothing on the Bridge but a glint of black and green sliding into the castle, which they thought an errant piece of mist blown from the bay.

If they'd looked closer, they may have seen a small rain puddle still rippling over stone . . . a single clump print gleaming under the moon . . . or the two specks of light across the Bridge, floating low like fallen stars . . .

The bold yellow eyes of a bald, wrinkled cat, watching Agatha vanish safely into a den of danger, before the cat pulled into darkness and pit-patted away.

19
Old School Reunions

D
o girls have softer heads than boys?

All Tedros could feel was drool dripping off his lip, his scraped-up cheek, and his skull ripping with pain. He couldn't feel his eyes, let alone open them, and he wondered if this is how mangos felt when they fell off trees and smashed to bits, before he realized mangos don't have feelings and he was likely suffering from a violent concussion.

Between pangs of nausea, he tried to touch the back of his head and check for blood, but his hands wouldn't budge.

Slowly he slit open his eyes to see he was still in a girl's body, splayed on a white canopied bed, his mouth gagged and wrists lashed to bedposts with red velvet sheets.

Stomach sinking, he turned his head to see Sophie perched on a stone altar table in the corner, the Storian paused over a blank page.

“Well,
Essa
—if that is indeed your name—you've told me so many lies that listening to you, ‘
girl to girl
' seems rather pointless, don't you think? But let me tell you what I do know. You're not a new student. You're not a Never assassin. You're not a Never at all. You and your ‘cousin' are spies for Good, here to destroy my happy ending. Only you're too late, Essa dear. Agatha and Tedros are long gone, as this blank page attests, and Rafal and I would be in the throes of a heavenly romantic evening if it wasn't for
you
.”

Tedros garbled urgently into his gag.

“Still have something to say? Oh dear,” Sophie drawled, standing up. “Well, since the School Master and you are such bosom buddies, why don't you just tell it to
him
.” She raised her fingerglow towards the window, about to shoot a flare into the sky—

Sophie dropped her hand, eyes widening.

On the bed, Essa's long hair was lightening from black to gold.

It shrank into her scalp, as her chin dimpled and her cheeks hardened, amber stubble stippling her jaw. Faster now, her legs and arms sprouted with fuzz, her feet ballooned two sizes and her shoulders and chest broadened, shredding her shirt seams. As the girl stranger writhed in pain, her calves chiseled, her biceps rippled, her forearms swelled, bursting the knots of her binds, until at last she tore away the gag with a virile roar, no
longer a girl or stranger at all, but a prince in his body like a lion uncaged.

Sophie backed into a corner. “Teddy?”

A familiar scratching sound filled the chamber and Sophie looked down to see the Storian spill a new scene on the blank page: a bow-legged, helmet-haired girl hurtling across Halfway Bridge into the School for Old.

“Aggie?” Sophie squeaked.

She looked up at Tedros, legs shaking, breath shallowing.

“Don't panic,” the prince soothed, as he inched across the bed. “Just don't panic, sweet pea . . .” He reached for her, breaking into a winning smile. “A prince is here to rescue you, okay? Everything is just fi—”

Sophie panicked. She lurched for the window, finger glowing, and shot a hot pink flare into the night—

A blast of gold light obliterated it and Sophie spun to see Tedros' glowing finger pointed at her.

“Listen. I'm a boy now. So either we do this the easy way or the hard way,” he warned, waiting for Sophie to stop hyperventilating and come to her senses.

Instead, she ran for the window, trying to fire off another flare.

“Hard way it is,” sighed Tedros.

Two minutes later, Sophie was cuffed to the bedpost with red velvet sheets, shouting every possible curse word into her gag.

Tedros glared back from the altar table, shirt ripped and covered in scratch marks.

“Now, for once in our lives, Sophie, the two of us are going to have a
normal
conversation.”

The Storian knows where I am
, Agatha thought, as she stole through a dark corridor, back in her girl body. It was only a matter of time before the School Master came hunting her.

A clock clanged high in the castle. Eleven o'clock. One hour left.

Her clump steps quickened, muffled by loud drips from the moldy ceiling. She had to find Tedros' sword
now.
Excalibur was their only hope to destroy the School Master's ring—and thus the School Master himself.

But where was it?

Even with a head start, she had no idea what was inside the School for Old, let alone who was lurking within its castle or where to look for a single sword blade that could be hidden anywhere: in a secret cabinet, behind a fireplace, under a doormat, through an invisible door, beneath the stones she was treading on. . . . Who was she kidding! This was a fool's mission!

Agatha buckled against a wall, trying not to throw up.
I can't do this
.
I'll never find it.

An old voice answered inside of her.

“Do not fail.”

Merlin's last words.

The same as her mother's.

The wizard had put Good's fate in her and Tedros' hands for a reason.

Maybe she doubted herself. But she didn't doubt Merlin.

Do not fail
.

This time the voice was hers.

On a deep breath, Agatha turned into the foyer.

The entrance chamber was quiet, empty, and insufferably humid. Any trace of the military-themed, refurbished School for Boys had been rubbed out, with the black stone foyer back the way it was first year: leaky, lumpy and dimly lit by gargoyles wielding torches in their mouths. With no sign of guards, Agatha scampered into the sunken anteroom adjoining the foyer, where three twisting staircases ascended to the dormitories. The portraits of the new Nevers were gone, no doubt moved across the bay. But the rest of the walls were still jam-packed with old Evil students, each frame carrying a portrait next to a scene of what they became after graduation.

Only now, as Agatha inched closer, she saw that the frames of Evil's most famous villains had all been defaced.

Captain James Hook's old student portrait as a young, broodingly handsome boy was splotched in graffiti from multiple people:

DON'T BLOW IT THIS TIME!

Payback for Pan!

NO ONE BEATS HOOK TWICE!

Over a gluttonous boy who became Jack's giant, there were more scribbled exhortations:

SECOND CHANCE AT GLORY!

KILL HIM AND HIS LITTLE COW TOO!

JUST STEP ON THE LAD!

Agatha scanned more frames along the wall: a willowy girl who'd become a famous Evil fairy (“NO SPINNING WHEELS THIS TIME!”), a blond boy with a scanty blue moustache who'd become Bluebeard (“YOU GONNA LET A
GIRL
WIN AGAIN?”), and dozens more notorious villains, their portraits splashed with more motivational creeds . . . until her eyes stopped on a Nevergirl whose face looked eerily familiar. Then Agatha noticed the graduation scene next to it: a raven-haired witch standing in front of a gingerbread house with her daughter. It was the same picture as the one on Hester's night table, only here scrawled with a single taunt:

Hear your kid's a better witch than you!

Agatha inched closer.
Who did all this?

Voices suddenly floated from the foyer—

She dove behind a staircase.

An undead ogre and an undead hobgoblin stalked into the stair room, both stitched up and shedding off skin like the zombie villains she'd seen in the Woods. The ogre, bald and potbellied, had a thick gray hide, a serrated spine, and wielded a wooden cudgel, while the slimy, green hobgoblin with stumpy white horns carried a twisted brass dagger.

“Turnin' fog to chocolate? Bloody good prank if you ask me,” chortled the ogre in a gravelly voice. “Few'a those New
whippersnappers might amount to somethin' after all.”

“Don't know why you think this is funny,” piped the shrill-voiced goblin. “Came back to do our stories over again, not patrol empty halls and chase candy. Why can't I be in class upstairs with the others?”

“Henchmen guard the castle, not go to class,” groused the ogre. “Best git back to yer' post. Anyone breaks in and the School Master will shove us back inna graves we came from.”

The goblin sighed and the two parted ways into opposing halls.

Behind the stairwell, Agatha didn't move.
“Class?”
What classes were taught in the School for Old? And more importantly,
who
was taking them?

On instinct, she tiptoed from her hiding place and up a staircase, quite sure that whoever the students were at this school were the same hooligans who'd defaced the portraits.

The classrooms were lined up in an airless corridor off the first floor of Malice tower, Agatha recalled, but as soon as she turned off the landing, she saw two spear-toting guards down the hall and ducked behind the banister.

Of course the classrooms are guarded, you idiot
. But how else was she supposed to get a view inside?

She racked her brain for a plan, listening to the trolls pace up and down the hall, feeling a cold breeze raise goosebumps on her skin . . .

A cold breeze? In an airless hall?

She looked up. High over her head there was a hollow air shaft, boxed out of the ceiling.

Moments later, Agatha's bare toes clung to the banister like a balance beam, her clumps tucked into the waist of her breeches, as she reached for the sides of the vent, trying not to make a sound. She unfurled her fingers as far as they'd go, but they were still two inches short. Leaning on her tiptoes, she stretched her hands higher, higher, feeling her shoulders strain out of their sockets, and clawed her finger pads into the mildew coating the vent. Hoisting herself up with desperate strength, Agatha had almost jammed her head and neck through, when she felt one of her clumps sliding out of her shorts. Gasping, she swung one-armed from the vent like a monkey, lunging to catch it, only to see her shoe fall through the gap in the staircase and crash far below with an ear-splitting boom.

Crap
.

Instantly, she propelled herself back into the vent, nearly breaking her elbows, and crawled as fast as she could through the cramped stone shaft, hearing the trolls' stunned voices and footsteps racing towards the stairs.

Soon she didn't hear them anymore, only the swirling air in the vent churning past her. The light from the staircase dwindled and she was in pitch-dark, with no clue where she was headed, until she began to hear a growing clamor and glimpsed wintry gray light spraying into the vent from a grating ahead. The buzz grew louder as Agatha drew closer, knees skinning along stone, before she flattened her belly against the grates and peered down through the slats.

Her mouth fell open.

Lady Lesso's old frozen classroom was teeming with
famous villains, stitched up and undead—at least 40 of them, hunched at desks, jammed under chairs, stuffed into corners, practically sitting on laps, so that there wasn't an inch of frosted floor untaken. She recognized many of these crusty, stitched-up Nevers, either from storybooks she'd read in Gavaldon, their gravestones on Necro Ridge, or the portraits downstairs. There was runty Rumpelstiltskin, the frog-faced Witch of the Wood, bloodshot Bluebeard, wizened old Baba Yaga, and even Jack's oafish Giant, looking bruised and battered from his encounter with Princess Uma's army.