The Last Ever After (27 page)

Maybe that's why she and Tedros never sealed their happy ending, Agatha thought. Because something was broken between them. And maybe that something couldn't be fixed. Because that something was . . . her.

“Mmmm, now it's getting interesting, isn't it?” said a chilling voice.

All eyes went to the young School Master, his sensual lips in a twisted grin.

“Evil's queen, ladies and gentlemen, still vying for Good's throne,” Rafal said, Excalibur's blade reflecting him. “But trust her at your peril, because in the end, she'll end up right back here, my ring on her finger, her heart belonging to me.”

Sophie felt his placid stare and sweat trickled down her side.

“You don't know what will happen any more than we do, Rafal,” said Agatha, still looking at her best friend.

“You're trying to talk reason to a murderer?” Tedros blurted.

Agatha's eyes never left Sophie. “Maybe she's right, Tedros. Maybe we have to think twice about our happy ending if we're ever going to find it.”

Sophie looked at Agatha, stunned.

Tedros brightened instantly. “Wait . . . Agatha, you're saying that you're okay with Sophie's terms? That you
get
what I'm proposing? That—”

“—we question our happy ending, Tedros, just like you said,” spoke Agatha, still looking at Sophie.

“That we all wipe the slate clean,” Sophie said eagerly, looking at Agatha.

“The three of us,” said Agatha. “This time with no secrets, no hiding, no guilt. We go in with eyes wide open and let the truth lead us to The End. That's the only way we'll know how each of us can be happy.”

Tedros glanced between them, baffled. “Okay . . . this got
a little deep for me . . .” He smiled lovingly at Agatha. “But I knew you'd understand.”

Agatha smiled back at him sadly.

He couldn't see she meant it for real.

Midnight tolled from distant castles, a deadline come and gone.

Agatha took a full breath, looking at her prince. “To new beginnings.”

Tedros smiled at his princess. “New beginnings.”

They both turned to Sophie.

Sophie smiled at Tedros. “New beginnings.”

The three students' eyes held for just a moment . . . then all at once moved to Rafal.

The young School Master's smirk vanished. In a flash, he seized Agatha tighter to the sword, about to slice her throat—

“Now!” Tedros yelled.

Sophie shot Rafal's hand with a scorching pink spell and he dropped Tedros' sword in shock. Agatha caught it and rammed the hilt into his gut, sending him reeling into a bookcase, which crashed on top of him along with hundreds of colorful fairy tales. Agatha flipped Excalibur to Tedros, who slid the hilt into the back of his shorts, the flat of the blade against his spine. Instantly he, Sophie, and Agatha sprinted to the window and climbed onto the ledge—

“We need to get to Merlin,” Tedros panted. “Mogrifying is our only chance!”

“The School Master can
fly
, Tedros! He'll catch us!” said Agatha, watching Rafal blast through the bookcase with
magic. “We need something faster!”

“You came in without a plan to get me
out
?” Sophie said, the sounds of the bookcase splintering behind them.

“Was pretty sure we'd be dead by now,” puffed Tedros. “What's faster than mogrifying?”

The bookcase over Rafal flew across the room, shattering against the opposite wall.

“He's c-c-coming,” Agatha stammered, spinning back to her friends. “We have to leave right no—”

Her eyes bulged. Sweeping from the Woods towards the School Master's tower was a sooty black cloud, boxy and elongated like a passenger train, and strangely moldy in texture. For a moment, she thought it was smoke from a distant fire, until she saw the familiar twinkles sewn into the cloud, glittering like . . .

“Fairy dust?” Agatha said, agape.

And indeed, now she, Sophie, and Tedros all glimpsed the shadow
inside
the fairy-dust cloud: a shadow with flowing purple robes and a cone-shaped hat, flying and flapping his arms as he steered towards the window.

“If you don't come to Merlin, Merlin comes to you,” the wizard trumpeted, bringing the cloud a few feet from the window ledge. “Quickly, children! Tink's dust won't last much longer!”

Agatha glanced back and saw Rafal starting to rise. She spun to Sophie and Tedros. “We have to jump into the fairy dust!”

“Jump?”
Sophie squeaked, peering off the ledge.

“On three!” said Agatha. “One . . .”

“Two . . . ,” said Tedros.

“Three!”
they yelled—

Agatha and Tedros cannonballed into the thick of the cloud and felt a magic lightness buoy them into air, as if they'd lost all mass. As Merlin veered the cloud train towards the school gates, Agatha closed her eyes, abandoning to weightless flight. Tedros, meanwhile, couldn't stop somersaulting in midair, like an asteroid knocked from its path.

“How do I stop spinning!” Tedros howled.

“Relax your buttocks, dear boy!” Merlin called back.

Swimming through dust, Agatha grabbed on to the prince's wrist, stopping his orbit. Tedros smiled gratefully . . . then frowned.

“Where's Sophie?” he asked.

They twirled to see her standing on the windowsill, white as a ghost while the dust train floated away.

“Sophie, what are you doing!” Agatha cried.

“Jump
now
!” Tedros hollered.

Terrified, Sophie inched closer to the ledge and suddenly felt a clamp on her left hand. She spun to see Rafal holding on to her, calmer than ever.

“You'll come back to me, Sophie,” he promised. “Leave now and you'll come back, begging for forgiveness.”

Sophie saw the cold confidence in his pupils, reflecting her scared face. His grip on her hardened, her hand weakening in his . . .

“Sophie, come on!” a boy's voice called.

She turned and saw the golden, shirtless prince suspended in the sparkle cloud, beckoning her to his side . . . like the first day they ever met . . .

“I'll never be your queen, Rafal,” Sophie whispered, a pink princess's song swelling in her heart. She turned to the young School Master. “Because I'll be someone else's.”

Her pink fingertip glowed, lighting up TEDROS beneath Rafal's golden ring. The School Master reddened in surprise, his hand slipping off his queen's. Like a dove breaking free, Sophie leapt backwards out of his window, beaming radiantly as she floated into the last tail of glitterdust.

Agatha and Tedros swam through twinkling soot and caught Sophie in their arms, the three of them drifting over the bay like flowers in a sandstorm, as Merlin helmed the dust train towards the school gates.

Tedros draped his arms over the two levitating girls. “We're together,” he marveled. “We're
actually
together.”

“And finally on the same side,” said Sophie, hugging him.

Watching Sophie and Tedros as friends for the first time, Agatha smiled tightly, at once relieved and on edge . . . until her face deadened.

“What is it, Aggie?” Sophie asked.

Agatha squinted at the beautiful, white-haired boy in the window, letting them escape. “He's not chasing us. Why isn't he chasing us?”

“Ummm, because everyone else is?” said Tedros.

The two girls spun to see two hundred undead villains exploding out of the School for Old: witches, warlocks, ogres,
giants, and trolls roaring and shrieking like banshees and hurtling after the fairy-dust cloud.

“Speed up, Merlin!” Agatha shouted at the wizard, who was turned away at the front of the cloud.

“What, what? Can't be feeding you now, child,” Merlin bellowed, sucking on a lemon lollipop. “Tink's dust's already lasted longer than I expected.”

“Not feed!
Speed!
” Agatha blared.

But now the dust train sputtered with an ominous hiss and broke apart like a weak mist, sending the three students parachuting on sooty wisps to the shore, barely clearing the corrosive bay. Shell-shocked, they looked up from the ground and saw Merlin flying towards the gates in a piece of cloud, blissfully unaware that he'd lost his passengers.

Horrified, Agatha glanced back and saw the zombie army smashing towards them—

“RUN!”
she yelled, bolting up onto bare feet and hot stepping towards the gates.

Sophie and Tedros thundered after her, the three of them waving and screaming at Merlin, trying to get his attention.

“Why can't he hear us!” Agatha shouted.

“He's
old
!” Tedros barked.

Hobbling in her stilettos, Sophie lagged behind, an ogre within arm's reach, before she slung off a high heel and pelted him in the head, sending him spinning into a three-troll pileup. Flinging her other heel into the pestilent bay, Sophie raced after her friends, who were so far ahead she could hardly see them. “Wait for me! Already the third wheel and we're still at
school
!”

Agatha and Tedros scampered side by side for the gates, whose green glow seeped through a patch of pine bushes. But as the gates came into full view, Agatha's eyes bulged in horror. “They're sealed, Tedros!”

“'Cause Merlin has Dovey's wand!” he moaned.

They craned up to see Merlin's cloud wisp crossing over the towering school gates, about to abscond safely into the Woods. Aghast, Tedros unleashed a two-fingered whistle—

Merlin flicked back a dismissive smile, only to see the caboose of his train missing and Tedros and Agatha on the ground inside the school gates.

“The wand, Merlin!” Agatha hollered. “Use Dovey's wand!”

Merlin frantically pulled off his hat, rifling through it and yanking out champagne bottles, throw pillows, an empty birdcage—

“God help us,” Tedros breathed.

Agatha looked back and saw Captain Hook, Jack's giant, and Red Riding Hood's wolf closing in on Sophie, the latter's jaws snapping at her behind.

“Aggggieee . . . I'm hallllluccinnattinnggg!” Sophie squealed. “Therrre'sss faaamous villlainnssss chassinngggg meeeee!!!”

Agatha whipped back to Merlin. “
Hurry
, Merlin!”

The wizard pulled out a bowl of cashews, a chain of rainbow Christmas lights—“Oooh, these are lovely!”—before he heard Sophie's screams and glimpsed the wolf rip the hem of her dress as Sophie skidded towards her best friends, who were
still trapped behind the gates.

Pursing his lips, Merlin dug deeper into his hat, his arm all the way in, and fished out Professor Dovey's wand with a relieved smile. “Goodness, this really should come with a case.”

“MERLIN!” Agatha screeched.

Merlin wheeled and stabbed Dovey's wand at the glowing green gates, which slid open on command—

Tedros swept Agatha through in his arms and they collapsed together face-first into dirt.

“Close the gates!” Tedros wheezed at Merlin.

“No!”
Agatha yelled.

Because Sophie was still bungling towards the opening, the wolf shredding more of her clothes with every second, and the rest of the villain army nipping at the wolf's heels, poised to stampede through the gate with Sophie. “DON'T STAND THERE LIKE LUMPS!” she shrieked at her friends.
“DOOOO SOMETHINGGGG!”

Tedros drew his sword, but it was shaking in his hand. “There's too many of them!” he said to Agatha, watching Merlin awkwardly trying to turn his cloud around. “They'll tear us apart!”

Agatha saw Merlin flash the same panicked expression, because the prince was right. By the time Merlin turned, the villains would be picking their bones. The three of them needed a place to disappear . . . a place the villains couldn't get to . . . a cave or a tunnel or a—

“Wait!” she cried, waving at the wizard. “Your
cloak
!”

This time, Merlin understood. He stripped off his purple
robe, hurled it into the air like a kite, and with Dovey's wand, shot it down like a comet into Agatha's hands.

Standing in the gate opening, Agatha flung open Merlin's cloak like a bullfighter, the childish stitching of a night sky shimmering in the moonlight. She and Tedros climbed into the wizard's cloak, half their bodies magically disappearing into the silk, before the two Evers gripped on to the collar with both hands, like miners about to drop into a cave.

“Sophie, hurry!” Agatha shouted, holding open the cloak lining.

Sophie staggered through grass towards the gate opening, the wolf clawing into her petticoat, a giant about to throttle her from the left, Captain Hook hacking at her from the right—

Only there was another shadow coming from the other side of the shore . . . tall, muscular, and astonishingly fast, smashing out of the trees. “Oh my God! He's coming!” she choked, as she raced towards the magic cloak, waving madly at Tedros and Agatha. “Help! The School Master's coming!”

But it wasn't the School Master at all.

It was a pallid, dark-haired boy, weasel-quick and charging towards Sophie, black eyes aflame.

Agatha gasped. “Hort,
no
!”

Forces collided into the cloak, knocking Agatha into free fall. Losing consciousness, she looked up in horror as
four
bodies, not three, tumbled through a starry purple sky . . .

Then a blast of white sun blinded her and the universe went dark.