The School for Good and Evil #2: A World without Princes (17 page)

Lady Lesso looked as if she'd swallowed her own tongue. “It means—it means your soul i-i-is—”

“Rusty with counterspells,” the Dean said. “Wouldn't you agree, Lady Lesso?”

Lady Lesso stiffened, a strange weakness distilling her usually cold eyes. She looked scared, Agatha thought, almost . . .
sad
. “Yes, of course,” she mumbled to the Dean.

Agatha noticed her teacher's eyes dart to her and dart away.

“But I still . . . failed?” Sophie said hopefully.

“On the contrary, first rank,” the Dean said, swishing out.

Sophie opened her mouth to protest, but Lady Lesso quickly awarded the rest of the rankings and jetted from the room when butterflies zoomed through to signal class's end.

Agatha didn't budge as girls exited, buzzing how lucky it was the Dean rescued Sophie from Lesso's incompetence. “The teachers are just jealous of her,” Beatrix sighed dismissively.

As the girls left the room, Agatha nervously watched Sophie, back turned to her, gathering her things. The Dean's arrival had been lucky indeed. For the girls hadn't seen what she had: the witch reborn, her symptoms complete. If the Dean hadn't intervened in time . . .

Tedros
, Agatha thought, sneaking for the door.
Just make it to Tedros—

“Aggie, I won't be on guard with you,” Sophie said behind her. “You wouldn't go to Tedros, would you?”

Agatha stopped dead. “What? Why would you say that?”

“Because you keep looking at me like I'm a witch.”

Agatha turned to see Sophie stalking towards her, eyes cold. Agatha felt her chest sweating, her legs jellying, symptoms that told her she was about to faint, the way she once did in Tedros' arms. But just as she collapsed to a deadly witch now instead of her prince . . .

“Your—your teeth—” she spluttered at Sophie, recovering. “They're—they're normal—”

Sophie gaped dumbly. “My teeth? What are you—” Her face hardened. “Agatha, that was
ink
. My pen must have leaked—had it in my mouth—”

“But your hair—” Agatha insisted. “I saw it falling out—”

“A piece got caught on a stupid beanstalk!” Sophie barked. “And you believed
I
was turning into a witch again? That I'd attack
you
? After everything we've been through!”

All Agatha managed was a croak.

“I trust you tonight, Aggie,” Sophie said, face filled with hurt. “Even if you don't trust me.”

Watching Sophie go, yanking at her disheveled shawl, Agatha sagged guiltily.

But then she remembered the
wart
—the wart she definitely saw . . . the wart that couldn't be explained away. . . . As Sophie trailed away, tearing off the shawl, Agatha chased to see under it—

A hand yanked her back.

“Lesso's lying,” Hester said, closing the door and sealing them alone. “You heard her. Sophie's soul's corrupted by unforgivable Evil! That's why she couldn't change back! That's why the Beast came out of her! It explains everything!”

“But—but what does that mean?” Agatha rasped—

“It means this time the change is permanent!” Hester pressed. “When Sophie turns into a witch, she'll never turn back! I told you she wanted revenge!”

“But you said it yourself! She hasn't hurt anything! And the symptoms
aren't
getting worse at all—”

“Oh they're getting worse, all right. The Dean just isn't seeing it,” Hester said, looking away. “You have to kiss Tedros tonight!”

Agatha shook her head, still picturing Sophie's hurt face. “I can't. I can't go to him, Hester. I have to trust my best friend.” She slumped, exhaling. “Probably wasn't even a wart. Just being paranoid, like I was with her hair and teeth. We're
all
just being paranoi—”

But now Agatha saw where Hester was looking.

Behind the desk, the phantom pigeon lay against the wall.

Only it wasn't a phantom anymore.

Blood spilled towards them from its mangled corpse, across the candy floor.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

“
S
he's turning into a witch! She's turning and she doesn't know it!” Agatha choked, rushing with Dot into the Charity breezeway.

“Oh, she knows,” Dot snapped. “She's just playing innocent. Why do you think she's wearing that stupid shawl!”

“We have to tell Lady Lesso—she'll know what to do—”

“No! You saw what happened with Professor Dovey. We can't put the teachers in danger!”

“Sophie was Good at home, Dot!” Agatha cried. “She was
happy—
”

“You want to see her happy? Wait until she does to you what she did to that pigeon!”

Thankfully, Agatha wouldn't see Sophie the rest of the afternoon. With challenges complete for the day, their classes diverged until Forest Groups, so while Sophie had Female Talents with Anadil and Hester, Agatha hurried to History of Heroines with Dot.

“You can't be alone with her again!” Dot said as they neared the mass of girls filing into Good Hall. “Hide in Hester's room after classes!”

All Agatha could see was the pigeon's gaping eye . . . its blood seeping towards her. . . . She stopped against a sapphire column, gulping for air. “This is all because of my wish.”

“No, this is all because you chose the wrong ending last time.”

Agatha looked up at Dot's reflection in the polished glass.

“You heard Hester. Tonight's your last chance to do what your heart really wants,” Dot said. “Or Sophie will be a witch forever.”

Agatha's throat tightened, afraid to let the words out. “And if . . . if I kiss him?”

“She'll go home to her father safe, like you promised. The witch locked inside.”

Agatha said nothing for a moment. Finally she turned. “How do I escape guard duty tonight? The other girl will tell the Dean—”

“Will she?” Dot took her arm. “Just 'cause I'm popular and wear glitter doesn't mean I'm a better student.”

“We're on guard . . . together?”

“If you haven't noticed, I've been failing every challenge worse than you. And I've been trying!”

Agatha looked at her, scared. “But even if I do escape . . . what if I can't get into the boys' castle—”

“You will.”

Agatha felt the unspoken ending in Dot's grip.

Because our lives depend on it.

Good Hall had the same briny smell and humid haze as last year, its marble ballroom swathed in emerald algae and blue rust, like a cathedral that had been sunken in seawater. Chipped marble murals on the wall depicted the history of the Great War, ending in the triumph of the Evil School Master over his own Good brother. As Agatha sat down in the pews, she found it odd that the Dean hadn't changed the murals to reflect either the School Master's death or the Boy Eviction. Surely she'd want history revised in her own image?

Odder still, though History was the Dean's class to teach, she failed to appear at all, leaving Pollux fumbling before half the school.

“Our Dean had urgent business, so I offered to present a comprehensive review of Male Brutality through the ages, with pointed emphasis on the persecution of those who do not display conventionally masculine traits.”

He pursed his lips. “But the Dean preferred you each introduce your lineage instead.”

Agatha tried to focus on paths into the Boys' school, but found herself tuning in to the girls' introductions. All the students at the School for Good and Evil came from fairy-tale families, except her and Sophie, the two unenchanted Readers kidnapped from Gavaldon. Agatha remembered that Hester's mother was the now-deceased witch who tried to kill Hansel and Gretel, while Anadil's grandmother was the notorious White Witch, who wore little boys' bones. But now Agatha also learned Beatrix's grandmother was the maiden who outwitted Rumplestiltskin, Millicent was the great-granddaughter of Sleeping Beauty and her prince, and Kiko was the child of one of Neverland's Lost Boys and a mermaid.

While Evergirls usually mentioned both parents, the Nevers proferred only one or none at all, whether Arachne's father, a robber of queens; Mona's green-skinned mother, who had famously terrorized Oz; or Dot's father, Nottingham's sheriff who never caught his Nemesis, Robin Hood.

“Why don't Nevers mention both parents?” Agatha asked after Dot sat down.

“'Cause villains aren't born out of love,” Dot said, watching Reena rhapsodize about how her royal parents met. “We're made for all the wrong reasons, none of which keep a family together. Lady Lesso used to say villain families are like dandelions—‘fleeting and toxic.' Sounded like it came from personal experience. Bet Sophie's is worse than any of ours.”

“But Sophie had loving parents—” Agatha's voice trailed off.

“Stefan suffered most of all,”
her mother had said about Stefan's marriage to Sophie's mother. Had his marriage been unhappy from the start? Had Sophie too been born “for all the wrong reasons”? Agatha looked at Dot, who seemed to intuit her thoughts.

“The School Master wanted to
marry
her for a reason,” Dot warned.

Agatha remembered his parting vow . . . his red-rimmed eyes claiming Sophie as his bride . . .

“You'll always be Evil, Sophie. That's why you're mine.”

Now, as Agatha thought of her best friend returning to a witch, she wondered anxiously: Was the School Master right? And why couldn't the Dean see it?

“I mean, how can anyone even believe the Dean's hogwash,” Agatha crabbed, trying to distract herself. “Kingdoms of women can't last without men. How would they, um . . .
grow
?”

“That's what we like about it.” Dot grinned.
“Slaves.”

The only other memorable moment of class came when Yara, the dancing girl from the Welcoming, sashayed in halfway through, with her gangly walk and rippling muscles, acting as if it was perfectly routine to skip class all morning and flounce in at will.

“Care to present your lineage, Yara?” Pollux asked thinly.

Yara twirled with a squawk and sat down.

“Gypsies, no doubt,” Pollux murmured.

As Agatha stared at Yara's beakish face, ginger hair, and strawberry freckles, she felt like she'd never encountered a girl so alien . . . and yet oddly familiar.

“Wanders in and out like the school pet,” Dot whispered. “It's 'cause she can't speak. Dean feels sorry for her.”

Agatha skipped lunch in the Supper Hall to meet Hester and Anadil atop the drizzly Honor Tower rooftop. (Dot declined to join them, citing a myriad of social obligations.) Where the open-air roof had once housed a topiary garden dedicated to scenes from King Arthur's story, the sculpted hedges had been remade in tribute to Queen Guinevere—Arthur's wife and Tedros' mother, who had abandoned them both and never been seen again.

“No wonder Tedros wants to attack us,” Hester said, slurping homemade gruel as she eyed scenes of the sculpted, slim queen.

“How can the Dean think she's a hero?” Agatha said. “She deserted her son!”

“On the contrary, the Dean says Guinevere liberated herself from male oppression,” Anadil quipped, watching her rats stab each other with stone shards, remnants of a gargoyle Tedros once killed. “She conveniently ignores that she left to shack up with a scrawny knight.”

Agatha stared at the menagerie hedges, making Guinevere out to be a saint.
“You don't expect me to tell the story as it happened, do you?”
Sophie had teased back home. Every fairy tale could be twisted to serve a purpose. Good could turn into Evil, Evil into Good, back and forth, back and forth, just like it had in the war between the schools a year ago. Even now, Sophie was vowing she was Good, while everything in their story was telling Agatha she was Evil.

“There's no shield
between
the two schools, only around the perimeter gates,” Hester was saying to Anadil. “But even so, she can't swim to Tedros, with those crogs in the moat—”

“Crogs?” Agatha asked, turning to them.

“Those spiny white crocodiles. They only attack girls,” Anadil said impatiently.

Agatha thought back to the cesspool in the Woods—the female deer dragged under by the crogs, while the male stag swam untouched. She felt doubly relieved she hadn't tried to cross.

“And she can't use the sewers since they're blocked,” Hester was saying. “She can't even use the west Forest gate—”

“Is the Bridge portal still up here?'” Agatha said, scanning the roof.

Hester frowned. “I told you, Tedros
couldn't
have said ‘bridge'—”