heroes or sidekicks or servants. No Happily Ever After for this lot. Just hooks in a museum. Agatha felt their eerie, glass-eyed stares and turned away. Only then did she see the plaque gleaming on the beanstalk. HOLDEN OF RAINBOW GALE. That wretched plant had once been a boy.
Agatha’s blood ran cold. All these stories she had never believed in. But they were painfully real now. In two hundred years, no kidnapped child had ever made it back to Gavaldon. What made her think she and Sophie would be the first? What made her think they wouldn’t end up a raven or a rosebush?
Then she remembered what made them different from all the rest.
We have each other.
They had to work together to break this curse. Or they’d both end up fossils of a fairy tale.
Agatha found her attention drawn to a corner nook, with a row of paintings by the same artist, depicting the same scenes: children reading storybooks, in hazy, impressionistic colors. As she neared the paintings, her eyes grew wider. Because she recognized where all these children were.
They were in Gavaldon.
She moved from first painting to last, with reading children set against the familiar hills and lake, crooked clock tower and rickety church, even the shadow of a house on Graves Hill. Agatha felt stabs of homesickness. She had mocked the children as batty and delusional. But in the end, they had known what she didn’t—that the line between stories and real life is very thin indeed.
Then she came to the last painting, which wasn’t like the others at all. In this one, raging children heaved their storybooks into a bonfire in the square and watched them burn. All around them, the dark forest went up in flames, filling the sky with violent red and black smoke. Staring at it, Agatha felt a chill up her spine.
Voices. She dove behind a giant pumpkin carriage, hitting her head on a plaque. HEINRICH OF NETHERWOOD. Agatha gagged.
Two teachers entered the museum, an older woman in a chartreuse high-necked dress, speckled with iridescent green beetle wings, and a younger woman in a pointy-shouldered purple gown that slunk behind her. The woman in chartreuse had a grandmotherly beehive of white hair, but luminous skin and calm brown eyes. The woman in purple had black hair yanked in a long braid, amethyst eyes, and bloodless skin stretched over bones like a drum.
“He’s tampering with the tales, Clarissa,” the one in purple said.
“The School Master can’t control the Storian, Lady Lesso,” Clarissa returned.
“He’s on your side and you know it,” Lady Lesso seethed.
“He’s not on anyone’s side—” Clarissa stopped short. So did Lady Lesso.
Agatha saw what they were looking at. The last painting.
“I see you’ve welcomed another of Professor Sader’s delusions,” Lady Lesso said.
“It is his gallery,” Clarissa sighed.
Lady Lesso’s eyes flashed. Magically, the painting tore off the wall and landed behind a glass case, inches from Agatha’s head.
“This is why they’re not in your school’s gallery,” said Clarissa.
“Anyone who believes the Reader Prophecy is a fool,” hissed Lady Lesso. “Including the School Master.”
“A School Master must protect the balance,” Clarissa said gently. “He sees Readers as part of that balance. Even if you and I cannot understand.”
“Balance!” scoffed Lady Lesso. “Then why hasn’t Evil won a tale since he took over? Why hasn’t Evil defeated Good in two hundred years?”
“Perhaps my students are just better educated,” said Clarissa.
Lady Lesso glowered and walked away. Swishing her finger, Clarissa moved the painting back into place and scurried to keep up.
“Maybe your new Reader will prove you wrong,” she said.
Lady Lesso snorted. “I hear she wears pink.”
Agatha listened to their footsteps go quiet.
She looked up at the dented painting. The children, the bonfire, Gavaldon burning to the ground. What did it all mean?
Twinkly flutters echoed through the air. Before she could move, glowing fairies burst in, searching every crevice like flashlights. Far across the museum, Agatha saw the doors through which the two teachers had left. Just when the fairies reached the pumpkin, she sprinted for it. The fairies squealed in surprise as she slid between three stuffed bears, threw open the doors—
Pink-dressed classmates streamed through the foyer in two perfect lines. As they held hands and giggled, the best of friends, Agatha felt familiar shame rise. Everything in her body told her to shut the door again and hide. But this time instead of thinking of all the friends she didn’t have, Agatha thought about the one she did.
The fairies swooped in a second later, but all they found were princesses on their way to a Welcoming. As they hovered furiously above, hunting for signs of guilt, Agatha slipped into the pink parade, put on a smile . . . and tried to blend.
Despite her ghastly new uniform, Sophie had no intention of sitting with Evil. One look at the Good girls’ glossy hair, dazzling smiles, chic pink dresses, and she knew she had found her sisters. If the fairies wouldn’t rescue her, surely her fellow princesses would. With villains shoving her along, she tried to get the Good girls’ attention, but they were ignoring her side of the theater. Finally Sophie battled her way to the aisle, waved her arms, and opened her mouth to yell, when a hand yanked her under a rotted bench.
Agatha tackled her in a hug. “I found the School Master’s tower! It’s in the moat and there’s guards, but if we can just get up there then we can—”
“Hi! Nice to see you! Give me your clothes,” said Sophie, staring at Agatha’s pink dress.
“Huh?”
“Quick! It will solve everything.”
“You can’t be serious! Sophie, we can’t stay here!”
“Exactly,” Sophie smiled. “I need to be in your school and you need to be in mine. Just like we talked about, remember?”
“But
