that what you’ll tell the School Master at the Circus?” Professor Sheeks thundered. “‘I don’t know my talent’ or ‘don’t have a talent’ or ‘don’t like my talent’ or ‘want to trade talents with the Ooty Queen!’”
“She had me till the last bit,” said Dot.
“Every year, Evil loses the Circus of Talents!” Sheeba yelled. “Good sings a song or waves a sword or wipes their bottom and you have nothing better? Don’t you have pride! Don’t you have shame! Enough! I don’t care whether you turn men to stone or turn men to dung! You listen to Sheeba and you’ll be number one!”
Twenty pairs of eyes stared at her. “Which monkey is next?” she boomed.
The woeful displays continued. Green-skinned Mona made her lips glow red. (“Because every prince is scared of a Christmas tree,” Sheeba moaned.) Anadil made her rats grow an inch, Hort sprung a hair from his chest, Arachne popped her one eye, Ravan burped smoke, and just when their teacher looked completely fed up, Dot touched her desk and turned it to chocolate.
“Mystery solved,” Sophie marveled.
“I’ve never seen such a parade of uselessness in my life,” Sheeba gasped.
But Hester was next. Leering at Sophie, she gripped the desk with both fists, clenching tighter, tighter, until every vein bulged against her reddening skin.
“Turns into a watermelon,” yawned Sophie. “Special indeed.”
Then something moved on Hester’s neck and the class froze. Her tattoo lurched again, like a painting coming to life. The red-skulled demon unfurled one wing, then the other, swung its buck-horned head to Sophie and opened slitting, bloodshot eyes. Sophie’s heart stopped.
“I told you to watch out,” Hester grinned.
The demon exploded off her skin in full-bodied life and tore towards Sophie, shooting red fire bolts at her head. Stunned, she fell backward to dodge them, knocking a bookcase to the ground. The shoe-sized beast swooped, launched a bolt that ignited her robes, and Sophie rolled over to stamp out the flames. “HELLLPP!”
“Use your talent, incompetent blond girl!” Sheeba barked, wagging her hips.
“She should sing,” Dot quipped. “Would kill everyone in the room.”
Hester circled her demon for a second attack, only to see it snare in the cobwebbed, spiked chandelier. Sophie crawled under the last row, glimpsed a fallen book, Encyclopedia of Villains, and ripped through pages. Banshee, Beanighe, Berserker . . .
“Sophie, hurry!” Hort screamed.
Sophie wheeled to see the winged beast slash through the cobwebs as Hester’s eyes flared across the room. She flipped desperately. Crypt Bat, Cyclops . . . Demon!
Ten pages of small print. Demons are supernatural beings that come in an astonishing variety of forms, all with different strengths and weaknesses—
Sophie swiveled. The demon was five feet away—
“Your talent!” roared Sheeba.
Sophie threw the book at the demon and missed. With a lethal smile, it held up a bolt like a dagger. Sheeba lunged to intervene and Anadil tripped her. Screeching, the demon aimed at Sophie’s face. But as he slung his bolt, Sophie suddenly remembered the one talent all good girls had—
Friends.
She spun to the window and let out a gorgeous whistle for a kind, noble animal to save her life—
Black wasps smashed through the window and swarmed the demon on cue.
Hester jolted back, as if she’d been stabbed.
Sophie’s eyes bulged in horror. She whistled again—but now bats stormed in, sinking teeth into the demon as the wasps continued to sting. The demon crumpled to the floor like a burnt moth. In her seat, Hester’s skin went white and clammy, sucked of blood.
Alarmed, Sophie whistled louder, higher, but then came a cloud of bees, hornets, and locusts, besieging the foaming creature as Hester violently convulsed.
In the corner, Sophie stood paralyzed as screaming villains batted them away from the demon with books and chairs, but the swarm had no mercy, savaging it until Hester heaved her last breaths.
Sophie threw herself over the demon, thrust her hands at the swarm—
“STOP!”
The swarm went dead still. Like scolded children, they whimpered obediently and fled out the window in a dark cloud.
Wheezing, the wounded demon clawed to Hester and collapsed back into her neck. Hester choked and coughed up phlegm, brought back from the edge. She gaped at Sophie, flooding with fear.
Sophie dove to help her. “I didn’t mean—I wanted a bird or a—” Hester recoiled from her touch.
“Princesses call animals!” Sophie cried into silence. “I’m Good! 100% Good!”
“Thank you, Beelzebub!”
Sophie whirled.
“Looks like a princess! Acts like a princess! But a witch,” Sheeba whooped, wobbling to her feet. “Mark my words, my useless ones! This one will win the Circus Crown!”
For the second time in two challenges, Sophie looked up at the top rank, spewing red smoke above her head.
Panicked, she whipped to her schoolmates to appeal, but they were no longer looking at her with contempt or ridicule. They were looking at her with something else.
Respect.
Her place as #1 Villain was getting surer by the minute.
Up close, Professor Clarissa Dovey, with her silver bun and rosy face, looked even more comforting and grandmotherly. Agatha couldn’t have wished for a better executioner.
“I’d prefer the School Master handle these things,” Professor Dovey said, flipping papers under a crystal pumpkin paperweight. “But we all know how he is about his privacy.”
Finally she peered up at Agatha. She didn’t look comforting anymore.
“I have a school full of terrified students, two days of classes to make up, five hundred animals whose memories must be erased, a classroom wing that’s been eaten, a treasured menagerie reduced to ash, and a headless gargoyle buried somewhere underneath all this. Do you know why this is?”
Agatha couldn’t get words out of her throat.
“Because you disobeyed Pollux’s simple order,” Professor Dovey said. “And nearly cost lives in the process.” She shamed Agatha with a look and went back to her scrolls.
Agatha glanced through the window at the lakeshore, where Evers were finishing lunches of roast chicken dolloped with mustard, spinach and Gruyère crepes, and flutes of apple cider. She could see Tedros reenacting the menagerie scene for an enthralled audience, sporting his black eye like a badge
