know! I only have two buttons left!” Sophie squealed, slapping the frog away.
“No! We need to get off now!”
Agatha pointed at the red hoods swinging onto their track—
“Follow me!” she cried to Sophie, shaking off a rainbow of lizards, and swung to the next strap. She glanced back to see Sophie still grappling a canary on her collar. “Shoo! This is handmade!”
“NOW!” Agatha roared—
Sophie gasped and swung for the next vine. She missed and plunged screaming towards a gnashing flytrap. Agatha blanched in horror—
Sophie belly flopped onto the blue HIBISCUS LINE below, running parallel at high speed. Hands and legs wrapped around the glowing trunk, she looked up at Agatha, who heaved with relief.
“Aggie, watch out!” Sophie yelled—
Agatha wheeled to a hood on her vine. He grabbed her throat.
Hearing Agatha’s choked gurgles above her, Sophie tried to stand on her trunk, then saw a thorn tunnel ahead about to decapitate her and plastered down just as her train whooshed through. Suddenly she heard a twinkly sound and swerved her head down the tunnel to see the glowing blue butterfly, hovering in place above the track.
“Help us!” Sophie begged—
The butterfly beat its wings and whizzed forward. As her train came out of the tunnel, Sophie scooted down the tree trunk to follow it, shadows of the hood strangling Agatha darkening the track ahead. Frantic, Sophie tried to keep up with the butterfly, but two red hoods landed in front of her, bows and arrows in hand. Just as they aimed, she looked back with terror and saw the hood about to snap Agatha’s neck—
The butterfly dove and yanked the vine under Sophie’s hand. In an instant, the vine snared Sophie’s wrist, ripped her off the track, and lassoed Agatha’s hand on the way up. The hoods whirled in shock, spewing their knives and arrows at them, but the vine coiled like a whip and launched both girls upwards into a blue windwheel of light. The rush of air sucked them towards the light portal in a storm of loose petals, pulling up, up, up—
And into a lush field.
Kneeling in a bed of tall red and yellow lilies, Agatha and Sophie heaved for breath, faces scratched, petals in hair, and dresses barely still on. Both looked down at the dirt-plugged hole they’d just spouted from, broiled with arrows from below.
“Where are we?” Sophie said, searching for the blue butterfly.
Agatha shook her head. “I don’t—”
Then she saw a red lily and a yellow lily whispering to each other, giving her strange looks.
She’d seen flowers talking about her once before, she thought. In a field just like this, until they’d tugged her by the wrist and yanked her up to …
Agatha lurched to her feet.
The School for Good soared above them, shimmering in red-orange sunrise over the crystal-clear side of Halfway Bay. Its four glass towers, once divided between pink and blue, were now only blue, with flags bearing butterflies of the same color billowing from sharp minarets.
“We’re back,” Sophie gasped.
Agatha went white as snow.
Back to the one place she’d tried to forget. Back to the one place that could ruin everything.
Ahead, the closed doors to the Good castle lay atop a hill. Golden spiked gates barred the path up the Great Lawn, mirrored words arching over them:
THE SCHOOL FOR GIRL EDUCATION AND ENLIGHTENMENT
Agatha closed and reopened her bleary eyes, for she had seen wrong.
It still said “GIRL.”
“Huh?”
Sophie stood up beside her. “That’s strange.”
“Well, ‘Good’ and ‘Girl’ aren’t so
But then she saw what Sophie was looking at. At the halfway point across the bay, Good’s lake slimed into Evil’s moat. Only the moat wasn’t black, like it used to be. It was rusted red, the color of the cesspool in the Woods and guarded by the spiny white crocodiles she had seen eat the female deer—at least twenty of them, lurking in the sludge, black shark teeth glinting.
Slowly Agatha looked up at the School for Evil looming above the moat. Three bloodred towers, jagged with spikes, flanked a smooth silver tower, twice as tall as the others. Atop the four towers, black flags crackled in the fog, emblazoned with scarlet snakes.
“There used to be three Evil towers,” Sophie said, squinting. “Not four …”
Voices rose across the bay and the two girls ducked into the lilies.
Out of the Woods stormed men in black through Evil’s castle gates.
They were wearing red leather hoods.
“The School Master’s men!” Sophie cried as they faded into the fog.
Agatha whitened. “But that means—”
She whirled back to the bay.
“It’s … gone,” breathed Agatha, for the School Master’s sky-high silver tower, once guarding the halfway point between moat and lake, had simply … disappeared.
“No, it’s not,” Sophie said, still eyeing the School for Evil.
Now Agatha saw why there were four towers there instead of three.
The School Master’s tower had moved to Evil.
“He’s alive!” Agatha cried, gaping at his silver spire. “But how—”
Sophie pointed. “Look!”
In the tower’s single window, veiled by fog, a shadow stared down at them. All they could see of its face was a gleaming silver mask.
“It’s him!” Sophie hissed. “He’s leading Evil!”
“Agatha! Sophie!”
The girls swiveled from the lilies to see Professor Dovey running from Good castle in her green high-necked gown.
“Come quickly!”
As the two girls hurried behind her through Good’s golden gates, Agatha glanced back at the School Master’s tower and the masked shadow in the window. All they had to do was kill him again, and her mistake would be hidden forever. They’d go home safe, her promise to Stefan kept, and Sophie would never know what she’d wished for. Looking up at that shadow lording over Evil, Agatha waited for her heart to rage with purpose, to propel her into battle … but instead her heart did something else.
It fluttered.
