want you home alive!” Agatha begged. “I want us to forget ever coming to the School for Good and Evil! I don’t want Tedros!”
Sophie whirled, snarling. “Then why did you wish for him?”
Agatha froze.
“Let the gifts begin!” the Dean decreed.
“Gifts!” Sophie spun from Agatha, beaming. “At last, some good news.” She sidled up to the Dean as the veiled girls fanned to the walls like a clamshell opening, leaving a wide aisle down the middle.
Agatha followed warily, remembering what this world had once done to her and her best friend. The longer they stayed here, the longer they were in danger. She had to get Sophie home now.
Moving into the sunlight of a small window, she noticed the museum exhibits had changed. Evidence of boys’ achievements had all been stripped and replaced with relics from her and Sophie’s fairy tale: Agatha’s Evergirl uniform, Sophie’s Lunchtime Lectures sign, Agatha’s note to Sophie during the Trial by Tale, the slashed lock of hair from Sophie’s Doom Room punishment, and dozens of others, each enshrined in a blue-tinted glass case. On the main wall, the Ever After mural, which once celebrated the marriage of prince and princess, was now covered with a navy canvas, embroidered with butterflies. Indeed, the only holdover was Professor Sader’s old nook of paintings off the far corner. As a seer who could glimpse the future, the former History teacher had once drawn paintings of every Reader who had come from Gavaldon to the School for Good and Evil. Whenever Agatha needed answers, she always drifted back to these paintings, finding new clues. All she wanted was to study them again now, but there were two veiled girls marching towards her down the aisle, carrying an enormous purple vase.
“From Maidenvale,” said Dean Sader, honeyed voice now deep and commanding. “An urn from Princess Riselda, who like hundreds of others heard your story and realized she’d be happier without her prince. She had his throne burned and offers the ashes to you.”
The girls held up the urn to Sophie and Agatha, who peered at its carving of a prince magically ejected out a castle window to crocodiles below.
“We don’t want it,” Agatha crabbed.
“Shall we put it in my room?” smiled Sophie, turning to the Dean.
“Room?” Agatha blurted. “Sophie, you’re not staying—”
But now two girls were marching down the aisle with oriental, bamboo drapes.
“From Pifflepaff Hills,” the Dean boomed. “A hand-painted tree curtain from Princess Sayuri, who read your tale and realized that without princes, princesses and witches are happier.”
Its exquisitely painted bamboo reeds depicted a princess and witch embracing in one panel, while in the other, a prince who looked a lot like Tedros was flogged to a pulp by a beast.
“This is horrible,” Agatha snapped.
“Hang them by my bed,” Sophie chimed to the two veiled girls. “What’s next?”
The Dean pointed a gold-lacquered nail down the aisle. “From Netherwood, a tapestry of homeless princes …”
“I wish Professor Dovey and Lady Lesso could appreciate someone as chic as you,” Sophie fawned to the Dean, as the procession of prince-abusing gifts continued, including prince voodoo dolls, looted prince swords, and a carpet made out of prince hair. “Do classes start today?”
The Dean grinned as she glided away. “Including mine.”
“You’re not serious,” Agatha hissed to Sophie. “Now you want to go to class?”
“Let’s hope they renovated those rooms made of candy.” Sophie hand combed her hair, readying for the day. “I’m allergic to the smell.”
“Sophie, there is a bounty on your head—”
“And lastly, a gift from me,” declared Dean Sader, standing in front of the covered Ever After mural. “Students, your old school taught you balance was about vanquishing Good or Evil. But how can there be balance between Evers and Nevers until there is balance between Boys and Girls? It is no mistake our Readers have returned to join our school, for their fairy tale remains unfinished.”
She looked right at the two girls. “And the battle for its ending just begun.”
She let the canvas fall. Agatha and Sophie drew breaths.
The words EVER AFTER, giant and glimmering, still peeked from painted clouds at the top of the mural in gold block letters. Everything else had been redone.
Now the scene depicted two sprawling blue-glass castles around a lake, as girls in azure uniforms gathered on tower balconies, basked on the lakeshores, and strolled the gated grounds. Some of these girls were beautiful, some were ugly, but they worked, lived, and idled together without division, as if witches and princesses were always meant to be friends.
There were boys in the painting too, if one could call them that. With black peasant rags and ogrishly distorted faces, they scooped manure, raked a blue forest behind the castle, and built up the towers in miserable chain gangs before retreating to filthy prison slums at the fringes of the gates. Female overseers drove them like chattel and the boys put up no fight, slaves resigned to eternal servitude. Agatha’s eyes rose to the top of the painting, where haloed in sun two women with crystal diadems surveyed their kingdom from the highest balcony …
“It’s us,” Sophie gasped.
“It’s … this school,” scowled Agatha.
“Your true Ever After,” the Dean said, stepping between them. “Captains of these hallowed halls, leading girls to a princeless future.”
Agatha grimaced at the vision of Everboys and Neverboys hated and enslaved. “This school isn’t our ending,” she said, turning to Sophie. “Tell her we have to leave!”
But Sophie was gazing at the painting, eyes wide. “How do we make it come true?”
Agatha stiffened.
“How all heroes win their happy ending, dear,” the Dean said, touching both their shoulders. “By facing the enemy.” She grinned out the window at Tedros’ tower. “And slaying him.”
Agatha and Sophie locked eyes in surprise.
“My cherished students!” The Dean swept her hand over the crowd. “Welcome our Readers back to school!”
With a roar, the mob tore off their veils and rushed the two girls.
“You’re home!” gushed Reena, embracing Agatha with freckly Millicent, while green-skinned Mona and one-eyed Arachne smooshed Sophie into a hug—
“Didn’t know we were friends—” Sophie croaked, suffocated—
“We’re on your side against Tedros,” Arachne cheered, Millicent on her arm as if Evers and Nevers were suddenly bosom buddies. “All of us!”
“You’re our heroes,” Reena said to Agatha, who noticed the Arabian princess looked
