style="font-size:15px;"> “Where’s Sophie?”
“Won’t come out of the room. Missed all our classes,” Hester said as a wolf dumped mystery meat into her pail. “Apparently sharing a coffin with Hort robs you of your will to live.”
When Agatha made it to puddled Halfway
Bridge, her reflection was waiting for her, more glum and gaunt than the last time.
“I need to see Sophie,” Agatha said, avoiding eye contact with herself.
“That’s the second time he’s looked at you that way.”
“Huh? Second time who looked at me?”
“Tedros.”
“Well, Sophie won’t listen to me.”
“Well, maybe Sophie isn’t Tedros’ true love, then.”
“She has to be,” Agatha said, suddenly worried. “It can’t be someone else. That’s how we’re getting back home! Who else could it be? Beatrix? Reena? Milli—”
“You.”
Agatha looked up. Her reflection smiled hideously.
Agatha’s eyes veered back to her wet clumps. “That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. First off, love is something storybooks invented to keep girls busy. Second, I hate Tedros. Third, he thinks I’m an evil witch, which given my recent behavior, might be true. Now let me through.”
Her reflection stopped smiling. “You think we’re a witch?”
Agatha glowered at herself. “We’re making our friend win her true love just so we can take her away from him.”
Her reflection instantly turned uglier. “Definitely Evil,” it said, and vanished.
The door to Room 66 was unlocked. Agatha found Sophie curled under her scorched, tattered covers.
“I saw it!” Sophie hissed. “I saw him pick you! Here I’m worried about Beatrix, when you’re the double-crossing, backstabbing fink!”
“Look, I don’t know why Tedros keeps choosing me,” Agatha said, squeezing rain from her hair.
Sophie’s eyes drilled into her.
“I want him to choose you, you fool!” Agatha yelled. “I want us to go home!”
Sophie searched her face for a long moment. With a sigh, she turned to the window.
“You don’t know what it was like. I still smell him everywhere. He’s in my nose, Agatha. They’ve given him his own room until the stench goes away. But who’s to say where skunk ends and Hort begins?”
Shuddering, Sophie turned back. “I did everything you said, Aggie. I focused on all the things I love about Tedros—his skin, his eyes, his cheekbones—”
“Sophie, that’s his looks! Tedros won’t feel a connection if you just like him because he’s handsome. How is that different from every other girl?”
Sophie frowned. “I didn’t want to think about his crown or his fortune. That’s shallow.”
“Think about who he is! His personality! His values! What he’s like deep down!”
“Excuse me, I know how to make a boy love me,” Sophie huffed, shooing her out. “Just stop ruining things and let me do things my way.”
Apparently Sophie’s way was to humiliate herself as much as possible.
During lunch the next day, she sidled up to Tedros in the Evers’ line, only to have his boys crowd her, chomping blue mint leaves. Then she tried to get the prince alone in Surviving Fairy Tales, but Beatrix stuck to him like glue, taking every opportunity to remind him he picked her coffin.
“Tedros, can I talk to you?” Sophie blurted finally.
“Why would he talk to you?” Beatrix said.
“Because we’re friends, you buzzing gnat!”
“Friends!” Tedros flared. “I’ve seen how you treat your friends. Use them. Betray them. Call them fat. Call them liars. Appreciate the offer. I’ll pass.”
“Attacking. Betraying. Lying. Sounds like one of our Nevers is using her rules!” Yuba beamed.
Sophie was so despondent she even ate a piece of Dot’s chocolate.
“We’ll find you a love spell somehow,” said Dot.
“Thanks, Dot,” Sophie sobbed, mouth full. “This is amazing.”
“Rat droppings. Makes the best fudge.”
Sophie gagged.
“Who’d you call fat, by the way?” Dot asked.
Things got worse. For a weeklong challenge in Henchmen Training and Animal Communication, students of both schools had to tote assigned creature sidekicks everywhere they went. At first, both schools exploded into chaos, with trolls tossing Nevers out windows, stampeding satyrs stealing lunch baskets, baby dragons setting desks on fire, and animals christening the Good halls with mountains of dung.
“It’s a tradition. An attempt at school unity,” Professor Dovey said to her Evers, clothespin on her nose. “However misguided and poorly organized.”
Castor scowled at Nevers flitting about the Belfry, under siege by their henchmen. “ONCE YOU GET YOUR HEADS OUT OF YOUR BEHINDS, YOU’LL REALIZE WHO’S MASTER!”
And indeed, after three days, Hester had her baby ogre potty trained and spitballing Evers at lunch, Tedros had his wolfhound swaggering behind him, Anadil’s python befriended her rats, and Beatrix’s fluffy white bunny inspired such love she named it Teddy. (Tedros kicked it every time he saw it.) Even Agatha managed to teach her plucky ostrich how to steal candy without teachers noticing.
Sophie, however, found herself with a chubby cupid named Grimm, with bushy black hair, pug nose, pink wings, and eyes that changed colors depending on his moods. She knew his name was Grimm because he wrote it all over Room 66 in her favorite lipstick the first day. On Day 2, he saw Agatha for the first time at lunch and his eyes went from green to red. Then on Day 3, while Yuba taught “Uses of Wells,” he started shooting arrows at Agatha, who leapt behind the Forest well just in time.
“CALL THAT THING OFF!” Tedros yelled as he deflected Grimm’s arrows into the well with his training sword.
“Grimm! She’s my friend!” Sophie shouted.
Grimm guiltily put his arrows away.
On Day 4, he spent all of Sophie’s classes grinding his teeth in the corner and clawing at the
