The Last Ever After (23 page)

Agatha stalled, fingerglow pinned ahead.

Dead center in the garden was a leafy sculpture of herself as a girl, floating magically above a rippling pond in Tedros'
arms. Beneath them Sophie raged on the pond's shore, fists gnarled, mouth wide open in a scream.

Agatha shivered, reliving the moment by the lake on the night of the Evers Snow Ball. That single moment when three friends had been torn apart.

Now it was up to her and her prince to bring them back together.

From the shore, Agatha lifted her gaze to the black towers of the School for New, menacing outlines in the night.
What happened to Tedros?
she thought.
What if he never makes it to Sophie? What if I never see him again?

Shouts rang out from the stairwell inside.
“Check the roof!”
Lady Lesso cried.
“Find who did this to my son!”

Agatha gasped. No time to worry, only to act.

On an inhale, she closed her eyes and leapt into water.

Meanwhile, in the School Master's tower, Sophie was still thinking about Edgar and Essa.

After the discomfiting morning—barely hiding Tedros' name from Rafal, botching her chance to find the spy, meeting those two strange fans on the shore—the rest of the day had taken a decided upturn. By the time she'd gotten to her class, Pollux had already begun the challenge, a repeat of yesterday's test to get inside the enemy's head, except with the students in phantom Agatha masks. (Hester won easily this time, despite arriving late herself.) After class, Sophie managed to catch up with the three witches in the hall, who seemed aloof as to the whereabouts of Edgar and Essa. (“Different schedules than
us,” Hester snipped.) With her friends rushing off to History, Sophie barely had time to ask them for a spell that might cover an “imperfection” of the skin.

Dot grabbed her cheeks. “You're not turning warty and psychotic again are you!”

“No, no, just an oddly placed pimple . . . you know, unbecoming of a queen . . . ,” Sophie warbled.

“Well, if I you're ‘queen' of anything, it's curing pimples,” said Hester. “Come on, girls. Can't be late to the School Master's class.”

Anadil followed, but Sophie overheard her whispering. “Don't know why we bother going. All he talks about is Sophie this and Sophie that and how she inspires Evil's future. Whatever that means.”

“Means we got a love-sloshed teenager as School Master,” Dot chirped, toddling after them.

Sophie lingered behind, stunned. Rafal was gushing moonily to the whole school about her and here she was, still terrified of him? All he'd asked of her was loyalty and love—the same things he'd given her. And so far she'd failed on both counts. She bit her lip guiltily, hand fidgeting in her pocket.

TEDROS had to be dealt with
now
.

The old Library of Virtue, once a gold, impeccable coliseum, was a musty, weed-grown mess, with books strewn out of order (not surprising considering Evelyn Sader had killed the old tortoise librarian, who'd yet to be replaced). Even so, Sophie managed to excavate an old copy of
The Recipe Book for Good Looks
, and spent the rest of the morning brewing a
“Flesh-Over” potion of beets, wildflower, and dwarf sweat (Beezle was filched of the last, before yipping “Grand Witch Ultimate!” and bolting away). According to the book, the spell would only last until the covered area grew wet—and yet, the moment Sophie slathered the potion on her finger and watched Tedros' name flesh over with fresh skin, she felt good as new, as if she'd earned a fresh start with Rafal too.

The young School Master also seemed to have turned the page, for he no longer acted angry when they met for lunch on the faculty balcony. Instead, while Sophie pecked at a fresh salmon salad he'd brought in a basket, Rafal nervously picked at the laces of his black shirt.

“Sophie, I was thinking . . . I've been asking your loyalty without truly earning it first. Maybe we haven't spent enough time getting to know each other like um, normal young people . . .” He glanced at the other teachers on the balcony and the students on the ground, all sneaking peeks at him and Sophie together. “So, uh, perhaps you and I could do that . . . I mean, spend time without other people around—like away from school, you know, like a . . . a . . .”

Sophie raised her brows. “Date?”

“Right. Yes. Exactly.” Rafal tugged at his sticky shirt. “I could take you on a tour over the Woods, maybe? You know, after everyone goes to sleep? Lady Lesso won't get on our case about going too fast and we can stay out as late as we want because—well,
obviously
. Wait until you see the Netherwood from really high up. With the trees all dead, it looks brilliant, like a devil-made scarecrow, and the stars over the Murmuring
Mountains connect into a giant skull,” he rambled, like a nerdy Neverboy. “Could even do it tonight, after supper . . . you know, get some time together without everyone watching us . . .”

Sophie looked into his milky face, which seemed to be getting younger and younger. For a moment, he sounded so open to love.

“I'd like that very much,” she breathed.

Rafal smiled, relieved. The young Master and Queen spent the rest of lunch in bashful silence, like two normal teenagers who'd just arranged their first date.

That evening, after dinner, as Rafal flew her back to his tower, Sophie nestled into his arms, no longer doubting who her true love was. Tedros' name was fleshed-over and forgotten, the Storian had written nothing further of him or Agatha, and for the first time, even Rafal wondered whether the two Evers had left the Woods entirely.

“Perhaps they came to their senses,” he said as they landed in the chamber. He gave the Storian a cursory glance, still paused over a blank page. “Let me change and then we can go on our . . . our, you know . . .” His larynx bobbed. “I'll go change.”

Sophie looked out the window. After all this, she'd never see her best friends again, she thought, battling a wave of sadness. . . . She shook it off, remembering this is what she'd wished for: Agatha safe with her true love, and she safe with hers. Bucking up, she looked back at the handsome, loving boy in the corner, doffing his sweaty shirt. The boy about to take her on her first real date.

“Well, with no Agatha and no Tedros, we'll finally have time to focus on
us,
won't we?” she said. “And what better way to start than a proper date night?” She fixed her hair, gussying up for their evening. “Goodbye troubles! Goodbye ordinary life! I can picture it now: going to school together every morning, gossiping about our students, quiet dinners in the tower, planning the places we want to go and things we want to see, like a princess and prince, in the throes of Ever After—”

“I'm not your prince. This is not Ever After. And everything you described sounds like ordinary life to me,” said Rafal, his back turned.

Sophie bristled. “Well, I'm sure a bit of routine will be good for us after everything that's happened,” she said, straightening books on a shelf to fill the silence. “At the very least, we can send those Ever Killers back to Bloodbrook.”

“Ever Killers?” Rafal said, sniffing at a pile of dirty shirts, looking for one clean enough to wear.

Sophie made a mental note to do his laundry in the morning. He was becoming more of a teenage boy by the minute. “You know, the new students you brought in,” she yawned, noticing the new flesh on her ring finger starting to wear thin. She'd have to apply more potion tomorrow. “Edgar and Essa, I think it was. You didn't think I'd find out, did you?”

“I'm sorry. Who?”

“Those
cousins
, Rafal.” Sophie plopped stomach-down on the bed. “Captain Hook's family . . . strange pair, really. Clearly obsessive fans of mine but couldn't bring themselves to ask for an autograph. Spent the whole time sizing up my ring. Don't
blame them, of course. It is rather lovely. Said you'd brought them here to kill Agatha and—”

But now she saw Rafal staring at her.

“Hook murdered his whole family,” he said. “By the age of ten.”

Sophie bolted up, confused. “What? But then . . . then who . . .”

Slowly Rafal's gaze moved to the Storian, still frozen inexplicably over the storybook. A light dawned in his pupils, red patches growing on his cheeks and bare chest.

“You didn't bring any new students in, did you?” Sophie said quietly.

The School Master fixed his eyes on her and Sophie saw there would be no date tonight.

“If anyone—
anyone
—dares to enter this tower,
kill them
,” he hissed.

Then he leapt out the window and was gone.

“You want us to
break into
the School Master's tower?” Tedros shouted through blustering green mist, as he stood on a window ledge high over the bay.

“Not us.
You
,” Anadil said, flattening next to his girl body against a black stone wall. “And stop using your boy voice. You'll be alone with Sophie in a matter of seconds!”

“Seconds?! The tower's half a mile away!” Tedros barked in his boy's voice again, pointing at the School Master's spire, far into the Blue Forest. “How am I possibly supposed to get from here to there—”

“Stop waving your hands, you ninny! Someone might see you,” Dot said, peering through binoculars from inside the window. “Ani, the School Master just left, so this is our chance. Sophie's in there alone until he comes back. Plus, fog's at its peak.”

Indeed, Tedros could hardly see the School Master's tower now, cloaked in green mist blowing off the bay. “First of all, what does fog have to do with getting me into
that
tower? Second, there's no such thing as ‘flying' spells. Third, I can't mogrify into a bird without reverting to a boy once I land. And fourth, I don't see either of you carrying fairy dust, so please tell me what I'm doing in a girl's body ten miles above ground in the middle of the night!”

Anadil and Dot looked amused. “You didn't think Merlin was going to leave the details to you, did you?” said Anadil.

“Fog patterns and mapping Sophie's movements were my job,” said Dot. “And Ani's job was . . . well . . . show him, Ani.”

Ani drew a black rat from her pocket, paws up and whimpering on its back, with a small black helmet fitted over its head. “This is how you're getting to Sophie,” she said, plunking the rat in Tedros' palm.

“This?”
Tedros goggled at the rodent. “
This
is how I'm supposed to fly halfway across the school?”

“Rat #1 got you through the gates, didn't it?” said Anadil, stroking the still-pooped pet in her pocket. “Rat #2 gets you to the tower.”

“And Rat #3 negotiates world peace?” Tedros bellowed, glaring at the shaking, shivering rat in his palm. “Last time
I checked, villain talents have limits, Anadil. Maybe you have the talent to make a rat small or white or dance the rhumba, but rats don't fly, that's for sure, especially ‘Rat #2,' who's acting as if I'm about to chuck it off this tower!”

“Smart rat,” Anadil grinned.

“Huh?” said Tedros—

Dot stabbed out her glowing fingertip and a tuft of green fog floating over his head froze to ice, before turning a dark toast brown. Tedros looked up and a single drop of condensation dripped onto his lips.

Chocolate.

Like flames racing up dynamite, the green fog around him started to freeze and spread to cocoa brown, morphing into frozen fractals and swirls—some flat, some loopy, some blade-sharp, some spaghetti-thin—until the entire sky over the bay looked like a chocolate roller coaster, camouflaged by the night.

Running out of steam, Dot focused harder, her flickering fingerglow chasing a last thin trail of green fog as it surged towards Tedros' girl body, plastered against the castle wall.

“Dot, that's the important one . . . ,” Anadil warned.

Dot gritted her teeth, trying to keep her glow steady, aiming right at the whip of fog lashing for Tedros' face . . .

“
Now
, Dot!” Anadil cried—

Dot screeched with effort and shot a blast of light. The fog froze into a knife-sharp icicle, an inch from Tedros' eye.

Tedros blinked in shock, eyelashes grazing the chocolate spear. . . . Then slowly he looked down at the shaking, helmeted rat in his hand.

The rat locked its paws onto the icicle, with Tedros still holding on to the rat's body.

“Oh no,” Tedros peeped.

Anadil kicked him off the ledge and Tedros let out a howling scream, clinging to the rat like a handlebar as it zip-lined down the chocolate icicle. At the end of the icicle, the rat flew off, like a sled off a track, before hooking onto another piece of fog-turned-chocolate. The rat zip-lined so fast along the chocolate tracks—corkscrews, dive-drops, sidewinder spins—that Tedros saw nothing but a kaleidoscope of cocoa and stars, as if magically sucked into one of Merlin's hot toddies. He could hear the chocolate rails splintering as he zoomed past and the rat squealing with terror, knowing it was only a matter of time before the entire ride shattered under their weight. The rat flew into an upside-down loop and blood surged into Tedros' head, his mind blanking blissfully, his legs kicking through air, detached from gravity. Above him, the rat's claws shredded even faster along the chocolate tracks, sending creamy brown flakes scattering like snow. Delirious, Tedros closed his eyes and stuck out his tongue, tasting cottony sweetness, wondering if he'd died and gone to Prince Heaven, where he could ravish and pleasure without duty or responsibility forever and ever and ever . . .

He smelled a sharp, awful stench and the rat jammed to a stop, ejecting him off the chocolate roller coaster, over the rancid Blue Forest, through a wide-open window, and onto a hard stone floor, flat on his bottom.

Tedros didn't move, panting on the floor. “I . . . want . . . Agatha's . . . mission.”