فصل 18

18

Tedros in the Sky with Chocolate

It wasn’t until after she and Tedros split up that Agatha wondered if she would ever see him again.

“Showtime, kids,” said Hester, storming into the room and snatching Agatha off the bed. “Ani, Dot, you take Essa. Edgar’s with me. We have two hours until midnight.” “Why do we get the twit?” Anadil moaned.

“Because you’re the henchmen!” Hester snapped, sweeping Agatha out of the room. Agatha looked back frantically just in time to see her prince-turned-princess lunge off the bed and catch her at the door.

“See you soon,” he breathed.

“See you soon,” Agatha said.

The door closed between them and Tedros was gone.

Hester yanked Agatha’s boy body down a dim hall. “Anadil and I tried for weeks to find a path into the School for Old with zero luck, so you better have a damn good plan.” “Barely said goodbye,” Agatha mourned, looking back at the receding door.

“Didn’t look like you two were saying much of anything,” Hester snarked, pulling her past a few Evers and Nevers hightailing into rooms as if their lives depended on it. Kiko froze in her tracks, gawking at them.

“What are you looking at?” Hester growled.

Kiko shut her door, her voice echoing from inside: “Mona, Hester has a boyfriend!” Hester dragged Agatha ahead. “Halfway Bridge is suicide, obviously; we’ll be sitting ducks and no way can you get past the invisible barrier a third time. Sewers are still blocked off from last year, so that’s a no-go. Best bet is to risk the fairy patrol around the bay—” “Hold on. We?” Agatha asked excitedly. “Merlin said I’d be on my own—” “Because Merlin thinks you’re the only one who can get into the School for Old alive,” said Hester. “What he doesn’t understand is that a coven is a coven and we protect each other to the death. Besides, no chance I’m letting you see inside that school without me.” She saw Agatha’s expression, grateful and moved, and Hester glowered impatiently. “Well? Which way? Anything but the—” “Bridge,” Agatha smiled.

“I knew you’d say that,” Hester sighed, towing her into a dark breezeway. “And don’t tell Dot I said you’re in the coven. She’ll turn us both to mocha pudding.” Agatha followed her out the glass passage into a shadowy Honor dormitory, noticing more students ducking into rooms as if outrunning a monster. “How did you get to be Merlin’s spies anyway?” “We used Anadil’s rat to ferry a message into the Woods, looking for help to fight the School Master. Turns out your cat Reaper was in the Woods at the same time, delivering your mother’s message. Well, cat found rat and chased it halfway to Maidenvale, intent on eating it, before Yuba discovered both of them. Ever since then, Reaper—so cute, by the way—brings Merlin’s messages to us while Ani’s rat brings our messages back to Merlin.” Agatha slowed down. “League business,” she thought, remembering why Merlin said she couldn’t see Reaper. Meanwhile, her bald, mashed-up cat who she thought had no other use than scaring away strangers and decapitating birds had been communicating with her three witch friends all this time. She suddenly missed that vile old coot even more and wondered if Reaper knew her mother was dead. Agatha’s heart sank. She didn’t have the strength to tell him.

Hester was far down the hall now and Agatha could barely see her, with the sky ink-black out the porthole windows and a brisk crosswind blowing through. As her eyes adjusted, she had to put her hands out to find a stuccoed wall and resisted calling out Hester’s name— Only then did she notice the mural splashed beneath her fingers . . .

Seven brightly dressed dwarves facedown in blood.

Slowly Agatha backed up, taking in more scenes: Tom Thumb devoured by a giant . . . Rapunzel and her prince thrown from a tower by a witch . . .

Good endings she’d seen tacked to a wall in Yuba’s cave. Good endings already rewritten for Evil.

Agatha remembered what Merlin had warned her in the Woods. The School Master was behind all of this. Each fairy tale revised a piece of a bigger plan.

But what plan?

Why was he killing old heroes? Why did he need the old stories at all?

“Unless the Old gives him power over the New,” Merlin’s voice echoed.

Stomach squeezing, Agatha crept further along the muraled walls: Captain Hook plunging his hook into Peter Pan’s heart . . . a wolf biting into Red Riding Hood’s neck . . . a pockmarked old witch jamming Hansel and Gretel into an oven . . .

“Hurry up!” Hester hissed ahead.

Agatha bustled to catch up, terrified for the old League members she’d left behind, safe in a cave for the time being. Whatever the School Master’s plan, they had to destroy his ring before any more of these scenes came true.

As the tower clock tolled ten o’clock, Agatha noticed the dormitories dead quiet now. “Where’d everyone go?” “Aric declared mandatory study time, since tracking week is next week,” said Hester, tugging her up the rear staircase. “No club meetings, no common rooms, all bodies in assigned rooms. Anyone who saw us thinks we were trying to make curfew. Weird hearing your voice come out of that body, by the way. You look like a creepy page boy.” “What if teachers see me? Or fairies?” Agatha pushed.

“Doing room checks, starting with first floor. Relax, no one will stop you if you’re with me. Teachers all love me, except—” Hester froze, staring upwards. Agatha squinted through the dark gap in the staircase to see a tall, spike-haired shadow glaring down from the fifth floor. Glittering purple eyes flashed like warning flares.

“Hester, my sweet. Shouldn’t you be in your room?” said Aric, slinking down the stairs.

“Edgar forgot his book bag in the library,” said Hester, foisting Agatha past Aric. “You know how disorganized boys are—” Aric barred them with his big arm. “You may be teacher’s pet, but that doesn’t mean you can break the rules, Hester. Even I can’t break the rules, or I’d have cut my mother into pieces by now and served her as a midnight treat.” His tongue traced his teeth, his eyes on Hester. “Strange, though. My mother insists you’re one of Evil’s Great Hopes, sure to become an illustrious witch. And yet, I can’t imagine Evil’s Great Hope cavorting about with a dodgy boy after curfew.” His pupils flicked to Agatha. “Stranger indeed, given I’ve personally punished almost every boy in school but don’t recognize this one in the slightest.” He fingered the coiled whip on his belt hook, prowling towards the twiggy stranger. “The muscleless legs . . . flaccid wrists . . . weak jaw . . . almost feminine, don’t you think?” “Edgar keeps to himself,” Hester replied calmly. “With all the Evers and Nevers mixed together and your being new here, no wonder you don’t recognize—” “Oh I’d remember a boy this . . . soft,” Aric purred, backing Agatha against the banister. “You see, Edgar, I don’t like boys who don’t act like boys. I spent years trapped in a cave, abandoned by my own mother, and yet I taught myself not to shed a tear. Boys don’t cry or snivel or bend over like passive little princesses. Boys fight. Boys dominate. It’s what I told Tristan in the Trial, when he begged for his life like a dog. No matter how many times I’d taken that tart to the dungeon, teaching him what it meant to be a boy . . . still he didn’t learn his lesson. And then to find him high up in that tree, unashamedly a girl!” Aric’s cheeks raged red. “Never again. Every boy in this school belongs to me now. Especially ones like my new friend Edgar, who don’t seem much like boys at all.” He leaned in, his lips almost touching Agatha’s, as he grinned into her eyes. “Best move along, Hester dear. I need some alone time with our young Edgar tonight. And when I send him back in the morning, he’ll be a real boy.” Agatha couldn’t breathe.

Hester didn’t move.

“Go,” Aric hissed at Hester, viper-quick. “Because this time, when I slit you open, you won’t have a Trial flag to save you.” Hester swallowed and gave Edgar a helpless stare.

Legs shaking, Agatha watched her friend quail up the stairs and vanish. Agatha hastily focused on her fear, feeling her own fingertip start to burn gold. She had only one hope to escape— Aric’s whip lashed around her wrist. Agatha’s glow extinguished in surprise.

“Magic? How feeble.” He yanked her down the stairs by the whip like a leash. “Can’t even fight like a boy.” Agatha’s fear scorched to adrenaline. “How’s this, then?”

Aric turned—

She punched him in the face.

Aric reeled backwards into the wall, nose gushing blood, before he recovered and charged her like a bear. Agatha dove under him, but he grappled her by the belly, ramming her headfirst into the banister. Bleary with pain, Agatha made out a hard stone floor four flights down— Aric hoisted her over the deadly drop and smiled brutally, teeth speckled with blood. “Say hello to Tristan for me.” He loosened his grip— A red, horned demon smashed into his groin and Aric cried out in shock, throwing Agatha’s boy body to the stairs. Shrieking like a banshee, the shoe-sized demon spread-eagled on Aric’s face like a mask, blinding him as he writhed against the wall.

Agatha gaped at Hester, slithering down the staircase.

“Best move along, Edgar dear,” Hester cooed, lurking towards Aric. “The Dean and I have some old business to settle.” “No! I can’t leave you alone!” Agatha hissed in her ear. “Not like last time!” “This isn’t like last time at all.” Hester swished her red-lit finger and her demon squeezed Aric by the throat, choking him until he gurgled.

“But he’s dangerous!” Agatha sputtered. “What if—”

“You’re forgetting something very important about me, my dear,” said Hester. She turned to Agatha, eyeballs clouding with blood. “I’m a villain.” Agatha didn’t ask any more questions. She sprinted up the last two flights, hearing Aric’s muffled wails as she pushed through the frosted door and slammed it shut behind her.

Fingerglow lighting her path, Agatha dashed along the dark, chilly rooftop between the scenes of Merlin’s Menagerie, guzzling in air—Hester’s fine, Hester’s fine, Hester’s fine— What wasn’t fine was the fact that she was all alone in her mission now, just as Merlin predicted, and the fact that teachers were surely on the way, given the noise they’d made in the stairwell. She didn’t risk the time to study the hedges or see how they’d changed. She had to find the scene with water . . . that was the secret portal from the roof to the Bridge . . .

Just find water.

Three minutes later, Agatha was still running in circles, hyper breaths fogging, spying nothing but landlocked hedges as she swerved deeper and deeper into the maze . . .

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.” Then he remembered where he was, the body he was in, and what he was supposed to be doing.

His eyes jerked open.

Hobbled and hurting, he lumbered onto his legs, still unused to his girl’s squishy form. He peered around the School Master’s deserted chamber, licking the last chocolate off his lips.

“Sophie?” he squeaked in his girly snoot, moving deeper into the room. “Sophie, it’s Essa! Essa from Bloodbrook. We met this morning? Sorry to barge in like this, but you’re in terrible danger.” He imagined Agatha at his side, her spirit egging him on. “We have to leave here now, Sophie,” he said, confidence growing. “Before the School Master comes back. So if you’ll just listen to me, girl to girl—” A blast of pain exploded through his head, knocking him out, and he crashed face-first to the floor.

Far across the bay, inside the witch’s room, Anadil and Dot gaped in horror through binoculars at Sophie, who was looming over Essa’s fallen body, wielding a giant storybook like a club.

Anadil slowly turned to Dot.

“Never was much of a girl’s girl, was she?” Dot quipped.

As soon as the fog started turning to chocolate, Agatha saw her chance.

She’d been hiding at one end of Halfway Bridge, trapped in her boy body, ogling ten hulking, armed shadows atop the School for Old.

None of them looked human.

Agatha’s heart seized. She had no hope to get past one of the School Master’s guards, whoever they were, let alone a fleet of them— That’s when the fog over the bay started detonating into iced chocolate.

Flabbergasted, she swiveled and saw Dot’s fingerglow pulsing from a dark window, high in the other school.

Shouts of shock and panic rang out from the shadowy guards over the Bridge, who flooded off the balconies into the castle, leaving the roof unattended.

Agatha smiled, hidden at the other end. Whatever Dot was doing in the School for New, it served as the perfect diversion in the School for Old.

Not a coincidence, Agatha thought.

Merlin and his spies had done everything they could to help her and Tedros finish their missions.

The rest was up to them.

As fast as she could, Agatha darted from her hiding place and sprinted across the dim, frigid Bridge, feeling the wind on her scrawny boy chest, hands held out in front of her, knowing the barrier was coming— Bam! She slammed into it a quarter of the way down the span, leaving her palms stinging and her body fully exposed in the moonlight. The guards would spot her the second they returned.

“Let me through,” she begged, hands flat on the barrier.

Her crystal-clear reflection magically appeared in the mirror, dressed in Evil’s uniform—only it was her usual girl self, instead of a boy.

“Old with Old,

New with New,

Back to your tower

Before—”

Her reflection peered at her. “Wait a second, lad . . . you’re not a student here at all.” Her face darkened. “Intruder.” Her reflection opened her mouth wide. “INTRU—” “No! It’s me!” Agatha yelped. “It’s Agatha!”

“All I see is an underfed, googly-eyed boy,” her reflection said, opening her mouth again to scream— “I’ll prove it!” cried Agatha, knowing she had no choice now. She closed her eyes, visualizing the counterspell. . . . Her hair began to thicken, her jaw to round, and all at once her body eased back into her girl’s shape, filling out her uniform. “See. Me,” she smiled, now matching the reflection in the barrier. “So let me pass—” “Oh. You,” her reflection growled, not smiling back. “You nearly got me destroyed for confusing the sides the past two years. First you convinced me you were Evil, when you were Good. Then you convinced me you were a Boy, when you were a Girl. No way are you getting past me a third time. So listen clear: “Old with Old,

New with New,

Back to your tower

Before I call You-Know-Who.”

Agatha tightened. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the chocolate patterns in the sky starting to evaporate. The sound of guards storming to the rooftop amplified inside the castle.

“And how do you know I’m not supposed to be on the Old side instead of the New?” Agatha asked her reflection, trying to stay calm.

“Easy,” her image huffed. “Because you’re as young as me and I’m as young as you.” “So if I’m young, I can’t be old?”

“Have you ever met an old person who’s young?” her reflection fleered.

“Well. Would a newborn baby see me as young or old?” said Agatha.

“Old, but that’s because it doesn’t know any better—”

“So what about a child?”

“Depends on how old the child is,” her reflection snapped.

“So how young or old you are ‘depends’ on things?” Agatha asked.

“No! It’s obvious to anything that’s full-grown!”

“What about a full-grown flower? Or a full-grown fish?”

“Don’t be stupid. A flower or fish can’t see age,” said her reflection.

“But you said anything full-grown—”

“A full-grown person!”

“So you’re a person, if it’s obvious to you,” reasoned Agatha. “Yet you’ve been on this Bridge for thousands of years. So what does that make you? Young or old?” “Old, of course,” her reflection puffed.

“And if you’re me and I’m you, then what does that make me?” Agatha said, lips curling to a smile.

Her reflection gasped, realizing the answer. “Definitely old.”

Agatha’s mirror image could only gape in anguish, fading into night, as the real Agatha reached her fingers through the barrier and felt the cold, empty wind.

Seconds later, the monstrous shadows swarmed to their post and saw nothing on the Bridge but a glint of black and green sliding into the castle, which they thought an errant piece of mist blown from the bay.

If they’d looked closer, they may have seen a small rain puddle still rippling over stone . . . a single clump print gleaming under the moon . . . or the two specks of light across the Bridge, floating low like fallen stars . . .

The bold yellow eyes of a bald, wrinkled cat, watching Agatha vanish safely into a den of danger, before the cat pulled into darkness and pit-patted away.