The Last Ever After

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Even Yuba was tight-lipped, fingers fidgeting on his staff, as if he’d pondered the question and had no answer.

The old heroes blinked at the gnome, fear filling their faces.

“We are heroes, yes?” Hansel challenged. “We must fight back!”

“Against two hundred dead witches, monsters, and who-knows-what running around the Woods? Don’t be an imbecile,” Gretel snapped. “Why do you think we’re here in stinky cave hiding?”

“Can’t hide for long. They’ll find us all eventually, no matter how often we move Headquarters,” soured Cinderella. “School Master’s got love on his side now. He’s invincible. What do we got except age spots and cricked necks?”

“Ella’s right,” Jack sighed. “As long as the School Master’s got a queen who loves him, all of us are gonna end up dead as Snow.”

“Then what do we do?” mewled Red Riding Hood.

“The only thing we can do,” said Yuba, eyes shifting to Agatha and Tedros. “Convince his queen to destroy that love.”

The League went quiet.

“The crackpot plan again,” Cinderella murmured.

“You really think you can do it? You really think you can make your friend destroy the School Master’s ring?” Peter Pan asked, peering at the two young Evers.

“Why would she give up true love for you?” Pinocchio prodded.

Agatha felt emotion rising into her throat. “I wish there was a way to explain me and Sophie. We’re different—very different—and still the same. Sure, we fought and pushed each other’s buttons and we’re terrible at listening to each other, but we shared the same heart. Saw life through each other’s eyes. I never thought I could live without her.” She paused, tangled in memories. “Somehow things changed. Maybe that’s growing up, I don’t know. Every time we tried to hold on to each other, we hurt each other instead. It was both our faults, but mine most of all. I stopped telling her the truth. I stopped trusting the one person who taught me how to trust in the first place. I thought I’d lost her forever, that it was too late to ever make things the way they were before … but deep down I still feel like there’s a way. There has to be a way.” Agatha managed a sad smile. “Because if anyone can make Sophie see what love really is … it’s her best friend, isn’t it?”

The League’s old faces melted to childlike stares, as if finally seeing the young girl with hope instead of disdain.

Tedros stepped next his princess, chest proud. “Exactly. Leave Sophie to me.”

Agatha’s smile vanished.

The League looked between them, thoroughly confused who Sophie’s best friend was.

“All that matters now is that we get to Sophie—” Tedros started.

“Right,” Agatha interjected. “And we know she’s somewhere in the School for Good and Evi—”

“Which means getting in and finding her without being caught,” Tedros spoke over her.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Gretel shot back. “School Master is young and strong, School Master has both castles, School Master has army of dead … and you think you can get into his school?”

Agatha frowned. “Um, that’s the whole reason we came to you, obviously. Because we need your help breaking into—”

“Help? Your mother’s message said ‘hide you,’” Hansel jeered from his wheelchair. “Does it look like we can help?”

“We can barely can get to the toilet these days, let alone lead a raid on a castle,” cracked Cinderella, expelling a loud fart.

The League members burst into laughter. Even the White Rabbit.

“Some sneak attack! With my joints, they’ll hear us five miles away!” Pinocchio quipped.

“Don’t worry, P! We can beat them with our canes!” said Peter.

“Or my basket of goodies! Hard and crusty by now!” giggled Red Riding Hood.

Gretel shrieked a snort and the others howled so loudly, doubled over with tears, that even Uma jolted awake at the noise.

Agatha glanced at Tedros, who scowled at her venomously for trying to make him believe in these useless old fogies. She swiveled back to the heroes. “But t-t-that’s why we came all this way! That’s why we trusted in you! My mother wrote the League to protect us—my mother told us you’d help—”

“Because your mother knew that the League of Thirteen had a thirteenth member,” said a deep voice.

Agatha and Tedros turned to see a tall shadow standing at the cave entrance.

“She knew these twelve would keep you safe. But help?” the voice said, as the shadow slid into the light. “I’m afraid that’s only me.”

“Ah, just in time …,” smiled Yuba.

Agatha stared at a long, gangly nut-brown old man with a thick white beard and twisty white moustache. He wore a sweeping violet cape lined with fur tippets and stitched with the signs of the zodiac, a droopy, dented cone hat patterned with stars, large horn-rimmed spectacles, and a pair of plushy violet slippers.

I’ve seen him before, Agatha thought, too tired to think clearly. In the Woods? No … it was a storybook, wasn’t it? … a storybook that Dean Sader had taken her whole class inside.This old man was there, inside a dusty cave, filled with burbling laboratory vessels and shelves of grubby vials and jars … arguing with a king about a spell … a king that looked a lot like …

Agatha’s heart seized, her eyes shooting open, and she spun to Tedros behind her—

But her prince was already pale as a ghost.

“Merlin,” he gasped.

His legs crumpled and he fell all at once like a tree in a forest, his princess right there to catch him.

(#ulink_475d3cfc-f4ff-50fe-82fe-c61dbb3d10e2)

s midnight came and went, Sophie sat calmly in the School Master’s window, her hair wet, her ebony dress bunched at the knees as she pressed bare toes against the wall. She looked out at the fluorescent green bay, reflecting the shadows of two black castles, both dark and quiet.

Just this morning, she’d been reeling with doubts: from a school that turned Evers into Nevers … from Agatha’s voice, impelling her to destroy Rafal’s ring … from a schedule that called her a teacher of Evil when she still didn’t feel Evil at all.

She turned to the Storian over her storybook, painting a scene of Agatha and Tedros following a white rabbit through the Woods. With every minute, her friends were getting closer to school, closer to seeing her again, closer to convincing her to leave Evil behind forever …

Sophie smiled, feeling the gold ring lock tight on her finger.

Or so they think.

How quickly things changed in a fairy tale.

Twelve hours earlier, Sophie had been chasing after the School Master, as he crossed a green breezeway tunnel into the old Valor tower.

“Teach Evil? Teach Curses and Death Traps?” Sophie yelped, gripping her schedule as she floundered after him in her black nightgown and glass heels. “Have you lost your mind!”

“It was the Dean’s suggestion. Wish I’d come up with it myself, if only to prevent her the satisfaction of a good idea,” Rafal groused, ascending the staircase carved HENCHMEN. “Now that I’m young, she’s been treating me like I’m incapable of running my own school. Even had the gall to tell me that my flights over the bay are disruptive since students keep peeking out the window during challenges. I am the School Master, thank you. If I want to go for a spin, I’m perfectly welcome to—”

“Rafal.”

Sophie’s voice was so sharp that he stopped and stared down at her through the gap in the black staircase.

“I wish we had time for adolescent rants, but whoever this Dean is, she expects me to be a teacher at this school, when a) all the students are my age, b) none of them like me, and c) I don’t know the first thing about teaching!”

“Really?” He resumed his ascent. “I distinctly remember you hosting Lunchtime Lectures for the entire school.”

“Teaching kids how to cure dandruff is different than teaching them how to be Evil!” Sophie said, chasing him towards the top floor. “Let me get this straight. Agatha and Tedros are coming to kill you and here I am in a nightgown, expected to give homework and grade papers—”

But Rafal was already at the lone black-marble door atop the staircase.

“Professor Dovey’s office?” Sophie asked, accosting him. “She’s who wanted me to be a teacher? She’s Dean of Evil?”

But then Sophie saw that the door once inlaid with a glittering green beetle was now inlaid with two violet, intertwined snakes. Beneath the snakes, letters cut from amethysts spelled out a single word:

“Deans?” Sophie wrinkled her nose. “There’s more than one? But who are—”

The door swung open magically, revealing a thin, tight-jawed woman with a long black braid and a sharp-shouldered purple gown, studying a scrap of parchment at Professor Dovey’s old desk.