7
The Witches Brew a Plan
“So let me get this straight,” Hester glared, straddling a gilded sink next to Anadil, both in their saggy black Nevers’ tunics. “Tedros wants to kill Sophie. Sophie wants to kill Tedros. And unless you find an ending with one of them now, everyone in this school dies.”
Agatha nodded weakly, leaning against one of Honor tower’s ivory bathroom stalls, fitted with a sapphire toilet and tub. She never thought she’d be so happy to see two witches in her life. Unlike the rest of the girls, neither of them had changed. Hester’s red-and-black streaked hair was greasier than ever, and the buckhorned red demon tattoo around her neck back to full color after a failed spell had weakened it the year before. Anadil, meanwhile, looked even paler than she did before, if that was possible for an albino with ghostly white skin and hair. Straddling the sink next to Hester, she dangled a live lizard to her three black rats that looked just like the ones slain in last year’s Good-Evil war.
“A prince and a witch, willing to kill each other for you,” she rasped in her scratchy voice. “It if it was me, I’d feel flattered.” She watched the rodents disembowel the lizard and lifted her hooded red eyes. “Thankfully I don’t have feelings.”
“Questionable. Who replaces dead pets with ones exactly alike?” Hester murmured.
“Look, I’m hungry, dirty, haven’t slept, and an army of boys is trying to kill my best friend,” Agatha said, voice cracking with stress. “I just want us to go home alive.”
“And yet you wished for Tedros,” Hester said in her usual sharp snarl. “Which seems to suggest you don’t want to go home at all.”
Agatha didn’t say anything for a moment. “Look, just tell me what to do so no one gets hurt.”
“As if we’re fairy godmothers, Ani,” Hester snorted, blowing smoke rings off her glowing red fingertip.
Anadil graffitied a skull in the sink with her glowing green finger. “Only not as ancient or menial.”
“Please,” Agatha begged. “You’re witches. You have to know another way to take back a wish—”
“So earnest!” Hester whirled and carved a box around Agatha’s face in the mirror with her lit finger. “Just look at that helpless, lost little soul. Still wearing black and searching for the old Agatha. . . . The Agatha who threw headless birds, farted in Evergirls’ faces, and loved her precious Sophie more than life.” Hester met Agatha’s reflected eyes and grinned. “But she’s gone, princess.”
“That’s not true,” Agatha retorted, but Reaper’s scratches seared her hand as if they were fresh.
“To think we once wanted you in our coven,” Anadil said. “And now here you are, afraid of hurting your best friend over a boy.”
“Nice to see you two haven’t changed,” Agatha muttered, trundling for the door. “Reminds me why we weren’t friends.”
“In the end, only one can make you happy,” Hester purred behind her. “The question is, who?”
Agatha turned to see the witches slide off their sinks and circle her like sharks.
“Sophie or Tedros?” Hester mulled.
“Tedros or Sophie?” Anadil stewed.
The two witches leaned against the sinks side by side. “This requires plenty of thought,” said Hester, peering at Anadil. Their heads whipped back to Agatha.
“TEDROS,” they chorused.
Agatha’s heart skipped and she squelched it in shock. “But that’s wrong! I don’t want a prince!”
Hester slid off the sink in one move. “Listen to me, you bug-eyed tramp! Unless you kiss Tedros, the schools stay the way they are,” she hissed, suddenly looking like the dangerous witch Agatha knew. “Kiss him, and everything is fixed. Prince with his Princess, Witch gone forever. Evers over here, Nevers over there. The School for Good and Evil back in time for me to be third-year Captain.”
Agatha crossed her arms. “I see. I’m worried about my best friend’s life, and you’re worried about school.”
“Do you know what you’ve done to this place, you waffling wench?” Hester snarled, black eyes storming. “Do you know what you’ve put us through?”
She flung crumpled parchment at her from her pocket. Agatha unwrinkled a schedule, barely readable under all the graffiti.
“Girls, you stupid idiot! Everything at this school is about being a girl!” Hester screeched. “Do you know how hard I’ve tried to prove I’m more than a girl and now I have to live in a castle full of them! You can’t have a school without boys! Even we know that, and we’d rather kill ourselves than touch one!”
“We did dance with them at Evil’s Ball,” Anadil corrected—
“Shut up,” Hester boomed, spinning back to Agatha. “No one likes boys! Even girls who like boys can’t stand boys! They smell, they talk too much, they mess up everything, and they always have their hands in their pants, but that doesn’t mean we can go to school without them! It’s like stymphs without bones! It’s like witches without warts! Without boys, LIFE HAS NO POINT!”
Echoes shivered the mirror.
Agatha held up the schedule. “Um, and the teachers are okay with this?”
“Why do you think they weren’t at your Welcoming?” Hester grouched, settling a bit. “They’re as happy about this as we are. But they have no choice. Resist, and they’ll suffer the same fate as Princess Uma.”
Agatha saw the Animal Communication teacher wasn’t on the schedule. “Where is she?”
“The Dean changed her class to Animal Hunting, since girls have to be self-sufficient and can’t depend on boys for food. Part of the Five Rules,” Anadil puffed, turning the sink faucet on to terrorize her rats. “Uma refused to teach the class, of course, on the grounds she wasn’t going to kill animals she’d spent her whole life befriending.” She stroked her quivering wet rats and looked up. “The next morning, a staircase evicted her into the Woods.”
“She’s probably better off,” Agatha said, slightly relieved that she wouldn’t have to learn more owl hoots and dog calls from the prissy pink princess. Then she saw Anadil still glaring at her.
“Do you remember what’s in the Woods?”