Agatha’s chest clamped. Princes. Vengeful, bloodthirsty princes.
“Why didn’t the Dean rescue her?” Agatha croaked. “They’ll kill her—”
“You think that’s bad?” Hester barked, blood engorging again. “Do you know how much Nevers hate bathrooms? Do you know how much our bile boils just being near one, let alone hiding in one with sapphire toilets? That’s how much we don’t want to go to the classes here.”
She glowered so hatefully Agatha swallowed her defense of Uma’s fate as the worse.
“You want Sophie to stay alive? You want to avoid war between boys and girls? You want your happy ending?” Hester’s eyes burned into Agatha. “Kiss Tedros.”
Agatha could feel her heart rebelling from its clamps. The correct ending, Professor Dovey had said.
Agatha’s cheeks splotched red. Betray her best friend? Abandon Sophie forever? After all they’d been through?
“I can’t,” she said, and slumped against the stall door. A cough suddenly came from behind it.
Hester bared sharp teeth. “What.”
“Can I come out now?” peeped a familiar voice.
“You’ll stay in there until you admit you’re a traitor who no one likes and who is better off stabbing her own throat than ever showing her face again,” Hester lashed.
Silence.
“Agatha, can I come out?”
Agatha sighed. “Hello, Dot.”
The stall door slowly opened, and an Evergirl she’d never seen, with a slender waist and auburn curls, crept through first. Agatha gave her a baffled look and peeked in the stall for Dot.
The stall was empty.
Agatha slowly turned back to the stranger. “But you’re—you’re—”
“Hungry all the time,” Dot said, and pulled her into a long hug, before Agatha drew away and gaped at her. Dot was thirty pounds lighter, with a light sheen of makeup, red lipstick, and sparkled mascara. Her hair, brown with blond highlights, was tightly curled and clipped with glittery yellow barrettes. She’d even rolled up her uniform’s light blue bodice so it showed off her taut belly.
“You’re not going to get rid of this school, are you?” Dot fretted, nibbling on what looked like a wad of dried kale.
“Here we go,” Anadil moaned.
“Daddy always told me I’d end up a fat, lonely villain like him,” said Dot, eyes wet. “But this place lets me be who I want to be, Agatha. I feel good here for the first time in my life. And these two make me feel so bad for it. They made so much fun of me for being fat, and now they insult me for being thin.”
“So you might as well die,” said Hester.
“You’re just jealous because I have new friends,” Dot snapped.
The tattooed demon peeled off Hester’s neck, inflated to life, and hurled a lightning bolt at Dot’s head. Dot dove into a bathtub and the bolt blasted a hole in the marble wall. A tiny girl on her bed, reading Why Men Don’t Matter, gawped through the hole and fled her room.
Grumbling, Hester summoned her demon back into her neck. Dot peeked at Agatha from the tub, now snacking on what looked like a star-shaped carrot. “She’s mad because everyone else likes the Dean.”
“I like that she can’t make us wear that buffoonery,” Hester said, scowling at Dot’s blue bodice. “Professor Sheeks secretly taught us a charm that made us erupt in contagious boils anytime we put on the uniform. After two days of screaming girls, the Dean gave up.”
“How could she just take over?” Agatha said, bewildered.
“You have to remember how bad things were between boys and girls when you left,” Hester said. “The most eligible prince in school lost his princess to a bald, toothless witch. Boys suddenly saw girls as the enemy—and girls saw the boys as bullies. When the schools changed to Boys and Girls, it already felt as divided as Good and Evil. The Dean just made things worse.”
“But where did she come from?” asked Agatha. “She says she’s Sader’s sister—”
“All we know is, the night the schools changed to Boys and Girls, Professor Dovey couldn’t get back into her office,” said Anadil. “She and Lesso tried to get it open for hours, and when they finally did . . . Dean Sader was sitting at the desk.”
“But how’d she get in?” Agatha said, frowning. “And why don’t they fight her?”
“For one thing, the male teachers tried,” said Anadil. “And they haven’t been seen since.”
Agatha gaped at her.
“As long as Dovey and Lesso had the Storian, we had a chance at peace,” Hester pressed. “But now you kissing Tedros is the only hope. Because there is no way to fight the Dean.”
She glared into Agatha’s eyes.
“The castle’s on her side.”
As Sophie followed the Dean through the blue breezeway from Honor Tower to Valor Tower, girls kept popping up in their path, saluting Sophie like a ship captain—
“Death to the prince!” a pimply girl squeaked.
“Long live Sophie and Agatha!” chimed an elfish Evergirl.
Sophie forced a fraught smile as she tried to keep up with Dean Sader through the glass tunnel over the lake. As she walked, the Dean squinted out at distant princes clamoring outside the school gates, testing Lady Lesso’s shield with rocks and sticks. Her thick red mouth pursed slightly and she walked faster, hips swishing in a dress that seemed so much tighter than all the other teachers’. Hustling behind, Sophie peered at the Dean’s reflection in the breezeway. She’d never seen anyone so beautiful—even her own mother. Proportions exactly out of a storybook, rose-petal lips, hair so lustrous and full, as if the Dean had been drawn to a page and brought to life. What did she use on her skin? Even thistleroot can’t get pores that small, Sophie thought, comparing them in the polished glass to her own—
Her bald, toothless reflection snarled back at her, covered in warts.
Sophie choked with terror and closed her eyes. No . . . I’m Good . . . I’m Good now . . .
She opened her eyes to see her creamy smooth face once more.
“Sophie?”
Heart racing, Sophie turned to see the Dean frowning at the end of the breezeway. Quickly, Sophie hastened to keep up, legs quavering, as more girls passed and saluted her.