Her hands slipped. She careened down eaves, jerking and heaving towards the last spout, where the biggest gargoyle waited, horned like the devil, jaws wide over the spout like an infernal tunnel. Clawing, gurgling, Agatha tried to stop herself, but the rain bashed her along in gushing bursts. She looked down and saw the gargoyle blast fire from its nose, which rocketed across the pipe. Agatha ducked underwater to avoid instant cremation and bobbed back up, clinging to the rail’s edge above the final drop. The next rush of rain would send her right into the gargoyle’s open mouth.
Then she remembered the gargoyles when she first saw them: guarding the gutter, spewing rain from their mouths.
What goes out must come in.
She heard the next wave coming behind her. With a silent prayer, Agatha let go and fell into the demon’s smoking jaws. Just as fire and teeth skewered her, rain smashed through the spout behind her, shooting her through the hole in the gargoyle’s throat and out into the gray sky. She glanced back at the choking gargoyle and let out a scream of relief, which turned to terror as she free-fell. Through the fog, Agatha glimpsed a spiked wall about to impale her, and an open window beneath it. She curled into a desperate ball, just missed the lethal blades, and crashed on her stomach, dripping wet, and coughing up water on the sixth floor of Malice Hall.
“I—thought—gargoyles—were—decoration,” she wheezed.
Clutching her leg, Agatha limped down the dorm hall, hunting for signs of Sophie.
Just as she was about to start pounding on doors, she caught sight of one at the end of the hall, grafittied with a caricature of a blond princess, splashed with painted slurs: LOSER, READER, EVER LOVER.
Agatha knocked hard. “Sophie! It’s me!”
Doors started opening at the other end of the hall.
Agatha pounded harder. “Sophie!”
Black-robed girls started emerging from their rooms. Agatha jiggled Sophie’s door handle and shoved against the frame, but it wouldn’t budge. Just as the Nevergirls turned, poised to discover the intruder in pink, Agatha took a running start, threw herself against the defaced door of Room 66, which swung open and slammed shut behind her.
“YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I WENT THROUGH TO GET HE—” She stopped.
Sophie was crouched over a puddle of water on the floor, singing as she applied blush in her reflection.
“I’m a pretty princess, sweet as a pea,
Waiting for my prince to marry me. . . .”
Three bunk mates and three rats watched from across the room, mouths open in shock.
Hester looked up at Agatha. “She flooded our floor.”
“To do her makeup,” said Anadil.
“Whoever heard of anything so evil?” Dot grimaced. “Song included.”
“Is my face even?” Sophie said, squinting into the puddle. “I can’t go to class looking like a clown.” Her eyes shifted. “Agatha, darling! About time you came to your senses. Your Uglification class starts in two minutes and you don’t want to make a poor first impression.”
Agatha stared at her.
“Of course,” Sophie said, standing up. “We have to switch clothes first. Come, off they go.”
“You’re not going to class, darling,” Agatha said, turning red. “We’re going to the School Master’s tower right now before we’re stuck here forever!”
“Don’t be a boob,” said Sophie, tugging at Agatha’s dress. “We can’t just break into some tower in broad daylight. And if you’re going home anyway, you should give me your clothes now so I don’t miss any assignments.”
Agatha wrenched away. “Okay, that’s it! Now listen to—”
“You’ll blend right in here,” Sophie smiled, studying Agatha next to her roommates.
Agatha lost her fire. “Because I’m . . . ugly?”
“Oh, for goodness’ sakes, Aggie, look at this place,” Sophie said. “You like gloom and doom. You like suffering and unhappiness and, um . . . burnt things. You’ll be happy here.”
“We agree,” said a voice behind Agatha, and she turned in surprise.
“You come live here,” Hester said to her—
“And she drowns in the lake,” Dot scowled at Sophie, still wounded by her jibe at the Welcoming.
“We liked you the moment we saw you,” Anadil cooed, rats licking Agatha’s feet.
“You belong here with us,” Hester said, as she, Anadil, and Dot crowded around Agatha, whose head swung nervously between this villainous threesome. Did they really want to be her friend? Was Sophie right? Could being a villain make her . . . happy?
Agatha’s stomach churned. She didn’t want to be Evil! Not when Sophie was Good! They had to get out of this place before it tore them apart!
“I’m not leaving you!” she cried to Sophie, breaking away.
“No one’s asking you to leave me, Agatha,” Sophie said tightly. “We’re just asking you to leave your clothes.”
“No!” Agatha shouted. “We’re not switching clothes. We’re not switching rooms. We’re not switching schools!”
Sophie and Hester exchanged furtive glances.
“We’re going home!” Agatha said, voice catching. “We can be friends there—on the same side—no Good, no Evil—we’ll be happy forev—”
Sophie and Hester tackled her. Dot and Anadil pulled the pink dress off Agatha’s body, and the four of them shoved Sophie’s black robes on in its place. Shimmying into her new pink dress, Sophie threw open the door. “Goodbye, Evil! Hello, Love!”
Agatha stumbled to her feet and looked down at a putrid black sack that fit just how she liked.
“And all is right in the world,” Hester sighed. “Really, I don’t know how you were ever friends with that tram—”
“Get back here!” Agatha yelled, pursuing Sophie in pink through the hall’s hordes of black. Shocked by an Ever in their midst, Nevers swarmed around Sophie and started to beat her about the head with books, bags, and shoes—
“No! She’s one of us!”
All the Nevers turned to Hort, in the stairwell, including dumbstruck Sophie. Hort pointed at Agatha in black.
“That’s the Ever!”
The Nevers unleashed a new war cry and mobbed Agatha as Sophie shoved Hort away and escaped down the stairs. Agatha scraped through the gauntlet with a few well-placed kicks and slid down the banister to cut Sophie off. With Sophie in sight, she tracked her through a tight corridor, reached out her hand to grab her by the pink collar, but Sophie turned a corner, ran up snaking steps, and veered off the first floor. Agatha swerved into a dead end, saw Sophie magically jump through a wall, blood-splattered “NO STUDENTS!” and with a flying leap, Agatha jumped through the portal right after her—