“Oh sweetie, that’s the past,” Sophie groaned, reclining against her glass throne, shaped like a five-pointed crown. “It’s a new year now and I’ve moved on, just like our former classmates who are off in the Woods, pursuing their fairy-tale quests. Look . . .”
She slipped the lid off the vial attached to her necklace and turned the vial upside down, emptying the gold liquid. But instead of falling to the floor, the liquid suspended midair, creating the outline of a large square before it magically filled in with a magnificent three-dimensional map of the Endless Woods. Scattered across kingdoms near and far were dozens of brightly colored figurines, like an army of toy soldiers, each resembling a fourth-year student from the School for Good and Evil and labeled with their name.
“And from the Quest Map, it looks like our friends are doing quite well,” said Sophie. “See, here’s Beatrix in Jaunt Jolie, fighting with Reena and Millicent as her sidekicks. . . . Here’s Ravan in Akgul, plundering the Iron Village with Drax as his henchman and Arachne as his mogrified newt. . . . Here’s Hester, Dot, and Anadil in Kyrgios on some ‘important’ mission they won’t tell me about, though it can’t be that important if they’re never in the same kingdom for more than a day. . . . And here’s Chaddick, off on Avalon Island by himself—mmm, strange; I thought he’d gone to Camelot to be Tedros’ knight. Why would he be in Avalon? Nothing but snow and tundra. No one even lives there. Well, except the Lady of the Lake, but she seals her castle’s gates to everyone except Merlin and Camelot’s king. . . . But it looks like Chaddick’s figure is inside her gates, doesn’t it? Maybe he’s flying over the island on a stymph or something. . . .”
“Blue means they’re winning their quest?” Hort asked.
“And red means they’re losing. That’s why my name is in blue,” preened Sophie, pointing to her figurine by the miniature school towers on the map. “My quest as Dean was to bring Evil into a new age, and clearly I’ve succeeded.”
“Well, my name’s in blue too,” said Hort, spotting his figure obscured by Sophie’s. “My students love me, I work out every night, and I’ve even started getting fan mail. Just the other day I got a note in a girl’s handwriting saying I was her favorite character from your story and that they didn’t make boys like me in Woods Beyond. Must be a Reader from your old town—”
“Or Castor playing a prank,” Sophie sniffed.
The puff went out of Hort’s chest. “Hey, wait a second. Isn’t it weird that every single name on this map is blue? Shouldn’t someone be losing their quest?”
“Ever since Clarissa gave me this map, we’ve been nothing but winners,” Sophie crowed. “So either I’m good luck or we’re a very talented group.”
“Or your map is broken, which would explain why it says Chaddick is inside the Lady of the Lake’s gates when that’s impossible,” said Hort. “Look, even Tedros and Agatha are in blue, which means, according to the Quest Map, they’re doing just fine.”
Sophie peered at him, then at Agatha’s and Tedros’ names in Camelot, just as blue as the others.
“That can’t be right,” she murmured. “How can Tedros be winning? I read Camelot’s papers every day. He’s the town fool! He’s a disgrace!”
She saw Hort smirking at her.
“Poor Teddy,” he said.
Sophie rose from her throne and sashayed past Hort. “Oh please, for all we know, Clarissa hexed his name to make him look good. Fairy godmothers love to cheat.” She swept her hand through the map, dispersing it to liquid and back into the vial on her neck. “And honestly, I can’t worry about a failed king and a princess who isn’t even queen and yet is somehow too busy to write her best friend. I have my school to run: 125 new Nevers who think Tedros and Agatha are old news and have their eyes on me. Plus, I have these pesky Readers we’ve accepted, who don’t have a clue. Why, on the very first day, a girl from Gavaldon caved in an entire classroom. So my hands are quite full, thank you. And even if I could spare a thought for Tedros—or any boy, for that matter—it would be a wasted one. I’m completely happy on my own, unattached and untroubled by the vagaries of love. Flah-sé-dah, that’s my new mantra: a blissful mélange of ‘laissez-faire’ and ‘la-di-da.’ Who needs the stress of love when there’s important work to do? I prefer a modest life now, dedicated to my students.”
“Um, throwing a Dean’s Dance the second week of school with the theme ‘Night of a Thousand Sophies’ where people have to dress up in outfits inspired by your fairy tale doesn’t seem modest to me,” said Hort, his Neverboy helpers murmuring assent as they polished the statue of Sophie in hooded robes, a crown of flowers upon her head. “Nor does taking half the Evil students out of class to decorate for it serve anyone but you,” Hort added, surveying the ballroom filled with Nevergirls in chic leather dresses and high black boots and Neverboys in stylish leather coats and skinny black pants, all hard at work: hanging tapestries of Sophie’s best moments as a student, polishing stained glass windows of Sophie’s face, and scrubbing the marble floor branded with a red S circled by olive leaves and topped with a gold crown.
“And yet here you are, helping them,” Sophie said, simpering at Hort.
“Yeah, so you’ll take me to the dance.”
“A Dean doesn’t need a date to her own dance,” Sophie bristled.
“But maybe she wants one,” said Hort, sweat dripping.
“What I want is for you to put on a shirt,” said Sophie, eyeing his sculpted torso.
“I seem to have lost it,” said Hort.
Sophie arched a brow. “Indeed.”
“Um, Professor?” a voice peeped.
Hort and Sophie turned.
Fifty first years blinked at them. “Someone’s knocking on the door,” a vampiric-looking girl wisped.
A barrage of loud raps echoed through the Hall.
Sophie waited until the knocking stopped. “Really? I don’t hear a thing.”
“By the way, I liked the castle better how it was before, when it was crumbly and dirty,” Hort said, rubbing out a stain on Sophie’s statue with his hand. “Everything’s too clean now. Like we’re trying to hide something.”
“Hogwash. How could anyone possibly prefer the old Evil,” Sophie pooh-poohed, glancing out the window at the renovated towers of Malice, Mischief, and Vice, lit up with red-and-gold paper lanterns. “Evil was so dark before. So morose and unattractive. No wonder we were always the losers. We acted like losers!”
“So Evil’s been around since the dawn of time, waiting for you to save it?” said Hort, stonefaced.