“This is not a group assignment!” Yuba bellowed.
Clinging to Sophie’s blue vine, Agatha’s roach watched as the boys split up. Tedros headed west towards the Turquoise Thicket and stopped. Slowly he turned to Sophie’s pumpkin.
“He’s coming,” Agatha said.
“How do you know?” Sophie whispered.
“Because that’s the way he looked at me.”
Tedros walked up to a pumpkin. “This one. This one’s an Ever.”
Yuba frowned. “Look closely first—”
Tedros ignored him, clasped its blue skin, and in a burst of glitterdust the pumpkin turned into Sophie. A “16” puffed in slimy green smoke over the prince’s head and a “1” in black over Sophie’s.
“Only the best Evil can disguise as Good,” Yuba commended, and with a wave of his staff, erased the red F off Sophie’s dress once and for all.
“And as for you, son of Arthur, I suggest you study your rules. Let’s hope you don’t make such a terrible mistake when it counts.”
Tedros tried to look ashamed.
“We can’t find any!” a voice called.
Yuba turned to see all the boys with low ranks smoking over their heads. “Should have marked them,” he sighed and waddled into the patch, jabbing pumpkins to see if they yelped.
With the gnome gone, Tedros let himself smile. How could he tell a teacher he didn’t care about rules? Rules that had led him to that god-awful Agatha twice? For the first time, he had found a girl who had everything he wanted. A girl who wasn’t a mistake.
“I’d say you owe me a question, son of Arthur.”
Tedros turned to find Sophie wearing the same smile. He followed her eyes to the Nevers scoreboard above the Forest, where Albemarle had pecked her name at the very top.
The next day, she found a note in her lunch pail.
Wolves don’t like foxes. Blue Brook at midnight. T.
“What does it mean?” she whispered to the roach in her palm.
“It means we go home tonight!” Agatha gushed, antennae beating so fast that Sophie dropped her.
The roach paced the mildewed burlap of the Malice Common Room floor, eyeing the clock as it ticked towards midnight. At last she heard the door open and Sophie entered in a seductive black sheath dress, accented with long black gloves, beehived hair, a necklace of delicate pearls, and black-tinted spectacles. Agatha nearly burst her carapace.
“First, I told you to be on time. Second, I said don’t dress up—”
“Look at these glasses. Aren’t they chic? Saves your eyes from the sun. You know, these Evergirls sneak me all sorts of things like this now, pearls, jewels, makeup to add to my ensembles. At first I thought they were Good Deeds, and then I realized, no, they just like seeing their things on someone more glamorous and charismatic. Only it’s all so cheap. Gives me a rash.”
Agatha’s antennae curled. “Just—just lock the door!”
Sophie bolted the latch. She heard a crash and spun to see Agatha red-faced, pale body wrapped in a burlap curtain.
“Um—must have mistimed it—” Agatha spluttered—
Sophie looked her up and down. “I prefer you as a roach.”
“There has to be a way to get new clothes when you turn back,” Agatha grouched, wrapping herself tighter. Then she saw Sophie fondling Tedros’ note. “Now listen, don’t do anything stupid when you meet him tonight. Just get the kiss and—”
“My prince came for me,” Sophie mooned, sniffing the parchment. “And now he’s mine forever. All thanks to you, Agatha.” She gazed up lovingly and saw her friend’s expression.
“What?”
“You said ‘forever.’”
“I meant tonight. He’s mine tonight.”
They were both silent.
“We’ll be heroes when we get back to Gavaldon, Sophie,” Agatha said softly. “You’ll have fame and riches and any boy you want. You’ll read about Tedros in storybooks for the rest of your life. You’ll have the memories that he was once yours.”
Sophie nodded with a pained smile.
“And I’ll have my graveyard and cat,” Agatha mumbled.
“You’ll find love someday, Agatha.”
Agatha shook her head. “You heard what the School Master said, Sophie. A villain like me can’t ever find love.”
“He also said we couldn’t be friends.”
Agatha met Sophie’s lucid, beautiful eyes.
Then she saw the clock and jolted to her feet. “Take off your clothes!”
“Take off my what?”
“Hurry! We’ll miss him!”
“Excuse me but I’m sewn into this dre—”
“NOW!”
A few minutes later, Agatha sat next to Sophie’s clothes, head in hands.
“You have to do it with conviction!”
“I’m naked behind an ugly couch. I can’t do anything with conviction, let alone make my finger glow and turn into a rodent. Can’t we pick a more appealing animal?”
“You’re five minutes from losing your kiss! Just picture yourself in its body!”
“How about a lovebird instead? It’s more me.”
Agatha grabbed Sophie’s spectacles, bashed them with her clump, and threw them over the couch.
“Want me to do the same to the pearls?”
THUMP.
“Did that work?” Sophie’s voice said.
“I don’t see you—” Agatha said, whipping around. “For all we know you turned yourself into a newt!”
“I’m right here.”
Agatha turned and lost her breath. “But—but—you’re—”
“More me,” Sophie breathed, a ravishing plush pink fox with sparkly fur, bewitching green eyes, succulent red lips, and a bouncy magenta tail. She clasped the pearl necklace around her neck and admired herself in a shard of broken glass. “Will he kiss me, darling?”
Agatha stared, mesmerized.
Sophie watched her in the mirror. “You’re making me nervous.”
“The wolves won’t bother you,” Agatha babbled as she unlocked the door. “They think foxes carry disease, plus they’re color-blind. Just keep your chest to the ground so they don’t see the swan—”
“Agatha.”
“What? You’ll miss hi—”
“Will you come with me?”
Agatha turned.
Gently, Sophie curled her tail around her friend’s hand. “We’re a team,” she said.
Agatha had to remind herself she didn’t have time to cry.
Sophie the Fox pattered quietly through the Blue Forest, past willow trees shimmering with sleeping fairies and wolf guards who shrank from her as if she were a snake. She skirted sapphire ferns and twisty oaks of the Turquoise Thicket before slinking to the top of the bridge overlooking