Something grazed her head. She whipped around and saw a gash in the oak trunk, right where she was standing. Impish Vex straddled a branch above her, sharp stick in hand.
“Just curious to see how tall you were,” Vex said.
Doughy, bald Brone waddled in from behind another oak and checked the mark. “Yeah, she’ll fit.”
Sophie gaped at them.
“Like I said,” Vex said, wagging pointy ears. “Just curious.”
“I’m going to die!” Sophie wailed as she fled the Forest.
“Not with me there,” Agatha said, pincers curled. “I beat them all in your classes and will beat them again tomorrow. Just focus on getting the kis—” Something smacked her head.
“What in the—”
Agatha looked down at a dead roach in the grass. Four more landed beside it.
Slowly Sophie and Agatha craned up to see the Evil Towers billowing pink mist, dead insects raining off balconies into the Clearing.
“What’s going on?” Sophie said.
“Extermination,” a voice answered.
Sophie turned to Hester, arms folded against the Forest gates. “Apparently they’ve been running around our school at night. Couldn’t have the risk of plague, of course. After your friend was sick.”
Hester picked a thrashing bug off her shoulder.
“Besides, a good reminder to anything that tries to go where it doesn’t belong, don’t you think?”
She licked the roach into her mouth and glided back into the Forest, leaves crunching under her feet.
Sophie gasped. “Do you think she knows you’re a roach?”
“Of course she knows, you idiot!”
Nevers’ voices neared from the Forest.
“Go!” Agatha hissed, scrambling down Sophie’s leg. “We can’t meet again!”
“Wait! How do I survive the Tria—”
But Agatha had vanished into the Good tunnel, leaving Sophie to fend for herself.
With the fairies doing curfew inspections from the first floors up, Agatha had just enough time to sneak to the breezeways and cross to Valor. Like all the teachers, Sader’s bedchamber adjoined his study. Break its lock and she could surprise him in his bed. She didn’t care if the creep didn’t want to answer questions. She’d tie him to his bed if she had to.
Agatha knew it was a terrible plan, but what choice did she have? She couldn’t sneak into the Trial now and Sophie would never last alone for three hours. Sader was their last hope to get home.
The stairs led right to his study, the lone door on Valor’s sixth floor. There was a stream of raised blue dots across its marble. Agatha ran her finger over them.
“No students allowed on this floor,” boomed Sader’s voice. “Return to your room immediately.”
Agatha grabbed the doorknob and pointed her glowing finger at the lock—
The door creaked open on its own.
Sader wasn’t inside, but he hadn’t been gone long. The sheets in his bedroom were rumpled, the tea on his desk warm. … Agatha skulked around his study, its shelves, chairs, floor all suffocated with books. The desk was buried three feet under them, but there were a few open on top of the pile, lines of colorful dots highlighted by prickly silver stars in the margins. She swept her hand across one of these marked lines and a misty scene exploded out of the book to a woman’s sharp voice:
“A ghost cannot rest until it has fulfilled its purpose. For that, it must use the body of a seer.”
Agatha watched a scraggy ghost crash into the body of a bearded old man, before the mist cycloned back into the page. She touched the starred lines in the next book:
“In a seer’s body, a spirit may last only seconds before both seer and spirit will be destroyed.”
Before her eyes, two floating bodies merged, then crumbled to dust.
She ran her fingers across more of the starred lines.
“Only the strongest seers can host a spirit—”
“Most seers die before the ghost ever takes hold—”
Agatha grimaced. What was his obsession with seer—
Her heart stopped.
Prophecy, said the teachers.
Could Sader see the future?
Could he see if they got home?
“Agatha!”
Professor Dovey gaped through the doorway. “Sader’s alarm—I thought it was a roach—a student! Out of bed after curfew!”
Agatha scurried past her for the stairs. “Two weeks cleaning toilets!” her teacher squawked.
Agatha glanced back to see Professor Dovey sweep her hands over Sader’s books with a frown. She caught Agatha watching and magically slammed the door.
That night, both girls dreamt of home.
Sophie dreamt she was fleeing Hester through pink fog. She tried to scream Agatha’s name, but a roach crawled from her mouth instead. At last she found a stone well and swam to its bottom, only to find herself in Gavaldon. She felt strong arms, and her father carried her to her house, which smelled of meat and milk. She needed the toilet, but he took her to the kitchen, where a pig hung on a gleaming hook. A woman drummed red nails on the counter. Tsk, tsk, tsk. “Mother?” Sophie cried. Before the woman could turn, her father kissed Sophie good night, opened the oven, and threw her in.
Sophie woke with a jolt so hard she smashed her head on the wall and knocked herself out.
Agatha dreamt Gavaldon was on fire. A trail of burning black dresses led her up Graves Hill and when she got to the top she found a grave instead of her house. She heard sounds from within and started digging, hearing voices now, nearer, nearer, until she woke to them next door—
“You said it was important!” Tedros barked.
“The Nevers said she cheats with Agatha!” Beatrix said.
“Sophie’s not friends with Agatha! Agatha’s a witch—”
“They both are! Agatha turns into a cockroach to give her answers!”
“A cockroach? You’re not just petty and jealous, but completely insane!”
“They’re both villains, Teddy, they’re using you!”
“You’re the one listening to Nevers! You know why Sophie lost those challenges? She wanted to keep me safe! If that’s a villain, then what are you—”
With wind rumpling her curtains, Agatha couldn’t hear the rest, but soon the door thumped and Tedros traipsed away. Agatha tried to go back to sleep, but found herself staring at the pink paper flower shivering on her marble night table, like a rose on a grave.
She yelped, clobbered by an idea.
All the rooms in the hall looked dark except for the Trial Evers’, who were staying up until dawn to prepare for the following night. In her lace dressing gown, Agatha tiptoed barefoot up the pink glass stairs, eyes pinned upward for fairies or teachers.
Five floors down, Tedros glared up at her through the spiral gap, suddenly wondering if Beatrix had told the truth.
Leaving his boots at the bottom, he followed Agatha through the breezeway to Honor’s fourth floor, occupied entirely by the Library of Virtue. Crouching in knee-high black socks, he peeked in to see her