LITMIR.BIZ

      ophie was sure Beatrix had set the fire to get Tedros’ attention. No doubt he rescued her from the blazing tower, kissed her as Good burned, and had already set their wedding date. Sophie came up with this theory because this was what she had planned to do at lunch. Instead, classes were canceled the next day too, leaving her marooned in a room with three murderers.

      She stared at the iron plate on her bed gobbed with soggy gruel and pig’s feet. After three days of starvation, she knew she had to eat whatever ghastly lunch the school sent up, but this was worse than ghastly. This was peasant food. She flung her plate out the window.

      “You don’t know where I might find cucumbers in this place?” Sophie said, turning.

      Hester scowled across the room. “The Goose. How’d you do it?”

      “For the last time, Hester, I don’t know,” Sophie said, stomach rumbling. “It promised to help me switch schools, but it lied. Maybe it went batty after laying so many eggs. Do you know of a garden nearby with some alfalfa or wheatgrass or—”

      “You talked to it?” Hester blurted, mouth full of oozing pig’s foot.

      “Well, not exactly,” Sophie said, nauseous. “But I could hear its thoughts. Unlike you, princesses can talk to animals.”

      “But not hear their thoughts,” said Dot, slurping gruel that looked chocolate flavored. “For that, your soul has to be a hundred percent pure.”

      “There! Proof I’m 100% Good,” said Sophie, relieved.

      “Or 100% Evil,” Hester retorted. “Depends on if we believe you or if we believe the stymphs, the robes, the Goose, and that wave monster.”

      Sophie goggled at her and burst into sniggers. “100% Evil? Me? That’s preposterous! That’s lunacy! That’s—”

      “Impressive,” Anadil mused. “Even Hester’s spared a rat or two.”

      “And here we all thought you were incompetent,” Hester sneered at Sophie. “When you were just a snake in sheep’s clothing.”

      Sophie tried to stop giggling but couldn’t.

      “Bet she has a Special Talent that blows ours away,” said Dot, munching what looked to be a tiny chocolate foot.

      “I don’t understand,” Sophie snickered. “Where does all the chocolate come from?”

      “What is it?” Anadil hissed. “What’s your talent? Night vision? Invisibility? Telepathy? Fangs filled with poison?”

      “I don’t care what it is,” Hester snarled. “She can’t beat my talent. No matter how villainous she is.”

      Sophie laughed so hard now she was weeping.

      “You listen to me,” Hester seethed, fist curling around her plate. “This is my school.”

      “Keep your crummy school!” Sophie hooted.

      “I’m Class Captain!” Hester roared.

      “I don’t doubt it!”

      “And no Reader is going to get in my way!”

      “Are all villains this funny!”

      Hester let out a mad cackle and flung her plate at Sophie, who dove just in time to see it tomahawk into the Wanted poster on the wall and slice off Robin’s head. Sophie stopped laughing. She peeked over the scorched bed at Hester, silhouetted against the open door, black as Death. For a second Sophie thought her tattoo moved.

      “Watch out, witch,” Hester spat, and slammed the door.

      Sophie looked down at her shaking fingers.

      “And here we thought she’d fail!” Dot chimed behind her.

      Agatha knew it had to be bad if they let a wolf take her.

      After the fire, she was locked in her room for two days, allowed out only to use the toilet and accept meals of raw vegetables and prune juice from scowling fairies. Finally after lunch on the third day, the white wolf came and took her away. Digging claws into her singed pink sleeves, he pulled her past the stair room murals, past glowering Evers and teachers who couldn’t even meet her eyes.

      Agatha fought back tears. She already had two failing ranks. Inciting an animal stampede and setting the school on fire had earned her a third. All she’d had to do was pretend to be Good for a few days, but she couldn’t even manage that. How did she think she could ever last here? Beautiful. Pure. Virtuous. If that was Good, then she was 100% Evil. Now she would suffer the punishment. And Agatha knew enough about fairy-tale punishments—dismemberings, disembowelings, boilings in oil, skinnings alive—to know her ending would involve both blood and pain.

      The wolf dragged her through the Charity Tower, past a bespectacled woodpecker jabbing in new rankings on the Groom Room door.

      “Are we going to the School Master?” Agatha rasped.

      The wolf snorted. He dragged her to the room at the end of the hall and knocked once.

      “Come in,” said the quiet voice inside.

      Agatha looked into the wolf’s eyes. “I don’t want to die.”

      For the first time, his sneer softened.

      “I didn’t either.”

      He opened the door and pushed her through.

      Apparently the fire had finally been brought under control, because classes resumed after lunch on the third day and Sophie found herself in a damp, moldy classroom for Special Talents. But she could barely focus with her stomach rumbling, Hester throwing her murderous looks, and Dot whispering to other Nevers about their “100% Evil” bunk mate. It had all gone wrong. She had started the week trying to prove she was a princess. Now everyone was convinced she’d be Evil’s Captain.

      Special Talents was taught by Professor Sheeba Sheeks, the rotund woman with boils on both ebony cheeks. “Every villain has a talent!” she bellowed in her thick singsong voice, pacing the room in a busty red-velvet, pointy-shouldered gown. “But we must turn your bush into a tree!”

      For the day’s challenge, each Never had to show off a unique talent to the class. The more potent the talent, the higher the student’s rank. But the first five kids failed to produce anything, with Vex whining he didn’t even know his talent.

      “Is that what you’ll tell the School Master at the Circus?” Professor Sheeks thundered. “‘I don’t know my talent’ or ‘don’t have a talent’ or ‘don’t like my talent’ or ‘want to trade talents with the Ooty Queen!’”

      “She had me till the last bit,” said Dot.

      “Every year, Evil loses the Circus of Talents!” Sheeba yelled. “Good sings a song or waves a sword or wipes their bottom and you have nothing better? Don’t you have pride! Don’t you have shame! Enough! I don’t care whether you turn men to stone or turn men to dung! You listen to Sheeba and you’ll be number one!”

      Twenty

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