LITMIR.BIZ

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their hair is always so long,” Anadil said, dangling a dead mouse for the rats’ dessert. “Makes me want to pull it all out.”

      Just a few rooms away now . . .

      “And those phony smiles,” Hester said.

      “And that obsession with pink,” said Anadil.

      Fairies next door!

      “Can’t wait to kill my first one,” said Hester.

      “Today’s as good a day as any,” Anadil said.

      They’re here! Sophie swelled with joy—new school, new friends, new life!

      But the fairies flew past her room.

      Sophie’s heart imploded. What happened! How could they miss her! She lunged past Anadil for the door, threw it open to a flash of wolf fur. Sophie jolted back in shock and Hester slammed the door.

      “You’ll get all of us punished,” Hester growled.

      “But they were here! They were looking for me!” Sophie cried.

      “Are you sure we can’t kill her?” said Anadil, watching her rats devour the mouse.

      “So where in the woods do you come from, love?” Dot asked Sophie, inhaling a chocolate frog.

      “I don’t come from the woods,” Sophie said impatiently, and peeped through the eyehole. The wolves had no doubt scared the fairies away. She needed to get back to the bridge and find them. But right now, there were three wolves guarding the hall, eating a meal of roasted turnips from cast-iron plates.

      Wolves eat turnips? With forks?

      But there was something else odd on the wolves’ plates.

      Fairies, scavenging food from the beasts.

      Sophie’s eye widened in shock.

      A cute boy fairy glanced up at her. He sees me! Clasping her hands, Sophie mouthed “Help!” through the glass. The fairy boy smiled with understanding, and whispered in a wolf’s ear. The wolf looked up at Sophie, and shattered her eyehole with a savage kick. Sophie stumbled back, hearing a chorus of airy giggles and growling laughs.

      The fairies had no intention of rescuing her.

      Sophie’s whole body shook, about to explode into sobs. Then she heard a throat clear and turned.

      Three girls gaped with identically confused expressions.

      “What do you mean you ‘don’t come from the woods’?” said Hester.

      Sophie was in no state to answer dumb questions, but now these goons were her only hope to find the School Master.

      “I come from Gavaldon,” she said, stifling tears. “You three seem to know a lot about this place, so I’d be thankful if you could tell me wher—”

      “Is that near the Murmuring Mountains?” asked Dot.

      “Only Nevers live in the Murmuring Mountains, you fool,” Hester groused.

      “Near Rainbow Gale, I bet,” said Anadil. “That’s where the most annoying Evers come from.”

      “Sorry, I’m lost already,” Sophie frowned. “Evers? Nevers?”

      “A sheltered Rapunzel locked-in-a-tower type,” Anadil said. “Explains everything.”

      “Evers are what we call Good-doers, love,” Dot said to Sophie. “You know, all their nonsense about finding Happily Ever After.”

      “So that makes you ‘Nevers’?” said Sophie, remembering the lettered columns in the stair room.

      “Short for ‘Nevermore,’” Hester reveled. “Paradise for Evildoers. We’ll have infinite power in Nevermore.”

      “Control time and space,” said Anadil.

      “Take new forms,” said Hester.

      “Splinter our souls.”

      “Conquer death.”

      “Only the wickedest villains get in,” said Anadil.

      “And the best part,” said Hester. “No other people. Each villain gets their own private kingdom.”

      “Eternal solitude,” said Anadil.

      “Sounds like misery,” said Sophie.

      “Other people are misery,” said Hester.

      “Agatha would love it here,” Sophie murmured.

      “Gavaldon . . . is that by Pifflepaff Hills?” Dot said airily.

      “Oh, for goodness’ sakes, it’s not near anything,” Sophie moaned. She held up her schedule, “SOPHIE OF WOODS BEYOND” at its top. “Gavaldon’s beyond the woods. Surrounded by it on all sides.”

      “Woods Beyond?” said Hester.

      “Who’s your king?” asked Dot.

      “We don’t have a king,” Sophie said.

      “Who’s your mother?” asked Anadil.

      “She’s dead,” Sophie said.

      “And your father?” asked Dot.

      “He’s a mill worker. These questions are quite personal—”

      “And what fairy-tale family is he from?” Anadil asked.

      “And now they’re just plain odd. No one’s family is a fairy tale. He’s from a normal family with normal faults. Like every one of your fathers.”

      “I knew it,” Hester said to Anadil.

      “Knew what?” said Sophie.

      “Readers are the only ones this stupid,” Anadil said to Hester.

      Sophie’s skin burned. “I’m sorry, but I’m not the stupid one if I’m the only person here who can read, so why don’t you look in the mirror, that is if you could actually find one—”

      Reader.

      Why didn’t anyone here seem homesick? Why did they all swim towards the wolves in the moat instead of fleeing for their lives? Why didn’t they cry for their mothers or try to escape the snakes at the gate? Why did they all know so much about this school?

      “What fairy-tale family is he from?”

      Sophie’s eyes found Hester’s nightstand. Next to a vase of dead flowers, a claw-shaped candle, and a stack of books—Outsmarting Orphans, Why Villains Fail, Frequent Witch Mistakes—was a knurled wooden picture frame. Inside was a child’s clumsy painting of a grotesque witch in front of a house.

      A house made of gingerbread and candy.

      “Mother was naive,” said Hester, picking up the frame. Her face struggled with the memory. “An oven? Please. Stick them on a grill. Avoids complications.” Her jaw hardened. “I’ll do better.”

      Sophie’s eyes shifted to Anadil and her stomach plummeted. Her favorite storybook ended with a witch rolled in a barrel of nails until all that remained was her bracelet made of little boys’ bones. Now that bracelet was clasped on her roommate’s wrist.

      “Does know her witches, doesn’t she,” Anadil leered. “Granny would be flattered.”

      Sophie whirled to a poster above Dot’s bed. A handsome man in green screaming as an executioner’s axe sliced into his head.

       WANTED:

      ROBIN HOOD

      Dead or Alive (Preferably Dead)

      By Order of Sheriff of Nottingham

      “Daddy promised to let me have first swing,” Dot said.

      Sophie

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