Lady Tremaine narrowed her eyes, trying to see her daughter. “Come into the light, my dear, so I can see you.” Drizella stayed where she was. She was like a statue. She stood stock-still, too afraid to let her mother see her. “Do as I say, Zella! Do it now, and stop acting like a vampiric fool, and come into the light!” Drizella slowly inched her way out of the shadows. “I want to see all of you, girl! Not just the tips of your shoes!”

And then it became clear why Drizella was hiding from her mother. Lady Tremaine’s face turned scarlet with anger. “Ah, now I see. We’ve talked about this, Zella. And what did we agree upon the last time we spoke on this matter?”

“I’m never to come down those stairs without dressing properly!” said the frightened young woman.

“Precisely. Now get upstairs and change your clothes this moment!”

“Mother, please! Don’t make me put that dress back on!” Drizella looked desperate, but her mother’s eyes became wider as her anger grew.

“How are you going to attract a husband if you’re not dressed properly?” Her booming voice sent the many black-and-white cats that populated their moldering, vine-covered château scattering. “Get upstairs and put on your dress right this moment!” Drizella looked down at her feet as her mother continued to yell. “Zella! Go! I don’t want to see you again until you’ve changed into your dress! And send down your sister!”

The lady of the house watched her daughter disappear up the stairs.

“Foolish girl!” She threw a threadbare velvet pillow across the room. “Sorry, my dear,” she said to the startled cat. “Come here, Lucifer, I’m sorry I frightened you. Come to Mommy.” The cat swaggered grumpily over to his mistress. “Don’t look at me like that. I said I was sorry. What are we going to do about those girls, refusing to wear their best dresses, refusing to find husbands so we can be lifted out of this squalor?”

“Mother, are you talking to the cats again?” It was Anastasia. Her ginger ringlets hung long and loose down her shoulders, framing her frightfully pale face and matching her vivid red lip paint. “You remember that isn’t Lucifer, don’t you? He died many years ago.”

“How dare you say my sweet baby died? You aren’t dead, are you, my dearest?” Lady Tremaine stroked the smug black-and-white cat, pretending to forget her daughter was there. “Don’t listen to that silly girl, Lucifer. You’re just fine.”

“Mother, we’ve talked about this. He just looks like Lucifer.”