Rafal was onto her.

If he saw Tedros’ name carved into her . . . she was good as dead.

If she didn’t kill Agatha and Tedros . . . she was even deader.

Which meant only one thing, Sophie thought.

It was her friends’ lives or her own.

Sifting into the crowd of students, Sophie veered towards the lollipop room, determined to catch the spy for Good. If she caught the spy, then the spy couldn’t break Agatha and Tedros into school. And if Agatha and Tedros couldn’t break into school, then she’d never have to see them again, and if she never had to see them again, then she’d never have to kill them—

Sophie froze still.

A white mouse was motoring past her shoe tip, a wooden stick in its mouth.

It couldn’t be the traitorous mouse Lady Lesso had warned her about, for it wasn’t carrying a note or a key or anything useful to a spy. And yet, there was still something odd about the rodent, frantically weaving and skidding between boots, as if racing against a clock—and something even odder about the stick between its teeth, knobby, aged, and tapering to the top, as if it wasn’t a stick at all, but some kind of wand . . . a wand Sophie was quite sure she’d seen in this very school . . . But where? Wands were never used in classes or challenges and most teachers mocked them as archaic training wheels or remnants of fusty godmothers. So who at the School for Evil could possibly have use for a—

Sophie yelped.

Like a runaway bull, she barreled headfirst into the crush of bodies, chasing after the mouse. Wherever this little vermin was headed, toting Professor Clarissa Dovey’s wand, it was surely leading her right to the spy. Did Dovey’s wand have special powers? Is that how the spy planned to help Agatha and Tedros in? Was Professor Dovey the spy herself? But how, given Dovey was locked up somewhere with the Good teachers? Sophie didn’t have time to think—

Bucking and flinging kids aside, she tracked the mouse down dark spiral stairs, almost losing sight of it, before her clacking heels woke a few sleeping fairies on the banister, who glowed angry green and lit up the mouse as it skittered into the foyer. Hoisting her dress, Sophie sprinted after it through the Supper Hall kitchen, where enchanted pots stewed sardines and cold cabbage; past the Laundry, where Beezle, the red-skinned dwarf, was singlehandedly trying to wash 240 uniforms (“Mama!” he screeched, drowning in bubbles); and into the enormous Gallery of Good, refurbished black and green, which instead of reflecting all of Good’s great victories, now depicted something else . . .

Sophie slowed her pace, taking in the museum cases around her. The glass boxes, once filled with hero’s triumphant weapons and proof of dead villains flaunted new exhibits: Rapunzel’s severed hair, Tom Thumb’s clothes, Snow White’s crown, and seven dwarf-sized pairs of shoes . . . all splattered with blood.