“As ‘the girl’? Is that what I am?” Agatha rocketed up in her string-bean body. “‘The Girl’?”

“Hey now, all I’m saying is that if any of my friends ever saw me like this—”

“Pretty sure they just saw you in the hall,” Agatha snarled, boiling with boy hormones. “Think Chaddick even winked at you.”

Tedros looked like he’d been slapped.

“There’s the old Agatha,” Hester smirked.

“Back in the coven at last,” said Anadil.

“Not as an official member, of course,” Dot snipped.

Agatha splayed onto the mattress, stirring up soot. “Are boys angry and starving all the time? I could eat this pillow.”

The pillow turned to chocolate.

“And that is why I’m not an official member,” Agatha said as she bit into it, throwing Dot a grin.

Tedros stared at his princess, now a ravenous, belligerent boy; at three Evil witches, still sniggering at his expense; at his long-tressed, soft-jawed, smooth-legged reflection in a glass picture frame . . .

The prince burst into a sweat. “I can’t do this . . . I just can’t . . .” His fingertip started glowing hot gold. “I’m doing the counterspell and reversing the potion—”

Agatha lurched up and grabbed him. “They’ll catch you the second you walk out this door! They’ll kill all of us!”

“We’ve come this far, all right?” begged Hester, coaxing his girl body down to the bed.

“It’s the only way, Tedros,” soothed Anadil, gripping his glowing finger.

“Might even make you a better person,” Dot huffed, before adding under her breath: “Less dramatic, at least.”

Tedros dumped his peachy cheeks into his hands and hunched over the bed. “We’re never going to make it! We’re never going to get Sophie out of here! I’ll never get back to Camelot, I’ll never get to be king, and I’m going to die as a girl!”

Hester’s demon swelled red on her neck. “You sniveling, cock-brained, yellow-bellied imp! The four of us girls have spent our whole lives proving we’re more than girls and here you are acting like being a girl is a death sentence! Your whole life you’ve relied on your dimpled chin and moony eyes and washboard stomach to substitute for a soul. Well, now you’re one of us, Essa, and all of our lives are depending on you, so if you don’t stop whining and man up, you sorry excuse for a prince, I’ll send this demon right up your—”

She saw Agatha shaking her head and stealthily blowing smoke letters off her own glowing fingertip: “MOTHER ISSUES.”

Hester bit her lip. “Tedros. My friend,” she said, trying to sound sympathetic with mixed results. “I know this isn’t easy, but you’ve made it into this hellish school. That was the hardest part. Now we just need you and Agatha to finish the missions Merlin gave you.”

“You have the whole day to figure out how you’re going to do it. In the meantime, Hester, Dot, and me better get back to class or Sophie’s going to suspect something,” said Anadil, shooting Hester a look.