Hester kneeled to Tedros’ level and clasped his small, dainty fingers in hers. “We’ll leave you here with Agatha and be back after dinner. That’s when your missions start. Okay?”

Tedros didn’t answer.

Hester held up the tail of her shirt, revealing an ugly pink scar on her belly. “I took Aric’s knife to protect your princess. To protect your true love, Tedros. Now it’s your turn to prove what you’re made of.” She glanced up at Agatha’s gawky, penguinish boy. “Both of you. If we’re going to rescue Sophie and save our world, we need you to be a team.”

Agatha and Tedros didn’t look at each other.

“One smile, Edgar and Essa,” said Hester. “Please.”

“Hester asking for a smile? World’s dying after all,” Dot chipped.

Slowly Edgar and Essa made eye contact. They turned to Hester and conjured identical smiles.

Hester slackened in relief. “Back soon, lovebirds. Use your time wisely,” she said, as her two roommates followed her out. “And try not to break any school rules if you know what I mean.”

Agatha and Tedros held their smiles as the door closed and locked from the outside.

Then they looked at each other and frowned.

Less than an hour earlier, Edgar and Essa were squashed side by side on a tree stump in the Woods, watching Merlin sprinkle glitterdust on a grove of carnivorous purple thorns, putting the thorns to sleep.

“When can I turn back?” Tedros demanded in a deep voice, creamy girl cheeks glowing pink.

“Once you return alive,” the wizard said, poking testingly at a limp thorn.

“Which means never,” Agatha murmured, squinting ahead at tall, spiked gates that blocked entry to the School for Good and Evil. The lethally sharp slats that once shimmered solid gold now glowed acid green, flashing a familiar sign:

TRESPASSERS WILL BE KILLED

Agatha gulped. They’d had a short nap on the clifftop and a hat-made snack of kale omelets and strawberry-vanilla smoothies before Merlin dressed them in Evil’s black-and-green uniforms (“Spies, obviously,” as to how he acquired them) and brought them to the threshold of the school without informing them how a girl and boy—now boy and girl—could get through gates vowing to kill them.

“Only a teacher can open those gates,” Agatha argued. “If we touch them, we’ll get blasted to pieces!”

“Gates are the least of my problems. Suppose the counterspell doesn’t work? Suppose I’m stuck a girl forever?” said Tedros.

“Please don’t use your boy voice in a girl’s body, my child,” said Merlin, picking his teeth with a thorn. “It’s a bad habit and reeks of cheap burlesque. Now you won’t get very far without being able to convince people you’re a girl, so let’s start with your name.”

“My head itches,” Tedros said, still in baritone. “Why can’t I have my normal blond hair?”

“Because we need you to look like an Evil assassin, not Goldilocks’ lovelier sister.”

“You’re a magician. You’d think you could dye hair without giving me lice—”