Agatha yawned and closed her eyes, about to join the comatose, when she heard three backsides plunk to the floor.

“After everything we did to get you in and out of that school, after risking our lives for you, you couldn’t even get Sophie to destroy the ring?” Hester’s voice attacked.

Agatha opened her eyes. “I tried, Hester—”

“First of all, you can’t talk to your friends in a diamond crown. It’s pretentious,” said Anadil.

Agatha had forgotten she even had it on. She quickly pulled off the diadem and shoved it behind her back.

“Can I wear it for a bit?” Dot asked, mouth full of pizza turned to chocolate. “I bet it’ll look nice on me.”

“If it can fit around that head,” Hester mumbled.

Dot hurled her pizza at her, smacking Hester in the cheek. “Do you know how unfair that is, you contemptuous git! You made me gain weight in order to stay in the coven and now you’re making fun of me for it? Are you that insecure that you needed me to be fat to feel okay about yourself? Well, you picked the wrong piggy tail to pull, honey. I love myself no matter what I look like, so nothing you say to me will ever make me feel ugly again. Because unlike you, Hester, I’ll never be ugly inside.”

Hester gaped at Dot like she was a rabid bear. “Agatha. Give the girl the damned crown before she stays this way forever.”

Dot snatched the diadem out of Agatha’s hands and admired herself in a brass urn as she jammed it on (upside down and backwards, but no one said a thing).

“Now where were we,” said Anadil. “Oh right. The part where Agatha fails us all.”

Any pleasure Agatha took from Dot’s tirade evaporated. “Listen, I thought I could convince Sophie to destroy the ring. We’d even gotten close again in the last few days. It was like she was the old Sophie and I was the old me and I thought she’d listen . . .” She remembered their last moments together and guilt rushed through her. “I had my chance. I should have taken it—”

“You don’t have to defend yourself, Agatha. The truth is it doesn’t matter what you would have done,” Hester said with awkward sympathy, clearly smarting from Dot’s words. “We’ve warned you since the day you got here. All three of us did. Sophie was sorted into the School for Evil for a reason. And no matter how much you love her or try to change her, that’s where she was always going to end up.”

“We just didn’t think it’d be as the School Master’s queen,” said Anadil. “How we’re going to make Sophie destroy his ring now . . .”

A quiet doom fell over the witches’ faces and Agatha realized why everyone had ignored Merlin when he’d tried to speak before lunch. They wanted a few precious moments before they had to face the truth.