Tedros didn’t answer and Agatha didn’t press him. Soon both of them were asleep in each other’s arms.

By three o’clock, Merlin’s hat had finished floating around the den, serving coffee and tea, and one by one, everyone began to drift back to the dining room, where the wizard was sitting at the head of the table. No one sat with him. Instead, the old heroes hugged the walls and the young students crouched on the floor, engaged in idle chatter, while the wizard just waited patiently. When an ominous silence fell, the old heroes quickly began filling it with stories of how they’d survived these past two weeks.

Peter Pan and Tinkerbell, for instance, had bunkered with the mermaids of Neverland, while Cinderella and Pinocchio had hidden in Rapunzel’s tower, reasoning that if Rapunzel was already dead, then the old villains certainly weren’t going to frequent the place.

“Her tower is a museum now, like Snow’s house, so there’s a rope that lets tourists climb all the way inside,” said Pinocchio. “Shoulda seen Ella climb, swinging and slamming against the tower like a wrecking ball. Kept whistling for birds to help, but with all her squawking and cursing, they just stood back and let nature take its course—”

“If nature took its course, you’d be firewood,” Cinderella snarled.

Hansel and Gretel had used a similar strategy, for they’d returned to their witch’s old gingerbread house, also an Evers’ landmark now.

“Zombie witch is stupid but not so stupid to think we go back to her house,” explained Hansel. “My idea, of course.”

“Your idea! Only thing you did was eat half the roof!” Gretel barked.

Agatha noticed Hester gnashing her teeth as she listened to this. . . . Suddenly Agatha’s eyes flared, remembering the witch’s defaced portrait in the School for Old. “Hester, that’s your house!” she whispered. “Your mother was that witch! She’s alive—somewhere in the Woods—”

“She’s not alive, Agatha. She’s a zombie under the School Master’s control,” Hester hissed. “I’m not stupid or sentimental enough to think whatever dead-eyed goon he’s brought back from the grave is my mother.”

“Hester, I know you pride yourself on being strong,” Agatha whispered worriedly, “but how can you just sit here with them talking about her like that? They killed her!”

Hester glowered at her. “The biggest mistake a villain can make is to get caught up in revenge. Hansel and Gretel were two hungry kids trying to survive in the Woods. Mother thought she’d captured another pair of greedy, gluttonous brats, only to grossly underestimate them. Hansel and Gretel killed her because they had to. It wasn’t personal.” She glanced back at the old siblings. “Doesn’t mean I can stand the sight of ’em, of course. But it also doesn’t mean their story has anything to do with mine anymore.”

Agatha could see Dot and Anadil gazing at Hester with awe, and for a moment, Agatha wondered whether in this room of heroes young and old, Hester was the greatest hero of all.