“Looks just like when I saw him in Granny’s nightdress,” Red Riding Hood rasped, watching the wolf in the front line, only fifty yards away. “Ate me in one swallow then. But I’m a grown woman now. Which means he’d have to chew first—”

“I’d take a wolf’s teeth over a hook any day,” said Peter Pan anxiously.

“My stepmother has an axe!” Cinderella boomed.

“You win,” said Hansel.

“It’s not your stepmother, okay? They’re not any of your old villains,” Hester retorted. “They’re zombies. They’re not real.”

“They look plenty real to me,” Lancelot growled, drawing his sword.

Hands shaking, Tedros pulled Excalibur, as the Dark Army marched closer. “Lead the way, Sir Lancelot.”

“Look who’s suddenly showin’ me respect!” Lancelot snorted. “You, who spent all week blathering that you could win this war without my help!”

“You don’t know me well enough to know that I spend half my life saying stupid things and the other half apologizing for them,” said Tedros. “Please, Lance. You’re the greatest knight who’s ever lived. Surely you’ve faced tougher battles. . . . Surely this isn’t as bad as it looks?”

The knight could see Agatha and the rest gazing at him with the same hopeful expressions.

Lancelot glanced up at two hundred villains brandishing weapons, thirty yards away now . . . then back down at his army of defenseless Evers and Nevers, crotchety old heroes, and a prince who held the world’s greatest sword but still wasn’t much good at using it.

“Not as bad as it looks,” he said. “Worse.”

The Dark Army halted their advance, twenty yards from the knight. The fairies lit up to full blast as the villains sneered across the forest, eyes red and murderous, mouths clamped in flat, lifeless lines. They raised their weapons in the fairy light, waiting for the order to charge.

“Think I just wet myself,” peeped Hansel.

“M-M-Merlin?” Agatha spluttered, fixed on the zombies. “Merlin, tell us what to do!”

“That’ll be difficult, ’cause Merlin ain’t here,” said Hort.

Everyone spun around.

Merlin was gone.

Agatha and Tedros gripped each other in horror. “We’re dead,” they gasped—

From the sky came a blast of wind and they looked up to see two shadows, embraced in flight, float down through the trees.

The boy touched down first, his white hair spiked as sharp as the black crown of the girl he held in his arms. He wore a sleeveless black shirt that showed off his porcelain skin and lean muscles, and long black breeches that hung low on his hips, revealing a piece of his rippled stomach. The girl was as pale as he was, her cheeks and lips so colorless that for a moment Agatha thought her a marble statue, until she pulled away from the boy wearing a black leather catsuit that hugged every curve of her frame. She moved towards Agatha, her hair a gold wave beneath her jagged crown, her skin so tight against her bones the veins glowed through, and her mouth curled in a cold, nasty smile.