Agatha felt hope shrivel away.

“What I do know, however, is that you cannot find the ending to your fairy tale unless you know how it began,” said Sader. “And it began long before you two ever came to the School for Good and Evil. Every old story sets off a chain of events that leads to a new story. Every new story has its roots in the old. Your story most of all.”

He conjured a storybook twice as big as his fairy-sized body and let it float towards the girls. It had a red cherrywood cover, just like The Tale of Sophie and Agatha that the Storian was writing in the School Master’s tower right now. Only as Agatha looked closer, she realized this wasn’t her and Sophie’s fairy tale. The title of this one was:

The Table of Callis & Vanessa

Agatha saw Sophie’s whole body seize up.

“She was in a fairy tale,” Sophie gasped.

Sader spread open the storybook to its first page. A puff of mist erupted over it, along with a ghostly scene of an ordinary cottage. “And now it’s time for you to go inside,” he said.

Agatha and Sophie stared at his tiny image, confused.

“I was never fond of my sister Evelyn’s spells, but there was one that I quite liked,” Professor Sader explained, with a growing grin. “Because say what you will of her, when Evelyn Sader told you a story . . . she made you feel like you were there.”

He raised the open storybook and blew on the phantom scene. With a fizzling swish, the scene shattered into a million glittered shards and crashed over the two girls like a glass sandstorm. Agatha shielded her eyes, her body drifting through space, until her feet touched ground next to Sophie’s. Slowly they both looked up.

They were standing inside the cottage they’d seen on the page, the air thick and hazy around them, giving the room a vaporous feel, as if it wasn’t quite real. Agatha recognized the effect at once, for this was how Evelyn Sader had brought them into her adulterated fairy tales a year ago. Now August Sader had brought them into one they never knew existed.

Agatha scanned the intimate kitchen and white, round dining table . . .

“Wait a second—” she started.

“This is my house,” said Sophie, realizing it too.

Agatha furrowed. “But if it’s your house, then who’s that?”

Sophie followed her eyes to a skinny black-haired girl in the corner, scowling out a window. She had a sharp nose, big brown eyes, and thin pink lips. She couldn’t have been older than sixteen.

“It’s . . . you . . . ,” said Sophie, studying her. “Only not you.”

Definitely not me, thought Agatha, because this girl had a cruel mouth and a vicious gleam in her eye. There was something dark and venomous about her that made Agatha afraid of her, even if she was just a phantom. She’d never seen the girl in her life. She had no idea who she was and why she was in Sophie’s house. But one thing was for sure. Whatever the girl was looking at through the window had her unwavering focus and utmost contempt.