Her thoughts broke off because Sophie was already sprinting towards the glowing grave.

“Sophie, wait!” Agatha said, racing after her. She couldn’t let her get to Rafal—

But Sophie was already thrusting herself into the empty coffin and shoving through a false snow wall at the back of the grave. Agatha tried to grab Sophie from behind, but Sophie flung her away and Agatha reeled off-balance. She recovered and lunged after Sophie through the wall, propelling into the freezing block of white.

As she came out the other side, Agatha shook the snowflakes out of her eyes and hair to see she was in a dark, leaky tunnel, sloping steeply uphill. Sophie was way ahead, almost to the door at the end. Agatha hurtled after her, hearing the echoes of Sophie’s stuttered breaths and rustling leather catsuit as she wrestled the handle. When it wouldn’t budge, Sophie threw her shoulder against it as hard as she could, before Agatha tackled her against the door, slamming it open with a tumultuous groan as both girls tumbled through—

Agatha’s head cracked hard against a stone floor. By the time she wobbled to her knees, eyes blearing open, Sophie was gone. Agatha lurched up to the big, empty room lit by a weak green torch. A room she’d been in before.

The Exhibition of Evil.

She hustled towards the museum’s exit, not wanting to let Sophie get too far ahead—

A sharp hiss slashed through the silence. Agatha froze on her heels.

Slowly she turned and spotted a small, dark shadow huddling on the floor beneath Sader’s last painting of Gavaldon.

“Reaper?”

The bald, mashed-up creature hissed at her again before it glared up at Sader’s painting with copper-yellow eyes.

Agatha rushed towards him and scooped him into her arms—

He bit her wrist and she dropped him with a yelp. Reaper turned back to Sader’s painting, his slit-like pupils locked on the scene.

All Agatha’s questions of how her cat had gotten into the school, where he’d been the past few weeks, or why he was in Evil’s museum fell away. Because right now, Reaper wanted her to look at the painting on the wall. As she leaned in towards the canvas, Agatha saw why.

The scene was different than it was before.

It was darker, with only a needlepoint of light left in the top corner. And where the shadows of villains once closed in on Gavaldon as the villagers burned storybooks in fear, now there were actual villains coming through the trees as they battled the young and old heroes back. The only thing separating the villains from Gavaldon was a thin, hole-riddled shield, about to break.

Agatha bolted straight. Once a vision of the future, Sader’s painting was now magically tracking the present. She was watching the war between Good and Evil as it unfolded . . . and Good was losing.

Urgently, her eyes scoured the scene for Tedros, but Sader had always painted with hazy, impressionistic brushstrokes, no detail to the faces at all.