Peter looked up at Yuba, blue eyes glistening. Then he looked back down. “Tink made me come,” he muttered. The fairy squealed in protest and pelted him with a lump of gruel.

Agatha and Tedros gawped at each other. Peter? Peter Pan?

“I’m with Peter,” boomed the huge, blue-haired woman, spinning from the mirror. “Not even out of school, these little brats. Should be lickin’ our feet and beggin’ for autographs! Instead they somehow get their own fairy tale—students! a fairy tale!—and now that tale’s got its panties in a knot, wakin’ our old villains from the dead and draggin’ us straight out of our Ever Afters—”

“Ever Afters! Ha!” chimed a gangly, high-voiced man in suspenders and beige breeches, with big, twinkly eyes, a long nose, and a full head of white hair. Tiny round scars marked all the joints of his long, tanned limbs, as if he’d once been screwed together. “First of all, Peter can barely leave his house he’s so depressed at growing up. Second, I’d never have wished to be a real boy if the Blue Fairy told me real boys end up with arthritis and bad eyes and permanent constipation. And third, Ella told me herself she preferred sweeping cinders to being a queen.”

“When did I ever say that?” the fat woman squawked.

“Last night,” the long-nosed man replied, looking surprised by her question. “You drank a barrel of wine and told me you miss cleaning for your stepsisters, because at least you felt useful and stayed fit and now you’re old and bored and big as a house—”

“WHO ASKED YOU?” thundered the woman. “YOU SPENT HALF YOUR LIFE AS A PUPPET!”

“First they get mad at me for lying. Now they get mad at me for telling the truth,” moped the long-nosed man, curling into a sofa.

Agatha’s and Tedros’ eyes bulged even wider. “Pinocchio?” said Tedros.

“Cinderella?” said Agatha.

“Don’t give me that face,” Cinderella sneered back at her. “For bein’ Camelot’s supposed future queen, you ain’t much to look at yourself.” Her hawkish green eyes shot down to Agatha’s clumps. “Bet no one wants to see those feet in glass slippers.”

“Hey now! She’s my princess!” Tedros jumped in.

“I don’t blame you, handsome,” Cinderella smirked, voice smooth as an eel. “Your daddy didn’t have good taste in girls either.”

Tedros looked like he’d been kicked in the pants.

Yuba sighed. “Professor Dovey had just as much faith in Agatha as she did in you, Ella. So I suggest you treat our guests with respect—”

“We have the respect when these two studenten fix the mess!” croaked a wild-haired, hunchbacked man in a wheelchair with owlish gray eyes and a harsh foreign accent. “Think they’re special because Storian writes their story? Well, at least our stories have end, yes? But these two change ending again and again—‘Are we heppy yet?’ ‘Are we heppy yet?’ Bah. Fools! Now see! School Master young, Evil redoing stories, and dead witch hunting me I have to kill all over again—”