Sophie rooted deeper in her chair, arms crossed over her nightgown. “First of all, if I’m going to stand in front of a class full of teenage boys, I at least need something to wear. Besides, even if you do get me into that classroom, I don’t know any of the new fairy tales!”

“I said a new tale. Not tales.”

“Well, whatever fairy tale this is, I can’t possibly teach it—”

“Of course you can, since it’s the only fairy tale we teach at the School for New.” Lady Lesso glowered at her, holding open the door.

“Yours.”

12

Find the Spy

The old lollipop room in Hansel’s Haven was still made of lollipops, but they’d been blown up into thousands of rainbow-colored shards and pieced into new murals across the walls.

As students flurried in from the crowded hall, Sophie sat on Professor Sheeks’ old lollipop desk that had been slashed, scarred, beaten into lumps, and riddled with holes. Wearing black-suede stiletto boots and a formfitting, lacy black dress, she studied the murals of herself at her most Evil in The Tale of Sophie and Agatha—riding a rat to slay Agatha during the Good-Evil War . . . invisibly attacking Tedros during the Boy-Girl War . . . throwing Agatha into a sewer . . . pushing Tedros off a cliff . . .

You fought them before, the voice inside her said. You can do it again.

Her hands started to shake.

I can’t, Sophie panicked, looking away. I’m different now.

She waited for the voice inside her to agree, to speak reason and protect her friends . . .

Instead a different voice came this time. Darker. Angrier. Spewing bile.

Like mother, like daughter.

Like mother, like daughter.

Like mother, like daughter.

Like mother, like daughter.

Slowly Sophie lifted her eyes back to Agatha and Tedros, painted on the walls . . . and for a moment she saw Honora and Stefan instead.

Sophie’s hands stopped shaking.

Find the spy, the witch inside whispered.

Find the spy, she obeyed, locking to the task.

A throat cleared loudly.

Sophie looked down at a class of almost forty Evers and Nevers in black-and-green uniforms crammed into seats—Beatrix, Reena, Chaddick, Nicholas, Mona, Arachne, Ravan, Vex, Millicent, Brone among them—all wearing the same putrid scowls.

“Oh hello there, um . . . c-c-class,” Sophie sputtered, startled by both their expressions and the sheer number of students. “It’s been a w-w-while, hasn’t it?”

The student’s scowls intensified.

“But we’re a family now, aren’t we?” Sophie fawned, trying a new tactic. “And look at you, so smart in black! Never used to like black (such a nihilistic color), but Lady Lesso said this dress belonged to Rumpelstiltskin’s niece, who used to teach this very same class. Small-boned woman—not surprising since her uncle was a dwarf—so no one’s been able to fit into it until me.”