He exhaled, looking out at the purple night. “Perhaps everything that followed could have been avoided if the teachers at the School for Good had taken my inquiries seriously, but they too were drunk on victory and we didn’t have a Dean nearly as sharp as Clarissa Dovey at the helm. At the end of third year, I was tracked as a Helper to Arthur’s father and moved to Camelot upon graduation, where I became Grand Vizier and eventually resident tutor to his son. Still, I made it my mission to keep watch over the goings-on at school, in case my suspicions proved correct. For years, I’d give guest lectures in History of Heroism or come for tea and crumpets with old professors or write Arthur for news once he was old enough to be a student himself. But Good’s winning streak continued and there was no sign of any resistance from Evil or untoward behavior by the School Master. Soon, my worries dulled and instead I began to devote my energy to a spell that had become my life’s work—a potion that could briefly turn boys into girls and girls into boys in the hopes to foster experimentation, sensitivity, and peace. A potion I believe both of you know well.”

Agatha and Tedros murmured sleepily, thinking of the bright purple potion that had caused so much chaos at the School for Boys and Girls.

“Given the spell was based in gnome biology, Yuba generously offered to test each new version of the potion as I developed it,” said Merlin, his pupils honing in on Agatha. “It was during one of these visits to him that he mentioned the School Master had taken an interest in a new teacher at the school named Callis.”

“What! My mother was a teacher?” Agatha blurted, jolting from her daze.

“Professor Callis of Netherwood,” Merlin affirmed.

“N-N-Netherwood?” Agatha stammered, shell-shocked. “That means she wasn’t from Gavaldon? My mother was from . . . the Woods?”

“And quite the popular professor of Uglification,” Merlin replied.

Agatha gawped at him incredulously. Her mother taught Evil kids how to uglify and disguise themselves? The same mother who used to beg her daughter to tell her about the school as if trying to imagine it for herself? Agatha tried to picture her mother trundling through the Evil castle halls in a pointy-shouldered teacher’s gown, leading challenges in Manley’s rancid classroom, uglifying and shape-shifting with her repellent students. . . . Her stomach hollowed. Either this was all a terrible mistake, or she’d lived with a stranger her whole life.

“When positions open up at school, the Deans are responsible for scouring the Woods and finding qualified professors whose tales are long over or who’ve accepted that the Storian will never choose them for a tale once they sign up for the seclusion of faculty life,” said Merlin. “Imagine the School Master’s surprise, then, when the Storian begins to tell the story of this new Evil teacher: Callis of Netherwood, heart and soul committed to Evil . . . and yet still dreaming of finding her one true love.”