The School for Good and Evil 3-book Collection: The Camelot Years (Books 4- 6)

“But why a ship, Aggie?” Sophie moaned, magically dissolving blue sludge off her and Agatha with her glowing pink finger. “I despise boats. They smell like toilets, the beds are stiff, there’s never any fresh vegetables, and it’s impossible to do yoga without falling overboard any time there’s a swell—”

“Wait until you see this ship, though. The Igraine magically steers on my command. It can turn invisible, it can fly—”

“Throw on a bandana and a pair of breeches and now you’re Whiskey Woo, the Pirate Queen,” Sophie grumped as they followed Dovey and the witches upstairs, bypassing the party in Evil Hall. “The Igraine. Good lord. Sounds like a prehistoric bird. Or a splitting headache. Well, if we’re together, I suppose I’ll muddle through. Speaking of which, where’s the other Evers? Merlin said you’d have a crew.”

“Crew?” Agatha said. “No crew. I mean, Willam’s on board, but he’s been in his cabin seasick ever since we left.”

“Willam?” Sophie asked with keen interest.

Hort scowled. He had enough boys at school to compete with, let alone boys lurking in boats. (Also, what kind of name was Willam? Sounded like the noise frogs made when they sucked down flies.)

“Hold on. No crew?” Sophie asked. “But Merlin told Dovey he was sending a team of Evers tonight to join me and the coven. That together, we’d be in charge of saving our classmates’ failing quests.”

“Well, we could certainly use the help on board,” Agatha mulled, “especially since we’re overloaded with Nevers. Maybe Dovey can give us a couple of her best first years. … Perhaps that’s what Merlin wanted us to do for a crew. …”

“Then why not just tell us as much?” Sophie grouched. “Why is everything a riddle with that old prat?”

“Because these are our quests, Sophie, not his,” said Agatha.

“I still think the man’s a nosy, musty loon,” said Sophie. “But do tell me about Willam. Is he gorgeous and strong? A strapping swabbie of the high seas?”

Behind them, Hort went apoplectic red—

“I don’t think he’s your type,” Agatha chuckled.

Hort exhaled, relieved.

“To be fair, no one thought Rafal was my type either,” said Sophie as they reached the highest floor and followed Dovey and the witches onto an outdoor catwalk. Two wolf guards patrolled the walk, which stretched between the highest floor of Evil’s castle and the School Master’s tower. As she passed, Sophie gave the guards an imperious smile and flicked dust off the red-and-gold SOPHIE’S WAY sign, lit up and pointing towards the silver spire that divided the bay between Good and Evil. “Now, Aggie, for the most important question of all: What do we do about this wedding of yours?”

“Can’t be worrying about a wedding when we have to save the Woods,” Agatha said. “It would have been a challenge anyway. You’d have had to plan the whole wedding from here at school. Camelot’s castle is already a mess and Tedros doesn’t want you there romping around and causing more upheaval—”

“I see,” Sophie said archly. “Afraid I might steal his crown?”

“Um, right. I think it’s well established that you two should stay as far from each other as possible. We’ll get someone else to plan the wedding.”

“Nonsense. I’ll do it while we travel. I just need two assistants on board, a fleet of courier crows, and an unlimited budget—”

“Camelot is bankrupt, Sophie.”

“—and naturally I’ll bring Bogden as one of my assistants, so perhaps we can include another Ever to balance out our crew … a handsome boy like Bodhi or Laithan. …”

“Wedding?” Hort cried, interloping between the girls. “Twenty minutes ago, you said you were done with Agatha’s wedding. That you never wanted to think about her and Tedros again. That you were throwing your own party because you were totally over—”

Sophie thrust out her glowing finger and zipped his mouth with a spell. Stunned, Hort tried to yell through sealed lips to no avail.

“One of Lesso’s best hexes,” Sophie told Agatha. “I’ve been reading her old spellbooks during my nightly baths.”

Agatha took a deep breath. “Sorry I didn’t write you all these months, Sophie,” she said, nearing the School Master’s tower. “So much has happened since I left school.”

“The Royal Rot certainly agrees,” Sophie replied.

“Sophie!”

“Darling, you weren’t writing me and I needed news of my best friends. You didn’t expect me to read the Camelot Courier, did you? Nothing but propaganda.”

“And the Rot is any better? A tabloid that said I cursed Tedros to fall in love with me and plan to slit his throat on our wedding night, once I’m officially queen?”

Sophie snickered.

“And here I was feeling guilty I hadn’t written you,” Agatha said.

Sophie threw an arm around her. “Well, it doesn’t matter now, does it? We’re together again and this time without a prince in our hair as we head off on the biggest adventure of our lives.”

Hort was grinding his teeth so loudly that the two girls glanced at each other.

“Is he really still there,” Sophie murmured.

“Poor little weasel,” Agatha said, pointing her glowing gold finger and unzipping his mouth.

Hort exploded at Sophie: “Adventure? Adventure? If you think you’re going into the Woods with … with … her, then you have another thing coming! You reassigned my quest and made me a teacher and I didn’t complain because you made it sound like you’d be my girlfriend and we’d go on dates and eat ice cream and kiss like normal couples do! And instead you treat me like a servant and now you’re trying to abandon me at school and take skinny, stinky Bogden? Are you kidding? Just because Agatha deserted her stupid boyfriend to go gallivanting around the Woods doesn’t mean you can! I spend every day teaching kids about Elf Wars and Wizard Summits and things I don’t care a lick about to spend time with you and you think you can leave? Kiss my big, blooming arse! I’ll set that ship on fire if you even get close!”

Sophie blinked at him, speechless.

“You know, sometimes I wonder what he sees in you,” said Agatha.

Sophie laughed and took her hand. “Everything, darling. Everything.”

As the two girls continued towards the School Master’s tower, Hort watched them go.

He knew what he saw in her. The same thing he’d always seen, no matter how badly she treated him. He saw a girl as soft and vulnerable as he was, if only she’d let herself feel it instead of distracting herself with the next best thing.

Don’t follow her, Hort begged himself.

Please.

Don’t. Follow. Her.

He followed.

As he scrambled to keep up with the girls, Hort told himself it was only because he’d never entered the School Master’s tower before. But that wasn’t the real reason, of course. The real reason was because the tower was now Sophie’s private chamber. And he wanted to see the inside.

The scaffolding shrouding the spire was dotted with sleeping stymphs, slumbering after a long day of renovations. Stymphs detested Hort, so he held his breath as he passed. Skirting between two more watchful wolf guards, he followed Dovey and the girls through a gap in the silky black scaffold.

Don’t act like it’s a big deal, Hort thought as he climbed through the open window. Don’t be creepy.

But he was creepy. He was always creepy. Creepiness was an inalienable, undeniable part of his essential Hortness—

His bare feet touched the carpet and Hort snapped out of his thoughts. Every inch of the floor of Sophie’s chamber was blanketed in lush white threads, so soft and deep they swallowed his feet like warm milk. His eyes roamed the sky-blue walls, studded with thousands of tiny silver balls like congealed drops of rain. The stone ceiling had been knocked out and replaced with a shallow aquarium, filled with water that changed color every ten seconds, and glittery, floating glass flowers. In one corner, Sophie’s king-sized bed was veiled in a gold lace canopy, and beyond it, he could see inside the all-mirrored bathroom, teeming with vials and bottles of potions and creams. Nearby was a walk-in closet with racks of magically suspended dresses, organized by color and theme, and presided over by a grim-faced black mongoose with the name BOOBESHWAR on a tag around his neck, who was in the process of steaming one of Sophie’s kimonos.

“Crikey. All I got in my closet is moths and soggy breeches,” Hort murmured.

He turned, expecting Dovey and the witches to be as surprised by all this as he was—

But the six of them were circled around the Storian as it wrote in a storybook, its gold-hued cover spread open on the white stone table.

Hort moved in closer and saw the pen’s sharp nib sweeping colors across a painting of a boy lying by a lake, his eyes closed. Blood leaked from a wound in the boy’s ribs, framing him in a crimson puddle.

Hort and Agatha looked up at Professor Dovey. But neither she, nor the witches, nor Sophie seemed as frozen with shock.

“Chaddick?” Agatha rasped. “He’s … he’s …”

“We don’t know who killed him or why,” Sophie said softly, studying the storybook. “But if this is right, his body is by the lake that took us to Guinevere and Lancelot’s safe house.”

“That’s where the Lady of the Lake lives,” Hester added. “How did Chaddick get through her castle’s gates? Maybe there’s a part of the story we’re missing. …”

Quickly Hester slipped her fingernail under the storybook’s page to see the pages that came before. The Storian scorched red with fury and stabbed at her finger—

Hester withdrew it before it impaled her. “It’s the first page.”

“What?” Sophie blurted. “‘Once upon a time a handsome boy died?’”

“Under other circumstances, I’d be enthralled,” said Anadil.

“This proves that Chaddick was onto something,” said Professor Dovey, giving her a look. “His death is part of a larger story, just as Merlin thought.”

Hort could see Agatha staring at the storybook, tears on her cheeks. Even though Agatha was a nagging goat, the fact she was crying made Hort’s eyes mist up too. Chaddick had been a boy at school, just like him. A boy who’d been on a quest in the Endless Woods and had now died for it. And here Hort was, a spineless sap confined to the castle because he’d given up his real quest to chase a girl. Guilt and determination flushed through him, two crisscrossing rivers. Like Chaddick, Hort’s own father had been killed on a quest: a lifelong mission to serve Captain Hook in the fight against Peter Pan. Hort had come to the School for Evil to be better than his father. But what would his father think of him now? Still at school, pretending to be a teacher, puttering after someone who wouldn’t give him the time of day. …

For the first time, he felt the death grip Sophie had on his soul weaken.

This wasn’t about her anymore. This was about making something of his life.

Even Peter Pan had learned to grow up.

Hort gazed out the window at the Igraine in Evil’s harbor, sails flapping in the wind.

Wherever that ship was going, he would be on it.

Suddenly the girls tensed all at once and huddled closer to the storybook—

“What is it?” he asked.

But now he saw for himself.

The Storian was writing its first words of the story.

Beneath the painting of Chaddick’s body, the pen etched its bold, beautiful script:

Once upon a time, a Snake made its way into the Woods. Its plan was simple: take down the Lion.

The Storian turned the page and began to paint once more.

“A snake?” Hester asked, baffled.

“A lion?” Anadil echoed.

“So this is about, uh, disgruntled animals?” Dot said.

“No,” Agatha replied, peering at the storybook. “It’s not about animals at all.”

Everyone watched her, waiting for her to elaborate.

“Um, then what’s it about?” Hort prodded.

Agatha raised her eyes. “It’s about getting to Avalon now.”

There was panic in her face, as if she’d put a puzzle together the rest of them hadn’t.

“How soon can you leave?” Professor Dovey pressed.

“We need food and weapons,” said Agatha.

“I’ll make sure you have both,” said the Dean.

“Aggie, what is it?” Sophie asked, glancing between them.

But the Storian had finished its second painting now, a magnificent rendering of the twin-sailed Igraine sinking back under Halfway Bay, with Agatha at the stern, commanding the ship onwards. The pen wrote beneath:

Soon, a team of students from the School for Good and Evil set out to find the Snake, led by two best friends, Sophie and Agatha, along with a crew of three witches, an altar boy named Willam, and a first-year Never named Bogden.

The Storian halted.

“What about me!” Hort protested.

But no one was paying the slightest attention, because Professor Dovey was rounding up the girls towards the window: “Come; there’s provisions in the kitchen and weapons in the Armory—”

“Boobeshwar!” Sophie yelped at her startled mongoose: “Start packing my suitcase. …”

“Wait a second,” Hort piped up.

“You’ll need food and water for a week before you can reload in the Ever Lands,” Dovey was saying.

“Enough clothes for two months, Boobeshwar!” Sophie hollered over her. “I’ll send Bogden to fetch the luggage—”

“I SAID WAIT A SECOND!” Hort bellowed.

Six pairs of eyes went to him.

“Look,” he said.

They followed his gaze to the long, white table.

The Storian was writing again.

There was one more member of their crew, however. Someone they hadn’t expected.

Someone who they’d need on their dangerous quest.

Hort raised his fist. “See! See! I told you! It saved the best for—”

Someone named Nicola.

“Nicola?” Agatha said, mystified.

Everyone stared at the page.

“Who in tarnation is Nicola!” Hort barked.

But only Dovey and Sophie seemed to know, for they both eyed each other with strange looks, before Sophie slowly turned to Agatha.

“Well, darling, it seems we’ve found the missing Ever for your team.”

10

NICOLA

The Perks of Being a Reader

Sophie might be a Dean, but that didn’t mean Nicola had respect for the girl or would join her ranks of fawning students.

For one thing, she’d met Sophie back when they lived in Gavaldon, but Sophie was acting as if she’d never seen Nicola in her life. For another, Nicola had read The Tale of Sophie and Agatha and thought Sophie was a class-A brat. And then on Nicola’s first day, Sophie had blamed her for caving in a classroom when it wasn’t her fault at all!

For these reasons (and more), she’d been giving Sophie hostile looks ever since she got to school two weeks ago and Sophie had been giving them right back.

So imagine Nicola’s surprise when it was Sophie herself who barged into her room tonight and dragged her onto this boat, helped by Hester, Dot, and Anadil, three witches she’d only seen in a storybook.

No one told her why. They’d just acted like she was their prisoner and gave her thirty seconds to pack before they flung her aboard and dumped her in the worst room. She didn’t even know who else was on the crew, since no one had bothered to come check on her once they’d set sail.

It hurt her feelings, to be honest. Hester was one of her favorite characters in The Tale of Sophie and Agatha and being treated like a stray dog by your favorite characters is worse than never meeting them at all. Even Dot, who seemed so jolly and sweet on the page, hadn’t managed a proper “hello.”

I should have known, she thought. Girls like me are always left out of fairy tales.

Nicola steeled herself. Well, if this crew couldn’t show her the most basic manners, then she wasn’t going to make an effort either. Instead, she would handle them the way she’d handled rude customers at Pa’s pub in Gavaldon: with grace, dignity, and pity for their poor souls.

Thunder blasted outside and a slash of lightning lit up her window.

Nicola unpacked her toothbrush, soap, and comb in her tiny bathroom. The boat had been swerving and lurching through this storm for the past hour.

Whoever was steering had no idea what they were doing.

“Man the sails!” Agatha cried, soaked to the bone as she gripped the captain’s wheel—

Nicola snuck closer to the galley door so she could peer through the crack and survey the whole deck.

Lightning ripped through a sail and the Igraine lurched off-course, rain flooding over the rails. The storm had exploded only a few hours after they left, caging them into whirling winds they couldn’t escape. Hester and the witches were siphoning water off the deck using their fingerglows—

“Lady of the Lake controls these waters! Should be giving us easy passage!” Hester was shouting at Anadil and Dot.

Meanwhile, Nicola’s classmate Bogden was clutching a red-haired boy as he puked overboard; Sophie was crawling on all fours up the deck; and another boy was batting down the hatches, which kept coming loose—

Hort! Nicola gasped, recognizing him. Her whole body went hot. …

Wind slammed against the boat, spinning it like a pinwheel, knocking Sophie into a railing. The broken sail flapped over her, lashing against the mast. A huge shard of wood snapped under the rogue sail and came shearing down, about to spear the deck—

Instantly, Dot turned the shard to chocolate chips, which scattered into the rain. Hester’s demon flew off her neck and hoisted up the heavy sail; Anadil’s three rats secured its ropes (all the while catching chocolate in their mouths).

“What did I … say … about … boats!” Sophie mewled, makeup smeared, soggy hair caught around her neck like a noose. Blown side to side, she scooted on her stomach up the steps to the captain’s level—

“The wind is sending us everywhere but Avalon,” Agatha growled, wrangling the wheel. “We should be there by now!”

“You said the ship listens to you!” Sophie squawked behind her.

“The ship, not the weather! The faster I tell it to go, the more the wind hits us!”

Sophie lunged off the top step and grabbed hold of Agatha’s ankle. “Isn’t it a magic ship? Make it fly or turn invisible!”

“What good is being invisible in a storm! Or flying higher into it!” Agatha said, squinting into the rain. “We must be fifty miles off-course!”

There were clearer skies to the east, which would give them a chance to regroup. She just needed to steer the boat out of this wind-cage—

“SAIL EAST!” she shouted at the wheel.

The Igraine bounded eastwards but bashed into headwinds, making it swing back and forth like one of those sickening pirate-ship rides at the Gavaldon Fair. Sophie lost grip of Agatha’s shoe and went rolling down the stairs.

“AGATHA!” she shrieked, hanging off the staircase banister.

Hort ran to save her, but tripped and plunged down a hatch. Bogden was now retching alongside the red-haired boy, while the witches tumbled across the deck like marbles. As the ship bobbed, water surged over the rail. The Igraine started to sink—

“Mind if I help?” a voice said behind Agatha.

Agatha turned to see a short, buxom black girl her age leaning against a rail, arms folded. She had a catlike face with thin eyes and sloping brows, along with springy black curls immune to the rain and a pink first-year’s Ever uniform at odds with her cold expression.

“Nicola?” Agatha said, shouting over the storm. “That’s your name, isn’t it?”

“And yours is Agatha, though the Agatha I’ve read about would have come and said hello so maybe that’s not your name after all,” Nicola replied. Agatha winced, but Nicola didn’t give her a chance to respond. “Steer like it’s a riptide. The wheel’s spinning left because you’re trying to go right. If you want to go right, turn the ship left.”

“AGGIE! HELP!” Sophie howled below, a seagull on her head.

Nicola narrowed her eyes. “Seagulls love the smell of hot decay. Wonder what that says about your friend.”

She turned to find Agatha gaping at her.

“I just told you how to get us out of this storm,” Nicola said.

Agatha shook her head. “Sailing in the opposite direction doesn’t make sense—”

Nicola glared harder. “Listen, I may be a first-year Reader who no one on this boat cares about, but that also means I’ve read your fairy tale and know you’re a smart girl. Smart enough to realize you’ve been trying to get us out of this storm for the past hour and have instead put us on the verge of a very watery death.”

Another tidal wave detonated onto the deck, drenching Agatha.

“One more and we’ll get to see who can hold their breath the longest,” said Nicola.

Agatha swiveled towards the wheel. “SAIL WEST!” she commanded—

The Igraine pivoted smoothly to the west for just a moment. Then the current took over, counterposing the ship east. The wooden girl on the masthead swept her lantern towards the dawn-lit clearing. In a single move, the boat broke free of the wind-trap and glided towards Avalon.

Sophie dropped like a stone to the deck, her gown blown over her head like a broken umbrella. The rest of the crew peeked up, no longer thrashing or scrambling or retching. All of their eyes honed in on the new girl, who’d just saved their necks.

Sophie was the only one who didn’t smile at her.

Nicola sauntered towards the galley in her sheepskin boots. “Is breakfast ready? Or should I take care of that too?”

“Wait! If you’re a Reader, how’d you know how to do that!” Agatha called out behind her.

“The same way I know everything,” the girl replied, without breaking stride. “I read.”

“If you’re from Gavaldon, how did we never meet?” quizzed Agatha.

“Didn’t I see you in a Never’s uniform the first day of school?” asked Hort, spooning his oatmeal.

“Why did the Storian write you into our crew?” said Willam.

“Do you even know what a fourth-year quest is?” asked Hester.

Sitting across the galley dining table painted with Camelot’s crest, Nicola picked at a soggy tower of egg and cheese. “The real question is why an enchanted pot can’t make an omelet when I was making them at six years old.”

“Think Dovey gave us a broken pot,” Bogden said, snacking on potato skins. “I asked for pancakes and it made these instead.”

“Broken pot, broken map … Dovey’s house certainly isn’t in order,” Dot murmured.

Nicola was midbite when she saw the ragtag Inquisition still gawking at her. “Oh, so I’ve been on this boat for hours and now I exist?”

(“BOOBESHWAR!” Sophie screeched from her cabin.)

Nicola’s lips tightened. “Well, let me answer your questions, then. Agatha, we never met in Gavaldon because you spent your time on Graves Hill and I spent mine at Papa Pipp’s Pub, helping my father cook for his customers. I knew your mother, though, since she treated Pa for his bad back. As for your friend, Sophie, she met me a few times in Gavaldon, but she doesn’t seem to remember, since girls like her only notice you if you’re useful or a threat.”