The School Years Complete Collection. Soman Chainani

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СКАЧАТЬ are saying you’re the best Captain Evil has ever had. Look!”

      Sophie followed his eyes to a row of eel-green boxes amid the bouquets, wrapped with red ribbons.

      She opened the first to find a parchment card:

      HOPE YOU REMEMBER HOW TO USE IT. PROFESSOR MANLEY

      Beneath it was a black snakeskin cape.

      In the boxes that followed, Castor gifted her a dead quail, Lady Lesso left an ice-carved flower, and Sader enclosed her Trial cloak, asking if she might kindly donate it to the Exhibition of Evil.

      “What a genius trick,” Hort fawned, trying on the cape. “Hide as a plant, wait until Tedros and Hester are left, then charge in and take out Hester while Tedros is wounded. But why didn’t you finish Tedros off? Everyone’s asking, but he won’t say anything. I said it’s ’cause the sun came up.”

      Hort saw Sophie’s expression and his smile vanished.

      “It was a trick, wasn’t it?”

      Sophie’s eyes filled with tears. She started to shake her head—

      But there was something else on the wall in front of her.

      A black rose, note speared through thorns, dripping with ink.

      Sophie took it into her hands.

      Cheater. Liar. Snake.

      You’re right where you belong.

      All hail the witch.

      “Sophie? Who’s it from?”

      Heart throbbing, Sophie smelled the bitter black thorns laced with a scent she knew so well.

      So this was her reward for Love.

      She crushed the rose, spitting Tedros’ words with blood.

      “This will make you feel better.”

      In Room 66, Anadil scooped murky yellow broth from her cauldron into a bowl, dripping on the floor. Immediately her rats converged, eight inches bigger now, biting, clawing each other to get first licks.

      “Your talent’s coming along,” Hester croaked.

      Anadil sat on the edge of Hester’s bed with the bowl. “Just a few sips.”

      Hester managed only one, then fell back.

      “I shouldn’t have tried it,” she wheezed. “She’s too good. She’s twice the witch I am—”

      “Shhhh, don’t strain.”

      “But she loves him,” said Dot, curled in her bed.

      “She thinks she does,” Hester said. “Just like we all once did.”

      Dot’s eyes bulged.

      “Please, Dot. You think she’s the only Never who dabbled in love?”

      “Hester, enough,” Anadil pressed.

      “No, let’s have the truth,” Hester said, struggling to sit up. “All of us have felt shameful stirrings. All of us have felt weakness.”

      “But those feelings are wrong,” said Anadil. “No matter how strong they are.”

      “That’s why this one’s special,” Hester said wryly. “She almost convinced us they were right.”

      The room lapsed to silence.

      “So what happens to her now?” asked Dot.

      Hester sighed. “The same thing that happened to all of us.”

      This time their silence was broken by distant clacks in slow, menacing rhythm. The three girls craned to the door as the clacks swelled towards them, cruel and clean like whip cracks. They grew louder, sharper, impaling the hall, then ebbed past their room to silence.

      Dot farted in relief.

      The door slammed open and the girls screamed—Dot bellyflopped off the bed—

      A draft blew the hanging dresses past the torch over the door, casting flints of light on a shadow’s face.

      The hair gleamed, spiked and slicked, black as smeared eye sockets and lips. Ghost-white skin glowed against black nail polish, black cape, and black leather.

      Sophie stepped into the room, high black boots stabbing the floor.

      Hester grinned back at her.

      “Welcome home.”

      From the floor, Dot peeped nervously between them. “But where will we find a new bed?”

      Three pairs of eyes found hers.

      She didn’t even get time to collect her snacks. In the dark, dank hall, Dot pounded on the iron door in banishing silence. But it was no use.

      Three witches made a coven and she had been replaced.

      The Evers didn’t celebrate when Tedros received his Captain’s badge. How could they, when Sophie had made a fool of him? “Evil had returned!” the Nevers gloated. “Evil had a Queen!”

      Then the Evers remembered they had something the Nevers didn’t. Something that proved them superior.

      A Ball.

      And the Queen wasn’t invited.

      The first snow littered the Clearing in lumpy brittles of ice, pelting Nevers’ pails with loud pings. As they tried to grasp moldy cheese with frozen fingers, they looked daggers at Evergirls scrabbling about, too busy to worry about weather. With the Ball two weeks away, the girls needed to make every possible arrangement, since boys still refused to propose before the Circus. Reena, for instance, expected Chaddick to ask her, so she had dyed her mother’s old school gown to match his gray eyes. But if Chaddick asked Ava instead (she had caught him ogling Snow White’s portrait, so he might like paler girls), then Nicholas might ask her, in which case she’d trade for Giselle’s white gown to balance his tanned skin. And if Nicholas didn’t ask her …

      “Mother says Goodness is making people feel wanted even when you don’t want them at all,” she sighed to Beatrix, who looked bored. With Sophie out of the picture, Beatrix knew Tedros was her date. Not that he had confirmed this. The prince had been ignoring everyone since the Trial, sullen as a Never. Now Beatrix felt his mood infect her as she watched him shoot arrows into the tree he and Sophie used to sit beneath.

      Tedros ripped more holes in its heart, but there was no satisfaction. After a few days of teasing, his mates had tried to cheer him up. Who cared if he shared his spoils with a Nevergirl! Who cared if she puttered with him along the way! He’d still won a brutal Trial and outlasted them all. But Tedros saw only shame in it, for he was no better than his father now. A slave to his heart’s mistakes.

      Still, СКАЧАТЬ