The School for Good and Evil 3-book Collection: The School Years (Books 1- 3). Soman Chainani

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СКАЧАТЬ barely survived a hovering bat, and nearly turned back into herself in Special Talents before finding a broom closet just in time.

      By the third day, Agatha hardly glanced at her Good homework and spent all her free time learning Evil spells. Where her classmates struggled to make fingers flicker, she could keep hers glowing by thinking about things that made her angry: school, mirrors, boys. … Then it was a matter of following a spell’s precise recipe, and just like that, she could do magic. Simple stuff, nothing more than playing with water and weather, but still—real magic!

      She would have been paralyzed by the incredibility, the impossibility, except that it came so naturally. Where the others couldn’t summon a drizzle, Agatha conjured thunderclouds in her room and splashed the odious murals off her wall with a squall of lightning and rain. Between sessions, she stole into bathrooms to try out new Spells for Suffering—the Lights-Out Jinx to briefly darken the sky, the Sea Swell Curse to summon a giant wave. … Time evaporated when she studied Evil, so rife with power and possibility, she could never get bored.

      While waiting for Pollux to deliver her Good homework one night, Agatha whistled while she doodled—

      “What pray tell is that?”

      She turned to Pollux in her doorway, head on a hare’s body, staring at the drawing.

      “Oh, um, me at my wedding. See, there’s my prince.” She crumpled the page and coughed. “Any homework?”

      After chastising her for slipping in the Ever ranks, explaining every assignment thrice, and berating her to cover her mouth when she coughed, Pollux finally left in a circus of hops and falls. Agatha exhaled. Then her eye caught the crumpled doodle of herself flying through flames and she saw what she’d been drawing.

      Nevermore. Evil paradise.

      “We have to get home,” she mumbled.

      By the end of the week, Agatha had led Sophie on a magnificent winning streak in all her classes, including Yuba’s Trial Tune-Ups. In these one-on-one duels to prepare for the upcoming Trial by Tale, Sophie beat every person in her group using approved spells, whether stunning Ravan with a lightning bolt, icing Beatrix’s lips before she could call for animal help, or liquefying Tedros’ training sword.

      “Someone’s been doing their homework,” Tedros said, agog. Hidden under Sophie’s collar, Agatha blushed with pride.

      “Before it was dumb luck. This is different,” Hester griped to Anadil as they bit into a lunch of charred cow tongues. “How is she doing it?”

      “Good old-fashioned hard work,” Sophie said, swishing by in shimmering makeup, ruby-red hair, and a black kimono, sparkling with gems that spelled “F is for Focused.”

      Hester and Anadil choked on their tongues.

      By the end of the third week, Sophie was up to #5 and her Lunchtime Lectures had resumed due to popular demand. So had her black-robed fashions, bolder and more extravagant than before, in a grand pageant of scalloped plumage, fishnet bodices, faux monkey fur, sequined burkas, leather pantsuits, powdered wigs, and even a chain-mail bustier.

      “She’s cheating,” Beatrix hissed to anyone who would listen. “Some rogue fairy godmother or time-turning spell. No one has time to do all this!”

      But Sophie had time to design a satin jumper with matching nun’s wimple, a sparkled clamshell dress, and matching shoes for every new look. She had time to beat Hester in the “Uglify a Ballroom” challenge, write a report on “Wolves vs. Man-Wolves,” and prepare Lunchtime Lectures on “Wicked Success,” “Ugly Is the New Beautiful,” “Building Your Body for Sin.” She had time to be one-girl fashion show, rabble-rouser, rebel priestess—and still wrestle her way past Anadil to #2 in the rankings.

      This time Beatrix couldn’t stop Tedros from falling for Sophie. But Tedros tried valiantly to stop himself.

      She’s a Never! So what if she’s beautiful? Or smart? Or creative and kind and generous and—

      Tedros took a deep breath.

      Evers can’t like Nevers. You’re just confused.

      He felt relieved when Yuba hosted another “Good or Evil” challenge. This time the gnome turned all the girls into blue pumpkins and hid them in the forest’s voluminous patch.

      Just find an Ever, Tedros scolded himself. Find an Ever and forget all about her.

      “This one’s Good!” Hort yelled, and flicked a blue shell. Nothing happened. The other boys couldn’t tell the difference between pumpkins either and started debating the merits of each.

      “This is not a group assignment!” Yuba bellowed.

      Clinging to Sophie’s blue vine, Agatha’s roach watched as the boys split up. Tedros headed west towards the Turquoise Thicket and stopped. Slowly he turned to Sophie’s pumpkin.

      “He’s coming,” Agatha said.

      “How do you know?” Sophie whispered.

      “Because that’s the way he looked at me.”

      Tedros walked up to a pumpkin. “This one. This one’s an Ever.”

      Yuba frowned. “Look closely first—”

      Tedros ignored him, clasped its blue skin, and in a burst of glitterdust the pumpkin turned into Sophie. A “16” puffed in slimy green smoke over the prince’s head and a “1” in black over Sophie’s.

      “Only the best Evil can disguise as Good,” Yuba commended, and with a wave of his staff, erased the red F off Sophie’s dress once and for all.

      “And as for you, son of Arthur, I suggest you study your rules. Let’s hope you don’t make such a terrible mistake when it counts.”

      Tedros tried to look ashamed.

      “We can’t find any!” a voice called.

      Yuba turned to see all the boys with low ranks smoking over their heads. “Should have marked them,” he sighed and waddled into the patch, jabbing pumpkins to see if they yelped.

      With the gnome gone, Tedros let himself smile. How could he tell a teacher he didn’t care about rules? Rules that had led him to that god-awful Agatha twice? For the first time, he had found a girl who had everything he wanted. A girl who wasn’t a mistake.

      “I’d say you owe me a question, son of Arthur.”

      Tedros turned to find Sophie wearing the same smile. He followed her eyes to the Nevers scoreboard above the Forest, where Albemarle had pecked her name at the very top.

      The next day, she found a note in her lunch pail.

      Wolves don’t like foxes. Blue Brook at midnight. T.

      “What does it mean?” she whispered to the roach in her palm.

      “It means we go home tonight!” Agatha gushed, antennae beating so fast that Sophie dropped her.

      The roach paced the mildewed burlap of the Malice Common СКАЧАТЬ