THE EVIL QUEEN STANDS IN THE DARK FRONT hall of Monster High, her gown impressively spiky, her headdress magnificently spooky, her wicked hands held out in a most commanding way. Her voice booms.
“Monsters! Heed me, your ruler, your mentor, your queen! Stand and quake in my terrible presence!”
“Um…” says Woolee, twisting a lock of her long fur. “What does mentor mean? Isn’t that a kind of candy?”
Her friend Gob whispers loudly, “So she wants us to eat her? Seems a bit much.”
“Sorry, lady,” says Deuce Gorgon, walking past her. “No offense, but I can’t be late for Casketball practice.”
“No,” the Evil Queen says, positioning her fingers in just the right way for a mind-control spell. “What you need is… to do my bidding!”
The snakes coiling in a Mohawk out of Deuce’s head roll their eyes at the Evil Queen.
“Whatever, dude,” Deuce says.
“Hssss,” say his snakes.
“You!” the Evil Queen shouts, pointing at Bonesy. “Skeleton thing! Come hither!”
Bonesy shakes his head with a dry rattling sound. He holds up a skeletal arm in a talk-to-the-hand gesture and keeps walking.
“This is absurd!” she says. “You are creatures of terror! You are monsters! How dare you disobey me?”
The front hall empties until only the large purple transparent blob of a goblin is left. Gob smiles at the Evil Queen, opens something that might be a mouth, and burps.
“That is just repulsive,” says the Evil Queen.
Gob laughs and then shambles down a coffin-lined hallway, making a shlump-gwee noise as he goes.
The Evil Queen grumbles. “This is clearly not Shadow High.”
“What is this… Shadow High you speak of?” asks Moanica D’kay from behind her. Her voice has a roughness to it, as if she’s just awoken from a very long nap.
The Evil Queen whirls. She is not accustomed to being surprised.
Moanica walks slowly up a staircase. Her skin is gray, her arms akimbo as if she is about to strike a pose. Purple hair streaked with yellow-green adds to her sallow complexion, and the Evil Queen is certain that she’s not currently alive—not in the traditional sense. Movement behind her gives the impression that there are more things in the shadows.
The Evil Queen casts a necromancy spell. “Corpse Girl,” she calls. “To my side!”
Someone behind her yelps, but the girl herself just smiles.
“I prefer to be called Moanica,” she says. “And whatever spell you’re casting, it isn’t going to work on me.”
The Evil Queen reaches out a hand and, with visible effort, clenches it and pulls it back. As she does, a teenage zombie boy stumbles out of the shadows and shuffles helplessly toward the Evil Queen.
“No?” the Evil Queen says. “My power may be diminished, but it is far from gone.”
“Zomboy! Stop!” Moanica shouts.
“Nevertheless,” the Evil Queen says, snapping her fingers. The Zomboy falls to the ground, looking dizzy. “It appears taking over this world would be pointless. It isn’t what I’m looking for.”
“Taking over…?” Moanica shoves the rising Zomboy behind her. “What are you looking for?”
“Oh, world domination,” says the Evil Queen, examining her fingernails. “Control put back into the hands of those who aren’t afraid to wield the power of evil over milquetoast do-gooders—that sort of thing.”
Moanica’s smile seems real for the first time. “You know, spiky-hat lady, I think we can help each other out. What do you need?”
“Books,” says the Evil Queen.
So while everyone else is in class, Moanica sneaks the Evil Queen into Dracula’s office. Moanica sniffs and tiptoes around. The Evil Queen runs a fingertip over a massive oak desk, inspecting it for dust.
“Dracula is teaching now, so we have a few minutes,” whispers Moanica.
“The vampire Dracula?” the Evil Queen says, one thin eyebrow raised in a perfect arch.
“Yes!” Moanica hisses. “I don’t know what it’s like where you’re from, but in this world you need to be quiet when you’re sneaking.”
The Evil Queen’s eyes flash red at the insolence of the girl. That this lesser creature would give her orders makes her grind her teeth.
“Ah,” the Evil Queen says, understanding. “You are afraid.”
“Yes, because we’re not supposed to be here.”
“But what could you, a zombie, possibly fear?”
“Well, the guy who owns this library, for one,” Moanica says.
“Yes, of course. Dracula. The lord of this realm. Surely he would rend you limb from limb for invading his sanctum sanctorum.”
“His… um… what? Er… no, he’d probably expel me from school, though,” Moanica says. “And that would mess up all my plans!”
“Expel…?” The Evil Queen resists an urge to clap a hand over her face in frustration.
“I don’t see any alarms or traps or anything,” Moanica whispers. “So look around, but hurry!”
Hurry? The Greatest Evil Ever After Has Ever Known doesn’t jump to anyone else’s clock, thank you very much! But the process does go much more slowly than she’d prefer. Unable to magically absorb the knowledge in the room, she instead must flip through each book one by one.
Moanica peeks out the office door at her posse of Zomboyz she left as guards.
“For the love of decomposition… Dracula is coming. We’ve got to get out of here!”
“Go distract him,” says the Evil Queen.
A voice echoes from the hall. “Zomboyz, I didn’t see you in class today! Did you wish to speak with me about anything?”
“Too late,” whispers Moanica. “What if he comes in? We need to hide!”
The Evil Queen casts a cloaking spell, but her choked magic creates an actual cloak that settles on her shoulders.
“I may not be a zombie,” Dracula is saying, “but I am interested in your brains. You might even say deadicated. Get it?”
The Evil Queen repeats the spell. The cloak changes from red to gray. So. Irritating!
“Over here,” whispers Moanica. She pulls out a bookcase and stuffs herself behind it.
“Hmph,” says the Evil Queen. The space is too narrow for her awesome spiky shoulder pads, but she squeezes in as best she can.
The door opens. “Draculaura, are you in here?” Dracula’s voice calls. If he looks too closely, he will discover them. The Evil Queen clenches her fists. It has been a long time since she has had to fight a creature with her bare hands. She seems to remember a good deal of slapping.
And then there’s the sound of Dracula’s footsteps leaving, and the door shuts behind him. Moanica exhales. The Evil Queen is only slightly disappointed to have missed an opportunity for a slap fight.
“That was close,” says Moanica.
The Evil Queen creeps from her hiding place and unbends the spikes on her shoulder pads. The books she was reading (Wuthering Frights, A Tale of Two Beasties, and a reference guide titled The Monster Manual of Vile) are no longer on the table. Dracula must have put them back on the shelf. And he left behind an ornate wooden box.
“What is this?” the Evil Queen asks.
“Um, a box?” says Moanica.
The queen examines the box, alert for traps, and then opens it.
“Are you familiar with this?” the Evil Queen asks.
Moanica edges closer, a scroll in her hand. “Oh… yes! That’s the Monster Mapalogue. Or at least part of it. There’s a necklace bit to it, too.”
The Evil Queen taps a fingernail on the wooden map. “This,” she says. “Have you seen this hexact map before?”
“Well, there’s Monster High,” she says, pointing with the scroll she’s holding, “and over there is the cemetery where I used to live, but I’ve got no idea what that ‘Ever After’ thing is. Never seen those other places on a map before. I can’t even read them.”
The Evil Queen stares at the map. A shame most of the lands aren’t labeled. It is much easier to use magic on things if you know their names.
“What do you suppose Wanderland is?” Moanica asks, pointing at the map again with her scroll. “Maybe people there just wander around confused all the time.”
“Wonder, not wander. But you’re mostly right,” the Evil Queen says. She notices Moanica’s pointing tool. “What is that?”
“Wonderland,” Moanica says.
“No, you fool, the scroll,” the Evil Queen says. “Where did you get that?”
“From behind the shelf. It must’ve fallen. I hoped it was a secret book, but it’s just old wallpaper.”
The Evil Queen plucks the scroll from Moanica’s hands and unrolls the edge of a document covered in letters that are, in fact, not wallpaper designs. She traces her finger down the lines of characters. “This is another language,” she says.
“No way,” Moanica says. “I know French, and that is not French.”
“Quiet, fiend!” the Evil Queen hisses. “I’m trying to translate it!”
In proper circumstances—that is, if she were in her castle in Ever After, surrounded by magical objects and universally recognized as the magnificent ruler of all she surveyed—the Evil Queen would have been able to magically translate the document and absorb its information. But these are not normal circumstances.