LET’S TAKE A PEEK AT WHAT THE EVIL QUEEN IS doing now.… Aha! Raven was right! That was the Evil Queen snooping around Ever After High. We should probably rewind a bit and see what that scoundrel has been up to.

Okay, here she is when she first arrives at Ever After High this morning, not looking at all like the gowned, headdressed monarch we saw in the mirror prison. She’s woven an illusion around herself, borrowing the face of an old woman with white hair and soft wrinkled skin. Once before when she escaped mirror prison, she infiltrated Ever After High disguised as a young student, so she went for something quite different this time. The disguise is, she is certain, exceptional.

“Of course, everything I do is exceptional,” the Evil Queen whispers to herself.³⁶

36 Not because she hears me. The Evil Queen doesn’t even know Narrators exist! Like I said, villains just like to mutter to themselves about how great they are.

She can’t quite force herself to shuffle down the hall looking meek and inconspicuous, though. She is the Evil Queen! She simply must straighten her spine and stretch her legs in long, confident strides. It’s all she can do to stop herself from declaring, I have escaped! I have made it to Ever After High despite everything! I am your queen!

Instead, she clenches her teeth together, keeping silent. It’s sooo hard for her.

And then a mass of lavender and mint green tumbles into her path.

“It is sooo hard to stay silent, isn’t it?” Madeline Hatter says. “I play the quiet game with my pet rock, and little Igneous is always beating me.”

The disguised queen takes a step back.

“Oooh, you’re a disguised queen?” Maddie says.

“How… What makes you say that?”

“Because I heard the Narrator call you a disguised queen.”

“Narrator?”

“Oh, don’t be scared! Narrators aren’t like alligators, even though they sound the same,” Maddie says. “I mean their names, not their voices, because alligators don’t talk, especially not on Thursdays, because that’s all about honking—”

“I demand to know why these Narrators are talking about me!”

“Oh, it’s nothing personal. Narrators talk about everybody and know everything. But no one hears them, hexcept me and Kitty Cheshire, though she pretends not to.” Maddie is whispering, her hand held to one side of her mouth, as if to prevent her words from escaping.

“Wait, what? Words need to escape?” Maddie shouts at the ceiling. “Aw, poor little words trapped in my mouth! I should help them escape. Be free, little words,” she yells, making shooing motions from her mouth. “Be free!”

Maddie cartwheels down the hall, shouting as many words as she can, especially words she hasn’t ever said, in case they have been trapped inside her for too long.

“Amorphous, be free! Antediluvian, your life is your own! Cyclopean! Eldritch! Fetid! Gibbous!” she shouts as she tumbles away.

The Evil Queen hurries in the opposite direction. Wonderlandians are generally odd, but that one almost seemed to be reading her mind. The queen makes a mental note to investigate the Hatter child further, and whatever a “Narrator” is, after she pins down this whole “Shadow High” business.

She shuffles into the library. A sleeping spell tingles on the tips of her fingers, ready to zap at anyone who might be in the library, but the room is empty.

“Fools,” the Evil Queen mutters. “This room should be constantly crowded with students eager for knowledge. Don’t they know what power hides between book covers?”

That the students are all fools is no surprise to her. She was hoping to find her daughter in the library, but perhaps it’s just as well. Raven would only try to stop her. She casts a spell to lock the library doors, and then undoes her disguise spell by reaching up, grabbing something unseen, and making an unzipping motion.

“Now then,” she says, shaking out her purple skirt and straightening her impressive headdress. “Time to get to work.”

She casts a seeking spell for books on Shadow High, but the closest thing she finds is a collection of essays on the height of shadows at various times of the day. After throwing that book on the ground and kicking it for good measure, she tries a different spell.

Seek now the hidden,

Not a certain edition, not that

shadow unbidden.

Seek the cage of the strange, the

shelves with the mange

Where the dangerous tomes call home.

Purple fog coalesces into a kind of snake that slithers through the air. The Evil Queen follows it as it darts through the shelves of the library, around corners, and up stairs, and then finally crashes into a mirror mounted on the wall.

She makes a fist, orange energy crackling around her hand, and punches. A wave of force pulses from her fist, and the mirror shatters. Behind the mirror is not a wall but a room.

“Mirror prisons for dangerous people, mirror prisons for dangerous books,” the Evil Queen says, stepping through the crack.

The shelves are labeled, and one brass plaque reads HISTORIES. In any Ever After library, Histories is the section where you find the fairytales of Ever After: the true stories of Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and so on.

But the Histories shelf here is filled with campfire tales—stories about people who Raven, Apple, and everyone else in Ever After are certain aren’t real. Dracula. Frankenstein. Boogey Men. Monster stories that parents in Ever After tell their children to frighten them into behaving. Headmaster Grimm forbids writing down stories about monsters. Yet here they are, fully bound, as if Dracula is just as real as Prince Charming.

“Strange,” mutters the Evil Queen.

She magically speed-reads all the books in Histories, then moves deeper into the Nonfiction shelf. There she finds a stack of old Ever After High school records. A parchment yawningly titled Yearly Attendance Across Districts features a list of schools. Ever After High is there, as is Wonderland High. Shadow High is not. But there are others. Many others. Some she has heard about.³⁷ Most she has not.³⁸ How could there be so many schools she’s never heard of? She is supposed to know everything! Are they ancient, defunct schools?

37 Like Faerie Highe. Faerie was on the Evil Queen’s Places to Invade After I Conquer Wonderland list, but when she discovered the fairies spent much of their time throwing digested glitter at one another, she decided not to bother.

38 Like Mr. Aardvark’s Academy for Anthropomorphic Anteaters in Fun Fauna Land, which I think closed down shortly after the Great Insect Uprising.

She casts a sensing spell and draws her finger down the list. Ever After High gives a pulse, as she expected. Wonderland High twitches, which confirms that it still exists. And then on Monster High, her finger visibly sparks. She pulls her hand back, blowing away smoke that trails from her glove.

“Well, hello there,” she says.³⁹ “Monster High, is it? That sounds dark and mysterious. Perhaps it’s even an alternate name for Shadow High. And judging by that spark, someone at this very moment must be looking for a way out. I think I should pay this place a visit. Best to strike while the iron is hot, as they say.⁴⁰ I’m afraid you’ve hidden from me far too long, my evil little friends.”

39 I startle every time she talks to herself, because for a second I think she’s talking to me.

40 I’m not sure who says that. Laundry workers? Blacksmiths, maybe? I think her point is that because Frankie and Drac are looking for Ever After High at the same time she is looking for Monster High, the magic crosses and therefore paves an easier path to move from one to the other?

Weaving magic about herself, the queen chants.

Hook this High

where monsters lie,

crook that nook of land,

find the sand

of the beach

where creatures reach

to seek a peek

inside

Ever After–wide.

A swirling vortex of magical energy appears above the Evil Queen’s head. She rotates her hand in time with the motion of the vortex.

Hang my tether on

open weather,

bolt this shock to the dock

on the edge of that notional ocean,

and plant me on this land

in the lee of an unseen sea.

She flexes her hand, and a bolt of lightning strikes the swirling green mass. The library around her vanishes, and she is moving through a whitewash fog of nothing. Two shadows flick past her in the mist. Finally her boots touch earth.

She is standing before an ancient house, dark and sinister. It is as if someone had tried to re-create her castle of power from the old days but neglected to include the moat and all the delightful death traps. She hears voices and… howling?… from inside, and she enters through the front doors.

Before her are gathered a most beautiful collection of malevolent beasts. There are wolf creatures, semitransparent fiends, and the animated skeletons of the dead. There is an incomprehensible gelatinous mass, eyes floating loose in its body. The Evil Queen smiles, raising her arms to the gathered group.

“Children of darkness! I am here to lead you!” She clenches her fists, meaning to invoke a spell that will make her glow, but nothing happens. The effort to send herself to Monster High has temporarily drained her of power. “I am here to drive you to your destinies of power!” she continues, certain her words alone will be impressive enough. “With me at your head, there will be nothing to stop us! The weak of the world will scream in terror at our advance! They will bend their knees to us or be destroyed!”

The Evil Queen’s voice booms as if she were the thunder itself.

The gathered students of Monster High stare. Some shift. Deuce Gorgon, son of Medusa, unsuccessfully tries not to laugh.

“Is that the new Hagriculture teacher?” whispers Cleo de Nile.

“I have no idea,” Clawdeen Wolf replies. “But let’s get out of here before she starts yelling again.”

“Good idea,” says Cleo.

“Hey, have you seen Drac and Frankie?” Clawdeen asks as they walk away to class.