“Move, you fool!” Agatha berated.
Sophie scurried after her, resorting to crawling on her hands and knees, wondering how she was huffing like a hog while Agatha, who ate every cookie in a 50-mile radius, was sprinting up the stairs with ease. But soon she reached the top and was hustling behind her friend towards the stone door, still open a sliver. Both girls threw their weight against it, barely shoving it ajar, before Sophie’s heels lost traction in the snow and she face-planted with a shriek. By the time she staggered up, Agatha was already inside. Sophie squeezed through behind her— It was pitch dark.
“Aggie?” Sophie wisped.
“My fingerglow won’t light,” Agatha said nearby.
“Magic doesn’t work here, remember? Raccoon rock or whatever he called it. Doesn’t allow magic inside its bounds. Aggie, I can’t see anything. Where are y—”
A cold hand seized her wrist.
“Listen,” Agatha’s voice said.
Then Sophie heard it.
A hissing sound somewhere far away. Or was it buzzing? Like a set of pipes leaking air . . .
Another scream echoed. This time a boy’s.
“Come on,” Agatha said, yanking Sophie down the tunnel.
“I hate it when you treat me like your sidekick,” Sophie said, stumbling behind. “I’m a Dean and you’re not even queen yet. If anyone’s a sidekick here, it’s—”
They slammed into a wall and careened to the ground.
In her haze of pain, Sophie thought they were back at school, foiled by the invisible barrier on Halfway Bridge that had set their original fairy tale into motion. But as the pain wore off, she could feel Agatha lumber up next to her, hands on the wall.
Sophie heard that strange hissing behind it, along with muffled voices— “They’re inside! I hear them!” she said.
She thrust her ear to the stone, trying to hear more, and felt it creak under her weight.
“It’s another door,” said Sophie, surprised.
“But there’s no handle,” said Agatha. “On the count of three, push as hard as you can. One . . . two . . .”
“On three or after three?”
“After three, you dolt.”
“So on four, really.”
“NO! After three!”
“Let me count, then,” said Sophie.
“Hurry, you idiot!”
“One . . . two . . . three!”
They shoved the door as hard as they could and plunged through into a blitz of daylight— “Watch out!” Hort’s voice cried.
Toppling forward, Sophie snagged Agatha by the waist, trapping her in place. The two girls froze like mannequins, muscles clenched, breaths held.
Their bodies were an inch from being impaled on a bloodstained sword, planted handle-first into the dirt of a stone cave that opened into gray skies and a view of Avalon’s coastline below.
The sword had Camelot’s seal on the hilt.
Chaddick’s sword.
Curled around it were two king cobras, hissing with forked tongues, mimicking the warped Camelot seal they’d seen on the map in Chaddick’s dead hands. Behind the sword were dozens of treasure chests, hanging open and empty, with black velvet lining inside and the same snake-and-sword emblem carved on the outside. But that wasn’t the most ominous sight. Because as Sophie peered closer, she saw now that the chests weren’t empty at all. . . .
The black velvet was moving.
Snakes.
Hundreds of them.
Thin black ribbons, slowly slithering out of the chests and slipping into the sand.
“Don’t move,” said Nicola’s voice above her.
Slowly Sophie’s eyes lifted and saw the crew clinging to icicles on the ceiling of the cave.
“They’re asps. They only see motion,” warned Nicola, hanging on the same icicle as Hort. “I read about them in The Brahman and the Jackal—”
“No one cares,” Sophie retorted. “All we care about is are they deadly?”
“Why do you think we’re up here, you oaf!” Hort lashed. “Beaver trapped us while you two were off kissing somewhere!”
Sophie’s eyes bulged—not just because Hort had never been so rude, but because even if the asps hadn’t spotted her and Agatha, the cobras had. The two bigger snakes flicked off the sword, coiled in the dirt, and slithered towards the two girls.
“Aggie . . . ,” Sophie hissed, watching their hoods spread with fiery red-and-orange patterns. She and Agatha stepped back, but the cobras accelerated, fangs gleaming.
“Agatha . . .”
The two snakes split paths, each heading for a different girl, faster, faster, like eels gliding through sea.
“Agatha!”
The cobras launched for their throats, jaws wide—
Agatha threw Sophie out the door and heaved it closed, hearing the cobras’ bodies smack against stone.
Sweating hard, Agatha shouted through a slit in the door, “Where’s the beaver?”
“Escaped, the sleazy trash-ball,” Hester spat back. “Managed to get him by the neck with my legs for a second. Long enough to squeeze him into confessing that he got paid to kill us. Someone in a green mask. Didn’t have the faintest clue who the guy was. Said they all get paid for the attacks.”
“Who’s ‘they’?” Sophie asked.
“Everyone who’s been attacking our friends’ quests and terrorizing the kingdoms! Snake’s behind all of it!” said Hester, still in disbelief. “Snake recruited this army of goons to throw the Woods into chaos. Forget that we spent three years trying to keep the balance between Good and Evil. Apparently there’s a whole lot of creeps out there who don’t have any loyalty to either side if you pay them enough. You thought Aric was bad? At least he had a cause. This lot can be bought—”
The echo of hoofbeats cut her off. Inside the cave, the crew turned, looking out the opening. From outside the door, Sophie could see through the cave opening too, down to the faint outline of a beaver astride a gray horse galloping along the coast and out of view.
“Guess that answers the question of who’s been feeding the horse,” said Dot.
“I’m losing grip!” Anadil yelped.
Hester swiveled to her best friend slipping off a melting icicle, her three rats hanging by each other’s tails. Hester spun to Dot. “Turn it to chocolate—something she can hold—”
“First, it’ll melt, and second, magic doesn’t work here!” Dot railed.
“I’m gonna fall!” Anadil gasped.
Without thinking, Agatha pulled at the door, about to rush in, but Sophie yanked her back. “You’ll get killed!”
Agatha kicked the wall in frustration. “In storybooks, what kills snakes?”
“Handsome princes with swords?” said Sophie.
“WHAT KILLS SNAKES,” Agatha shouted into the cave.
“Lions!” Dot replied. “That’s what The Lion and the Snake said!”
“No lions here,” clipped Bogden, wrapped around Willam’s icicle.
“What about cats!” said Agatha. “Reaper hates snakes!”
“No cats,” said Bogden.
“Demons!” said Hort. “In Bloodbrook, that’s how we get rid of—”
“Magic doesn’t work,” said Bogden, nodding at Hester’s dormant tattoo.
“Instead of telling us what doesn’t work, why don’t you tell us what does!” Sophie yelled through the door.
“Look, any moron knows only one thing kills snakes in fairy tales!” Nicola exploded, as if she couldn’t take it anymore.