“You’re not Good,” Agatha grumbled, dripping sweat. “Plus, they’re probably relieved it’s not them. Also, don’t you have any questing clothes?”
“Like your tomboy getup? You look like a mill worker, while I look like Wendy from Peter Pan, only not as helpless or dull. I told Boobeshwar to hem it, but the fool’s run off with his fiancée—”
Sophie stumbled on her dress again and a shirtless pirate smacked her hard with his horse reins. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen, with a bony torso, a peeling sunburnt face, and a nose broken in two places.
“Izzis what lasses look like atta School for Evil? Pity I aint creepin’ the halls, then,” he chuckled, leering down at her. “School Master passed my house by on kidnappin’ night. Musta thought little ol’ Wesley wouldn’t turn out Evil enough. Too bad. We coulda been friends.” He curled towards Sophie, flashing snaggly teeth. “Bet ye smell like warm cherry pie.”
“Well, you’ll never know since that’s the closest you’ll ever get to me. Or any female, I suspect,” Sophie snipped.
Wesley reddened and spat at her. “Wait ’til the Snake gets his hands on ye.” He rode to join his fellow pirates ahead.
Agatha saw Sophie’s finger glow hot pink. “Steady, Sophie.”
“Dirty thugs. I could kill them all,” Sophie fumed. “Though I’m a little out of practice.”
“They’re taking us to the Snake. That’s what matters,” said Agatha.
The original plan had been to fight the pirates and rescue Beatrix’s quest team, wherever they were. Given reports that the pirates had taken over Jaunt Jolie’s ports, Agatha had expected them to attack the moment the Igraine docked—and they did in startling numbers, surfacing from the water in scaly black cloaks and silver-tipped black boots, scrambling up the boat like lizards. From storybooks, Agatha had expected the pirates to be gnarly old men, with curly beards and stinking of rum, not a band of wild young alley cats. But after two days of sailing from Avalon back into balmy waters, two days that they filled with strategy meetings and spell practice, Agatha’s crew had been prepared for anything. Sophie unleashed a chilling witch’s scream that sent the young rogues diving underwater; Hester’s demon flung them overboard; Anadil’s rats sank teeth into necks; Dot rained steaming hot chocolate on their heads; Hort’s man-wolf pitched boys to the horizon while Willam and Bogden beat them off rails with the only weapons they had left (the beaver had stolen the rest); even Nicola, who had no fingerglow yet, smacked a pirate with her shoe. . . .
Except Agatha had been so focused on her crew that she hadn’t seen the cretin coming up behind her: a young pirate with bloodred tattoos around his eyes who shoved a knife against her throat. He recognized her hideous little face, he’d said, pulling a wet wad of parchment from his pocket—
“Snake said you lot’d be comin’ our way,” the boy cooed, smelling like rancid meat. “Won’t pay us if we don’t bring ye to him alive, though. Wants to kill ye all ’imself. Much as I’d like to cut yer neck and claim the bounty inna name of Thiago of Netherwood. Git my name in a fairy tale the ol’-fashion way. By earnin’ it.” He scowled murderously at the group. “Yellow-bellied cream puffs. Think ’cause you went to that hoity-toity school yer better than the lot of us? Pissin’ Evers and Nevers, questin’ for glory! We’ll see what yer books ’n teachers are worth when yer squealin’ like pigs—”
Hester’s demon launched for him. So did Hort’s man-wolf and the rest of the crew— Agatha ordered them to stand down. Not because she was scared; she was quite sure she could take out this Thiago twerp with a stun spell and a knee to his groin. But after what happened in Avalon, this was their one chance to meet the Snake. They had to find out who this villain was.
But now squired in chains with her crew, Agatha could feel her nerves shredding as they neared the town square. If Tedros could see her right now, he’d be on the next ship out of Camelot to rescue her. It’s why she hadn’t written him, letting her new courier crow idle about the ship instead. She’d come on this quest to ease his problems, not add to them.
A fool’s errand, her soul’s voice said. He can’t be king without going through the fire.
I’m his queen. My duty is to protect him, Agatha fought back.
You can’t protect him from the truth.
“Good lord,” Sophie said, distracting her. “Beasts didn’t take long to put their stink on the place.”
Agatha looked past her and blanched. The main thoroughfare of Jaunt Jolie was once an airy yellow-and-pink pavilion of shops, marble arches, and fountains filled with Wish Fish that painted beautiful water-paintings of people’s deepest wishes. Now it was a steamy pirates’ den with more than fifty sweat-soaked boys lounging on stone benches, spray-painting graffiti, barbecuing beef over open flames, drinking cider out of barrels, and tormenting Wish Fish to draw lewd images. WANTED posters littered the foul-smelling pavilion, featuring different members of Agatha’s crew with varying bounties (there was even one for Bogden at a meager 10 pennies).
“Four hundred gold coins?” Sophie said, spotting her own face on a poster. “Aren’t you at 500, Aggie? Surely a Dean is worth more than a princess—”
“Forget that. How did the Snake know we were coming here?” Agatha asked, scanning posters of Hester . . . Hort . . . Dot. . . .
“Forget that too,” Nicola butted in, staring at a poster of herself. “How does he know my face?”
“Wait a second,” said Agatha, squinting ahead. “Isn’t that . . . Beatrix?”
A portrait of their blond, doe-eyed classmate gazed back at them from one of three WANTED posters on a shop window. The other two posters were of ravishing, brown-skinned Reena and freckly, red-haired Millicent, both assigned by Professor Dovey as helpers to Beatrix in their quest against the pirates.
“Means the Snake hasn’t caught them yet,” Sophie surmised. “Pity.”
“I thought Millicent had been mogrified,” said Agatha.
“No wonder he can’t find her, then—” said Sophie.
“Hey, guys?” Nicola interjected.
Agatha and Sophie followed her eyes to a tattered poster on the ground.
“He killed a queen?” Sophie breathed.
Agatha knew she should feel scared for her own fate, but looking at the queen’s face, she only felt fury. “What kind of boys would help a masked murderer? They’re just like that scummy beaver. Willing to do anything for a bundle of gold.”
And yet scores of gold coins were littered across the pavilion, as if the scoundrels had earned so much booty that this was merely loose change. Nearby, a young pirate urinated on a wall beneath shops graffitied with new names: “DAMSEL IN ’DIS DRESS,” “YO HO HOME FURNISHINGS,” “THE PEG LEG PUB,” “PLUNDER’S PLUMBING.” And all the while, they sang shanties off-key as they waved cider jugs and stomped their silver-tipped boots— Underneath me pirate hat,
That’s where I hide me treasure map!
On the deck where floorboards creak,
That’s where I keep me wooden teeth!
In lovely maidens’ open hearts—