Sophie locked eyes with Agatha, their hearts stopped.
Every trapdoor started to magically open, all the prisoners about to drop through.
The crowd reeled, preparing for mass carnage—
Suddenly fire-tipped arrows bombed down from the sky, just missing the Snake and igniting the wooden platform.
The Snake swiveled, taken by surprise, the gallows doors still half-open.
In the distance, the mob parted a path as two figures in buckskin tunics blazed through, astride a red-spotted deer: a blond shooting arrows from a bow as someone behind, dark-skinned with long brown hair, lit arrows on fire with her purple fingerglow. They were being chased by at least fifty bellowing pirates with swords and spears, trying to catch up with the sprinting deer. Sophie recognized the riders at once— “Beatrix and Reena,” Sophie marveled.
And the deer was . . .
“Millicent,” Agatha realized.
More of Beatrix’s arrows rained over the wall, aimed at the Snake— He split into a thousand squealing scims, dispersing like leeches to elude them.
Reenergized, the crowd came to Beatrix’s and Reena’s defense, rushing headlong at the pirates, while onstage flames from the missed arrows started to spread.
Agatha whirled to Sophie. “Fire kills the scims! Just like fire killed Rafal’s zombies!”
She grabbed one of Beatrix’s missed arrows and lit Kiko’s noose, searing away the shrieking eel and setting her classmate free.
Kiko blubbered: “I thought I was going to die and then I would see my beautiful Tristan up there in heaven and I would say—”
“Kiko!” Agatha said, glaring at all the prisoners still hanging.
“Good point,” said Kiko.
Like a rabbit, Kiko dashed across the blazing stage, grabbing arrows out of the wood and lighting the scaly nooses on fire along with the chains between prisoners, starting with Nicola’s.
“I have no idea who you are, but Sophie doesn’t help anyone unless they’re important,” Kiko cheeped, before burning through Nicola’s cuffs, which let Sophie drop the first year to the stage, grab one of Kiko’s arrows, and start helping the others in the row, while Agatha took the second and third rows.
“Hurry, Sophie!” Agatha cried, as she freed the young princes of Jaunt Jolie. “The fire is spreading!”
Sophie ran to Hort first. But out of the side of her eye, she glimpsed Beatrix and Reena outside the iced walls, cornered by the pair of young pirates they’d seen kicking cages in Castle Jolie. The boys had stripped the Evergirls of their bows and arrows and were aiming the arrows back at their heads. Beatrix and Reena leapt off Millicent and hewed together, confronting the pirates with lit fingers. . . .
“Man-wolf. Now,” Sophie ordered Hort as she freed him.
“Aye-aye, Captain,” Hort said, lighting his fingerglow and bursting out of his breeches a mighty, hairy beast, before scaling the Camelot flagpole in a single bound and bellyflopping onto the pirates with a howl.
As Kiko, Nicola, and the other freed prisoners helped burn away more nooses, Sophie felt Agatha seize her from behind.
“Whole stage will collapse!” Agatha said, covering her mouth from the smoke. “We have to get everyone out of here!”
Sophie squinted up at the high walls that sealed them into the Four Point, while the war against the pirates raged beyond them. “But how can we get them over that?”
“Leave it to me,” Hester grunted, prying between the girls, fingerglow lit. The tattooed demon on her neck engorged with blood, turning redder, redder, until it tore out of its chains and flew off her skin, swelling to three-dimensional life. Mumbling hissy gibberish, it began snatching prisoners from the stage, three at a time, starting with kings and queens, and ferrying them over the walls and to the ground beyond, where throngs of citizens shielded them and spirited them back towards their kingdoms.
“Move faster, Hester!” Agatha cried as the witch directed the demon with her glow from inside the Four Point. “Stage is burning up!”
“And I’m on the stage so believe me when I say I’m moving as fast as I can!” Hester berated.
Eyes watering from the smoke, Sophie weaved around the fires, intending to free Mona and Brone next— But now she saw Hort’s man-wolf slammed up against the glass wall in front of her by tattooed Thiago, who’d pinned the tip of his pirate blade against Hort’s hairy belly.
“Knew I’d seen yer grubby lil’ face before,” Thiago seethed. “Scourie’s son. Bragged ye’d be the first man-wolf pirate at Hook’s Parley years ago. Took a blood oath to help us fight the Lost Boys. Instead ye turn round and kill Hook’s captain like yer Pan’s stooge. Ye killed my father.” He dug his blade into Hort’s stomach, drawing drops of blood. “Shoulda bragged ye’d be the first fink.”
“I did what any true man would have, unlike your lot,” Hort growled in pain. “You kill for money. You follow a leader with no soul. You’re the real Lost Boys.”
Thiago cut him deeper. “Bleats a pirate who killed one of ’is own.”
“What I killed wasn’t your father,” Hort insisted.
“Tell yerself all the lies ye want,” Thiago snarled. “But this I know fer sure. The thing I’m about to kill is you.”
He gripped the sword hilt to run Hort through, but Hort grabbed the blade by the tip and muscled it away from his stomach, the steel slicing into his hand. Before Thiago could react, Hort slapped him across the head as hard as he could with his big, hairy palm. The pirate wheeled wildly, swinging his sword and biting it into Hort’s bicep, spattering the frozen wall with blood and obscuring Sophie’s view.
Spinning around, Sophie saw Hester’s demon had rescued nearly all the prisoners from the stage, with only her, Agatha, Hester, Anadil, and Dot left. On the battlefield, Willam, Bogden, Beatrix, Reena, and Nicola were fighting pirates with weapons flung at them by fleeing citizens— Hester’s demon swooped to rescue Sophie, his beady eyes flashing: “Lookie missie witchie fishie!”
“No, take the witches!” Sophie said, ducking his grab. “You three! Go help Hort!”
The witches gaped at Sophie, then at Agatha, as if they didn’t trust Sophie could possibly be deferring her own rescue.
“Go!” Agatha cried.
Immediately the three witches hooked on to the demon’s claws and flew up and over the walls. As he streaked down, Hester’s demon attacked Thiago, blasting red firebolts from the demon’s mouth, while Anadil’s rats grew twenty feet tall and crashed into the fray, rampaging through pirates as the three witches rode on the rats’ backs, shooting stun spells right and left.
Onstage, Sophie and Agatha were the only two left behind, pushed to the edge by the fires.