A Crystal of Time (The School for Good and Evil The Camelot Years #2) - Soman Chainani Page 0,91

gawked as Hester and Anadil wrestled the pirate.

“What are we waiting for!” Agatha snapped at them. “Charge!”

Her army let out a roar and throttled through the window to help their friends. As they besieged the villain with kicks and punches and amateur stun spells, Dot pushed through the crowd, knocking first years aside, determined to rejoin her coven and do her part. She jostled her way to the pirate, finger glowing, prepared to turn his clothes to chocolate licorice that would bind him like ropes—

She saw his face and screamed.

“STOP!”

The attack ceased, everyone spinning to Dot, confused.

All except Agatha, who now saw the pirate’s bloodied, bruised face in the moonlight.

The pirate who wasn’t a pirate at all.

“Daddy?” Dot gasped.

Curled up on the stone, the Sheriff of Nottingham squinted up at her, his wild hair coated with rain, his beard dripping blood, his right eye swelling. “I really don’t like your friends,” he snarled.

“What are you doing here?” Dot asked as she, Hester, and Anadil sheepishly helped him up, the Sheriff giving the latter two a hateful look.

His face contorted with pain as he ignored his daughter and looked right at Agatha. “If you want to save your boyfriend, we have to go now.”

Agatha’s chest tightened again, her eyes darting off the catwalk towards the castle. “Go where? There’s no way out . . . there’s pirates . . . they’re coming . . .”

Except they weren’t coming, she realized.

Because she didn’t see any pirates at all.

Not on the catwalk. Not in the School for Evil. Not in the School for Good.

Every last pirate. Gone.

It’s a trap, she thought.

“No time to faff around, Agatha,” the Sheriff growled. “Rhian ain’t just killing your boyfriend. He’s killing all of ’em, Dovey included.”

It hit Agatha like a kick to the stomach. She saw teachers pale around her. Hort too, scared for Nicola.

“Bring your best fighters,” the Sheriff ordered, turning to leave. “Young ones and teachers stay behind to protect the school.”

Agatha couldn’t breathe. “B-b-but I told you! There’s no way to get us out of here safely! Even if we could, there’s no way to get us to Camelot in time—”

“Yes there is,” said the Sheriff, turning back to her.

He raised his arm and held up a familiar gray sack, its ripped pieces stitched together, something squirming inside. His bloodied lips curled into a grin.

“Same way I took care of all those pirates.”

16

PROFESSOR DOVEY

What Makes Your Heart Beat?

I know where Merlin is.

He meant for me to find that clump of hair he sent with Anadil’s rat. He knew I’d understand.

But what I know will come to nothing unless I tell someone.

Someone who can find Merlin if Tedros and I die. Someone out of Rhian’s clutches.

I must tell them before the axe falls. But who? And how?

As soon as we’re shoved out of King’s Cove, these moldy sacks jammed over our heads, all I’m left with is my sense of smell and sound. I feel myself kicked up a staircase, my limbs knocking against the other captives. I recognize Tedros’ solid arms and clasp his sweating hand before we’re pulled apart. Bogden hushes Willam’s whimpers; Valentina’s and Aja’s high-heeled boots clatter out of rhythm; Nicola’s breaths start and stop, a sign that she’s deep in thought. Soon my gown scrapes smooth marble walls, beetle wings rustling as they fall, and my knees buckle as I lurch onto a landing, my body drained from all it has endured. A minty breeze blows in, along with the scent of hyacinths. We must be passing the veranda in the Blue Tower, over the garden where the hyacinths grow. Yes, I hear the songbirds now, the ones outside the queen’s bedroom, where Agatha let me rest when I came to Camelot.

But these senses aren’t all I have to guide me.

There is a sixth sense that only fairy godmothers have.

A sense that churns my blood and makes my palms tingle.

A sense that a story is barreling towards an end that isn’t meant to be, and the only thing that can steer the story right is a fairy godmother’s intervention.

It is this sense that made me help Cinderella the night of the ball. It’s this sense that made me force Agatha to look in the mirror her first year, when she’d given up on her Ever After. It’s this sense that made me come to Camelot before the Snake’s attack. My fellow teachers surely consider the last a mistake: a violation of the Storian’s rules, beyond a fairy godmother’s work. But