I knew this wasn’t true. Like most villains, Jez tried to hide her weaknesses. Wanting your mommy? That was a weakness.
“But … none of you know your non-villain parents?” asked Ileana, astonished.
“Nope,” we all said at once.
“Mine abandoned me when she saw how cute and furry I was,” said Wolf, lolling his tongue in a half smile, but I knew it kind of hurt his feelings.
His mom had taken one look at baby Wolf and sent him adrift in a basket down the river. Talk about poor parenting skills. That’s probably why Wolf had a soft spot for that drowning human kid all those years ago. Anyway, Big Bad Wolf Senior found out about it, fished Wolf out of the river just in the nick of time, and raised him as a villain.
“What about you, Dodge?” asked Ileana. “Where’s your mom?”
“Uh, mine uh … got her head chopped off,” said Dodge.
We all looked at him in shock. Even for a villain, that was kind of gruesome.
“What?” he asked, playing with his bootlace again. “Construction accident.”
“How did your mom die?” Ileana asked me.
“Die? I don’t think she died,” I said.
“So, she’s still alive? Out there somewhere?”
“I guess.” Now I was fidgeting with my bootlace.
“Don’t you want to find her? To meet her?” Ileana pressed.
“What for?” I asked, feeling weirdly angry.
“She’s your mother!” Ileana said. “How did you end up with your dad?”
“I don’t know!” I snapped. “I suppose she gave me up. Or maybe Dad stole me out of my frilly blue crib. Who cares? The point is I’m a villain, and this is where I belong.”
I quit fidgeting with my boots and folded my arms across my chest again.
“So let me get this straight,” said Ileana. “You don’t know who your mom is or how you ended up here with your dad?”
“She has a point, Rune,” said Jezebel. “I mean, most of us at least know what happened to our non-villain parents.”
“Are you seriously taking her side?”
I was feeling crabbier by the second, but I still didn’t know exactly why. I just didn’t want to talk about my mom, whoever she was.
“No! I just think it is kind of weird you don’t know anything about your mom,” said Jez.
“Your dad never told you anything?” Ileana asked.
“Have you met my dad? He’s not exactly chatty.”
“We have to find out who she is,” said the princess.
“What?” I asked, looking up suddenly. I was really cranky now. I mean, it was my mom. Why was Ileana all up in my face about it?
“I’ll help,” said Wolf Junior.
“Me too. I’d like to know who she is,” said Jezebel.
“Hey! I know a quick way to find out!” said Dodge, suddenly sounding much livelier than he had in weeks. “That crystal ball in Master Dreadthorn’s study!”
“What!” I said in alarm.
“Rune has a key,” said Dodge, pointing at me. “We could sneak in and—”
“Hold on! No way!” I said. “If he finds out, he’ll blame me! He’ll skin me alive!”
“But—” said Ileana.
“No! End of subject!” I said, standing up suddenly and dusting off my cloak.
“Fine,” said the princess as she, too, stood up and straightened out her gown, but I thought she’d given up too easily. I glared at her, trying to see if she meant it or if she was just playing me.
The party kind of wound down after that. We bundled up our supplies, put out the torches, and made our way back to the Great Clock.
“See you guys tomorrow,” I mumbled, feeling angry and tired and some other emotion that I hardly ever experienced: sad.
“Rune, wait. I wanted to tell you something,” said Jezebel, reaching out her pale hand and touching my sleeve. “It’s important.”
“I’m not really in the mood, Jez,” I said, shrugging her off.
And it was true. Talking about my mom had kind of depressed me. I’d never really thought about her that much, but whenever I did, it made me a little cranky. I turned my back on Jez and stomped off to my room.
Chapter Five
A Girl Villain’s Mind
The next night, I woke late to find Dodge already gone to breakfast. Quickly, I got dressed, fed Eye of Newt a few fire ants, then dashed down the corridor hoping the Dreary-Os weren’t all gone. Human kids always went for the cereal first, so latecomers usually ended up eating werewolf kibble or some kind of troll cereal like Box-O-Rocks, which is literally a box of rocks. Not wanting to break a tooth or get dog breath, I picked up the pace.
I arrived in the cafeteria cave, grappled with a Crook for the last few crumbs of Dreary-Os, and found a seat with my allies. Ileana was holding a huge bouquet of flowers. I had a sneaking suspicion she’d conjured them with a spell. Like her mother, Ileana seemed to have a knack for Spelling.
“Those are contraband, you know,” Wolf said, nodding to the flowers and wringing his tail nervously between his paws. “Not allowed at villain school. If we get caught with those, it could mean big trouble.”
This was for two reasons. One, flowers just don’t scream evil overlord, and two, villains are often brought down by ridiculous weaknesses—like seasonal allergies.
“Who cares?” Ileana asked, inhaling deeply. “I like flowers. This place is so bleak sometimes. Besides, I needed them.”
“For what?” asked Dodge, suddenly curious.
“This,” Ileana said. We all leaned in closer as she parted the bouquet to reveal a hidden object inside.
“What. Have. You. Done!” I whispered, glancing nervously from side to side.
“Don’t worry. I just picked the lock. It was no problem. I conjured up a fake to replace it, too. I’ll return it before he even notices.”
“He’s going to kill me,” I said.
Nestled in the flowers was the Dread Master’s crystal ball. Wolf whimpered, but Dodge was smiling admiringly at the princess.
“There’s no reason for him to suspect you,” said Ileana.
“He always suspects me!”
“As soon as I find out who your mom is, I’ll let you know,” she said, concealing the crystal ball as Master Stiltskin shuffled by, flashing a toothless grin at us.
I gave Ileana the evil eye, but I couldn’t say anything with a teacher so close. Then I noticed something.
“Hey, where’s Jez? She said she wanted to talk to me last night.”
Ileana, Wolf, and even Dodge all looked at one another.
“I thought you knew,” Wolf said.
“Knew what?” I asked, feeling suspicious. Obviously something was up.
“Jez was transferred. To Mistress Morgana’s,” said Wolf.
“What?” I asked. My mouth was hanging open as my brain tried to process the information.
“I think her dad, the count, set it up,” Ileana said. “She left last night. That’s why she was packing her extensive wardrobe.” The princess made air quotes with her fingers. “She’s known about it for weeks now. That’s the reason she was so moody.”
“She’s always moody!” I said.
I couldn’t believe it. Jezebel? Gone! The bell rang and everyone got up to go to their classes, but I just sat at the table, stunned. Ileana patted me on the back.
“Sorry, Rune,” she said. Then she left, and the cafeteria cave was empty.
The rest of that day was a haze. I couldn’t concentrate in any of my classes. In Mad Science, I was called on to demonstrate the progress of my doomsday device. It created some seriously burnt toast and then showered everyone with hot tea, causing a few minor burns. However, Doctor Mindbrood didn’t think that burnt toast and hot tea were evil enough for annihilating humanity, so I had to start over.
I was so depressed by the time my dad’s class rolled around, I ended up forgetting to take any notes during his lecture. Of course he noticed, and gave me a week’s worth of slug sl
ime patrols on top of my regular dragon duty.
* * *
“This stinks,” I said as I scrubbed slime with a couple of Crooks who looked like they’d just graduated to training pants five minutes ago. It had been a few days since Jez had left, but I was still mad at her.
“I mean, she didn’t even tell me!” I said, plunging my sponge into the bucket of soapy water, showering the nearby Crooks with suds. “She couldn’t even leave a note or something? Seriously! You give a vampire the best years of your life. I mean, it’s not like we were dating or anything, but I thought … she … I … Dumb girls! Maybe I’ll transfer and see how she likes it. I won’t say a word! Yeah. Yeah! I’ll transfer to an all-boys villain school in Siberia, and she can just deal with it! No-good, useless, blood-sucking chocolate addict!”
I really had no idea what I was talking about. Mostly I wanted to vent. And the wide-eyed Crooks were good listeners. Either that or they were terrified beyond words. After the halls were sparkly clean, and I’d run out of names to call Jezebel, I trudged back to my room to find Dodge standing outside, smiling a typical evil villain grin. His mood had definitely improved in the last few days. Wolf was standing beside him panting with excitement.
“What?” I asked with my head hanging. I felt like I’d run out of steam.
“We noticed you were still bummed about Jez,” Wolf said. His tail was wagging. I always knew something was up when his tail wagged like that.
“So?” I asked.
“Sooooo,” Dodge said, putting one hand on my shoulder. “We have an idea to cheer you up.”
* * *
That’s how I found myself standing with Wolf and Dodge outside the entrance to the girls’ dormitories in the middle of the day. The Great Clock chimed/honked the hour. It was one in the afternoon. Except for a couple of random teachers roaming the shadowy halls, almost everyone was asleep. As the clanging of the clock faded, an unnerving quiet settled over the school.
In front of us stretched the corridor leading to the girls’ dorms. It was dark except for a few weak torches that glowed green with dragonfire. At the end of the long hall, I could just make out doorways carved into the rocky walls. Those would be the villainesses’ rooms.
“Remind me why we’re doing this,” I said, glancing around, afraid that at any moment I’d see Master Dreadthorn standing behind us.
“To cheer you up,” Wolf answered, grinning his doggy grin and patting me on the back with his paw.
“It’s not working,” I said nervously.
“Don’t worry, I have a plan,” Dodge said, staring down the hallway toward the girls’ dorms.
“What’s the plan again?” I asked.
“To get past the traps, break into Princess Ileana’s room, and get back out without being caught,” Dodge said. Sometimes I didn’t really know what to think of Dodge. One minute he was Mister Quiet-and-Polite and the next he was all gung-ho-let’s-break-into-the-girls’-dorms.
“Why Ileana’s room?” I asked, raising one eyebrow distrustfully.
“Because if we screw up or get caught, she won’t try to hex us, or sit on us, or bite us like the other witch, troll, and vampire girls would,” answered Dodge.
“Fair enough,” I said. “But it’s guarded by traps that are, you know, specifically tailored to a villainess’s mind. How do we get past?”
“Hold on.” Dodge reached into his cloak pocket and pulled out a folded piece of parchment that looked about a gazillion years old.
“What’s that?” Wolf asked, leaning in, his tongue lolling. Dodge pushed him back so he wouldn’t slobber all over the paper.
“Blueprints. It shows all the traps and how to get past them.”
“No way!” Wolf said, tail wagging. I moved in for a closer look.
“Where’d you get that?” I asked, my bad mood replaced with curiosity.
“Who cares where he got it? The point is we’re going to use it!” said Wolf, his tail thumping hard enough to make the torches flicker.
“Look here.” Dodge pointed to almost the exact place we were standing.
“There are hidden mechanisms in the floor,” I said as I examined the blueprint.
“What happens if we step on them?” Wolf asked.
“Let’s find out,” said Dodge.
He picked up a loose rock and tossed it on the floor where one of the trick stones was marked on the map. There was a faint whispering sound, like a puff of air, and four tiny darts shot out from innocent-looking cracks in the wall on our right and stuck into the opposite wall. Steam hissed up from where the darts stuck.
“Poison darts,” said Dodge, squeezing the blueprints and glancing nervously at me.
Wolf’s ears drooped as he whimpered. His tail went limp.
“Follow my footsteps,” said Dodge, looking very determined.
They were probably just sleeping darts. Not deadly, I mean. After all, we were just kids. Villain kids. Sneaking out. To raid the girls’ dorms and okay! They probably were deadly.
“Are you sure this is worth it?” I said, frowning at the smoking holes the darts had seared into the stone wall.
“Scared, Drexler?” asked Dodge, whose grin was not entirely pleasant.
He didn’t wait for an answer. Holding the blueprint in front, Dodge began a series of movements. I followed him, and Wolf Junior came up behind. We picked up first one leg, hopped, set our leg down, then repeated with the other leg.
“Why does it feel like I’m skipping in slow motion?” I asked.
“Well, you said yourself these obstacles were set up specifically for a girl villain’s mind,” said Dodge.
“Do girl villains skip? I’ve never seen one skip before,” I said.
I could not imagine Jezebel skipping. Great. I was thinking about Jezebel. So far, this lousy plan wasn’t working at all.
“Who cares? Just go!” Wolf said frantically, shoving me forward.
He was panting with fear, and I didn’t want his drool pool setting off a trap, so I hurried along. When Dodge announced we were safe, we all gathered around the blueprint to see what was next.
As we stepped forward, the floor began to shake, and a hidden panel opened directly beneath us. We stepped back. Soon the hole was too wide even to jump across. From somewhere in its depths, I could hear a hissing sound.
“Now what?” I asked, worried the rumbling would bring teachers running at any second.
“This is going to be tough,” Dodge said. “It seems we have to sing a rhyme.”
“What!” Wolf and I said together.
“Who has the highest voice?” asked Dodge.
As the only boy in the group whose voice hadn’t changed yet, I knew exactly where this was going. It didn’t help that Wolf was pointing his furry paw at me.
“No. Way.”
“C’mon Rune,” Dodge said. He handed me the blueprints and pointed to a rhyme written in the corner.
I glared at him and Wolf. They both put their heads together and batted their eyelashes at me. “Pleeeee-ase?” they said.
I sighed.
“Fine. I’m a little villain girl,” I mumbled. The hole grew wider. I could see now that it was crawling with dozens of black snakes.
“You have to do better than that!” Dodge said, stepping away from the widening panel. We were being forced back toward the poisoned darts. I raised my voice a few octaves and sang with more gusto.
“I’m a little villain girl dressed in black. All the little villain boys make me gack!”
As I was singing, the panel began to slide once more, closing the hole.
“Do I have to do this?” I asked. Almost instantly the panel slid open again.
“Rune!”
“Okay! I’m a little villain girl dressed in black. All the little villain boys make me gack! Take a step forward, two steps back.” Which we did. “Sidestep, jump up, land on the crack!”
We stepped to the side as I sang; the hole was almost closed. When we jumped up, the hole closed c
ompletely and we landed on the “crack.”
“That was totally humiliating,” I said.
Wolf and Dodge ignored me. The doorways we’d spotted from the other end of the hall were now tantalizingly close.
“You did great,” Dodge said, absentmindedly patting my shoulder while he examined the blueprints again. “One more challenge.”
“Seriously?” Wolf asked. “The girls do this every time they go to their dorms?”
“No, the traps are only set while everyone’s asleep,” Dodge said.
“Well, why didn’t we just cut class and come during school hours? Would’ve been a lot easier!” Wolf said.
“But our chances of getting caught would have been much higher, too.”
Wolf and I exchanged glances, and I just shrugged. The point of this was to get my mind off Jez. So far, it was working pretty well. It was hard to think about one’s newly transferred traitorous not-exactly-girlfriend while dodging poisoned darts and snake-filled pits and singing embarrassing rhymes.
“So what’s the final trap?” I asked.
“Me,” a cold voice answered.
I knew that voice even before I saw him. Slowly I looked up. Yep. My dad. We were so dead.
Quickly, I tried to think up some kind of lie, some reason that three of us would be in the girls’ dorms while the whole school was in bed. Sleepwalking? No, he’d never buy that. A fire? Poison? Famine? I couldn’t think of anything. We were toast.
“It’s not really him,” Dodge said. “It’s part of the trap. It’s just a bit of warlock magic.”
“I’ll deal with you in a moment,” Master Dreadthorn said, glancing briefly at Dodge before focusing once more on me. “As for you. You will march yourself straight to my study.”
“Don’t listen to him, Rune. It’s the final test. All we have to do is walk past him,” Dodge said, starting forward.
“If he takes one more step, you will be expelled, Rune!” My dad’s eyes flashed.
I reached out and grabbed the back of Dodge’s cloak. He stopped, grunting in frustration.
“Rune, trust me. This isn’t your dad. It’s just a magical projection. It can’t hurt us.”
“I don’t know,” Wolf said, twisting his tail nervously between his paws. “It’s pretty convincing.”
Villain School Page 4
