All The Kinds Of Love

•11•

Classes had started the next morning.

Hester and Anadil had been reasonably civil to Zita all evening. It had helped that there had been things to do to keep them occupied, so they didn't have to resort to taunts to save themselves from boredom.

The next morning, they were eating burnt toast, glaring at Evers, just like old times.

Except Dot wasn't there.

And Zita was.

And Zita was nothing like Dot.

However, she did provide answers to things they had been wondering.

"The Ever towers," (the word Ever was said with considerable scorn), "used to be purity and charity for girls and honour and valour for boys, but then they finally realised it was sexist and the way Evil has been doing it is way better, so now they're Purity, Honour, and Courtesy, I think. So it's more gender equal and all that."

One mystery: solved.

"What about the moat?" Anadil queried. "My cousin said it was all sludgy, but it's really not."

"Yeah, so in recent years, Good have tried to be less sexist, and Evil have tried to be less degrading." Zita explained. "Basically, they're tryna prove you don't need to live in horrible conditions to be evil. So, the moat and food and stuff."

Their first class of the day was Special Talents with their old friend, Sheeba Sheeks.

They discovered Zita's slightly-better-than-average strength, a boy called Valdrax who could (almost) breathe fire, someone who could (sort of) camouflage themselves (sort of) and many more budding talents.

There was even a girl who claimed she could change the thickness of her hair at will, though how this helped in villainy at all, no-one knew.

Of course, the coven had to underplay their skills.

Dot's bees flew around a bit and managed to lift up a pen; Hester turned some water faintly poisonous, the sort that would make you sick but not kill you, as Dot's roommate Sienna discovered; and Anadil made her crow poop on someone else's head and throw a pencil at someone else.

Despite this, they all did well. Hester placed second, Anadil third, and Dot fifth.

The winner was (annoyingly) Zita, who had managed to break a chair. The good news was her grades were inconsistent, and, as Valdrax whispered, she would often do very well one week and horribly the next.

Ranked just before Dot was a boy named Malroth who'd sprouted tiny horns from his head.

After Dot was Valdrax, then a girl called Makara, then camouflage boy, followed by a girl who'd moved a cup about an inch to the left without touching it.

Sienna was near the bottom, partially because she was stupid enough to drink the poisoned water, but she was still ahead of Thick Hair Girl, whom Valdrax whispered was dangerously close to being sent to the Doom Room.

Next was history, taught by an old sorceror who believed wholeheartedly in the teachings of August Sader.

He started by asking the three newcomers about their family history.