Isle of the Lost (15 page)

Lady Tremaine snorted. “‘What’s up’ is this…sad excuse for a year-long evil scheme. A grudge against one girl? Party tricks? Pranks? This is beneath you, Mal. I expected more from you. You’re my best student.” She reached for her wine and sipped it, making an appropriately disgusted face.

You expected more? You and everyone else on this island,
Mal thought sullenly.
Get in line.

“What’s wrong with my evil scheme?” she asked.

“It’s just not evil enough,” sniffed Lady Tremaine.

Mal sighed.

Lady Tremaine glared. “I need you to really put your dark heart and foul soul into it. Come up with a truly wicked scheme. One that will bring you to the depths of depravity and heights of wicked greatness of which I know you’re capable.”

Mal kicked the desk and frowned. She’d thought her evil scheme was pretty wicked. “Like what? And how do you know what wicked greatness I’m capable of, anyway?”

“You are Mal, daughter of Maleficent! Who doesn’t know that?” Lady Tremaine shook her head.

You’d be surprised,
Mal thought.

Lady Tremaine continued to sip her wine. “I’m sure you’ll come up with something, dear. You are your mother’s daughter, after all. I expect something truly horrid and legendary for your evil scheme. Something that will go down in
history
,” Lady Tremaine said, returning Mal’s paper to her. “I’ll give you a minute to brainstorm, if that helps.”

Mal looked down at the proposal she’d originally written. At first, she bristled at the criticism. She didn’t want to hear it.

What was wrong with this? It was evil, pure evil. And it was
bad
, wasn’t it? Taking down a princess—that wasn’t exactly a nice thing to do. She was going to make Evie pay, wasn’t she?

And a vendetta, that was a time-honored evil scheme, wasn’t it?

Classic villainy?
What was wrong with that?

Mal wanted to crumple the paper in her hand. She didn’t have time for this. She had other things on her mind…her mother and the Dragon’s Eye, for one, that stupid cursed scepter…

Hey, wait a minute….

What did my mother say about the Dragon’s Eye?

Whoever touches the scepter will be cursed to fall asleep for a thousand years.

Maleficent had only cursed Aurora’s kingdom to fall asleep for a
hundred
years after Sleeping Beauty had pricked her finger on a spinning wheel. This curse put the victim to sleep for a
thousand.

That was like, ten
times
more evil, unless her math was off. Anyway,
much
more evil.
Plus or minus a few zeroes.

Maybe she should embark on this quest, after all.

And if somehow, along the way, she made it happen that
Evie
was the one who would touch the Dragon’s Eye…

Well, that would be the nastiest, wickedest plan the Isle would ever witness! A two-for-one! No, a triple play—

She’d take out the princess and win her own mother’s respect—as well as the school’s evil scheme competition—all at once.

Lady Tremaine was right. All these little petty tricks she had planned to play on Evie were nothing compared to
this
. If Mal sent Evie to sleep for a thousand years—well, what could be nastier than that?

Or, more to the point,
who?

“I’ve got it!” Mal said, jumping up from her chair and giving the startled Lady Tremaine a big hug, despite her better judgment (and Lady Tremaine’s breath). “Something
so
evil, no one has seen it before—or ever will again!”

“Wonderful, child! It makes me so happy to see you so wicked,” sniffed Lady Tremaine, bringing a hankie to her eye. “It brings me hope for our future. Except for, you know. That
hug
.”

Mal smiled triumphantly. Even a sappy hug couldn’t get to her now. She couldn’t wait to get started. Evil waited for no one.

Her mind started turning.

She couldn’t very well embark on an evil quest alone. If she were going to look for a needle in a haystack, or the Dragon’s Eye on the island, she would need minions, her own henchmen to command, just like her mother had. She would have to put together a strike team—plus, it would be easier to get Evie to come with her if she were part of a group.

But where would she get minions of her own? Of course, there were always Maleficent’s henchmen’s kids. Except those boar-like guys stank too much; and as for the goblins and jackals—well, who would run the Slop Shop? Also, as she’d noted before, she didn’t speak Goblin. Besides, her mother kept harping about how useless they’d been during the whole Curse-Sleeping-Beauty mission.

Pass.

Mal would have to find her own team. Her own crew of right-hand-men and one yes-woman in particular.

Where to start?

She’d need someone who knew the island back and forth, upside down and sideways.

Someone who could be counted on if they met any trouble, being a whole lot of trouble himself.

Someone who knew how to get his hands on what he wanted.

She just had to convince him to join her.

Maybe she could promise him some kind of reward, or something.

It was already dark when she left school and went straight to Jafar’s Junk Shop.

M
al tossed pebbles on the junk shop’s window so that they clattered on the sill. “Jay! Are you there?” she shout-whispered. “Jay! Come out! I want to talk to you!” She hurled a few more stones again.

“Who’s making that infernal noise? Doesn’t anyone know how to ring a doorbell these days?” Jafar demanded as he pushed the window open and stuck his head out. He was about to unleash a string of curses when he saw who was standing outside. “Oh, my dear Mal,” he said, his voice still as silky as when he had been advising the Sultan. “How may I be of service?”

Mal was about to apologize when she remembered dark fairies are
never
sorry. “I’m looking for Jay,” she said, trying to sound as commanding as her mother.

“Why, yes, of course,” Jafar said. “I will let him know. Please, come inside.” There was a pause, and then Jafar bellowed in a booming voice, “JAY! MAL WANTS YOU!”

“THERE IN A SEC!” Jay yelled back.

“What’s the deal with villains and birds?” asked Mal, entering the junk shop and finding Iago on Jafar’s shoulder. She thought of how Maleficent showered Diablo with so much affection.

“Excuse me?” Jafar asked, while Iago narrowed his beady eyes at Mal.

“Nothing.”

Jay appeared. “Oh, hey, Mal, funny you’re here, I was just about to head over your way. We should talk more about that—”

“That homework assignment,” Mal said, shooting dagger looks at him. Nobody else could know about the Dragon’s Eye.

“Right, yeah. Homework. Thanks, Dad, I’ll take it from here,” Jay said, indicating pointedly for his dad to leave.

Jafar pulled his robe around him and huffed, Iago squawking and flying behind him.

“Is there somewhere we can talk?” Mal asked when she and Jay were finally alone.

Jay motioned to the junk shop. “What’s wrong with here?”

Mal looked around the messy shop, noticing a few things that were hers in the pile and taking them back without comment. She supposed it was as good a place as any—and seriously, what was she hiding, anyway? It wasn’t as if anyone else would steal Maleficent’s Dragon’s Eye. Who would be dumb enough to do that…?

She squinted at Jay, who was inspecting a beaker that he’d pulled from his pocket. His dark eyes shone with mischief.

“Where’d you get that?” she asked. “What is it?”

“I dunno. Reza had it in his bag. He was all protective about it, so I took it,” Jay explained with a sly smile.

Mal made an impatient gesture. She couldn’t wait to get started and couldn’t afford to get distracted. “Listen, I know you don’t think we can, but we need to figure out how to find that Dragon’s Eye. I mean, it does command all of the forces of darkness when it works. And, who knows? Magic might return to the island one day.”

Jay raised his eyebrows. “Yeah—I was just about to say the same thing.”

“Really?” she asked, shocked that he had taken so little convincing. She began to get a tad suspicious.

Jay blew on his nails. “Yeah. I mean, come on, if it’s really here, we need to get our hands on it. But are you sure your mother’s right? I mean, she is a little crazy in the horn-head.”

Mal rolled her eyes. “You can’t deny Diablo’s back. He was frozen in stone, but he’s alive now. He’s already eaten almost everything in our cupboards.”

“Whoa.”

“I know, right?”

“Iago’s the same. I think he eats more than me and Dad combined.”

They shared a chuckle.

“Okay, great—I was hoping to start searching as soon as possible,” Mal said, willing to overlook the possibility that Jay was only agreeing to help for his own selfish motives. She could handle him.

Jay was about to say something when he turned around, his reflexes swift and suspicious. “What’s that noise?” he asked, just as the door to the back room crashed down and Jafar tumbled through, Iago sitting on his stomach.

“I told you that you were too fat to lean on that door!” Iago scolded.

Jafar made a valiant attempt to take back his dignity, and pulled himself up to stand and brush the dust and detritus from his hair. “Oh, we were just about to ask if the two of you wanted dinner, weren’t we, Iago? But we couldn’t help but overhear…forgive me if we are wrong, but did you say that Maleficent’s Dragon’s Eye scepter is lost somewhere on this island?” Jafar asked, his dark eyes gleaming.

Mal narrowed her eyes at Jay, mentally berating him for not having found a suitable place for them to talk privately. But it was clear that it was too late, and Jafar already knew everything.

Jafar looked solemnly at the two teenagers in front of him. “Follow me, it’s time we had a real conversation.”

He led them to his private sitting room in the back of the shop, a cozy den full of jewel-toned curtains and Oriental rugs, tufted satin pillows and brass lamps and sconces that gave it a mournful, exotic, desert air. Jafar took a seat on one of the long, low couches and motioned for them to make themselves comfortable on the ottomans. “When I was released from my genie bottle and brought here to this cursed island, while I was whizzing through the air, I saw what looked at first like just an ordinary forest but upon closer observation was actually a black castle covered in thorns.”

“Another castle?” Mal asked. “Covered in thorns, you say? But that would mean…that’s…”

Her mother’s true castle. The Bargain Castle was a rental. It wasn’t their true home.
The Forbidden Fortress
. Wasn’t that what her mother’s real home was called? Mal had never paid enough attention, but it certainly sounded familiar. And where else could it be but the Isle of the Lost?

Jafar pulled on his raggedy beard. “Yes. But I’m afraid I can’t be sure of exactly where it is, though. This island is far larger than you think, and you could look forever and never find it, especially if it is hidden in the forbidden zone.”
Nowhere
, as it was called by the citizens of the Isle.

“Never!” repeated Iago with a ruffle of his feathers.

“That’s what I said.” Jay nodded.

“I had completely forgotten about seeing the fortress until now, when you mentioned Diablo’s return and his testimony that he saw the Dragon’s Eye himself,” said Jafar. “And if the fortress is on the island, perhaps it’s not all that’s hidden in the mist.”

“But why would it be here?” Jay asked, leaning forward on his knees and looking at his father intently.

“These things were too dangerous to keep in Auradon. And with magic made impossible by the dome, they are harmless now. But if we were to take back what is rightfully ours, perhaps we might have a chance against that invisible barrier one day.”

“Diablo swears the Dragon’s Eye has sparked back to life. Which means that maybe the shield is not as impenetrable as we thought,” said Mal. “But we’re still stuck with not knowing exactly where it is. There’s not exactly a map to Nowhere.”

“We can try the Athenaeum of Evil,” said Jay promptly.

“The Anthe-what of Evil?”

“The Library of Forbidden Secrets in Dragon Hall—you know, that locked door that no one’s supposed to go into. The one with the big spider guarding it.”

Mal shook her head. “You really think that’s anything? I always thought it was just a way to keep the first-years out of Dr. Facilier’s office.”

“Well, we have to start somewhere. And I remember Dr. F mentioning in Enrichment that the library contains information about the history of the island.”

“Since when do you pay attention in class?” Mal asked disgustedly.

“Listen, you want my help, or not?”

Jay had a point. It was a start, and she’d learned more about the island in one evening at the junk shop than she had in sixteen years. “All right.”

“We’ll go tomorrow, bright and early,” Jay said cheerfully. “Meet at the bazaar for supplies first, as soon as the market opens.”

Mal made a face. She hated getting up early. “What’s wrong with tonight?”

“The orchestra’s playing a concert tonight, there will be too many people around. Tomorrow’s Saturday: no one will be there. Easier.”