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“Old-fashioned note! Of course!” said Carlos, who couldn’t help but be pleased at the cleverness of their mysterious nemesis.
“Sort of,” said Mal as the other two nodded. Jay looked relieved.
“What happened to your eye? Are you all right?” asked Evie. “Do you need Mal to conjure an ice pack for that?”
“Tourney practice. It’s nothing,” Jay said, waving off their concern.
“But as I was saying, we have to go back home, because we all know the villains won’t rest until Auradon is reduced to rubble and we’re all minions,” Mal said fiercely, as if she would take on an army of them right now.
“Goblins,” said Jay. “Maleficent had goblins for minions, why doesn’t anyone remember that?”
After the group left Carlos to explore the Dark Net to see if he could find any more information on the villains’ plans and whereabouts, Mal decided to visit her mother. It bothered her too much to think that the mysterious M in her note might actually be Maleficent and she wanted to see for herself that her mother was still a lizard. It was late when she arrived in the library, almost time for lights-out. The royal guards, trained in imperial battle tactics by Mulan, stood in front of the double-locked doors and barred her way.
“Really? You know it’s me,” Mal said. “Open up. Family visitors are allowed under the royal decree,” she reminded them like she did every time she grudgingly visited.
The guard on the left grinned. “Oh yes, I see the resemblance now, I think it’s the forked tongue,” he joked, like he always did.
“Ha-ha,” said Mal, pushing her way inside.
The guard on the right grunted. “You have five minutes.”
“I know,” she said as they locked the door behind her and she made her way to the pedestal in the middle of the room with a glass dome sitting on top of it.
When she was a little girl, Mal had been very frightened of her mother. Maleficent was not the help-with-homework, bake-cookies type, after all. She was more the fearsome mistress who sent you on hopeless quests—like the one to retrieve her Dragon’s Eye scepter—and she didn’t take no for an answer.
Even so, these days Mal found it hard to believe she had once feared Maleficent. It was difficult to feel scared of something so small.
But the anonymous message from M had spooked her. Mal stared at her mother, who appeared to be sleeping. Under the glass dome, she looked like any ordinary lizard, harmless, cute even. But Mal knew better. No matter how harmless the reptile looked, it was still the Mistress of Darkness at heart.
So did Maleficent have some secret talent they didn’t know about? Would she able to transform back into herself after transforming to the itty-bitty size of her heart? Was the lizard in there really Maleficent? What if Maleficent was already gone?
Mal stared hard at the tiny purple creature that, when awake, had green eyes just like her mother to see if she could sense something different about it. But the snoozing reptile looked exactly the same as it did the last time she’d visited.
“Hey, Mom, can I talk to you for a second?” she said, careful not to tap on the glass. She’d heard lizards didn’t like that.
The lizard was still, not even a flick of her tongue.
The handful of times when she’d visited Maleficent in the past, it was like this. She never got a reaction of any sort. Mal always found it hard to accept that this small, tiny creature held the soul of the most powerful villain in all the land.
“Did you send me this?” she asked, holding up her phone with the mysterious text. “Are you M?”
No response.
“It’s only the two of us here, Mom, you can tell me if you’ve been changing back. In fact, it would be kind of nice to see you in your nonreptilian form,” she said. Mal still wasn’t above a white lie now and then.
There was no sign that the creature even understood a word she was saying.
Mal sighed. “I guess if you were planning something, you wouldn’t share it with me anyway, right? Seeing as I’m the reason you’re here in the first place.” She rubbed her eyes. “But one day I’ll find a way to get you out. You just have to promise me that you won’t try to destroy everything again.” Mal paused. “Okay, fine, you can cover Sleeping Beauty’s castle in thorny vines. Have a little fun.”
The lizard remained as still as the rock underneath it. The lights-out bell chimed and Mal reluc
tantly got ready to leave. “Fine, don’t tell me anything. I knew this was stupid. You can’t even talk.”
Just then, the floor buckled underneath her from yet another earthquake. Mal swayed and struggled to keep her balance, her heart lurching in her chest. When it was over, she stared at the lizard suspiciously. “I don’t know how you’re doing it, but why do I have a feeling you’re behind this too?”
Someone was skulking outside the door when Mal walked out, and she immediately tensed, prepared for an ambush. But there was no surprise attack, and the stranger had a familiar face.
“Hey, Freddie,” she said, relieved to see her old friend from the Isle, and slightly embarrassed by her reaction.
