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Reduced so that you could never again harm us. I remember how your friends and teachers came to your aid against my direct orders. In short, I remember…everything.”
    Charlie felt light-headed. He desperately wanted to sit down, put his head between his knees, close his eyes, and pretend this was all a bad dream—but he knew better.
    Unfortunately, all the things the Director said were true: Charlie had allowed Barakkas to come to Earth and join Verminion. It had been accidental, of course. Charlie’s untrained power was so strong that, under horrible stress, he had mistakenly opened a portal into the Inner Circle of the Nether, and Barakkas had rushed through.
    As a result, the Director had called for Charlie to be “Reduced”—a quaint name for a barbaric surgical procedure that would have forever stripped Charlie of the ability to portal or banish. In fact, it had been done to Pinch as a child, leaving him bitter and powerless. The Headmaster, Rex, and Tabitha had flatly refused to allow that to happen to Charlie, which placed them all squarely in the Director’s crosshairs.
    “You’re probably wondering how I remember?” the Director said, getting up from behind his desk and walking toward them. He ran his long fingers through his slicked-back gray hair, releasing the odor of the grooming product he’d used to style it—something almondy. “God knows you did everything on heaven and earth and elsewhere to make me forget.”
    And there it was, finally.
    The Hags, Charlie thought, sick to his stomach. He knows about the Hags of the Void.
    “You must have thought you were so clever,” the Director said, his eyes drawn down to slits, “using the Queen of the Hags to take away my memories of your crimes. How brilliant you all must have thought you were. How remarkably devious.”
    “What’s he talking about?” Theodore whispered.
    “I have no idea,” Violet said with a shrug.
    But I sure do, Charlie thought grimly.
    He hadn’t been there when the Headmaster, Rex, and Tabitha kidnapped the Director and brought him to the Queen of the Hags, but he had seen what the foul beast could do. She flew toward you on her powerful leather wings, enfolded you in them, and then, leaning back her green scaly head, she snaked a shockingly long tongue through her forest of teeth and plunged it into your ear, where she sucked deeply of—
    Your memories.
    She ate them like chocolate candies, and when she was done, you lost them forever.
    Except not this time.
    The Hag Queen had taken from the Director all the memories of Charlie and his friends…but somehow he had gotten them back.
    “How?” Charlie asked. “How did you remember?”
    “Look around you.” Director Drake gestured at the remarkable electronics of the Nightmare Division. “Everything that happens here is recorded and catalogued. It was only a matter of time before the members of my council showed me those recordings…reminded me what you had done to me, what all of you had done to me.” He leaned in so close that Charlie could see the coffee stains on his teeth. “Or did you think I would never find out?”
    “Of course we expected you to find out,” the Headmaster replied, startling Charlie. He had forgotten she was even in the room.
    “And what did you plan to do then?”
    “Why, take you back to the Hag, of course. Get your memory wiped, like we always do.”
    “Like you always…” Director Drake’s face suddenly went the color of ash. With his gray hair and gray eyes, he looked like the tin man from some evil, alternate version of The Wizard of Oz. “You don’t actually mean you—”
    “Oh, Reginald,” the Headmaster interrupted. “You can’t possibly think this is the first time you’ve remembered, do you? Why in the world would the council have waited six months to show you the recordings of our conflicts? They did it right away, of course, and, right away, we brought you back to the Hag to have your memory wiped