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That's all I'll say for now! Thanks for reading! :^)

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[Transcript]

        “Well, well, WELL!” creaked the Vice Principal, hitting each repeated “well” much like a hammer would a nail that killed its loved ones. “What do we have here?!”

        “EEP!” peeped Isaac.

        “HOLY GOD,” cried Max, continuing his streak of impromptu religiosity.

        “INCORRECT. You’re about as far from correct as you COULD be, in fact, Mr. Puckett,” Devilora sneered with impish glee, intruding further on the airspace of the gathered middle schoolers.

        She’d appeared without warning, out of the blue and out of place, like a zerg rush suddenly cresting the hill of a well-known painting’s picturesque horizon. Even Johnny looked a little bit surprised, though he was too used to life in her looming shadow to be properly unnerved.

        “What I see are three naughty children gathering before school to CONSPIRE! TELL ME that my AGING EYES deceive me—that’s an ORDER!”

        “...Your... aging eyes... deceive you?” Max cautiously complied.

        “RUDE! DETENTION FOR RUDENESS!” She jabbed a digit towards Isaac and Johnny. “AND YOU TWO! DETENTION FOR DISOBEDIENCE! I GAVE YOU AN ORDER!”

        “N-now, now, Devilora...” came a meek voice from behind her. Principal Pleezdoo tiptoed shyly into view. “We’re a long way from the middle school and the, er... broad authority that you enjoy there. That you, erm, really, really enjoy there.”

        “...Your name is Devilora?” Max asked, honing in on one star in the constellation of absurdity surrounding him.

        “That’s VICE PRINCIPAL to YOU,” hissed Devilora. “...But Lora to my friends, and Devi when my ex-husband was feeling lovey-dovey.”

        Max nearly wretched. This was poisonous knowledge, like learning the name of a big squid that hated you in a cosmic horror story.

        “In any case, Devi, d-detention is a punishment reserved for oopsy-daisies made at school, dear—” stammered Principal Pleezdoo.

        “An excellent point, Miss Posy,” Devilora said. “To normal jail, then.”

        “...Oh, you—you kidder, you. H-hello there, children,” Principal Pleezdoo cringed, erroneously hoping that ignoring the Vice Principal would help to curb her autocratic rampage. “So lovely to bump into you boys outside my office. Goodness knows I never want to see a student inside it! Erm, n-not that my door isn’t open BEFORE you, er... pull a fire alarm to ‘add dramatic tension’ to a food fight...” Principal Pleezdoo glanced at Johnny.

        “Your door wouldn’t open at all when we were tryin’ to TP your desk last week, PP,” said Johnny. “Had to pick the lock. But the pen we used got stuck so we just hit it with a chair.”

        “That’s not—” Principal Pleezdoo shut her eyes just like her therapist had taught her. “Okay.”

        “That’s not okay,” Isaac agreed, trying and failing to push Johnny under the bus. The bully was too dense to budge... and Devilora, normally prepared to punish any and all bus-related shenanigans, was distracted by something high above her on the ceiling of the Corner Shore.

        Principal Pleezdoo noticed first, following her gaze up to its target.

        “...Hm? Devilora, dear, is, er... is everything all right?”

        Max and Isaac, who could have witnessed what entranced her, had looked too late to notice PJ phasing back up through the floor. The little ghost had gotten curious, and thought to peek at Max below... but then that creepy lady had stared straight into his eyes! Could she have seen him? And why on earth did she look so familiar...?

        “We sell snacks, ma’am,” Max suggested. “You don’t have to hunt for house flies if you’re hungry.”

        “...A spider doesn’t hunt,” grinned Devilora, stroking the crooked curve of her prominent chin. “She simply waits... and all the yummy morsels come to her.”

        “I’m not surprised that you’re attracting flies but I’m not sure you should brag about it,” Max quipped, but his joke fell on deaf ears.

        What a valuable excursion this had been! So that poor scamp was still—well, Devilora wouldn’t say ALIVE... but even then, how fortunate!

        Within her host, the Witch was grinning even wider. What a tangled web fate weaved, what bittersweet and scrumptious tragedy! How grand to be the boogeywoman beneath so many bedtime stories—each path that crossed her own was one more chance to be some tale’s unhappy ending! Already the threads were converging in her grasp. She had a plan, a backup plan, red herrings, hostages, contingencies and countermeasures! Fauxbia had EVERYTHING that she’d need to survive—no, to succeed. From here on out, all else would just be icing on the insect!

        “Wow! So many customers!”

        Peter Puckett had returned from the Corner Shore’s stockroom, the residence’s rather cramped garage.

        “And from such a diverse range of age demographics! I must be good at this small business stuff.”

        Devilora realigned her spine to face him, her eyes alight with gleeful recognition.