Dorothy Must Die (30 page)

“I want her alive,” he said. “I can devise a more appropriate punishment than this barbarism.”

The Lion roared, not lowering his claws. He glanced over at Dorothy.

She stood looking down at Jellia, her cold expression in stark contrast to the atomic glow emanating from her red shoes. The crowd went quiet again, collectively inching backward, as if preparing for her wrath. At her feet, the Tin Woodman had managed to pull himself onto his knees, still smarting from Jellia’s spell. He grasped the hem of Dorothy’s dress and tried to thumb away a spattering of Jellia’s blood. Dorothy slapped his hand away.

“Scarecrow, take her away,” Dorothy said quietly.

As the Lion and the Scarecrow yanked Jellia to her feet, Dorothy swung her gaze over the crowd. Her cheek was mottled with pinpricks of Jellia’s blood.

“Let this be a lesson to all of you,” she said quietly, although her voice carried through the throne room. “This is where revolution will get you. In Dorothy’s Oz, there is no room for the Wicked.”

“Nox?” I whispered urgently, caught up in the rush of the crowd leaving the throne room. I wasn’t sure where he was, or even who he was. I was certain he’d be wearing someone else’s face, like me. I didn’t want to lose him, not now.

A guy in front of me in a pointed hat with little bells on the brim—part of a juggling troupe, I think—looked over his shoulder at me. He had blond hair and pale skin and a face I didn’t recognize.

“Not now,” he said. His voice was all Nox. Luckily, everyone was chattering so loudly that they couldn’t hear us. “Go to your room,” he ordered. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Then he pushed his way into the sea of people and was gone.

He must’ve known everything. That I’d jeopardized my mission in order to free Maude, and that Jellia was forced to sacrifice herself because of me. That’s what he meant when he whispered to me, I was sure of it. I was responsible for Jellia’s horrible fate, but how could I
not
have tried freeing Maude? It was the right thing to do. At least, it seemed so at the time. Now, it seemed like I’d merely traded Maude for Jellia. The Scarecrow’s laboratory wouldn’t be empty for long. I felt sick to my stomach.

Back in my room I sat on my bed, too full of nervous energy and confusion to even move. I picked Star up and held her, trying to calm myself down. It didn’t work. I watched the door, waiting for it to open.

Instead, after what felt like an hour but was probably more like fifteen minutes, Nox’s image appeared in the mirror, and he stepped right into my room.

He was still in disguise, still had the yellow hair and round face that looked nothing like his own. But it was him.

“Sorry,” he said. “I hate to intrude.”

I wanted to wrap my arms around him. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to tell him everything. About how hard the last week had been, about how lonely and confused I’d been without him.

“Amy,” he said, practically before he’d even fully materialized. “You’ve put us in a terrible position.”

He looked at me, and then his disguise faded away, and the Nox I knew—dark and angular and strong—stood before me. His eyes blazed with anger.

“Jellia is going to die because of your pointless risk. She’s been a loyal agent for the Order almost since the beginning, and now we’ve lost her. Because of you.”

“I didn’t . . .” I began to defend myself, but I didn’t know how to finish the sentence. I turned my face away from his. “I had to,” I said. “I couldn’t let the Scarecrow do that to that poor monkey. And the Wizard told me . . .”

“The
Wizard
?” Nox asked incredulously. “Why would you listen to anything the Wizard told you?”

“He was trying to give me a message,” I said. “Trying to tell me that Maude was important. That the Scarecrow was using her to create something. That we had to stop him.”

Nox stared at me as if I was the stupidest person alive. “The Wizard is a manipulator, Amy,” he replied. “It’s what he does. It’s how he survives. You can’t believe a word he says.”

“I can’t believe a word
any
of you say,” I snapped, my temper flaring. “Maybe if you’d actually told me Jellia was my handler, if I’d
known
—”

“You didn’t need to know,” he answered. “It wasn’t part of the plan—”

“What freaking
plan
?” I practically shouted. Days of frustration, of living in the dark, were beginning to boil in my blood. “You didn’t tell me what I was supposed to do. You didn’t give me anything to go on.”

Nox shook his head. “When will you learn? Some things are bigger than you, Amy.”

I didn’t want to hear any of that mission-before-all-else crap. So I shoved him. Nox stumbled back, surprised.

“You just left me here,” I yelled, jabbing his chest with my finger. “I didn’t know if I’d ever hear from any of you again.”

Nox caught at my wrists, stopping me before I could shove him again. “Do you think I
liked
leaving you here? Not being able to talk to you or see you, not knowing whether you were okay or not? I did it because I had to, not because I wanted to.”

“I’m just a chess piece for you people to move around,” I hissed, tearing away from his grip.

For a moment, I thought I saw a look of genuine hurt cross Nox’s face. But then he drew himself up, his voice going cold.

“And now you’ve ruined everything,” he said quietly. “We had a plan, and Jellia was part of it. Now she’s gone, and every second I’m here puts everything we’ve worked for at risk.”

“You want to make me feel worse?” I asked. “Is that it?”

“I thought I could trust you,” Nox said. “I thought you understood what we were trying to accomplish.”

At that, I had to look away. I was furious at him for putting me in this position, but it’d been my decision to free Maude, and ultimately that meant what happened to Jellia was on me.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean for Jellia to get hurt.”

“Being sorry doesn’t change anything,” Nox said with a sigh. “All it does is waste your energy. And you’ll need every bit of strength for what’s coming.”

I looked up at him. “Are you going to tell me what that is this time? Or are you going to surprise me again?”

“The ball,” he said, ignoring my commentary. “That’s when we strike.”

Of course. The gala that Dorothy had been planning for months was tomorrow night. If only everything could have held off for one more day, we wouldn’t be in this situation.
Jellia
wouldn’t be in this situation.

“I’d tell you the rest of the plan, but at this point there barely
is
a plan,” he went on. “Without Jellia, we’re going to have to change some things around. Jellia was supposed to assign you as Dorothy’s official cocktail waitress—”

“Cocktail waitress? Seriously?”

“Dorothy has been known to . . .” Nox hesitated. “Imbibe. Quite a bit.”

“She’s a lush,” I said, almost laughing, thinking about my drunken mother sprawled on the couch and how often I’d been her private waitress. “I would have been perfect at that.”

“We can’t control the new head maid—whoever it is—so we don’t know if you’ll be in proximity, if you’ll even be working the ball.”

“I’ll find a way,” I told him. “Am I going to be on my own again?”

“No,” Nox said. “I’ll be there, too, but you might not recognize me. And the rest of the Order and its allies will be close by. While Dorothy and Glinda are distracted by the party, they’re going to be working to set up magical wards around the palace, to temporarily disable the use of magic. Dorothy won’t be able to use her shoes; Glinda won’t be able to use her spells.”

“What about me?” I asked. “That means I won’t be able to use magic either.”

“You’ll be able to use your knife,” Nox said. “But it won’t be magic. It will just be a regular knife.”

“So I wait for the magic to go away . . . and then?”

Nox looked at me like he was surprised I was even asking. “Then you kill her,” he said.

I thought about it for a moment. “This is your big plan? Stab her at a party?”

“Yes,” Nox replied.

“And you couldn’t have told me that from the start?”

“We needed to be sure about you,” Nox replied. “Jellia was supposed to confirm your readiness, but . . .”

I thought of Jellia, bleeding, one arm missing at Dorothy’s feet.

“Oh, I’m ready.”

“Disabling all this magic isn’t easy,” he continued. “The palace is well protected. Just getting an agent
in
here is harder than you’d think. To place the wards, we’ll need witches strategically placed all over the grounds. They’ll only have one chance to act, and they might not be able to hold it for long. Without Jellia, it’s going to be much harder. You’ll have to act fast. But I’ll be here, and wherever you are, I’ll be right behind you.”

I studied Nox, his face stoic, but his words warm. I couldn’t figure him out. Was he using me or did he actually care about me? Hell, I couldn’t even figure myself out. Did I want to kiss him or punch him in the face?

“Great,” I replied, hoping to be as inscrutable as Nox.

He looked at me seriously. The anger in his face was gone now, replaced by concern.

“I won’t let anything happen to you, Amy,” he said. “Everything we’ve done is for this moment. For you. Don’t let us down.”

And then he stepped through my mirror, disappearing on me once again. I didn’t have a chance to ask him how I could let them down if everything they’d done was for me. It didn’t matter. The end result was the same. I was getting out of this strange body and out of this horrible palace. One way or another.

And first, I was going to kill Dorothy.

Dorothy quickly named Sindra the new head maid.

Although Sindra tried to be humble about it for the sake of Jellia’s memory, she couldn’t hide her excitement. She took to the role easily, sliding into her newfound authority as if it had been custom-made to fit her.

She made us draw straws to decide who would clean Jellia’s blood from the throne room.

“I’ll do it,” I volunteered, before the process could even get under way. The other maids looked grateful, even Sindra.

It was my fault her blood was spilled. The least I could do was clean it up.

I’d been concerned with keeping my head down after Jellia’s arrest, but it turned out that I had nothing to worry about. In the twenty-four hours before Dorothy’s gala, we were all being worked so hard that there was no time for me to do anything suspicious.

Anyway, with the mystery of the missing monkey supposedly solved, no one around the palace seemed to be very suspicious anyway. Dorothy was too egotistical to realize that Jellia had just been the tip of the iceberg. I didn’t let myself think about what could be happening to her down in the Scarecrow’s laboratory. She only had to hold out for a little while. Once Dorothy was dead, the first thing I planned to do was free Jellia.

So the rest of the maids and I scrubbed and cleaned and dusted every possible surface. We reviewed checklists of each guest who would be attending and their strange and dumb requests. The Governor of Gillikin Country could only have purple sheets; the Shaggy Man wanted a pantry stocked with nothing but baked beans and a closet filled with the finest dirty rags. I didn’t bother asking who the Shaggy Man was.

That night, I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. I’d spent the day working so hard that I hadn’t even had a chance to let my mind linger on what was coming.

In my dream, I scoured the cobblestones of the throne room, cleaning up Jellia’s blood. It was exactly how I’d spent my afternoon, except when I was finished I didn’t move on to preparing the guest bedrooms for the mayor of Gillikin’s entourage like I had in real life. Instead, I moved on to the hallways and the ballroom, the kitchen and the solarium, every room of the palace smeared with blood and in desperate need of cleaning. The sounds of my scrubbing echoed through the empty palace. Whatever happened here, I got the feeling it was my doing. I wasn’t sure if Dorothy’s palace being an abandoned, bloody mess was a good thing or a bad thing.

I woke up with a strange feeling in my stomach. It was the first-day-of-school feeling, but it was the day before summer vacation feeling, too—I was nervous about what I had to do, but excited to know that it was all almost over.

Tonight. Tonight was do-or-die. Literally.

Could I do it? I wondered. Could I really kill another person—even someone like Dorothy?

I put my uniform on slowly, catching a glimpse of Astrid’s face in the mirror for what might be the last time. When I was dressed, I pulled my magic knife from the air and turned it over in my hand, admiring it. The shining, intricately engraved blade; the hilt that Nox had carved just for me.

I stared at that knife, feeling the blade pulsing with magic in my hand, and I realized that not only could I do it, but I
wanted
to do it. Seeing what Dorothy had done to Jellia, the callous disregard for her life, and her look across the crowd like
this could be any of you
. Dorothy was a monster.

I couldn’t help thinking about what Nox had said when he had given me the weapon, about why he had chosen the Magril on the handle especially for me. He’d told me it reminded him of me because of the way it transformed itself from something ordinary into something special—into something magical and fierce.

I had already changed, I knew. I was nothing like the girl in the trailer park, nothing like the girl who had arrived here in Oz. But was the transformation complete? I had a feeling that it wasn’t. When I killed Dorothy tonight, I would be someone different afterward. But who?

I didn’t know. I couldn’t picture it. Maybe I didn’t want to.

That day, as I went about my chores under the careful eye of Sindra, I watched in curiosity as the palace began to fill up with strange visitors. I saw Cayke the Cookie Cook—flanked by bodyguards—her diamond-studded dishpan laden with an assortment of baked goods, a gift for Dorothy. Polychrome, the Daughter of the Rainbow, floated down the hallway and then passed through a wall as if she were a ghost, leaving a misty, multicolored trail behind her. There was a giant frog in a three-piece suit and a top hat; a small, round hairy guy who looked kind of like a really angry troll.

At first I thought
that
was the baked-bean-loving Shaggy Man, until Sindra muttered something under her breath. “Wow,” she said. “The Nome King is getting
fat
.”

I wondered how many of these people actually
liked
Dorothy, and how many of them were here because they didn’t have any choice? Which ones were Order operatives? When everything went down tonight, would the giant frog guy have my back? Would I have to avoid getting clocked by a diamond-studded baking sheet? I wished Nox had given me some idea who our allies might be.

Were all of Dorothy’s guests as evil as she was, as corrupted as the Scarecrow and the Lion and the Tin Woodman? Or were they all just here to keep her happy, knowing that ignoring an official invite from Her Royal Highness was basically asking for a palace-mandated Attitude Adjustment?

It didn’t matter, I decided. I already knew my enemy. That was enough.

In the late afternoon, Sindra gathered a handful of us in the maids’ mess hall.

“All right, everyone,” she beamed, clapping her hands excitedly. “I’ve selected you lucky ones to be the waitstaff at the gala this evening. That means you get the rest of the day off to rest, wash up, and get it together! It’s the biggest night of your careers so don’t screw it up.”

It was the
last
night of my maid career, thank goodness. As the other maids tittered excitedly on their way back to our chambers, I broke off, ducking down a hallway before I even realized where I was going.

The solarium. I needed to do one thing before all this happened. Just in case it was the end.

I passed a half dozen Munchkins in bright-colored formal wear on the way, along with a pair of palace guards, but I kept my eyes straight ahead like I was seriously intent on getting some cleaning done, and no one stopped me.

The solarium was clear, so I shut the door behind me and approached the magic painting.

“Magic picture,” I said, quiet but firm, “show me my mom.”

It took the painting a moment, like it was having trouble tracking my mom down—what else is new?—but after a stressful few seconds where I worried she might be dead, the painting started to rearrange itself. The seascape gradually shifted to a giant room, possibly an auditorium or maybe a gym. Fluorescent lighting, folding chairs, and a crowd of people, none of whom I recognized.

This didn’t look like any of my mom’s usual haunts, and at first I wondered if the picture had somehow gotten confused and tuned into the wrong signal. Until the image panned to a table with a coffee urn and bags and bags of Bugles. That was when I knew my mom couldn’t be too far away.

There she was, elbow deep into a bag, but somehow managing to look classed up—at least compared to the last time I saw her. Her hair was smoothed into a sleek ponytail, her makeup tastefully applied. She was smiling as she spoke to a woman holding a Styrofoam cup.

“I just wish Amy could be here to see this.” In her palm, she held out a coin with the number six on it. Styrofoam Cup gave her a hug and a pat on her back.

“Six months sober,” she said. “I just wish it hadn’t taken losing everything I care about to get it.”

No matter how tough you think you are, there are certain things that just get to you, and they’re usually the little things. The ones you don’t expect.

I wiped a tear from the corner of my eye. It was only one, but still. I couldn’t believe that Mom had changed so much.

It hurt my feelings a little, that she had done it all without my help, but it made me proud, too. Proud of her. Suddenly I missed her very badly.

Yet at the same time I didn’t want to go home. I wasn’t finished here. Just like my mom had changed, so had I. That place where she was—Kansas—didn’t feel like home anymore.

Mom had found purpose without me. And I had surprised myself by finding a purpose here.

I remembered what my mom had said about Madison Pendleton, about how bullies always got what was coming to them.

Tonight, I planned to prove her right.