Dorothy Must Die (32 page)

I made another circuit of the room and ended up near where the Tin Woodman leaned. He’d stretched a tuxedo over his metallic frame, though it bulged at odd angles and didn’t quite fit him. He wore a red corsage on the lapel, which had already begun to droop.

He looked miserable, staring at Dorothy with a combination of longing and self-pity. He turned something shiny over in his hands nervously and I inched a little closer to get a better look. It was a tin rose, delicately crafted, and shined to perfection. The way the Tin Woodman’s fingers worried at it, clenching and twisting the fragile stem, I figured it would break at any moment.

As I watched, he seemed to come to some huge internal decision. He nodded and thrust his hands up and down, like he was giving a speech to himself, psyching himself up. Then, still clutching his rose, he marched across the dance floor toward Dorothy.

Someone plucked a tumbler of whiskey off my drink tray. I moved to keep circulating, but a hand grasped my elbow.

“It won’t be long now.”

Nox. His hair had changed back to its original color and was slicked back. He was wearing a sharply tailored suit with skinny-legged pants. Otherwise, he was entirely himself, like he wasn’t afraid to be spotted.

“This should be good,” he said to me.

Together, we watched as the Tin Woodman stood before Dorothy, presenting himself with a stiff bow. Dorothy stopped doing the twist to stare at him. He offered her the tin flower and, after a brief moment of consideration, Dorothy took it. Then, after barely looking at it, she placed it on a servant’s passing drink tray.

“Ouch,” I said. Next to me, Nox smirked.

Dorothy spun away from the Tin Woodman, returning to her feverish dancing. For a second, it looked like he would just skulk away. But then he reached out, attempting to pull Dorothy into an awkward embrace or maybe initiate a tango. He was so uncoordinated, it was hard to tell.

What he ended up doing was slicing the strap on Dorothy’s dress.

“You lummox!” she shrieked, loud enough that the entire party stopped. “You rusty, empty-headed beast!”

This was an opportunity.

“Hold this,” I said, my heart pounding, and shoved my drink tray at Nox. He took it, confused, and I pushed my way through the crush of gawking Munchkins, Nomes, talking animals, and other assorted Oz weirdos. I knew what I was doing was risky, but another opening as perfect as this one might not come along. I put myself right at Dorothy’s side as she berated the Tin Woodman. Sindra was two steps behind me, her eyes narrowing into a glare as I spoke directly to Dorothy.

“Princess,” I said, keeping my voice as servile as possible. “Isn’t it time for a wardrobe change?”

Dorothy held up the front of her dress with one hand, the other jabbing a ruby-studded finger at the Tin Woodman, her glare like a death ray leveled on him. Slowly, with an almost physical effort on her part, she turned that gaze to me and forced a smile.

“Yes, Astrid,” Dorothy said. “Wonderful idea.”

So, she did know my name. The fact that it came out in the heat of anger made me realize that when she’d called me random
A
names in her chamber she had just been screwing with me.

Dorothy reached out and grasped my shoulder, effortlessly casting a travel spell. The swirling lights and thumping music of the party melted away, replaced by the relative serenity of the deserted hallway outside her quarters.

“Huh,” Dorothy said to herself, looking down at her hands. “Must’ve had too much to drink.”

She’d tried to teleport us directly into her chambers, I realized, but had failed. The witches’ spell was working—they had cut off the palace’s magic supply, just when I needed it. The magic must be leaking out of her. I felt it, too, a strange ebbing sensation; it was like lying in the sun, only to have a huge cloud pass slowly by overhead.

Dorothy flung open the door to her rooms and strode inside, already pulling her dress off. “Hurry up,” she snapped over her shoulder. “I won’t have buffoonery steal any more of this night.”

I followed her, pulling my knife out.

I felt that same stretching and contorting I’d experienced when I was back in the Order’s caves. I was Amy again now, I knew. I hadn’t thought about the fact that the magical barriers the witches had cast would break my disguise. It didn’t matter—there was no time to worry about that now.

And anyway, good. I wanted to be Amy when I did this. I wanted Dorothy to know.

She was still a few paces ahead of me, crossing toward her sprawling closet. I closed the distance.

“Something with sequins,” Dorothy said. “Fancy, sequined, short—that’s what I want, Astrid. Find it. The lower cut, the better.”

“That’s what you want to be buried in?”

Dorothy froze, turning slowly to face me.

“
Excuse
me?” she said, the words out just as she saw me—Amy, not Astrid—eyes widening, noticing my knife.

“This is for Jellia,” I told her, and slashed my knife in a wide arc across her throat.

Before I could connect, a black ball of snarling fur flew through the air, aiming straight for me.

Toto sunk his teeth into my wrist. I yelped in pain, unthinkingly loosening my grip on my knife, and watched in horror as it went clattering to the ground as if in slow motion.

Dorothy had stumbled backward when I first slashed at her, tangling her feet in the dress she’d just taken off and falling to the floor. Now she screamed, pulling the dress up, quickly covering herself.

“Get her, Toto! Kill her!”

I shoved Toto off me—he was little and his tiny bite had barely broken the skin—and scrambled for my knife. Stupid. I should’ve just stabbed her in the back, but I’d wanted to twist the knife figuratively, too.

Dorothy jabbed a finger at me, her eyes blazing with fury, probably trying to blast me with the same lightning bolt spell she’d slung at Jellia. But that fury changed to confusion and then fear as the spell sparked, sputtered, and died.

I grabbed my knife from the pink carpet but before I could charge Dorothy, Toto latched on to my arm again. He got my free forearm this time, so without really thinking about it, I stabbed at him with my knife. He let go just in time, yelping and barking, dancing around at my ankles. Fresh pinpricks of blood welled up on my arm, but I ignored them.

“Don’t hurt my dog, you bitch!”

I glanced at Dorothy just in time to see the airborne plush, pink ottoman that she’d flung at my head. I ducked out of the way but lost my balance in the process, stumbling against the nearby vanity.

This was going great.

Dorothy, wearing the dress the Tin Woodman had ripped, now all wrinkled and not pulled on quite right, booked for the door.

Shit.

“Guards!” Dorothy screamed as she fled her room. Toto yipped once more at me, then went racing after Dorothy. I chased them, knowing I couldn’t let Dorothy make it back to the party where she could rally her guards. I’d blown my perfect shot—I’d let Nox down, and the Order, and most importantly, Jellia.

As I sprinted into the hall, I heard alarms squealing from all around the palace. The screams of partygoers echoed all the way up here.

The halls were dim—the torches giving off less light than usual, as if even the flames here were augmented with magic. At first I didn’t see Dorothy, but then I spotted the unmistakable dazzle of her shoes as she turned a corner.

I was faster than her. I’d been trained by the Order of the Wicked, and she was lazy, drunk, and used to relying on her magic to protect her.

Dorothy glanced over her shoulder and saw me gaining. Instead of heading for the ballroom, maybe knowing I would’ve caught her before she got there, she suddenly veered left, through a barred door normally forbidden to the maid staff, and up a narrow spiral staircase.

I took the steps two at a time. The spirals of the staircase were so tight that I lost sight of her, but I could hear her shoes clicking, her breath heavy and panicked. I pressed on, getting dizzy. How high was this tower? Where was Dorothy leading me?

Then I felt a breeze on my cheek. I was outside. For a second, the lights from the city below us blinded me and then I could see again. We were on a jacaranda-covered terrace and Dorothy was standing with her back pressed up against the edge of the balcony. Her psycho little dog was trembling in her arms. Not so brave anymore.

I had her trapped. There was nowhere for her to go.

Her shoes weren’t going to help her.

I took a step forward.

With Dorothy helpless in front of me, basically just waiting to die, I hesitated. It was different this way—having time to think about it, not trying to kill her in the heat of the moment. I needed to be cold-blooded, to remember everything that she’d done, to remember that the girl standing in front of me was a monster.

And yet, I found my gaze pulled across the glittering panorama of the Emerald City, the place I’d read about in books my whole life. I was higher up than I’d ever thought it was even possible to go. I wondered what my mom would think if she could see me now, at the top of the tallest tower in the palace of a magical fairyland a million miles from the Dusty Acres trailer park.

About to stab the former heroine of the story.

For some reason, Dorothy didn’t look afraid of me anymore. She just smiled sweetly at me, her eyes wide and glittering.

“Amy, right?” she asked calmly. “The one that got away.”

I didn’t reply. I knew she was buying time, a classic desperation maneuver. I inched closer.

“I suppose I’ll never know what happened to the real Astrid,” Dorothy said, sighing. “My sweet little maid.”

“Like you care,” I replied, not able to help myself.

Dorothy smiled sadly and half turned to gaze out over the skyline.

“It’s pretty, isn’t it?” she said. “I come up here when I want to think. Sometimes it’s almost like I can see clear on back to Kansas. You know?”

There was a resigned, nostalgic tone in her voice.

This time, I didn’t let her bait me. I wondered if this sudden change in her personality was all a big act, or if maybe, somehow cutting off the flow of magic from her shoes was bringing Dorothy back to her senses.

I took another step forward.

She didn’t flinch. “I think my aunt Em would have liked you,” she said, still smiling, talking casually like I was an old friend. “She’d think you’re awful pretty. She’d want me to give you a second chance. She’d say, ‘Dorothy, there’s no such thing as a bad apple.’ She’d know you’re no killer. That they tricked you. She’d say, ‘You know, Dorothy, maybe you and that Amy have more in common than you realize.’”

I wasn’t stupid—I knew I couldn’t listen to her. But—what if she was right? What if we
were
alike? Dorothy hadn’t been like this when she’d first gotten here. It wasn’t until she killed the witches that she started to change.

If I killed her, did that bring me one step closer to
becoming
her?

No. I wasn’t like her. I was stronger—strong enough to absorb all those years at Dusty Acres, all those years of being a nothing, of being a punching bag, and never letting them transform me into anything close to the cruel and twisted monster Dorothy had become. Killing Dorothy was the only thing that would make Oz great again. It would avenge everyone she had hurt. It was what I was here for. I didn’t take it lightly—I knew I’d have to live with her blood on my hands for the rest of my life—but I wouldn’t let it corrupt me.

They made us strong in Kansas. I could carry this.

So I raised my blade. As I did, Dorothy’s unassuming, folksy smile widened, spreading into a twisted grin, her red lips grotesquely stretched with hate.

“Too late,” she said, just as I heard a dull, clanking noise behind me. I spun around to see him burst through the door, his boutonniere long gone, his tuxedo ripped to shreds.

The Tin Woodman.

He moved quicker than a man his size had any right to, his ax a silvery arc as it sliced through the air. I ducked just in time to save my head from being chopped clean off, then dove to the side. The Tin Woodman put himself between me and Dorothy.

“My hero,” I heard her say, and the Tin Woodman, so recently rejected, puffed out his chest. He sized me up, swinging his ax back and forth, and I saw in his eyes a homicidal devotion.

Could I win this fight? One-on-one with the Tin Woodman, with only my unenchanted knife?

He charged, swinging his ax overhead like he was chopping firewood. I danced aside, his blade drawing sparks from the stone rooftop. As he hefted his ax, I shot forward and stabbed for his eye, but he brought his hand up defensively and my dagger glanced off his gauntlet.

“Why do you fight for her?” I asked him, leaping backward from another brutal ax swing. “She doesn’t give a shit about you!”

“Shut up,” the Tin Woodman replied, all business.

I wasn’t quick enough on that last swing and had a shallow slash across my abdomen to show for it. I backpedaled, trying to put more distance between us.

Then I heard footsteps thundering from the spiral staircase. Palace guards or Tin Soldiers or both. Dorothy’s entire army. It sounded like
all
of them. All coming for me.

I caught my breath. There was no way I could take them all on like this: without magic, with just an ordinary dagger, and a psychotic, ax-wielding metal man already bearing down on me.

The Tin Woodman swung again. This time, I moved toward the blade. At the last moment, I dipped into a somersault and slid underneath him, between his legs.

A few strands of hair—the pink that I’d missed so badly when I looked in the mirror—floated down around me. He’d almost scalped me.

But he’d also made a mistake. Behind him now, I had a clear path to Dorothy.

This time I didn’t hesitate. There was only one way to accomplish my mission.

“Kill her!” Dorothy screamed, so loudly I thought my eardrums would shatter. “Kill the bitch!”

“There must be some mistake,” I said as I rushed toward her, my shoulder lowered. “
You’re
the bitch. I’m the
witch.
”

I barreled right into Dorothy, hugging her, our foreheads knocking together as we stumbled backward. She realized what was happening too late, slapping at my face when she should’ve been planting her feet. I shoved forward in a tackle, heard Dorothy cry out as her back struck the parapet, and then together we flipped over the edge.

We were suddenly weightless, tangled together, the blinking lights of the Emerald City stretched out beneath us. I heard the Tin Woodman bellow miserably and, just as we began to fall, I caught the briefest glimpse of Nox as he appeared on the balcony, a sword in his hand.

“Amy!” he shouted after me, his voice cracking in desperation.

It wasn’t Dorothy’s guards sprinting up the spiral staircase. It was the Order.

Too late. They couldn’t help me now.