Dorothy Must Die: The Other Side of the Rainbow Collection: No Place Like Oz, Dorothy Must Die, The Witch Must Burn, The Wizard Returns, The Wicked Will Rise (15 page)

She jabbed a long purple nail at the blob in the center. “And
this
is the Emerald City. Where Dorothy lives.”

Then she passed her hand over the pool again, and the colors disappeared, replaced by shimmering white dots, little pricks of light covering every inch of the map. “The white lights represent Oz’s magic,” Glamora said. “Its lifeblood. This is what Oz used to look like. And this”—she snapped her fingers—“is what it looks like now.”

The light dimmed and faded until most of the map was a dull, washed-out gray, dappled with a few gaping black holes here and there. There were still a few glittering spots spread across Oz’s four quadrants, as well as one spot in the south that was particularly bright, but other than that, the vibrant, shimmering landscape of just a moment ago was gone.

Except for at the very center of the map. The green blob was glowing with more intensity than any other spot, burning so bright that I had to squint to look at it.

I looked up at Glamora and then around the table, where Mombi, Gert, and the boy were all watching me expectantly.

“We need your help,” Mombi said.

“The magic is disappearing from Oz,” said Gert.

“It doesn’t look like it’s disappearing,” I said, gesturing toward the center of the map. “It’s just
moving.
”

“Correct,” Glamora said with a narrow-eyed smile. “And can you guess
why
it’s moving?”

I looked at her blankly, and then it dawned on me. I remembered the pit in Munchkin Country that my trailer had fallen into, and Glinda with her Munchkin machine. I remembered what Indigo had told me about
magic mining.

“Someone’s taking it,” I said. Glamora arched a perfectly plucked eyebrow, waiting for me to figure out the rest. “It’s Dorothy,” I realized. “Dorothy’s stealing the magic.”

“Now you’ve got it,” Glamora said. “And losing its magic to Dorothy will mean the end of Oz. That’s why you’re here. We need you to stop her.”

I sat up straight. I didn’t know the first thing about magic. I didn’t know the first thing about
Dorothy
. “Me? I just got here. How am I supposed to stop anyone from doing anything?”

All eyes turned to me at once. The boy fixed me with an especially hard gaze. Finally Mombi spoke.

“Simple. You’re going to kill her.” She looked right at me and said, “Dorothy must die.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but all that came out was laughter. Everyone was surprised—no one more so than me. I tried to stifle it, but it had been so long since I’d found something funny, and soon I couldn’t control myself. It all came spilling out. The fight, getting suspended, my mother jetting off to her tornado party, the trailer lifting up off the ground and landing me
here.
I thought about who I was back in Kansas, and who I was in Oz. What had I done to make them think I was a potential teen girl assassin? I mean, I got suspended for
not
punching Madison Pendleton. I had maybe been responsible for Indigo’s death, but it was only because I’d been trying to save an innocent monkey’s
life.
Taking someone down off a stake in the ground was the opposite of taking someone out. This was madness.

Across the table, the witches just sat there staring at me like I was a crazy person while I laughed hysterically. The boy frowned so hard, his eyes turned into slits. Finally, after a few minutes, I managed to calm myself down and wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.

“You want
me
to kill
Dorothy
,” I said. It was so ridiculous that I didn’t even know where to start.

“That’s the idea,” Glamora said. The look in her eyes said she didn’t think it was very funny at all.

I couldn’t believe they were being serious. “Um, I think you’ve got the wrong person. Before I got here, the last fight I had was with a pregnant girl. And I lost.”

“I saw you back in the palace,” Mombi said. “In your cell. You managed to hold your own in there. I don’t see why you couldn’t do the same with Dorothy.”

I had to admit, that was true. But I was still sure that the knife Mombi had given me had done half the work. And anyway: “That was different,” I said. “That was magic, I’m sure of it. But I couldn’t
kill
someone. I wouldn’t even know how.”

“We’ll teach you, of course,” Glamora said. “Everyone has to start somewhere.”

They were acting like we were talking about learning how to sew. This is not what I signed on for. When I had met Indigo on the road, I was just planning on making my way to the Emerald City and maybe getting one of those cool moving tattoos. This was way heavier than anything I expected.

“Listen,” I said. “I have my own problems. I’m sorry about what’s happening to Oz—I really am—but I don’t see what you think I can do about it. I’m not even
from
here.” I wasn’t from here. But even as I said it, a little part of me couldn’t help but feel that because of Indigo, because of Ollie, because of my time in the cell . . . I was linked to Oz somehow.

Glamora cocked her head. “Dorothy’s not from here either,” she said. “And look what she’s done with the place.”

Gert drove her point home. “It’s precisely because you are not from here that we think you can do this. You’re from the same place as her. You know how her mind works. You understand her.”

I wasn’t from here
. I was from Kansas. Just like Dorothy. I’d come to Oz on a tornado. Dorothy had changed their world once, and now they expected
me
to help them change it back.

“People from the Other Place have always had a special place in ours,” Gert said. “The Wizard. Dorothy. Now you. We don’t know what power it was that brought you to Oz, but we know that if you’re here, it must be because you have a role to play. We want to make sure it’s the right role.”

I shivered. The story was true.
The Wizard of Oz
had been real. Dorothy Gale had really been swept up by a tornado and brought to the Land of Oz. True, what I was living now didn’t seem like the kind of storybook tale I was used to. But it didn’t mean they didn’t exist.

For the first time, the boy spoke up. His voice was low and gruff.

“Gert, Glamora, and Mombi believe that you are our only hope.” He sounded like he wasn’t so sure about that. “My job is to train you.”

“Are you a witch, too?” I asked. It came out in a more confrontational tone than I’d meant it to, but I didn’t care.

The boy looked offended. “I’m a warlock,” he said drily. “Or a wizard, if you like that better. It doesn’t really matter, does it?”

Gert looked over at him as if remembering her manners. “Amy, this is Nox. He’s the newest member of the High Council of the Order of the Wicked. He’s the strongest fighter we have.”

“Good for him. No offense or anything, it’s just, I’m not a killer. I’m not the girl you’re looking for here. I think it would be pretty amazing to know what you guys know. But you all have magic; you know what you’re doing. I’m sure you can handle her without me.”

I probably should have been scared of these people—they called themselves the Order of the Wicked, after all—but talking back to them felt good. Then again, lately I didn’t seem to be able to keep myself from talking back to anyone, really.

“You haven’t been trained yet,” Glamora said. “You don’t know who or what you are yet. Oz is different.
You
can be different here. You can be stronger. We’ll teach you how to do all of it. To fight. To use magic.”

“Amy,” Gert said. She placed a reassuring hand on my back. “We’re going to teach you to be a hero.”

Me. A hero. The idea of having power—of learning magic—rattled around in my head. But reality chased after it: missing Mom, scary Dorothy, a circle of self-proclaimed wicked witches who wanted to make me into an assassin. Besides, even if they could teach me all that stuff, it wouldn’t change who I was on the inside. Salvation Amy from Flat Hill, Kansas. Just a trailer-park girl with a bunch of stupid dreams that would never come true.

Weirdly, something my mom had told me once came back to me:
You are not where you are from.
She’d meant it to cheer me up. To make me believe that growing up in Flat Hill didn’t have to define me for the rest of my life.

But the witches thought I was special
because
of where I came from.

It’s more than that, child. Much more.

Gert was fishing around in my brain once more.

I looked at Nox again. He stared back at me and gave me a shrug like,
See if I care.
He was the only one—except me, of course—who didn’t seem thrilled about this whole idea. Even if I agreed with him, I couldn’t help taking it a little personally. What did he have against me anyway?

“What happens if I say no?” I asked.

“You
can’t
say no,” Mombi said. “The pact, remember?”

“I told you,” Nox said, not even bothering to look at me. “Just because someone dropped out of the sky doesn’t make them the key to saving us.”

What was wrong with these people? I felt my blood begin to boil. Nox turned to Mombi and shrugged. And that shrug is what put me over the edge.

“I’m in,” I said quietly.

Mombi looked at Gert, who nodded as if to say that my words were true. But they weren’t. I had to say yes to joining the Order—I didn’t seem to have a choice in that. I was bound by the pact I’d made with Mombi. But I was determined to find a way out of the whole teen assassin part.

And Gert knew it.

A few minutes later, Gert led me to my room. “We let Glamora decorate. Of all of us, she misses the creature comforts of Oz the most.”

My cave room wasn’t pretty—it was majestic. It was the kind of bedroom I’d always wished for growing up. There was a circular bed that seemed to be sunken into the center of the floor, piled with pillows and silky bedding in rich shades of red. And in the center of the ceiling, instead of a chandelier, there was another upside-down tree. This one was way smaller than the one I’d seen before. And it was in bloom. Black branches held out strange but beautiful poppy-like blossoms, big and white with a blush of pink almost the exact color of my hair. The pale gold walls were covered in wallpaper with those same pink flowers bursting across it. When I looked closer, I realized they were actual flowers. More tiny flowers grew along vines that stretched from the floor to the ceiling, stopping in the middle to swirl into paisley loops. Beneath my feet, a rug made from golden fur rippled.

“What happens now?” I asked. “You lock me in here until I agree to be your killer and actually mean it? Because I know that you know I didn’t.”

“No, we train you. I know that you aren’t ready, child. Just put one foot in front of the other. The rest will come in time.”

She sounded so sure. Like she knew something that I didn’t.

“And if it doesn’t?” What would they do to me if I didn’t do what they wanted?

“There is something you don’t know about being bound—we can’t hurt each other as long as we are in the circle. There is much to fear outside the circle, but you don’t have to fear that.”

I felt myself exhale and nodded slowly. Whether or not she was telling the truth, her answer would have to be okay for now. I just wished I could read her mind, too.

“No matter what, you’ll still be a witch.”

“But what kind?” I asked.

“Good question, child,” Gert said, slinking off into the dark.

I was standing in the middle of an all-white cave. Nox had led me there, then excused himself to change into clothes that he could better torture me in. I waited impatiently.

If I was being honest, the decor of this cave was kind of freaking me out—which was saying something, considering all the others I’d seen.

I stood barefoot on the skin of some giant animal I didn’t recognize. Maybe it was some magical Oz beast or something. A track of fire lined the ceiling, illuminating the cave. The white stone walls looked like some kind of stone—opal, I guessed—that shimmered with layers of other colors, depending on the light. White razor-sharp spikes jutted out around me like some kind of medieval climbing wall. Scattered around the room were strange iron machines that looked like either exercise equipment or torture devices.