I’d never been in love with anyone before Nox. My dopey kindergartener’s crush on Dustin was nothing compared to what I felt for Nox. And realizing that I had absolutely no idea what was going on in his head, that he might have an entire history with someone that ended before I’d even met him—a history that I wasn’t part of, and knew nothing about—was enough to make me insane.
If being in love felt like this all the time, then being in love kind of sucked.
I sighed out loud. Jealousy was exhausting; I was giving myself a headache.
“Did you have something you wanted to share with the class, Amy?” Madison said drily. They were all staring at me.
“I’m fine, thanks,” I said hastily.
“You said something about resting?” Madison asked hopefully.
“You can’t stay here for long,” Lang said. “If the Nome King realizes you’re here it could jeopardize everything I’ve worked for, and I’m not his only spy. The magic outside hides much of what goes on here, even from him, but it’s still only a matter of time before he realizes you’re in my palace.”
“If you don’t want our help, we’ll be on our way,” Nox said haughtily. “Clearly, the road brought us here for something else.”
I wanted to shake him. What the hell was he thinking? Nox was always strategic but it felt like he was acting on pure emotion here. We were in a completely different country where Lang was the only potential ally we’d encountered. Our magic wasn’t working and we had no idea why. We had no food, no water, no shelter, and no way to hide from the Nome King. Prickly and unstable as she was, Lang was the only chance we had to figure out why the road had brought us to Ev and what we needed to do next. Nox might have some bad history with her, but her magic was obviously powerful. We needed her more than she needed us, especially if we couldn’t fully access our own power. Pissing her off was completely the wrong strategy.
“What he means is, we don’t want to put you in any danger,” I said quickly. “But if we could rest for a while before we travel on, we’d be grateful.”
Nox opened his mouth again to speak and this time I did kick him. He shut it with a snap.
Lang looked at me warily. “One night only,” she said.
“That’s really generous,” I said. “Thank you.” One night wasn’t much time. But hopefully it would be enough for me to figure out how to convince her to help us. Or to let us help her. Which, I was guessing, she was smart enough to figure out was basically the same thing.
Lang beckoned Greta, and the beetle clicked forward, looming over us. Madison swallowed hard.
“Greta, show them to the guest chambers,” Lang said. She smiled thinly. “You’ll forgive me if I leave you now.” The air around her face shimmered and seemed to solidify. As I watched, the silver mask re-formed over her face. But her magic disappearing act didn’t stop there. The shimmer spread outward, enveloping her entire body. The kimono swirled around her.
And then she was gone.
Madison’s mouth was hanging open. “Whoa,” she said softly. “That was . . .”
“Magic, yeah,” I said.
“Can you do that?”
“I’ve never tried the mask part. But disappearing, sure.”
She stared at me. “Prove it.”
“Right now it’s complicated,” I began, but Greta was already clicking toward us. One of its—her—heads nodded toward a mirror-framed doorway, and she pointed with one long, segmented leg.
“Ugh,” Madison muttered under her breath, staying as far away from Greta as possible as the beetle led us out of the room and down a hall. I hoped Langwidere’s sinister servant wasn’t easily offended. If anything, Greta seemed almost to be smirking. If a multiheaded giant beetle whose faces all had completely different expressions could be said to smirk, anyway.
Greta stopped in another long hallway studded with doors. The decor was just as sinister here as it had been in the other parts of Lang’s palace. Bodiless heads grinned at us crazily from the walls, and where the hallway ended, a huge wooden guillotine with a polished silver blade sat where a normal person might have put an end table.
“Home, sweet home,” Nox said. Greta indicated three of the closed doors with another wave of her leg, and then clicked back the way we’d come. Madison shrank against the wall as the beetle passed her. I could’ve sworn Greta brushed up against her deliberately. I also could’ve sworn the giant beetle was laughing.
But despite the horrible murals in the hallway, the doors Greta had shown us opened up on small, plain bedrooms with blank walls and simple furnishings. I sank onto a bed with a sigh of relief, grateful to have escaped the eerie stares of Lang’s creepy wallpaper.
“Now we rest?” Madison asked hopefully, sitting down next to me. But Nox was pacing the floor, deep in thought, and I shook my head.
“You can if you want,” I said. “But we have to figure out what to do next—before Lang throws us back out there. Once the Nome King realizes we’re here we’re in danger. And I don’t know how long we have. The Wheelers seem to report to Lang, but if they give him information, too, or if he can sense when someone crosses the Deadly Desert . . .” I trailed off. As usual, there was so much we didn’t know. If Lang had found us, odds were, the Nome King wouldn’t be far behind.
But first, I wanted to know where we stood with Langwidere, and why she was so eager to kick us out. Which, I was pretty sure, had at least something to do with Nox. Possibly a lot. Possibly some stuff I would regret finding out. But if there was one thing I’d learned the hard way in Oz, knowing the truth was always better than being in the dark.
Even if the truth totally sucked. Which, in Oz, it usually did. So at least I had practice.
This time, though, I had feelings. And if Nox’s history with Lang was what I thought it was—if he had been in love with her once—I knew there was no way it wouldn’t hurt.
And I also knew that even if it did, I was strong enough to deal with it. Old, Kansas Amy might’ve blamed her problems on her druggie mom or Madison’s bullying or her significant lack of friends. But I was a different person now. And I’d learned that everyone has a story—even Madison.
Whatever Nox told me, I could handle it.
I looked at him. “So, now that we’re alone—it’s time you tell us how you know Langwidere.”
He looked stricken and stopped pacing. I watched his face as grief and worry moved across his features, and I steeled myself for what was coming.
What if he’s still in love with her? I thought suddenly.
Okay, new Amy or no new Amy, if he was—that was one truth I might not be able to face.
I was so wrapped up in my new worry that I barely realized he’d already started talking.
“She was Lanadel when I knew her,” he was saying.
“I got that part. Who is she to you?”
“She trained with the Order before Mombi sent her here. It’s a long story.” I raised an eyebrow. “I’ll tell you,” he said. “I promise. But I really don’t think it’s important right now. I’m sure she’s not happy that we’re here, but I don’t think she’ll hurt us.”
“You don’t think?” Madison asked.
He shrugged. “I haven’t seen her in years and we didn’t . . . well, we didn’t exactly part on the best of terms.” I stared at him intently. There was no sign he was about to say anything about having been in a relationship with her. But if Nox was anything, it was totally unreadable. If he did still have feelings for her, I’d never know unless he actually told me.
Which was not his strong suit.
“But I know she hates Dorothy—maybe even more than we do,” he continued. “And it sounds like she’s no fan of the Nome King either. We’re more or less on the same side.”
“Is that Wicked? Or Good?” Madison asked.
“Same thing,” Nox said.
“Sometimes,” I muttered. He smiled at me. My heart did this gross flip-flopping thing. Knock it off, I told it.
“Okay, sometimes,” he agreed. “The side that’s fighting Dorothy, anyway. And if Dorothy is somehow allied with the Nome King now . . .”
“Enemy of my enemy is my friend?” Madison asked.
“Welcome to the wonderful world of Oz,” I agreed.
Nox leaned against the wall opposite us, sliding down until he was sitting on the floor with his long legs stretched out in front of him. “If Dorothy and the Nome King are working together it makes sense that the road brought us here to stop them,” he said.
“Unless the road brought us here completely at random,” I said. “Which it’s been known to do.”
Nox grimaced. “Let’s try for the best-case scenario.”
“I like how ‘we have no idea why but we think maybe there’s some reason we’re probably supposed to be here to do something we can’t figure out’ is the best-case scenario,” Madison said.
I laughed. “Yeah, that’s Oz for you. The road has seemed to act randomly in the past. But I think it’s always just had a mind of its own. It’s always acted for the good of Oz before. Nox is right; it’s the only answer that makes sense. But if we were barely strong enough to fight Dorothy on our own, there’s no way we can take on both of them. The Nome King is incredibly powerful.”
“And so is Lang,” Nox said, meeting my eyes. I could tell he was thinking the same thing I was.
“The road brought us here,” I said. “To her doorstep, basically. Which means: if we work with her, we have a chance. I think.”
“It means there’s something here we need,” Nox agreed. He looked pensive. “I wish we had some way to contact Ozma. If anyone could tell us something about what the road wants, it’s her. But she . . .”
He trailed off. I thought about what he wasn’t saying: that we had no way of knowing if Ozma was even alive. That with Mombi dead and Glinda in control of Glamora, things in Oz were very likely . . . bad. Really, really bad. Maybe even worse than they’d been when Dorothy ruled.
No, I thought. Nothing could be that bad. When Dorothy was in charge, Ozma had been enchanted so that she was basically three sheets to the wind. She wouldn’t let Glinda trick her again. And she was incredibly powerful—surely as powerful as Glinda, especially now that she knew the only side Glinda was on was Glinda’s. I couldn’t start thinking straight-up doom and gloom. The road wouldn’t have bothered to rescue us from the Nome King and carry us all the way across the Deadly Desert if we’d already lost Oz, I told myself. There was still time to find out what we needed to do in Ev, get back to Oz, and restore Ozma to her rightful place.
And once all that was done, maybe, just maybe, Nox and I could settle in for a solid makeout session.
“Why can’t you talk to Ozma? You can’t just, like, enchant a telephone?” Madison asked.
Nox knitted his brows together. “A telephone?”
“You know? E.T. phone home?” He looked even more confused.
“Madison, they don’t have telephones in Oz,” I said. “Telepathy, yes. Telephones, no. But trying to contact Ozma all the way across the Deadly Desert with no magic . . .” I stopped. There was something I wasn’t thinking of. Something important. Something Lurline had said.
I tried to remember what she’d told me during my brief visit to her world. I’d drunk the water from her spring. I’d walked through her garden with her. And then . . .
The words materialized in my mind as clearly as if she was standing next to me repeating them. And as I heard her voice, my boots began to flash with a faint but unmistakable silver light.
I will help you as much as I can. I will hear you when you call me. Be strong. There is more power aiding you than you know.
“Amy? What are you doing?” Nox had jumped up and was staring at my shoes with an expression of awe. “How are you doing that without your magic?”
“It’s Lurline,” I said. “We have to call her.”
At that, Nox gave me a questioning look.
“She told me she’d be able to hear me when I really needed her,” I said excitedly. “And the shoes are hers, right? They’re fairy magic, not just Oz magic. They’re like . . . original Oz magic. I might not be strong enough to use them to get all of us back to Oz, but I bet I can contact her with them somehow.”
Nox was nodding, although he looked uncertain still. “‘Somehow’ leaves a lot of room,’” he said. “Are you thinking a specific spell? I don’t know how you can use the shoes if you can’t use your magic.”
“I don’t either, but it’s the only thing I can think of,” I said.
“It’s worth a try,” he agreed. “What do you need?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. I closed my eyes, reaching within myself the way I’d always done in Oz, searching for that indescribable feeling of power. Of feeling something wake up inside me—something that only existed in me in Oz. Something I’d worked incredibly hard to learn how to harness.
And like before, it was as if I could see my magic through a thick, dense wall of Jell-O. I couldn’t reach it. I couldn’t feel it. But I knew it was there.
But I didn’t have what I needed to reach it. Come on, Lurline, I thought. Show me what to do. Please.
And then Nox reached forward and took my hand. I felt something stir to life within me at his touch. Not magic, exactly—something else. Trust. Love. Safety.
Home, I thought. Nox is home. And with that one word, the wall between me and my power began to dissolve. Lurline, I said. Help me.
I didn’t know whether I spoke the words out loud or in my heart. But as I said them, they took shape in front of me. A door began to form in my mind—and somehow, I knew that asking Lurline for help had made it appear. I squeezed my eyes shut more tightly. Still holding Nox’s hand, I stepped through the portal I’d created.
And then, without warning, I began to fall.
NINE
DOROTHY
I did my best to get Bupu to dress herself for dinner, but at the very suggestion she recoiled in horror. At first I thought she was offended because the dress was so ill-fitting—I’d have beheaded any of my chambermaids in Oz who suggested such a thing—but then I realized she was absolutely terrified at the prospect of attending the dinner herself. When I pressed her further, she cowered on the floor of my bedroom.
“They’ll kill me! They’ll roast me and eat me alive!”
“They certainly won’t,” I said, although I wasn’t at all sure. I would probably be tempted to do the same on a relentless diet of the awful stuff I’d had for breakfast. “Bupu, it wouldn’t be proper for me to attend the banquet without a handmaiden. Besides,” I added, hit with a flash of inspiration, “I have a job for you.”
She looked up at me, her eyes brimming over with tears. “A job? For me? Other than the one I already have?”
“Yes, dear,” I said, waving a hand regally. “You spend a lot of time out and about in the palace, correct?”
“I had many tasks before I came into your service, mistress,” she said uncertainly.
“And so no one would notice if you were to, say, wander around a little when we are released from this chamber for the banquet?”
“No, I don’t think so,” she said, still confused.
I sighed, reminding myself to be patient. It’s just not reasonable to expect everyone to be as quick on the uptake as I am, other than Scare. And you can’t expect anything from him anymore, because he’s dead, thanks to that bitch Amy Gumm. I mean, I suppose technically I killed him, but she ruined him so that I had no choice. Oh, how I missed Scare! He was a little creepy, sure, and I have to admit some of his experiments were a bit—well, I wouldn’t say out of hand, exactly, but maybe a touch over the top. But he’d always been there for me. Mostly. He’d certainly had the same goals I did. And he’d been so clever. He knew practically everything about the history of Oz. He’d been with me from the very beginning—from before he’d even had a brain. He’d made me laugh back then, and once the Wizard had given him his gift, he’d helped me make myself
into the woman I am now.
But Scare was dead, I reminded myself firmly. In the end, even he had failed me.
The truth was, at this point, Bupu was all I had.
“So if you were to overhear certain . . . conversations,” I continued. “Related to your mistress’s future in the palace? Just like you found out about the Nome King’s plans to marry me?”
At last comprehension dawned in her foggy little eyes, and she drew herself up with an expression of pride that was quite comical but also carried enough dignity that I restrained my snicker.
“I go many places,” she said, nodding vigorously. “I stay away from the Diggers and the other servants. No one thinks I hear anything. They think I’m just an idiot slave. I know lots about what’s going on.” She beamed with pride. “The palace servants say many things around me,” she added, waggling her eyebrows at me for emphasis.
“Then you must attend the banquet with me,” I said. “I want you to listen to everything everyone is saying. Everyone I can’t hear. And I want you to remember all of it. Is that clear?”
“No one has ever trusted me with an important mission before, mistress,” she whispered, her eyes wide with awe at the enormity of the responsibility before her.
“Very good, Bupu,” I said. She looked like she was about to literally jump with joy. I cleared my throat and she froze, halfway between a leap and a lurch.
Privately, I had my doubts as to whether Bupu would come up with anything resembling valuable information—assuming she didn’t get herself killed trying to spy at the Nome King’s banquet, which, I had to admit, was a distinct possibility. But she was better than nothing. Plus, having an important secret mission put a real snap in her step. She bustled around my chamber, fluffing pillows, straightening dresses, and hmmm-hmmming imperiously. “Out, dust, out!” she muttered, flicking at an invisible speck on the bedcovers. And finally, at my direction, she consented to swap out her dumpy, shabby sack dress for a—well, a velvet dress several sizes too big for her that still looked rather sack-like. At least it was a formal sack. I told her she looked every bit of an Oz Munchkin. She twirled around at my compliment and I felt something like pride. It was probably the first thing I’d done for someone else since I landed in Oz. Aside from spreading Happiness, of course.