I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right. “Dorothy’s alive? But we dropped a whole palace on her. There’s no way she could have survived that. We barely got out ourselves.”
Lang shrugged. “She didn’t have to survive it. The Nome King was waiting all along for the right opportunity. He tunneled under the Deadly Desert into the Emerald Palace years ago. He knew exactly when the palace began to fall, and he got her out of there before you’d even cleared the castle walls. She’s been in Ev for days.”
I didn’t believe it. It wasn’t possible. I hadn’t meant to let Dorothy live. I just hadn’t been able to kill her myself. I thought of Lulu’s face after the Emerald Palace fell, when I’d told her I hadn’t been able to bring myself to kill Dorothy. The way Lulu looked at me as though I’d personally betrayed her.
And, in a way, I had. Killing Dorothy was why I’d been brought to Oz in the first place. It was the first, most important—and, ultimately, the only—task I’d been given. It was why I’d trained so hard, learned magic, learned how to fight.
I’d thought it was compassion that had made me leave Dorothy when the palace fell.
But if Dorothy was still alive, it was more like failure.
Except that some part of me had known there was a chance Dorothy might survive. Which mean that some part of me believed I didn’t have to kill her to save Oz. What if that was what Lurline had meant when she’d told me to find another way?
Was I a failure—or was I still Oz’s only hope?
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I thought I was the only one who could kill Dorothy. Isn’t that why you brought me to Oz in the first place?” I asked Nox.
Lang snorted. “You’re not that special,” she said. “Dorothy might be from the Other Place, but she’s still human. And you don’t seem to have gotten the job done, so maybe it’s time for someone else to take over.”
I bristled. Just because I knew I’d failed didn’t mean I was up for this crazy witch telling me where to go. But before I could snap back at her, Nox interrupted hastily.
“What’s the Nome King up to?” Nox asked.
Lang shot him a murderous look, as if she was offended he’d even opened his mouth. There was some seriously bad blood there.
And then it hit me. It was so obvious, I don’t know why it took me so long. Langwidere had been in the Order—or, at least, she knew Nox and Mombi. Had the Road of Yellow Brick dumped us in Ev for the world’s most awkward reunion with Nox’s ex?
“I don’t know yet,” she said coolly. “But it’s not your problem. I don’t know why the road brought you here either, but I have no use for you. You can rest here for a day or two, but after that, go on your way.”
“We don’t know what our way is, Lanadel,” Nox said in frustration.
“That’s not my name anymore,” she snapped.
“Uh, it seems kind of obvious?” Madison interrupted. “Everybody wants to kill this Dorothy chick, right? So . . .”
“So let us help you,” I finished, seeing exactly where she was headed. “Like I said, that’s why the Order came to me in the first place. There’s no reason for you to fight Dorothy alone.”
This time both Nox and Lang looked at me in surprise.
“Dorothy is everybody’s problem,” I pointed out. “And we’ve been fighting her for a long time without, frankly, a whole lot of success. What makes you think you can take her on your own?”
Lang frowned. “Exactly,” she said. “You weren’t strong enough. So why would I want your help?”
Now was definitely not the time to mention that I could have killed Dorothy but hadn’t been able to bring myself to do it. That being Wicked was one thing, but it wasn’t the same as being good. That no matter what Dorothy had done in the past, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to murder her when she was defenseless.
I remembered what it had felt like to stand over Dorothy in the cave underneath the Emerald Palace. She’d been vulnerable and weak; I’d been strong and powerful. I’d had the perfect opportunity to end it then and there. She’d murdered hundreds of people, including plenty of people I cared about. She’d almost destroyed Oz with her insane quest for power. And I still couldn’t bring myself to do it.
And the truth was, I wasn’t sure I could do it now. Because if I did, that would make me just like her. And if I killed her, would it really end there? And what if Oz’s magic warped me so much that I became just as evil in her place?
Nox had told me once that he wouldn’t hesitate to kill me if I turned into a monster. But a lot had happened between us since then. If I did start to become a monster like Dorothy, corrupted by the magic of Oz, what if he couldn’t bring himself to do it? What if, deep down, the only difference between me and Dorothy was that Oz’s magic had twisted her into something unrecognizable?
But I knew Dorothy had to be stopped, whether that meant killing her or finding another way to defeat her. And I also knew there was no way Lang, whoever she was, could do it on her own. She needed us, whether she liked it or not. And I was going to find a way to convince her.
Whatever it took.
I looked up. Lang was staring at me as if she could read my mind. Suddenly I really hoped she didn’t have Gert’s power to listen in on people’s thoughts.
“Guys?” Madison piped up. “I’m pretty hungry over here? Can we lay off the conference and eat something?”
“Of course. Forgive me, I’ve been a terrible hostess,” Lang said, not sounding very sorry at all.
As soon as the words left her mouth, a massive, shiny black beetle the size of a cow scuttled into the room from a doorway I hadn’t noticed, bearing an assortment of chairs, trays, and dishes improbably balanced on its immense back. But that wasn’t the weird part. The weird part was that its neck and body sprouted dozens of heads of different sizes and shapes. Some of them were almost human, others distinctly insectoid. The humanlike heads wore various expressions; some were smiling, revealing more than one row of teeth, and others were weeping or snarling with rage. Hundreds of beady black beetle eyes glittered at us from its insect heads. Its humanlike mouths moved as though they were speaking, but no sound came out as their jaws worked noiselessly. It was definitely up there with the Wheelers in the category of super-gross, super-creepy creatures that I never, ever wanted to see again, let alone stand next to while it set up the table and laid out the dishes with its long, segmented black legs and spikily jointed talons.
Madison looked slightly faint.
“I don’t think it will hurt us,” I said softly, although I wasn’t sure if I was trying to reassure Madison or myself.
“I’m terrified of bugs,” she whispered. “Like, irrational paranoia, get-the-sweats terrified.”
“All this time and I never knew,” I said with a grin I couldn’t help. “A well-placed cockroach at school could have changed everything.”
“Greta is not a cockroach,” Lang snapped, silencing us both immediately. “And she can hear you. Several of her bites are quite poisonous, so I’d watch my mouth around her if I were you.”
“Sorry,” Madison said hastily, but she still flinched as the beetle set a chair down in front of her.
If a many-headed beetle is capable of bowing sarcastically, Greta was definitely doing it. She set down chairs for the rest of us and delivered the dishes to the table in front of the princess, who uncovered them and shoved them toward us.
“Eat,” she said unceremoniously. “And sit.”
We sat. I wasn’t too excited about the eating part. Whatever Lang was serving us looked a lot like mushrooms. Lots and lots of mushrooms. At least there was water.
“It’s more than most people get here in a week,” Lang said shortly, watching me stare at the unappetizing brown mess.
“Of course,” I said quickly, helping myself to a spoonful. “I’m sure they’re delicious.”
They weren’t, not even a little bit, but at least they were filling. The three of us chewed in polite silence.
“Now that we’re all tight and stuff, can I ask about the heads?” Madison asked, swallowing a glutinous mouthful of mushrooms. Lang raised an eyebrow. “You know, the whole heads-on-sticks thing outside? And your decor? It’s a little unsettling, to be honest. Like way more Vlad the Impaler than Martha Stewart Living.”
“I don’t know your Vlad or Martha,” Lang said, her tone polite. “These are witches of the Other Place, presumably? But the heads are decorative, yes.”
“That stuff out there—those people—are decorative?”
“Those heads aren’t real,” Nox said. “They’re a glamour. An illusion. All of this”—he gestured at the palace, the mirrors, her nondescript clothes—“is an illusion. A mask. Right?”
“That’s the point,” Lang said with a shrug. “I know what people say about me. That I wear my murdered subjects’ faces stitched together over my own. That I swap identities the way other women change clothes. I don’t mind the rumors; I’m the one who started most of them. It pays to be unrecognizable. To have no one know for sure what I look like. I could be anywhere, or anyone.”
“So that stuff Nox was saying about you skinning people alive or whatever—that’s not actually true?” Madison asked.
Lang smiled. “I learned plenty about torture in the Order,” she said in a pleasant voice that belied her words. “Nox can tell you all about that. But actually hurting innocent people isn’t my style. The rumors let me move around Ev as I please. They keep the palace safe from trespassers, along with the Wheelers. Even the Nome King doesn’t know how much of it’s true and how much is just embellishment. Skinning people alive is certainly his style.”
That shut Madison up pretty quickly.
“And you and the Nome King . . .” Nox trailed off. I could guess at what he was about to say. How could she work for that monster? Especially if she’d been in the Order?
Lang glanced involuntarily at her silver bracelet. And now that I looked more closely, I could see that the pale skin of her wrist was circled with a web of silvery scars.
“It’s unbreakable,” she said, following my look. “The Nome King takes service contracts very seriously. I’ve tried to get it off with magic. Metal hammer, enchanted knives, half a dozen spells. He just laughed at me.” She pulled the fabric of her robe away from her neck briefly and I saw more scars knotted across her back, thick and painful-looking. “Or sent me to the Diggers to be whipped,” she added matter-of-factly. “After a while, it got easier to make him happy. I’ve had a lot of practice lying.”
“But the Order sent you here to spy. How did you become his prisoner?” Nox said. “What happened?”
Anger flashed through her green eyes.
“The Order?” she spat. “What did the Order ever do for me, Nox? The Order couldn’t even take out Dorothy. I don’t work for anyone. I do what the Nome King asks in order to stay alive long enough to find a way to take him down. Him and Dorothy both.”
“It seems to be working out for you,” Nox said, indicating the lavish palace with a nod of his head. I wanted to kick him. It was obvious that whatever work she was doing for the Nome King, she hated him. If he’d captured her when the Order sent her here and turned her into his slave, no wonder she hated the Order so much. Nox seemed dead set on antagonizing this girl and I didn’t understand why. That, or he was just oblivious to the fact that everything he said to her was exactly the wrong thing.
Which, knowing Nox, was just as likely. Fighting, he was good at. Tact, not so much.
“The Nome King didn’t buy me this place. I earned it. The few wealthy people in Ev pay a lot of money to gamble in my clubs.”
I thought I’d misheard her. “Your clubs? Like . . . nightclubs?”
She shrugged. “No matter how poor people get, they have to drink. And gambling makes them feel like they have a chance to make their lives better. It’s a public service of sorts, but it also puts me close to the action. There’s not a lot to do in Ev. Everyone who’s anyone comes through my clubs, and I pay attention to what comes out of their mouths. That’s the work I do for the Nome King. The work I do for myself . . .” She let that trail off, leaving us to digest her words.
“You cheat people and steal information from them for a really evil guy who’s magically keeping you a permanent prisoner?” I countered.
“It’s an exchange. I give them a place to forget their troubles for a while. Ev is a dangerous, violent place, but inside the walls of my clubs, my patrons are safe. I guarantee it. That’s a huge piece of why they do so well. And no one’s dumb enough to talk real politics within my walls—they know who I work for. I get just enough information to feed the Nome King useful tidbits to keep him satisfied. The rest of my intel I keep for myself.”
“So you’re a mobster,” Madison said. She sounded impressed.
Lang shrugged. “I prefer the word entrepreneur. I saw an opening and filled it. And in a way, my clubs bring people together. Rich and poor alike mingle at the roulette wheels and card tables. I have a dress code, but I don’t turn anyone away—unless they misbehave. That used to happen at first. Now that my reputation has spread, people don’t misbehave so much anymore.”
Most prisoners did not run Vegas-like empires. “So the Nome King just lets you . . . have all this?”
“The Nome King likes to think of himself as generous. And gambling provides a healthy distraction for the masses, which benefits him.”
“Distraction from what? Do you know why the Nome King rescued Dorothy and brought her to Ev?” Nox asked.
Lang shook her head, her clean, glossy hair rippling around her shoulders in a way that made my fingers itch for magic. I could’ve at least touched up my filthy and ragged dress, smoothed my hair to something resembling cleanliness. A little lip gloss—wait, who was I? Madison? Nox had seen me covered in blood, dirt, and worse. He’d seen me turn into a literal monster, and he was still around. I was tough, awesome, competent, and good at fighting. It wasn’t like she was flirting with my semi-maybe-non-boyfriend. If anything, her attitude toward him suggested she despised him.
But then I thought of that line from Romeo and Juliet that our sophomore year English teacher had drummed into our heads: My only love sprung from my only hate. You had to feel strongly enough about someone in the first place to hate them. Was this what jealousy felt like? Sort of being sick to your stomach all the time? I’d never had a reason to be jealous before.
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.