Order of the Wicked
Author: Danielle Paige
Date: 2016-06-28 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: kindle; fiction; sf; fantasy
Publisher: HarperCollins
Rights: All rights reserved

CONTENTS

1. Contents
2. One
3. Two
4. Three
5. Four
6. Five
7. Six
8. Seven
9. Eight
10. Nine

11. Excerpt from No Place Like Oz

1. One

2. Two

12. Excerpt from Dorothy Must Die
13. Back Ads
14. About the Author
15. Books by Danielle Paige
16. Copyright
17. About the Publisher

Guide

1. Cover
2. Contents
3. Chapter 1

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ONE

“Again!” Nox barked, and Lanadel gritted her teeth, preparing to repeat the knife stroke he’d just taught her for what felt like the hundredth time. She’d known training with the Order of the Wicked was going to be difficult, but she hadn’t realized it was going to be ridiculous. She was dripping with sweat, her dark hair clinging to her neck in damp tendrils. Back home, her brothers had always given her a hard time about her wild, untamable curls that refused to stay put in a ladylike bun. They’d teased her mercilessly, pulling the loose strands like she was—

Lanadel stopped that thought cold in its tracks. Her brothers were dead, and that was why she was here. Thinking about them now wasn’t going to bring them back. Their loss was so recent that every time her mind wandered she forgot they were gone. Forgot that she couldn’t just go home after fighting practice, punch Beech in the shoulder on her way to fight Rowan for a loaf of their mother’s fresh-baked bread . . .

Nox’s fist connected squarely with her cheek, snapping her head back and sending her reeling. “Monkey’s nuts!” she yelled, bringing her hand to her swelling cheek. “What the Ev did you do that for?”

“If we’d been on the battlefield instead of in the training caves, I’d have killed you,” Nox said coldly, his gray eyes hard. “You can’t let yourself get distracted in the middle of a fight.”

Lanadel bit down on another curse. Nox was a ruthless teacher, merciless and sometimes even cruel, but he knew what he was doing. She knew he was right. And if there was anyone in Oz more stubborn than Nox, it was her—and there was no way she was going to let him see her cry.

“Right,” she said, steeling herself. “Let’s do it again.” She was satisfied to see a flicker of surprise in Nox’s eyes. She might not have his skills, but he couldn’t beat her in willpower. She’d always been tenacious, but when her family died, her heart had turned as hard as the jewels that studded the walls of the Emerald City. She’d come to the Order to learn not just how to fight, but how to kill. And when she was ready, she was going to make Dorothy’s minions suffer for everything they’d done to her family. She’d make sure their deaths were as slow and as painful as her family’s had been. Right now, her will was the only thing keeping her from joining her brothers in whatever world Ozians went to when they died. For the first time in her life, she was alone. And since the loss of her family hadn’t killed her, she was going to make their killers pay.

Lanadel gripped the hilt of the short obsidian knife Nox had given her that morning and dropped into a fighting stance. If Nox was feeling particularly nasty, he’d use magic on her, but for now he was circling her with slow, measured steps, his crouch matching her own as he searched her defenses for a weakness. He lunged toward her with lightning speed but she parried his knife strike with the ringing sound of stone on stone and he danced back, resuming his circle. Concentrate, she told herself. Sometimes Nox favored his left side, just barely—but just enough. There it was, just the slightest give in his step. She saw her opening and feinted to the right. When Nox went to deflect her blow, she dropped into a somersault and kicked his left leg out from under him as she jumped out of the roll. He lost his balance—but not his nerve. As he lurched forward he grabbed her shoulder, throwing her to the ground and landing on top of her. “Checkmate,” he growled, his knife at her throat.

“Look down,” she said. He did, and rewarded her with the briefest flash of a smile. Her own blade was pressed up against his heart.

“Not bad,” he said grudgingly, rolling off her and to his feet in a single fluid motion. He extended one hand to her but she ignored it, pushing herself up on her own. Her head was ringing from Nox’s earlier punch and she could feel her eye swelling shut. She’d twisted her ankle when he’d thrown her to the ground, too, though the injury was nothing a quick soak in the healing pool couldn’t fix. But her training uniform was ripped in half a dozen places. She was bloody, bruised, and stinking—and Nox wasn’t even out of breath. His thick, dark hair was unmussed. He hadn’t even broken a sweat. It was infuriating. As if he could read her mind, he gave her a dismissive look.

“You’re getting better but you still have a long way to go,” he said in his now-familiar, cool, distant tone. “You’ll need to pick up the pace if you want to fight with the Order. We don’t have room for weaklings.”

Fury surged up in her, but she wasn’t going to show him he’d gotten to her. “I’ve only been training for a few weeks,” she said, keeping her voice even.

He shrugged. “Time isn’t a luxury we have here. We’re on the brink of war.”

“You don’t have to tell me that,” she said. She hadn’t told him about her family—only Gert knew that, and as far as she knew Gert had kept the information to herself.

“Apparently I do,” he said coldly. “You need to work much harder than you have been if you expect to be able to be of any use to us. We’re done for today; get that ankle to the pool. We meet again at sunrise tomorrow.”

“Yes sir,” she said sarcastically under her breath, but he was already striding away. Lanadel sighed and pulled her hair out of its totally ineffective ponytail. “You asked for this,” she muttered to herself as she followed him out of the training cave and toward the healing pool.

TWO

But when she got to the pool, she wasn’t alone. Another girl was there already, making half-anguished, half-ecstatic noises as she thrashed around in the warm, clear water. No one had ever bothered to explain the pool’s magic to Lanadel; it just worked. You got into it injured, and you came out healed, no matter how hard a beating you’d taken in practice—but the worse you felt, the more it hurt to get better. Which was probably some kind of metaphor for real life, but Lanadel was doing everything she could not to think too much about the real world.

“Sorry,” she said, embarrassed, and the other girl’s eyes flew open.

“I didn’t realize anyone was here!” she exclaimed. She was pretty—almost too pretty, with long, gold hair that swirled behind her in the water, clear green eyes, and a heart-shaped, pouting mouth. And she was totally naked. And she was totally ripped.

“N-no, it’s my fault,” Lanadel stammered, realizing she was babbling as she desperately tried not to look at the other girl in the pool. Living in a house with boys, she had seen plenty of them naked without wanting to. They were completely without shame. Conversely, no one had seen her naked for as long as she could remember. Lanadel’s eyes found a safe space on the surface of the water as she wondered who the naked girl was. Was she another recruit? Lanadel had never seen her before, but people came and went a lot in the caves, and she hadn’t been there long.

“Oh, don’t be silly,” the girl exclaimed. She fluttered one hand in the water, splattering Lanadel with sparkling, crystalline droplets. “There’s plenty of room, you just startled me.” She looked Lanadel up and down appraisingly. “And no offense, but you look like you need the pool even more than I do.”

“Yeah, uh, thanks,” Lanadel said, still stumbling on her words. The village she’d grown up in had been tiny, and other than her brothers, she hadn’t had friends. She didn’t know much about how to act around other people, and she definitely didn’t know much about how to act around other girls. Whoever this girl was, she was calm and confident and completely unflustered by the fact that she was talking to someone without her clothes on. Was Lanadel supposed to just get naked, too? Averting her eyes and blushing furiously, she pulled off her tattered training clothes and slunk into the pool, hissing in pain as the water met her bruises and cuts.

“It’s the worst,” the other girl said sympathetically. “Oh my god, believe me, it’s just the worst. For months, honestly, until you get used to it. You’re new, right?”

“Yeah,” Lanadel said, still wincing. But she was still grateful the pain took her mind off of the fact that they were naked. “I’ve only been here a few weeks.”

“The first few weeks are the hardest,” the other girl said. “It gets easier, though, I promise. Pretty soon you won’t even notice how much it hurts.” She laughed. “I’m Melindra,” the other girl added. “I’ve been fighting with the Order for a while now. Plenty long enough to know that”—she held up one hand, ticking her points off on her fingers with the other—“Mombi’s nuts, Gert’s a sweetheart, Glamora’s way smarter than she looks, and Nox is an asshole.” She frowned thoughtfully. “He’s a hot asshole, though,” she admitted. “And he doesn’t flirt. Ever.”

Lanadel burst into laughter for the first time since she’d turned up outside the caves, clamoring to be taught how to fight. “You tried flirting with him?”

“Well, obviously,” Melindra said, yawning. “Once you figure out how to disarm him, there’s not much else to do here. I mean, they’ll teach you magic, obviously. But probably not for a bit. They make you learn to fight the hard way first.” She rolled her eyes, making quotation marks with her fingers. “Because there’s no telling what Dorothy will throw at us,” she drawled, parroting the familiar, gruff bark of the old witch Mombi. Lanadel laughed again.

“Sounds familiar,” she said.

“You’ll have the whole speech memorized by the end of the week,” Melindra predicted. “Duty to Oz, blah blah, bringing together all corners of the land in unity, blah blah, Wicked coming together for the first time in the history of Oz to confront this profound and unexpected new threat to our safety as a country.”

It had been so thrilling when Dorothy first returned to Oz. The Wizard’s era had been before Lanadel was born, but she was old enough to remember the Scarecrow’s rule. The kindly fellow had been a sweet and endearing ruler, but he’d never seemed particularly effective. For a while, he’d implemented the building of schools all across Oz. Like the other kids in her village, she’d dutifully trooped along with her brothers to a little schoolhouse. She’d learned a lot of strange facts that still stuck in her brain: the annual sunfruit exports of the Kingdom of the Beasts, the tariff rate on buzzleberries from Quadling Country, and the chief dangers of traveling among the winged monkeys. But it was hard to see the point of school, and soon enough parents stopped sending their children. There was too much work to do to waste the day memorizing the names of every ruler of the Winkies.

And then something had happened in the Emerald City, and suddenly the Scarecrow wasn’t king anymore and they had a new ruler called Ozma, who’d been queen all along, or something like that. News took a long time to reach Lanadel’s tiny village in the far hills of Quadling Country, and her people didn’t have much use for rulers; their day-to-day life was much the same no matter who sat on the throne of Oz.

But even her village knew when Dorothy returned. The girl they’d heard about in bedtime stories and legends, the Witchslayer who’d saved Oz long ago—she wasn’t just real, she was back. Lanadel’s family had celebrated along with everyone else. And when Dorothy became Queen of Oz—well, even better. Or so they’d thought. That was before. Before Dorothy had created those half-person, half-mechanical creatures. Before she’d begun raiding villages and towns across Oz, taking prisoners and leaving a wake of blood, chaos, and burning houses. Before those terrible things had come to Lanadel’s village and—

No, she thought. Not now. She couldn’t let herself think about what had happened to her family. It would tear her apart before she had the chance to even the scales. And the Order was her only chance at righting the balance.

The Revolutionary Order of the Wicked was mysterious—their existence had only been a rumor when she set out looking for them after . . . after what Dorothy’s troops had done to her family. It had taken her long weeks of traveling and asking careful questions in inns and markets before, half starved and completely exhausted, she’d found her way to their training caves high in the Traveling Mountains. There was no map—the mountains moved too much for that. She’d had nothing to go on but half-fantastical stories: that the Wicked Witch of the West was still alive and had raised an army in order to stop the newly minted tyrant Dorothy’s rampage across Oz. That Glinda was a double agent, flitting between the Emerald City and a secret location in the middle of the mountains. That the winged monkeys were evil. That the winged monkeys were good. That somewhere on the side of Mount Gillikin was the entrance to a magical warren of caverns and tunnels that led to the heart of Oz—and a huge, secret army, training in stealth until they were strong enough to go up against Dorothy’s terrible forces.

By the time she reached the foothills of the Traveling Mountains, Lanadel had long since run out of food. She knew going farther into the mountains meant certain death—unless the Order was real, and unless she could find them. But she hadn’t hesitated as she took the first step on the narrow, rocky path that heaved under her feet as the mountains undulated around her with deep, rumbling booms and cracks. Revenge was the only thing she had left to live for. And so far, the Order was the only hope she had of avenging her family.

“Follow the shadow of Mount Gillikin,” she whispered, repeating the words an old innkeeper had told her in a sleepy hamlet in Gillikin Country. And maybe she was just delirious from starvation or exhaustion, but the innkeeper’s words had taken on a literal meaning. Mount Gillikin was the highest peak in the ever-shifting range, and as the mountain moved, its long, immense shadow had taken on the shape of a giant hand beckoning her forward. She hadn’t been walking for long when a huge storm descended on the mountainside, blowing snow so thick she could only see a few inches in front of her face. Half frozen and more than half starved, she had stumbled out of the storm into the meager shelter of a cleft in the rock that turned out to be the entrance to a much larger cavern. And there she had sunk to the ground, too exhausted to go any farther, and waited to die.

It was Gert, an ancient, grandmotherly witch whose sweet face belied her tremendous power, who’d found her collapsed on the floor of the cavern, and Gert who’d helped her to her feet and guided her to a tunnel at the back of the cave that led to the vast warren of tunnels and caverns where the Order’s headquarters were housed. Lanadel had no idea how far the caves extended, or how many troops the Order had. In two weeks, she’d seen a handful of other people, but they were always moving quickly back and forth along the corridors of the Order’s caverns and no one ever stopped to talk to her. She slept alone, in a small cave with a thin mattress on the floor, and Nox brought her her meals. She had risked her life to find the Order, but since she’d gotten here, she had lived in a weird limbo.

Gert had shown her to the cave where she slept the afternoon she arrived, and brought her a bowl of warm, nourishing broth that sparkled with an eerie green light. “Drink up,” she urged. The soup fizzed in her throat as she swallowed it, and almost immediately she could feel her whole body tingling as the strength returned to her arms and legs.

She’d slept like a dead person until Gert woke her up again—she assumed the next morning, although in the windowless cavern, she had no way to tell. Gert had introduced her to gruff old Mombi and sweet, pretty Glamora, and then she’d brought Lanadel to the training cave where Nox awaited her. That first day had been brutal—and so had the day after that. But as the days passed, her muscles gradually adjusted to the constant, punishing routine of her training. She knew there were other trainees, but she hadn’t met them. She hadn’t met anyone at all, other than the witches.

It was as if Nox was waiting for her to do something special—demonstrate some impressive skill or undiscovered talent—before she would be allowed to do anything other than eat her meals in silence and train obsessively with him. After a few weeks, she was so lonely that she was halfway tempted to run back down the side of Mount Gillikin and seek out somewhere else to go. Except that there was nowhere else. The Order was all she had now, for better or for worse.

Melindra was the first person other than Nox, Mombi, Glamora, or Gert that she’d talked to since she arrived. And it was hard to use the word “conversation” to describe the terse interactions she had with Nox. More like he barked orders, and she followed. And Melindra was funny, friendly . . . and gorgeous.

Melindra yawned widely and dunked her head in the warm water. “What I want to know is when we get to fight,” she said when she came back up, breaking into Lanadel’s thoughts.

“You haven’t been sent on any missions yet?” Lanadel didn’t know what she was expecting. Everything about her life now was so new. So confusing. And so filled with pain. Every day felt like being torn in a thousand different directions—as if there were dozens of different Lanadels inside her, trying to get out.

“Oh, they sent me out to do some recon,” Melindra was saying, and Lanadel snapped back to attention as the other girl continued. “You know, trying to establish the strength and size of Dorothy’s army, that kind of thing.”

“Those creatures are Dorothy’s army?” Lanadel thought of the creatures who’d torn through her village. Of what they’d done. The idea that there might be a whole army of them was so horrifying she could hardly bear to think about it.

“Supposedly.” Melindra shrugged. “I don’t know. I couldn’t find much. Lots of rumors in the Emerald City, but I couldn’t get near the palace without any kind of undercover setup, and I’m no good at that stuff. I can never keep my mouth shut. I got word back to the Order, and they sent another one of our best to try to get into the palace and find out what’s really going on. She’s still out there.” A flash of worry crossed Melindra’s face. “We haven’t heard from her in a long time, but I’m sure she’s fine.” Melindra sounded like she was trying to reassure herself as much as Lanadel. “Anyway, Dorothy has guards everywhere, that’s for sure, and her servants are terrified of her—or at least, the ones who manage to get out into the city sometimes. Supposedly she doesn’t like it when they leave the palace. But secret armies, weird experiments on people—”

“Experiments?” Could that explain what those—things—had been that attacked her village? They definitely weren’t human but they didn’t look like any other creature she had seen or heard of. And what they’d done to her family—that was something that had never happened, not in the entire history of Oz. If they were some terrible experiment gone wrong, that might explain what they were capable of. But who would create such a monster? And why? She tried to keep her voice steady, but Melindra gave her a searching look before she continued.

“So far, it’s all just rumors. No matter how hard we try, we can’t get any concrete intel. And Gert and Mombi have been keeping mum about it if they know anything. The heads of the Order don’t like to tell us much.” Melindra shrugged again. “I mean, obviously, ever since Dorothy Gale came back to Oz things have been different.” Melindra glanced over at Lanadel and saw her expression. “Well, it sounds like I don’t have to tell you,” she said quietly. “You know it didn’t take long before everything changed for the worse. Even the Pond of Truth started to tell lies. And the rumors coming out of the palace . . .” Melindra shivered involuntarily. “Raids on villages at the outskirts of Quadling Country. Even murder. And worse than murder. Enslavement.”

“I know all about that,” Lanadel said bitterly, without explaining. Melindra raised an eyebrow, but when Lanadel didn’t say anything else, Melindra didn’t press her.

“So that’s where the Order comes in. Listen to me ramble—I don’t mean to talk your ear off,” Melindra apologized.

“Nobody’s told me much,” Lanadel admitted. “I don’t even know how many members of the Order there are.”

“None of us do,” Melindra said. “I mean, there’s the trainees here, you, me, Holly, and Larkin, you’ll meet them soon enough”—something in Melindra’s voice suggested that the longer Lanadel waited before that happened, the better—“Nox, obviously, and Gert and Glamora and Mombi. Some of the other original trainees from this cell are out on missions.” Melindra sighed. “Dangerous stuff. These are dangerous times. But supposedly there are other cells, other training sites—we don’t get told much, you know? The less we know, the less we can give up if we get . . . captured.”

Lanadel shuddered. She knew what Dorothy’s creatures could do to someone they caught. What kind of tortures they would improvise . . .

“Anyway,” Melindra went on, “there aren’t many of us here right now, but there are more of us around Oz. And our numbers are growing because the more people Dorothy kills, the more people are ready to join the Order.”

“I came here for the same reason as you,” Lanadel said. She decided to be honest. “To fight. But I also didn’t have anyplace else to go.”

“Yeah,” Melindra said. “That’s true for most of us.” Her face took on a distant look that Lanadel recognized. It was the same expression that crossed her own face whenever she thought—or tried not to think—about what had happened to her family. “Nox might be an asshole,” Melindra said, her features returning to their usual animation, “but he lost his entire family to one of the Woodman’s raids. Mombi raised him—he’s basically more witch than boy. Like, you know how it seems he doesn’t have actual human emotions? He kind of doesn’t have actual human emotions. Partly it’s Mombi’s fault, but I mean—how do you get over a thing like losing every single person you love?”

Suddenly Lanadel was crying. She did her best to hide it from Melindra by dunking her own head underwater, but there was no concealing the way her shoulders were shaking as sobs racked her still-malnourished body. What was this tough, confident warrior going to think of a girl who cried at the drop of a hat? But instead of mocking her, Melindra threw her arms around her.

“Oh, wizard’s balloons, I’m so sorry! Me and my giant mouth,” Melindra babbled. “I don’t even think before I start talking. Don’t pay any attention to me at all.”

“It’s fine,” Lanadel mumbled into a mouthful of Melindra’s wet, sweet-smelling hair. Melindra’s embrace was the closest she’d gotten to another human being in weeks. Unless you counted getting punched in the face by Nox. She relaxed into the other girl’s arms, relishing in the comfort of her warm, damp skin.

“It’s not fine. I’m an idiot.” Melindra laughed harshly and let her go, and Lanadel did her best to recover—although she wasn’t sure whether she was more flustered by crying in front of Melindra or by the other girl’s embrace. It was almost as if she was still in Melindra’s arms for a few more seconds. It reminded Lanadel of the way her heart kept beating fast for a few seconds after she stopped running. Only she hadn’t moved a single step. Melindra kept on talking, unaware of her effect on Lanadel. “They didn’t waste much time giving me etiquette lessons, I’ll tell you that much. One day with Glamora and”—she snapped her fingers—“that was it. ‘We need you in the field,’ was what Nox said, but I knew what that really meant. ‘You’re such a buffoon we’re not even going to try and teach you to pass as a courtier.’ Like I said, undercover is not my strong suit.”

“Etiquette lessons?” Lanadel asked, surreptitiously wiping her eyes.

“They haven’t foisted Glamora on you yet? Girl, you better pray they keep that witch away from you.” Melindra held her hands out of the water, waggling her fingers at Lanadel. She had never been as animated about anything as Melindra seemed to be about everything. Lanadel’s brothers had been the boisterous ones. She missed the way they took up space. She had only known Melindra for the span of a few minutes, and she already knew that Melindra, too, was larger than life. “Anyway, I’m turning into a straight-up prune and Nox’ll be on my ass in a minute if I don’t get out of here and back to the training caves. Plus, I’ve just about yammered your ear off.”

“Nox will come here?” Lanadel squeaked in horror.

“There’s nowhere he won’t go if he thinks you’re slacking,” Melindra warned with a grin. “And I mean nowhere. Of course, if that’s what you’re into . . .”

Lanadel was out of the water so fast that Melindra burst out laughing. “You better watch out, or I’ll tell him that’s how to motivate you!” she called out as Lanadel threw on her dirty training uniform. She already knew a fresh set of training clothes would be waiting for her on the threshold of her sleeping cave in the morning. Melindra pulled herself out of the healing pool, and Lanadel couldn’t help but notice the way the muscles rippled in her arms as she heaved herself out of the water. “See you in the dining hall later?”

“What dining hall?”

Melindra rolled her eyes. “Oh, they pulled the solitary thing on you, too? Apparently it’s supposed to teach you initiative. You have to find the dining hall on your own if you don’t want to go completely nuts in your room alone. But yeah, there’s a dining hall. You know that bell that rings every evening?”

Lanadel nodded.

“That’s dinner. Just wander around when the bell rings. It’ll find you.” With that and a cheery wave, Melindra trotted out of the cavern before Lanadel could even thank her.

“Dining hall?” Lanadel echoed, shaking her head. Welcome to the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked, she thought. Where absolutely nothing is easy.

THREE

As soon as Lanadel heard the bell sound for dinner that night, she ran out of her room and into the long, low-lit stone corridor outside. It’ll find you, Melindra had said. What in Oz was that supposed to mean? She looked both ways down the corridor, half expecting sweet-faced old Gert to appear out of nowhere and tell her she’d solved some key riddle before leading her to the dining hall. But the hallway was as empty as always. Clear veins of crystal ran through the rough-hewn stone and glowed with an otherworldly light no matter what time of day. The floor was covered with a rug made from the fur of some animal she didn’t recognize: tawny orange gold with zigzagging black stripes. She knew the passageway to the left led to the big white cavern where she trained alone with Nox and, beyond that, the healing pool. So she turned to the right and started walking.

And suddenly she wasn’t alone. “Melindra told you,” said a familiar voice, and Lanadel jumped. Nox had appeared out of nowhere.

For a second, she debated the value of pretending not to know what he was talking about, but she decided against it. “Were you ever going to?”

Nox looked at her with his usual infuriating, inscrutable expression. “You have to learn to take initiative,” he said. “You have innate skill, Lanadel, and I don’t doubt your motivation. But you’re too afraid to take risks.”

“Does everything have to be about training? Can’t you just tell me where the dining hall is instead of letting me sit alone in my room for weeks thinking I’m the only person here?”

He stopped short and grabbed her chin, forcing her to look him in the eye. His thick, dark hair was wild. This close, his familiar sandalwood scent was almost overpowering. It was as if the rich smell emanated from his skin.

“This isn’t a joke, Lanadel,” he said. “The Order is the only hope Oz has of stopping Dorothy before she goes too far. Every one of us has to be ready all the time. So yes, everything has to be about training.” His voice dripped with disdain as he repeated her words.

Not for the first time, fury flooded through her as Nox needled her. “Fine,” she snarled suddenly, ducking away from his grip and into the fighting crouch he’d taught her. For the first time since she’d arrived in the caverns, Nox was caught off guard. And when she threw the hardest, fiercest punch she’d ever mustered in her short life, it connected solidly with his chin with a resounding, incredibly satisfying crack. Nox reeled backward, slamming into the corridor’s walls, and she was already ready for him as he brought his own fists up a second too late. She whirled into a roundhouse kick, sweeping his feet out from beneath him, and when he crashed to the floor with a startled “oof” she was already on top of him, her forearm pinning him to the ground by his throat as she straddled his chest. For a second, she saw a flash of something in his eyes that almost looked like respect.

And then a huge, invisible hand was squeezing the life out of her, pulling her off of Nox and pinning her up against the wall where she’d thrown him seconds earlier. She could feel its might crushing her ribs, pushing the breath out of her chest until she saw stars and the edges of her vision grew dim, but she refused to stop struggling.

“You—cheated—used—magic—” she wheezed, but the invisible hand only gripped her more tightly.

“Use it!” someone was yelling into her ear. “Use your anger, Lanadel!”

Something flared to life inside of her—the tiniest flicker of light kindled by the burning rage in her heart. She could almost see it—a finger of flame that was just the tip of a roaring fire.

“That’s it!” Nox yelled. Right before she passed out.

When she opened her eyes, a huge, whisker-sprouting wart surrounded by a sea of wrinkles dominated her entire field of vision. She shrieked and the wart moved backward, resolving into the wizened, ancient features of Mombi. Lanadel had had little contact with the stern witch who seemed to be more or less the head of the Order, and what contact she’d had mostly consisted of the old woman barking orders. She didn’t look any happier or kinder now.

“What did you do to her, hit her over the head?” Mombi grumbled. Nox was standing next to her, looking almost sheepish.

“I just thought—she needed some—she was almost there—”

“Magic is my subject!” Mombi snapped, poking a stubby finger into Nox’s muscular chest. Lanadel couldn’t help a feeling of smug satisfaction at Nox’s pleading expression. So he made mistakes after all.

“She was so close,” Nox said, some fire returning to his voice as he met the old witch’s gaze. “You need to push the trainees harder if you want to see results. We’re at war, Mombi.”

“You think I need to be reminded of that by you?” the witch snarled. “We need to push the trainees, yes. We don’t need to suffocate them!” She gestured violently toward Lanadel. “You could have killed her, Nox.”

“We’re all going to get killed if we’re not strong enough,” Nox said coldly. Mombi made a disgusted noise and turned away, stomping off down the corridor.

“No magic!” she shouted over her shoulder. “That’s my job, Nox, and don’t forget it again.” Nox watched her go, his expression unreadable, and then sighed and extended a hand to Lanadel.

“Sorry,” he said quietly. She ignored his outstretched hand, getting to her feet without his help. She’d been about to yell at him, too, fired up by what had just happened, but his unexpected apology stopped the words in her mouth. Nox never apologized. For anything.

“You were right,” she said, the words surprising her as she said them. Nox raised an eyebrow. “I could feel something happening. Was that . . . magic?”

“Yeah,” he said, looking at her thoughtfully. “It was. I wasn’t sure if you had it in you, to be honest.”

“How does that stuff even work? How can you tell?”

“Oz’s magic is—well, it’s complicated, to say the least. There’s a lot about it that we just don’t understand. For a long time, it seemed like only the witches could use magic. That’s what everyone assumed, anyway. But all that went out the window with the Wizard.”

“I thought Dorothy proved his power was fake back in the day.”

“It was and it wasn’t. All that stuff with the giant talking head—yeah, that was just cheap tricks and illusions. But the gifts he gave to the Scarecrow and the Lion and the Woodman were real enough. Plus, there’s the matter of how he got to Oz in the first place. As far as we know, no one can cross over from the Other Place without magic. There’s a lot we don’t know about the Wizard.”

“A lot we didn’t know, you mean,” Lanadel said. “He’s dead, right?”

Nox shook his head. “Nobody knows. There are rumors . . .” He scowled in frustration. “There are always rumors. If he is still alive, he could be a powerful ally. Or a powerful enemy. Or just . . . powerful. The Wizard has always been famous for putting his own interests first. But until we figure out what’s going on with Ozma, he might be able to rule in her stead. At least he was peaceful, which is a lot more than we can say for Dorothy.”

Lanadel’s eyes widened. “You’re trying to put the Wizard back on the throne?”

“Nobody knows the entire plan,” Nox said severely, as if she’d said something she shouldn’t have—even though he was the one who’d brought the Wizard up in the first place. “That way, if you’re captured . . .” He didn’t have to finish, repeating what Melindra had said back at the healing pool. Lanadel had seen what Dorothy’s minions were capable of. She had no desire to be anywhere near their clutches with information they wanted to get out of her. “Anyway,” he added less sharply, “everything in Oz is different now. I have magic.” He flexed his fingers. “Melindra, Holly, and Larkin have magic. There are others. They won’t tell me the full truth”—a note of bitterness entered his voice—“but I don’t think even Gert and Mombi fully understand what’s happening with Oz’s magic right now. I’m sure they’d love it best if they were the special ones. Keep the rest of us in line, that kind of thing.” He was pretending he was joking, but she wasn’t fooled. There was something dark and unhappy underneath his light words. Some old, deep wound. She remembered what Melindra had said about Mombi raising him. He’s more witch than boy. But if that was true, and Mombi wasn’t letting him in on the Order’s decisions, that had to hurt.

“And I have magic, I guess,” she finished.

“I had a feeling. But Mombi was right. She should have been the one to guide you to find your power—to learn control first. Magic in the hands of someone who doesn’t know what she’s doing can be incredibly dangerous. That’s why I shouldn’t have pushed you as hard as I did. I triggered your power, sure, but like Mombi said, I could have really hurt you.” He sighed again and pushed his dark hair out of his cool gray eyes. “I just . . .” He trailed off, his gaze distant.

“Like you said, we’re at war,” she supplied. “You can’t afford to be soft. And anyway, it worked. If it makes me stronger, I don’t care what you do.” She hadn’t realized how true that was until she said it out loud. How little she cared about her own life. If training killed her, so be it. If she wasn’t strong enough to avenge her family, she’d just join them.

“You mean that, don’t you?” He didn’t sound surprised.

She didn’t have to answer. She knew he could see it in her eyes. The fire was still burning. And next time, she was going to learn how to use it. “Come on,” he said, putting one hand briefly on her shoulder. “It’s about time somebody showed you the dining hall.”

FOUR

“Hall” was definitely the wrong word for the cavern Nox led her to. “Cathedral” was more like it. The cave was practically the size of her old village. The ceiling was so far overhead that it was lost in darkness, but long stalactites of glittering crystal reached downward out of the shadows, reflecting the light of dozens of chandeliers that floated over a single long oak table that stretched the entire length of the cavern. More glowing veins of the same crystal that lit the hallways streaked across the floor and up the walls; combined with the chandeliers, the effect was almost dazzling despite the fact that they were underground. A fire the size of a small house burned in a vast hearth at the far end of the cavern. Behind it, a foaming lavender waterfall descended from an opening in the ceiling, sending out clouds of jasmine-scented mist. Naked, chubby winged Pixies capered in and out of the water, giggling and splashing each other with tufts of foam.

Best of all, a small army of Flutterbudgets darted back and forth, setting the table with gleaming silverware and starched white napkins, filling cut-glass goblets with sparkling water, and bearing huge platters of more kinds of food than Lanadel had ever seen in one place in her life: singing jamfruits that periodically burst with a noisy squelch, sending sugary paste everywhere; piping-hot portlepastries baked into the shapes of flowers and trees; fizzgiggles that poured themselves into silver bowls, arguing fiercely with each other about who should get eaten first—Oz delicacies that Lanadel had only heard of but never imagined actually existed. She gasped out loud.

“Glamora really missed the banquet hall in the Emerald Palace,” Nox said at her side, slightly amused by her wonder. “She’s the only one of us who really cares about all this stuff, to be honest. So we let her do whatever she wants, even though it takes a lot of her energy to keep up appearances. It means a lot to her.”

“Appearances?” Lanadel asked. But as she looked more closely at the dazzling spectacle of the dining hall, she suddenly understood what Nox meant. The Flutterbudgets were setting the same places at the table over and over again. If she stared long enough at the chandeliers, their outlines blurred and she could see through them to the walls of the cave beyond them. The firelight flickered in the same repeating patterns. The fizzgiggles climbed into their bowls in the same endless order. The jamfruits’ song was stuck in a loop.

And although the long table was polished to a blinding glow and set with dozens of places, only a handful of people sat at the end closest to Nox and Lanadel—Gert, Glamora, Melindra, Mombi, and a boy and a girl Lanadel didn’t recognize. The boy had long white-blond hair that he kept pushing out of his eyes and a pale, serious face. The girl was a Munchkin; her muscular blue-skinned arms were decorated with delicate, pale tattoos of vines and flowers, and her blue-black hair was shaved at the sides so that only a long lock remained on top of her head. All of them were dressed in training clothes, but the Munchkin’s and the pale boy’s looked somehow more expensive and carefully tailored than Melindra’s torn and patched clothes, as if they’d never actually worn them to train in. All of them were ignoring the darting Flutterbudgets, hovering dishes of food, and exploding pastries.

“It’s fake,” Lanadel said as understanding dawned.

Nox shrugged. “It’s an illusion,” he said, low enough so Glamora couldn’t hear him. “Not exactly the same thing. It’s real magic. You just can’t eat the food.”

“Is it like this all the time?”

“She changes it up. Last winter it got so cold we couldn’t train outside for a while, so she turned it into a big sunny outdoor picnic in here. Blue sky overhead, sunshine and all. For a while it looked exactly like Rainbow Falls. That was my favorite. You could even feel the mist on your face if you got close to the waterfall. But Mombi complained the water noises made her have to pee at every meal.”

“But why?” Lanadel asked. “Why go to all the trouble?”

“It’s a good reminder of what we’re fighting for,” Gert said from across the table. How had she heard what Nox was saying? Lanadel wondered if she could read lips—or minds. “Not just freedom, but the way things are supposed to be. Oz is meant to be a place of joy and delight for everyone who lives here.”

“If Dorothy has her way, all that will change,” Nox added. He had a far-off look in his eyes. Everyone who joins the Wicked has lost something, he’d told her when she’d first arrived. Had his life been all about banquet halls and magical pastries before he learned how to fight? Well, he wasn’t the only one who had lost his entire family.

“And what do you think?”

“I don’t need illusions,” he said flatly, looking away.

“My life was never like this,” Lanadel said frankly, and Nox’s gaze focused on her again. “Not before Dorothy, I mean. I lived in a tiny village. My family was poor. We didn’t have banquets and picnics; there was always too much work to do. I’ve never eaten any of this stuff or been waited on or been to Rainbow Falls or—”

“You know what I mean,” Nox said tiredly. “Can we not argue about Oz’s economic conditions right now?” She was about to snap back a retort, but she swallowed it. For the first time, she felt almost sorry for Nox. Sometimes it seemed like he was carrying the entire weight of the Order on his—admittedly muscular—shoulders.

“Sure,” she said quietly. “Sorry.” Something like gratitude flashed across his face and was gone. So even the high-and-mighty Nox had regular emotions every now and then. Lanadel filed that piece of information for later.

“What are you doing, standing there like a monkey just flew off with your dinner?” someone was yelling from the table, and Lanadel immediately recognized Melindra’s raspy voice. “Sit down, you idiots. The food’s getting cold.”

Nox shook his head as if he was trying to push out unwelcome thoughts and slid into an empty place next to Melindra. Lanadel sat down across from them. She couldn’t help noticing that Melindra didn’t quite make enough room for Nox, so that he couldn’t avoid touching her as he took his seat, but he didn’t seem to mind. She remembered what Melindra had said about flirting with him and almost rolled her eyes before she caught herself. And then Nox put his arm around her, and she leaned into him briefly before turning to her food. Okay, so Melindra was doing more than just flirting with him, apparently. Melindra and Nox? Anyone and Nox? It was hard to imagine the effusive, confident girl going for a riddle-spouting jerkwad, but love was weird. Not that she would know. She tried as hard as she could not to stare, but when Nox wasn’t looking, Melindra winked at her, and she burst into laughter.

“What?” Nox asked in irritation, and Melindra started laughing, too. “What?”

“No-thing,” Melindra sang out innocently. “Lanadel, glad this jackfruit finally showed you where we eat. This is Larkin”—she gestured to the serious-looking boy—“and Holly.” The Munchkin girl inclined her head. “And obviously you already know Gert and Glamora. And Mombi.” The old witch grunted rudely. She was shoving bread and cheese into her mouth as though it was her last meal. And, as it turned out, she chewed with her mouth open. Lanadel averted her eyes.

As if in deliberate contrast to the magical, illusory banquet happening behind them, the food was almost aggressively ordinary: bread and cheese, some kind of bland, flavorless porridge, and a few (thankfully silent) apples. Lanadel wondered why Glamora didn’t spend more time magicking up some food that actually tasted good instead of wasting all her energy on a dinner party no one could enjoy, but by now she knew better than to ask questions. Maybe Nox was right, and the pretense was what was important. Acting as though things were normal, trying to keep their lives as close to what they’d been before as possible. Except that to Lanadel, none of it made sense. Their lives weren’t what they’d been before. That was the point. That was why they were all here. Pretending wasn’t going to get them anywhere. It wouldn’t bring back her family or change the past. The only way to return to the way things had been before Dorothy came back to Oz was to get rid of Dorothy. And that wasn’t going to happen without a fight.

Lanadel was so preoccupied with her thoughts that she didn’t realize Larkin was asking her a question until he repeated it twice. “Where did you learn to fight before here?”

She blinked. “Oh, sorry. I—well, I didn’t.” Larkin and Holly exchanged glances. They reminded her of the head councilman’s kids from her village. They had the same faintly arrogant air, as if they knew something nobody else in the room did.

“You’ve never trained before?” Holly’s voice dripped disbelief—and scorn. “At all?”

“No,” Lanadel said, bewildered. There’d never been a reason to learn how to fight in Oz before. Sure, there had once been wicked witches, but Dorothy had taken care of that long ago, when she first came to Oz and liberated the Munchkins and the Winkies.

Larkin made a soft snorting noise. “Then what are you doing here?”

“Can you even use magic?” Holly asked in a tone that clearly suggested that if she couldn’t, she was of less use than the dirt on the cavern floor.

“Leave her alone,” Melindra said sharply, sitting up. “We’re all here for a reason. Let’s not be twits about it.”

Lanadel shot the other girl a grateful look, but Holly wasn’t done.

“If we let just anybody join the Order—” she began with a sneer, but Mombi cut her off.

“Are you questioning my judgment, girl?” the witch barked. “Think I’m letting in riffraff? Is there something you’d like to say to me directly?”

“No,” Holly mumbled, looking down at the table, but her face was defiant and her scornful sneer didn’t relent.

“Mombi and Melindra are right,” Nox added severely. “You two might be more experienced fighters, but Lanadel can hold her own. She wouldn’t be here if she couldn’t.”

To her mortification, Lanadel actually flushed. Was Nox complimenting her? “I’m here,” she said pointedly. “You don’t have to talk about me like I can’t hear you.” Larkin snorted again and Mombi brought her fist down on the table with a thump.

“That’s enough,” she said sharply. “Nox is right. And there are few enough of us as it is. We don’t need to be squabbling with each other. Is that clear?”

“Of course, Mombi,” Holly said in a syrupy voice. “We’re sorry. Aren’t we?” she added, elbowing Larkin.

“Oh, very sorry,” he echoed in the same insincere, singsongy voice. It was obvious neither one of them meant a word of it, but Mombi seemed satisfied by their apology.

After they finished eating, Nox pulled her aside as the others wandered out of the dining room. “Things will be different for you,” he said seriously. “Your training will get harder than anything you’ve done before. We may need to move against Dorothy soon.”

“What do you mean?”

“A member of the Order is . . . collecting information,” he said vaguely, a troubled look passing across his face. “We haven’t heard from her in some time. If she’s been killed—well, it might mean Dorothy’s reach is farther than we think.” He had to be talking about the same girl Melindra had been referring to in the healing pool. But as usual, nobody was going to tell her anything else. Like what kind of danger this girl was in—or whether she herself would have to do the same thing soon. Melindra had tried to pretend that there was nothing to worry about, but Nox was obviously concerned. And if Nox was worried—well, that was a bad sign.

Lanadel could tell him that something was already on the move. Something that Dorothy had probably sent—something that matched up with the rumors about crazy experiments and a creepy secret army. If Nox thought Dorothy was just sitting around in the Emerald Palace, he was wrong. But the thought of talking about what had happened to her was still too raw. Once again, she felt herself being pulled in too many directions. If only she could make a different Lanadel—one that could carry the pain for her, so her real self could keep fighting without having to think about it.

Nox gave her a searching look. “What?”

“Nothing,” she said. “It’s all right. I understand.”

“I thought you would.” He nodded. “You’re doing well. Better than I’d expected considering the state you were in when you got here and your lack of any kind of training.”

“Better than Holly and Larkin expected, I guess,” she said.

He sighed and pushed his dark hair out of his face. “Holly and Larkin can be difficult, but they’re good fighters, and we need them. It’s better to just ignore some of their . . . quirks.”

Is that what they are, Lanadel thought sourly. Where she was from, treating other people like garbage was more than just a “quirk.” It was a crappy thing to do. But Nox was right. If she’d just met the entire Order—well, it was hardly an intimidating army, even if Mombi, Gert, and Glamora were witches and Melindra was the best fighter in Oz. It was hard to imagine the ragtag bunch defeating Dorothy’s forces and restoring peace to Oz. But as far as she knew, the Order was the only game in town—and going up against Dorothy alone would be suicide.

Training with the Order was the only chance she had to avenge her family. She didn’t care if she died trying, but the more fighters she had at her back, the further she would get. Besides, she wasn’t here to make friends. She was here to learn how to become a killing machine, and Nox and Melindra were the only people she’d met who seemed like they could teach her. She’d seen way worse than anything Holly and Larkin could do, she reminded herself. They were just minor distractions.

“What are you doing here?” she asked suddenly. “Leading the Order, I mean.”

He smiled. “I’m hardly the leader,” he said. “I leave that up to Gert and Mombi.”

“But you’re basically in charge of the trainees.”

He shrugged. “I know how to fight.”

“Melindra does, too.”

“Melindra’s our best,” he agreed. His expression was neutral. As usual, it was impossible to tell what he was really thinking. “But she’s impulsive. Gert and Mombi needed someone with more control to train new members.” Impulsive? Was he talking badly about his girlfriend? Was Melindra his girlfriend? And why did she even care? It’s none of your business, she told herself.

“Is that why you don’t have emotions?”

He looked surprised and then he laughed. “I have emotions,” he said. It was the most honest, unguarded thing she’d ever heard him say. As if lurking under his harsh, controlled exterior was a completely different person. Someone who knew how to smile, and laugh, and think about things other than fighting and death. Was that the person Melindra got to see all the time? Or was he this difficult with her, too?

“Not any that you show.”

“I’ve been fighting for a long time,” he said, his face closing down again. “And Oz teaches you that nothing is ever what it seems. It’s not a good idea to show people your true self or relax your guard.”

“Even here?”

“Especially here.” He was suddenly distant again. Now she really wanted to know what he was talking about. Did he mean he didn’t trust Melindra? Did he mean she shouldn’t trust Melindra? Was he just jealous of anyone else building up a relationship with Melindra?

Out of all the Order, Melindra seemed the most untouched by all the horror of Oz. Somehow she had remained honest and open, while the rest of them toted around their scars. She wanted to ask Nox about her. If he was in love with her. If he was capable of being in love with anyone. But any chance she’d had of getting through his defenses to catch a glimpse of the real Nox was gone. “You should get some rest,” he added. “Real training starts tomorrow. You need to be ready.”

He walked away without another word. Lanadel watched him go. Why he was so insistent that no one could be trusted? It was more than just his commitment to the Order and their training. Was it what had happened to his family, or being raised by Mombi—or was it something even worse? Whatever it was, it had hurt him so deeply that it seemed he would never be able to fully trust another person.

Nox wasn’t her friend—but he was like her. All his anger bottled up inside, just waiting for an outlet. Putting up walls to keep himself safe. Melindra was the opposite of that. Despite all that she had gone through, she was still open to Nox and to Lanadel, and to life, in a way that Nox didn’t seem to be.

Lanadel wondered if it was possible for Melindra to ever break through Nox’s wall. She had already somehow broken through to Lanadel. Lanadel didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. They were preparing for a war with Dorothy. Was having people who she cared about something that made her a better fighter, or a more vulnerable one?

Nox seemed to be struggling with the same question. But which side would he come down on? And what would it mean for Melindra?

FIVE

The next day was so different from her first weeks with the Order that Lanadel felt as if she’d suddenly traveled to an entirely new place. A tiny, winged image of Gert woke her at dawn by blowing a miniature horn in her ear—not that she could tell from her sleeping cave that it was dawn. She only knew it because Gert had told her when she first came to the caverns that that was when training started every day. But instead of her solitary meal in her sleeping cave and a long, dreary day of endless one-on-one sessions with Nox, she trained for the first time in the main cave with everyone else. The training caves all had the same high ceilings, bright crystal lamps, and hard, smooth white floors. The walls were lined with dozens of weapons: axes, knives, swords, staffs, and other fighting implements Lanadel didn’t even recognize, let alone know how to use. Slings and harnesses dangled from the ceiling at one end of the cave; when Nox had taught her flips and leaping, whirling kicks, she’d started out in a harness until she learned to spin and cartwheel without help.

Now Nox and Melindra circled her in the middle of the polished white floor while Larkin and Holly watched from the sidelines. In the ring, there was nothing friendly about Melindra’s face. Her expression was stony and focused, her eyes fixed. Lanadel could practically feel the searing force of her gaze as Melindra assessed her every weakness with razor-sharp precision.

“How would you fight differently against two people?” Nox asked as the two of them continued their unnerving, predator-like circle. “Think about what I’ve taught you.”

“Like teaching her anything is going to help.” Larkin’s voice was low, but it carried. Lanadel flushed with anger. She opened her mouth to answer him, and Nox and Melindra pounced. Melindra moved so fast Lanadel didn’t even realize what was happening until she was on her back on the floor, the other girl’s knee resting on her chest.

“Okay,” Nox said, in his usual infuriatingly even tone. “Let’s try that one again, Lanadel.”

They did. And again. And again. Each time, Melindra knocked her down before she could even land a strike while Holly and Larkin snickered. This time, Melindra and Nox didn’t defend her. They were so focused on fighting that she wondered if they even heard Holly and Larkin’s sneers. Why couldn’t she be the same way? Or maybe now they expected her to defend herself. Out there in the real world, out fighting Dorothy, there’d be no one to stop anyone else from trying to hurt her. If she couldn’t learn to deal with Holly and Larkin now, she’d be next to useless when she was faced with a real distraction.

But no matter how hard she tried, Lanadel couldn’t concentrate. Each time Melindra knocked her feet out from under her, Larkin’s laughter rang in her ears until it was the only thing she could hear. “Come on, Lanadel!” Nox yelled as Melindra knocked her down for what felt like the thousandth time. “Focus!” It was no use. Tears welled up in her eyes, blurring her vision, but Melindra was relentless. When she was fighting, she was practically a machine. Nothing could stop her. No wonder she was the Order’s fiercest fighter. It wasn’t just how strong she was. She had something else, some power that let her tune out everything except the enemy in front of her. It wasn’t magic. It was sheer skill.

Finally, Nox dismissed her with a scowl. Equal parts relieved and humiliated, she wiped sweat and tears out of her eyes as Nox called Holly into the ring. As she watched Melindra circle the other girl, Lanadel started to understand how Holly moved. Her inhuman, panther-like grace let her flow effortlessly from one movement to another. Slowed down, she looked like a dancer performing an elaborate, fierce ballet. As Nox and Melindra took turns darting toward Holly, she quickly deflected their kicks and strikes, mimicking Melindra’s easy, confident movements.

But while Melindra didn’t even break a sweat, Holly’s face glistened from the effort of blocking her attacks. Even Nox was actually breathing hard. Melindra looked as cool and as calm as if she hadn’t been fighting at all. “Good, Holly,” Nox said, and Holly flashed Lanadel a triumphant grin. Larkin’s turn in the ring was next. As he fought, Holly sidled up to her.

“That’s how it’s done,” she said in a low voice. “I don’t know why they bothered to recruit you if you can’t even block a basic hit. What are you, some kind of charity case?”

Lanadel gritted her teeth and refused to look at Holly. If Melindra could ignore her, so could she. And Larkin might have been just as good a fighter as Holly, but he had to work even harder. He was breathing hard, and his forehead was slick with sweat.

“What was your family, a bunch of peasants? My family was royalty. They taught me how to protect myself. You know,” Holly said airily, waving a hand. “In case some dirty Quadling wanted to kidnap me for ransom.” She sounded as though she found the thought utterly delicious.

“That’s ridiculous. Quadlings don’t kidnap people. And you don’t know anything about my family. And you know even less about me,” Lanadel snarled in spite of herself. She could take plenty of insults. But not that. Never that.

“Someone’s a little defensive. Why, I bet your parents probably weren’t even—”

Lanadel’s body moved before her brain even registered the slight. All those weeks with Nox had paid off. Her instincts worked just fine when they wanted to. And before she knew what she was doing, her fist connected with Holly’s sneering face. Holly reeled backward in shock, blood gushing from a nose that looked suddenly, distinctly crooked.

“What are you doing?” someone was shouting behind her, but Holly had already recovered and dropped into her fighting stance. Whatever else she was, she was no coward. And like Nox had said, she could really fight. She lunged at Lanadel, her fists up for the offensive, and Lanadel ducked and lashed out—just the way Nox had taught her. All the endless, boring repetitions and drills had sunk the movements into her muscles until they came as easily as breathing. As she and Holly flowed and jabbed around each other, she found herself smiling. She liked fighting. And more than that, she was good at it. She saw her opening and drew back her fist, preparing to lay Holly out on the mats of the training cave.

And then Larkin hit her in the back of the head. She staggered backward and brought her fists up again, but it was too late. Holly swept her feet out from under her with a low kick and she toppled to the mats so hard she saw stars.

“What is this?” Mombi barked. Where had the witch even come from? Did she have eyes in the back of her head? Probably, Lanadel thought, rubbing her ringing temples. Holly had danced away from her, a martyred expression on her face as she tenderly dabbed at her nose. “What were you thinking?” Behind Mombi, she saw Nox with his arms folded across his chest. Melindra looked like she was trying not to crack a smile. Holly and Larkin had identical expressions of smug satisfaction.

“Let her sit up,” Melindra urged. Mombi grumbled something under her breath that sounded a lot like “idiot girl,” but offered Lanadel her hand and pulled her to her feet. Lanadel winced as a white-hot flare of pain lanced through her head. Mombi nodded grimly.

“Serves you right,” she said, but her voice was a little more sympathetic. “A trip to the healing pool would fix you right up, but maybe a headache will serve to remind you that we do not fight each other outside the ring.” She whirled around, pointing at Larkin and Holly. “And that goes for the two of you, too. Don’t think I don’t know who started this one. Try that again, and you’ll be the ones getting whacked upside the head. Is that clear?” Holly and Larkin quickly rearranged their faces into expressions of contrite humility.

“Yes, Mombi,” Holly said sweetly in a high-pitched singsong. Mombi rolled her eyes.

“Now get out, the lot of you,” she said crossly. Nox looked startled. “Sparring practice is moved to cavern two. Lanadel and I will need the main cave. If you think our girl’s ready for magic, it’s time she got some real lessons. None of this aggravating-people-in-corridors nonsense.” She gave Nox a dirty look.

“I thought—” he said, flushing, and Mombi wagged a finger at him.

“Your job isn’t to do any thinking!” she interrupted. She turned toward Lanadel, and behind her back Nox gave her a look that was murderous. Lanadel wondered what was going on there. It didn’t just feel like Mombi reprimanding him for stepping out of line. It was like there was some whole long, complicated history between them. Something she couldn’t even begin to guess at.

“You’re dismissed,” Mombi added, waving a hand at Holly, Larkin, Melindra, and Nox. Melindra, slipping out of fighting mode as easily as she’d gotten into it, rolled her eyes and gave Lanadel a sympathetic look, mouthing the words “Good luck” when the old witch’s back was turned.

Holly smiled evilly. “You’re going to need it,” she added with a hiss. Mombi’s mouth twitched into an almost-smile, and Lanadel knew she’d heard.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Melindra said in a normal tone of voice, prodding Holly and Larkin out of the cave. “Get a move on, you little Wogglebugs. I’ll put you through your paces next door. And if you try to hit me on the head, I’ll make you regret the day you were born.”

But Nox didn’t budge as the others filed out of the cavern. “I should stay,” he said stiffly. “You put me in charge of training new recruits, even if you’re the one teaching her magic.”

Another strange, electric charge passed between them, and something about Mombi’s demeanor softened. “Oh, all right,” she grumbled, but her usual hostile fierceness was suddenly gone. Lanadel made a note to ask Melindra later what Nox’s history was with the witch. She’d mentioned Mombi had raised him but there didn’t seem much love lost between the two. Nox sat in a corner, stretching out his long, muscular legs and leaning back against the wall. He crossed his arms over his chest, his expression back to its usual unreadability. Lanadel would have preferred he not be in the room. If she was going to humiliate herself, she’d rather he didn’t see it. But she knew better than to ask him to leave. Especially after whatever had just happened between him and Mombi. She straightened her spine—something about being around Mombi always made her remember her posture—and waited expectantly for the witch to tell her what to do. And waited. And waited.

The old witch stared at her silently. A long, awkward moment passed, and then another. Lanadel cleared her throat. And then, just like that, Mombi snapped her fingers and Lanadel jumped. The witch smiled. “You probably think magic is just like that,” she said. “Snap your fingers and miracles happen.” She snapped again and Lanadel gasped. A huge, perfect replica of a lion loomed over her, its mouth bared in a snarl. She knew it wasn’t real but she still threw up her arms in self-defense. Mombi snapped a third time and the lion disappeared.

“I don’t think that at all,” Lanadel said honestly.

“Good,” Mombi said. “Because it looks easy. But the easy part is an illusion. Like anything else worth learning, magic takes hard work. Not everyone can do it. In fact, most people can’t. But Nox sees something in you”—she looked over at where he sat, looking stonily back at her—“and you wouldn’t have made it here in the first place if you didn’t have something more than ordinary courage.”

Coming from Mombi, that was a compliment. “So how do I—” Lanadel began, but the witch didn’t wait for her to finish her sentence. She leaned forward and grabbed Lanadel’s hands with both of hers, staring deeply into her eyes.

And suddenly Lanadel wasn’t in the cavern with Mombi anymore. They were standing on a surface that was as clear and solid as glass. Blooming clouds of color moved through the ground beneath them like ink expanding in water. More clouds swirled around them in the air, expanding and contracting as if they were living, breathing things. In the distance, a sparkling range of mountains shifted and pulsed like the clouds that surrounded them, changing colors with every beat: pale sunrise rose pink; deep sapphire blue; a vivid blue gray like the sky before a thunderstorm. Just past where she and Mombi stood, a river flowed merrily over the glassy ground, sunlight dancing across its surface. The air was warm and balmy as bathwater. The sky overhead was a clear, flawless blue that served as a gorgeous backdrop to the clouds that moved around them.

Lanadel gasped. It was the most beautiful place she’d ever been. More beautiful than Glamora’s dazzling banquet hall, more beautiful than anything she’d seen on her long journey to Mount Gillikin—more beautiful, even, than home. Not that she had a home anymore.

Mombi beamed at her, pleased as punch. “Sky Island,” she said proudly. “Used to be quite the tourist destination, before . . . well, you know. Now it’s one of the last remaining places in Oz that’s truly free.” She waggled an eyebrow. “Of course, that’s because there’s no magic here and no one actually lives here now that the hotel is abandoned and the souvenir store closed, but still. On this single, glittery bangle, we’re completely safe from Dorothy. For now. As long as she doesn’t know we’re here.” Mombi looked suddenly haggard. “So not really all that safe after all. But you get my drift.”

“I’m assuming we’re not here for a vacation,” Lanadel said when she caught her breath again.

“No,” Mombi said with a wry grin. “Though Lurline knows we all could use one. I’m afraid vacations aren’t on the agenda for any of us anytime soon. You’re here to learn magic, girl. Or—let me revise that. You’re here to tap into the magic you already know.”

“I can’t do that in the training caves?”

“Oh, sure you can. But this is much nicer, don’t you think? Plus, if you accidentally turn a rock into a dragon or some such, there’s no one for it to eat except you.”

Lanadel gulped. Surely Mombi was joking? But her face was severe. With the old witch, you never knew. “So what do I do?” she asked.

Mombi waggled her other eyebrow. “What do you do?” she echoed. “You stand here until you can feel it. The river’s lemonade, incidentally, if you get thirsty.”

“Feel what?” Lanadel asked, exasperated.

“Feel magic,” Mombi said. “Obviously.” She rolled her eyes. Lanadel bit back a sarcastic retort. Training with Nox was hard enough, but at least she knew what she was supposed to be doing. Standing here, no matter how beautiful it was, listening to Mombi spout nonsensical riddles, was something else entirely. She’d felt something when Nox had provoked her in the corridor outside her sleeping cave. Something totally different from anything she’d known before. Something huge, and powerful, and alive. Apparently that was magic. But she had no idea where it had come from, or how to get it back. And Nox wasn’t here to get in a fight with—although Mombi was getting close to aggravating her to the same degree. Maybe that’s what she’s trying to do, Lanadel thought. Except that “infuriating” was pretty much Mombi’s standard operating mode. The witch looked at her expectantly.

“I’m not a witch,” Lanadel said.

Mombi actually laughed out loud, slapping her knees in merriment. “Oh, goodness no, girl. You don’t have to be a witch to use magic. Everyone in Oz knows that.”

I didn’t, Lanadel thought. And then she thought suddenly of Holly and Larkin and their sneering, superior faces. If they could learn magic, so could she. Mombi had told her to stand there until she felt it, whatever “it” was. And if that was what it took, that was what she was going to do.

Lanadel closed her eyes. Shut out the swirling clouds and the mountain vista, the musical sounds of the river winding over the ground. Forgot the sun on her face and the gentle, warm breeze in her hair. She thought back to the thing she’d felt for the briefest moment, the tiny seed of flame that had flared to life in her chest. And then, for the first time since she’d come to the training caves, she let herself think about her brothers. If emotion was what it took to bring magic to life inside her, there was no emotion stronger than what she felt about losing her family. Nothing more powerful than the anger and hatred that drove her to the Order, to learn the skills she needed to destroy everyone who’d ever hurt her. Everyone who’d taken so much away from her. And suddenly the tiny flame roared up into a fire as huge as the flames that had burned her village and swallowed up her brothers’ bodies—a bonfire that took hold and spread as rapidly as wildfire across the landscape of her heart. She was burning alive with power; she could feel it roaring around her, crackling from her fingers and hissing through her hair. There was nothing she couldn’t do, no one she couldn’t take down—

And then Mombi grabbed her hands again and the flames went out as though they’d been doused with an ocean’s worth of cold water. She shuddered and sank to her knees. “Wizard’s teeth, girl,” Mombi said, sounding a little shaken. “I should have taken a closer look at you before I told you to tap into that.” Mombi pulled her back to her feet and put an arm around her briefly until Lanadel could stand without help. The witch regarded her thoughtfully. “You’re a very angry young lady,” she said.

Lanadel took a deep, shuddering breath. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “I am.”

Mombi nodded. “There’s power in that anger, as you just found out. But you’ll have to be more careful than most. Unchecked anger is a dangerous place from which to draw your magic. It’s difficult to control. It can consume you totally, transform you into something else. Someone you don’t recognize.”

“I already am someone I don’t recognize,” Lanadel said. None of her family would have imagined that the person she was now could ever have been the person she used to be. But no one in her family was alive to see her turn into a warrior.

“All of us have lost something,” Mombi said. “Each and every one. You’ll have to learn how to keep living with it. But you can’t let it define you.”

“I don’t have anything else.”

“You have the Order,” Mombi said. Lanadel didn’t bother to reply. The Order was temporary. The Order was what she needed right now. But the anger that was keeping her alive was permanent. Until she found a way to stop Dorothy. The Order was nothing but a stop along the way—and she didn’t believe for a second that Mombi and Nox cared any more about her than she did about them. Melindra, she thought. Melindra was different. But Melindra wasn’t in charge.

Mombi looked closely at her. “You think the Order is full of secrets, and you’re right,” the old witch said. “We keep our cards close to our chest. It’s for your safety. But there’s something you have to understand about magic. We’re trying to keep you on the right side of power.”

“I thought magic was a weapon.”

“Any tool is a weapon if you hold it right,” Mombi said impatiently. “That’s not the point. The Wicked isn’t about war—that’s just what we’re facing now, because Dorothy’s let the balance of power in Oz tilt like a drunk sailor. The Order has always done just that—kept order. Maintained the balance. Good, Wicked, those parts don’t matter. When the war’s over, we’ll still be here doing the same thing. Do you understand?”

Not at all, Lanadel thought. Mombi was as bad as Nox with all his arcane speeches about balance and magic. When the war was over, Dorothy would be dead. And that was all she cared about.

“That’s almost enough for today,” Mombi said. “One last lesson, shall we?” Mombi took Lanadel’s hands again and closed her eyes. “Concentrate with me,” she said. “Focus on Mount Gillikin. You’re strong enough to take us back there. Just don’t let your own power take control.”

Lanadel closed her eyes again and concentrated on the mountain. She could feel the fire surging up in her heart. Not now, she told it. Just take me home. And instead of a roaring flame, the power filled her with a gentle warmth. “That’s it!” Mombi crowed. There was a rushing noise and the bottom dropped out of her stomach as if they were moving incredibly quickly across a huge distance. Lanadel wondered if she was going to throw up. And then with a jolt the sense of movement stopped, and she opened her eyes.

She was standing outside the cavern that led to the Order’s caves, on a flat balcony of stone that overlooked the valley below. The Traveling Mountains undulated in the distance. The sky was the same cloudless blue as over Sky Island, but up here the air was thinner. She’d done it. She’d brought them back to the Order. And she was absolutely, completely exhausted.

“Nice work, girl,” Mombi said approvingly. “We’ll make a soldier out of you yet. Now listen—don’t you dare use magic on your own yet. You remember what happened when Nox pissed you off? You have some talent, don’t get me wrong, but no control. Try to use magic on your own before I give you permission, and I’ll throw you out of the Order. Are we clear?”

“Clear,” Lanadel said. Mombi peered at her suspiciously, but seemed satisfied with her answer. But was the witch telling her the truth about her magic being potentially harmful? The Order seemed keen on keeping information from even its most advanced trainees. Maybe Mombi was afraid Lanadel would find out something she wasn’t supposed to if she used magic on her own. Maybe the real danger wasn’t to her—it was to the Order.

Mombi snapped her fingers, interrupting Lanadel’s thoughts, and with another sick jerk the vista was yanked away and replaced with the training cave where they’d started out. Nox and Melindra were sparring, their faces taut with concentration. Nox dropped his fists when Mombi and Lanadel reappeared, and Melindra knocked him flat with a roundhouse kick. “Never drop your guard!” she sang out cheerily. Lanadel hid a smile.

“Thanks for the reminder,” Nox said from the ground. Melindra pulled him to his feet. “How’d she do?” he asked Mombi.

“Not bad for a first timer,” Mombi said. “Not bad at all. A little rough around the edges, but we all have to start somewhere.”

“That’s my girl,” Melindra said proudly. “Dorothy hasn’t sucked up all the magic out there yet.” Lanadel smiled at her, flushing with pleasure. At least Melindra wasn’t shy about giving out compliments. Melindra wasn’t shy about anything. More and more, Lanadel was wishing she could be that way, too.

But what she said didn’t make sense. “Dorothy’s stealing magic? From Oz?” she asked.

Mombi nodded grimly. “As far as we can tell, she’s been siphoning power everywhere she can get it since she returned to Oz.”

“I don’t understand,” Lanadel said. “Why would anyone do that?”

“Why would Dorothy try to steal Oz’s magic? Why would she corrupt the Woodman and the Scarecrow? Nobody has the answers to those questions, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening. That’s what we’re fighting,” Melindra said.

“Don’t you have to know why to stop her?”

“You didn’t have to know why to come here,” Nox pointed out.

“But maybe someone can—I don’t know, reason with her. Show her what she’s doing to Oz. She’s not from here. Maybe she doesn’t understand somehow.”

“Oh, she understands, all right,” Nox said bitterly. “Nobody doubts that. She wants power. It doesn’t matter why. Maybe everyone from the Other Place is like that. The Wizard loved power, too, don’t forget. Whatever happened to him in the end.” Nox looked thoughtful. “It’s possible the Wizard could help us stop Dorothy if he’s still alive. We don’t understand how her magic works here—how someone from the Other Place can use power in Oz. There’s so much we still have to learn. But we don’t have time to sit around and send out spies. Dorothy’s moving fast. We have to stop her soon, or it’ll be too late. And there aren’t many people we can trust anymore. Word is that Dorothy has spies everywhere. That she’s working with Glinda, even. That the two of them are responsible for whatever happened to Ozma.” He shook his head. “Nothing’s the way it should be anymore. That’s the only thing you can be sure of now.”

“Can I trust you?” Lanadel asked. “Melindra? Mombi? How do I even know you’re telling me the truth?” Mombi snorted and muttered something under her breath.

“You can’t trust anyone,” Nox repeated, ignoring the witch. “We’re trying to teach you the skills to fight Dorothy, yes. But I’m also trying to teach you to fend for yourself. To see things as they are. How can you fight if you won’t acknowledge what it is that you’re fighting? If we keep acting blindly, it doesn’t matter if we defeat Dorothy. Something just as bad will take her place. We can’t trust each other. The only thing we can trust in is Oz.”

“I don’t even know what that means,” Lanadel said.

“I know,” Nox said. “But you will. That’s why you’re here. If you’re ready to fight for Oz, and not yourself—if you fight for the way things should be, you’ll never lose sight of the truth.”

“What truth?” she asked, exasperated.

“Don’t listen to him,” Melindra said, rolling her eyes. “He’s super into filling everybody’s head with the same mumbo jumbo nonsense. The only thing you have to remember is we’re going to hit Dorothy where it hurts.” She mimed punching into the air. “It’s almost time for dinner,” she added. “Magic lesson’s over for the day. You’re free.”

“I decide when the magic lesson is over,” Mombi said, but she didn’t sound too upset. It was hard to say no to Melindra. And for good reason. It was like Melindra was the true heart of the Order. No matter what Nox said, Lanadel trusted her. Melindra could fight, sure, but she wasn’t constantly talking in circles or trying to hide the truth. She said what she thought. Among the Wicked, that was practically a magical power of its own. Melindra leaned briefly into Nox, and he looked startled, but quickly recovered. Then he stiffly put one arm around her.

Melindra smiled at him. “You just have to pretend to listen to him talk for a while, and then he usually stops,” she said affectionately. “You don’t actually have to pay attention.” She elbowed Nox in the ribs, not subtly. He scowled and took his arm away.

“Come on, Mombi,” he said. “I want to discuss some strategy points with you.” And then he whirled around abruptly and stalked away from them. Mombi looked back and forth between Nox and Melindra, one eyebrow raised. And then she followed Nox out of the cavern.

Melindra sighed, suddenly deflated. “So. Big day for you, huh? Mombi taught you some magic, and Nox gave you his patented Wicked ride-or-die talk. You ready for battle now, or what?”

“Something like that,” Lanadel said. “Are you . . .” She trailed off, not sure what to say. Nox and Melindra’s relationship, if it even existed, was a total mystery.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Melindra said tiredly. “Or I mean, as fine as I can be. I just wish I could get through to him, you know? There’s a different person in there. I think I’m the only person who’s ever seen it. And that’s the Nox I care about.”

Lanadel nodded. Melindra could just as easily have been talking about Lanadel herself. Sometimes Lanadel felt like she was constantly wearing a disguise around the Order. But if there was a different person waiting inside her, who was it? What was the real Lanadel even like? She’d hidden herself for so long she couldn’t even be sure. First around her family, who’d never understood that she had always wanted something more than their tiny village. And then, when she got her wish in the most horrible way possible . . .

Melindra shook her head, her eyes following the path Nox had traced as he left. “He’s damaged goods,” she said. “Lucky for him he has that hair, right?” But although she was joking, there was something almost melancholy in her voice.

“Yeah,” Lanadel agreed, pretending she hadn’t noticed Melindra’s hurt was real.

And then Melindra grinned, all trace of sadness gone. “I’m working on him,” she said confidently. “He really buys all that Wicked stuff. Mombi’s filled his head with nonsense. You ask me, it’s not that complicated. Dorothy’s the problem? We take out Dorothy.” She made a slashing motion with one hand. “End of problem.”

“What if there’s another problem after Dorothy?” Lanadel asked.

Melindra shrugged. “Well, then we’re probably screwed.” She grinned again, and Lanadel started to laugh once more. It was impossible to stay focused on her problems when Melindra was around. Melindra was right. Action was way better than sitting around. Who cared if there was some secret Lanadel she’d hidden away inside? She was almost ready to learn magic. She was already learning to fight. Nox and Mombi couldn’t keep her in these caves forever.

And when they sent her out to do the job they were teaching her—well, she wasn’t going to run away from any of Dorothy’s soldiers, that much she knew for sure.

SIX

“What is their deal?” she asked Melindra one night after dinner.

“Whose deal?” Melindra asked, distracted. Nox had been noticeably absent from the dining hall. Melindra had ignored the empty seat at the table, but the melancholy note was back in her voice, and she’d been a million miles away all through their meal.

“Holly and Larkin. Why do they hate me?” Even though Lanadel had been improving in her training in the last few weeks, they continued to treat her as if she was completely incompetent.

“Oh, them,” Melindra said with a snort. “You can’t take them personally. I think they hate everyone, to be honest.”

“They don’t hate you,” Lanadel pointed out.

“Sure they do. They’re just scared of me,” Melindra said.

“Oh.”

Melindra realized she’d hurt Lanadel’s feelings, and softened. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like the way it came out. I’ve kicked both their asses more than once in training, and they know if they mess with me, I’ll beat the crap out of them somewhere Nox and Mombi can’t find us. That was your only mistake—doing it in front of Mombi. She doesn’t go for us fighting among ourselves, even if it’s impossible to resist half the time. Holly was trying to get you to hit her in front of the grown-ups,” Melindra added with a laugh. “She thinks getting people in trouble is fun. And Larkin’s her little lapdog. But don’t mind them, really. They’re just—well, they’re orphans, too, you know. But if you’re a brat before your parents die, losing your family doesn’t necessarily turn you into a ray of sunshine. Larkin was studying to be some kind of fancy-pants warlock, and thinks he’s Lurline’s gift to the universe. Holly’s family was some kind of Munchkin royalty.” Lanadel remembered what Holly had said in the training cave. Right before Lanadel had almost succeeded in beating the crap out of her. That was a happy memory.

“I didn’t know the Munchkins had royalty.”

“They have dynasties, or something,” Melindra said, waving a hand. “Important bloodlines. Whatever, she thinks she’s important. It was a shock for both of them to turn up here and realize they had to learn just like everyone else—and fight next to dirty commoners like us.” She snorted. “They tried all that stuff with me, too. Nox doesn’t even notice. His head’s so far up his—” She stopped short.

“Is something going on with you and Nox?”

Melindra rolled her eyes. “There is no me and Nox. He’s a selfish little toad, that’s all. I’m totally done with him.” But for the first time since Lanadel had met the wiry, irrepressible warrior, something in Melindra’s voice rang false, and her eyes were sad. She cared about Nox, Lanadel realized. Cared a lot. But she didn’t want anyone to see it. She’d built her whole image around being tough and impossible to defeat.

It was like everyone in the Order had created another personality that could protect them from the world they had to live in. Gert’s overbearing sweetness, Glamora’s illusions, Mombi’s gruff bossiness. Nox’s remoteness, Holly and Larkin’s meanness, and Melindra’s tough-chick bravado. And Lanadel herself was just using her anger and her pain to build up walls no one else could climb. But how much was it costing them all to keep fighting all the time—not just Dorothy, but their own natures? What if they’d all done such a good job of inventing new people to be, they’d completely forgotten who they really were?

Melindra was in love with Nox. It was obvious. But it wasn’t clear if Nox returned the feelings. Not that that was her problem. But Melindra was the closest thing she’d ever had to a friend. Melindra was her friend. And it was hard to watch such a strong, capable—and beautiful—warrior made to feel small because of a guy. Especially a guy like Nox.

That night, Lanadel tossed and turned in her narrow bed, trying to process everything. After a while, she gave up trying to sleep. There was no point. She lay awake until the familiar little winged image of Gert roused her for another day of training, her thoughts still a muddled mess.

Now that Mombi and Nox had decided she was capable of learning magic, her training got even more intense. But she loved her magic lessons—not just because, more often than not, Mombi whisked her away again to Sky Island, but because Melindra often trained with her. And she learned much more from Melindra than she did from Mombi. It was Melindra who taught her how to summon up a fireball big enough to blow the dilapidated old Sky Island hotel to smithereens—and then put it back together, piece by piece, so that it was even stronger than before, while Mombi clucked in approval.

Drinking lemonade from Sky Island’s sparkling river, closing her eyes in the hot sun after a long training session, with Melindra laughing next to her . . . For just a second, she could pretend this was all there was in the world, and that she was happy. And then Mombi would yell at them to get up again, dragging her back to reality. The old witch was relentless, and so was Nox. It was as if they were pushing her toward something.

One night, she almost found out what it was. She was walking a route she didn’t usually take back to her sleeping chamber and heard Nox’s voice echoing from an unused training cave.

“. . . can’t possibly think she’s ready,” he was saying. Her senses spiking to alert, she pressed herself against the tunnel wall, straining to hear more.

“We don’t have the luxury of waiting until she’s ready.” It wasn’t Mombi he was talking to. It was Gert. The sweet, grandmotherly old witch. But now her voice was hard as stone.

“Do you have actual information to act on, or is this just some wild hunch?” Nox sounded impatient. Almost angry. Somehow, Lanadel knew they were talking about her. And if they were, he was trying to protect her. Nox? Protect her?

“There were reports before Dorothy returned,” Gert said. “He’s wanted Oz for centuries. It’s the perfect time for him to strike.”

“He can’t come to Oz,” Nox said.

He? Lanadel wondered. Who were they talking about? The Wizard? But that didn’t make sense. The Wizard had already been to Oz.

“We don’t think he can come to Oz,” Gert corrected. “But we don’t know anything about how powerful he is now. We need an agent. The girl is perfect. You’ve seen the way she hides what she’s feeling. She’ll make a good liar, and that’s what we need. She doesn’t even know her own true self, and that makes her unreadable. Like someone else I know,” Gert added, and Nox snorted. “We don’t have time to coddle people, Nox. This is a war.”

“So you keep saying,” Nox said quietly. “I don’t agree with this, Gert. I won’t support you.”

“You don’t have a choice.” Gert’s voice was sharp. “About this, or about Melindra.”

“Melindra can make her own decisions,” Nox said, “but not if she doesn’t know what’s going on.”

“You can’t protect her, Nox. Just because you have feelings for—”

“I’m not trying to protect her!” Nox exploded. “I’m trying to tell you to stop lying to these girls!”

“We’re not lying, and you know it,” Gert said. “We give people the information they need—when they need it.”

“When will I need all the information, Gert? When are you going to tell me the rest of what’s going on here?”

“That’s enough, Nox. Go to sleep. You’ll have to . . .”

But Lanadel didn’t wait to hear the rest of her sentence. She heard a rustle as Nox turned to leave the cavern, and she ducked down the corridor before Nox found her eavesdropping. But she knew what she’d just heard was something huge.

What decision did Melindra have to make?

And as for Lanadel, where were they sending her?

SEVEN

Lanadel wanted more than anything to talk to Melindra about what she’d overheard. She could hardly wait to corner the other girl, but it was nearly impossible to get her alone. Mombi was always there when they trained on Sky Island. Everyone else was always there when they trained in the caves. And she didn’t want to ask Melindra to meet her in secret in case Gert, Nox, or Mombi overheard and grew suspicious.

Finally, she decided to find Melindra in her sleeping cave after dinner, even though it felt like an invasion. She’d never visited another member of the Order in their own rooms. No one did—it was almost as though there was an unspoken rule against it. In a place where everyone saw each other every day, privacy was a precious resource. But what she’d heard was too important to keep to herself.

Melindra was sitting cross-legged on the floor of her sleeping cave—which, Lanadel noticed, was just as small and sparsely furnished as her own. She opened her eyes as Lanadel cleared her throat hesitantly at the threshold. If she was startled to see Lanadel there, she didn’t show it.

“What’s up?” she asked. “You need something?”

“I need to talk to you,” Lanadel said. “But if you’re busy . . .”

“Nah, I was just meditating. Come on in,” Melindra said, patting the sleeping mat next to her. Despite the seriousness of what she had to say, Lanadel smiled. It was hard to imagine Melindra sitting still long enough to meditate. But if there was one thing for sure she was learning in the Order, it was that anyone could surprise you.

“It’s about the Order,” Lanadel said, sinking down next to Melindra on her mat. This close, she could smell the other girl’s scent—wild and clean, not unlike Nox’s sandalwood smell. Lanadel told her everything she’d overheard. When she finished, Melindra was quiet for a long time.

“Are you sure they were talking about you?” she asked finally.

“No,” Lanadel admitted. “I guess they could have meant Holly. But I just had a feeling. And Gert wants to send you somewhere, too.”

“Oh, that part’s easy,” Melindra said. “She wants to send me to the Emerald Palace, to find out what happened to Annabel.”

“Annabel?”

“One of us,” Melindra said. “I’m not supposed to tell you, obviously. Only what people need to know and all that crap.” She shrugged. “Annabel was my friend,” she said. “Is my friend. But she was supposed to come back from her mission to the Emerald City weeks ago, and . . .” She trailed off. “We need her information, of course,” Melindra said bitterly. “They don’t care about her. Just what she found out.”

“Do you think she’s . . .” Lanadel couldn’t bring herself to say it.

“Probably. Wouldn’t be the first friend I’ve lost here.” Melindra smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “It’s easier with the ones like Holly and Larkin. I don’t miss them as much. But as for where they want to send you, I don’t know.”

“Do you think they meant the Wizard?”

Melindra shook her head. “No way. Not if they were talking about centuries of power. I’ve heard that time moves differently in the Other Place, where the Wizard is from, but he wasn’t in Oz for that long. I don’t know who they mean, but I don’t like it.”

“Nox seemed like he really cares about you,” Lanadel said. “Or at least . . .” She didn’t know what to say. Nox and Melindra’s relationship was so complicated. She wished there was something she could do to help her friend. But she couldn’t make Nox into a different person. The real Nox, the one that Melindra saw when it was just the two of them. She couldn’t even be herself around Melindra. She didn’t know how. She felt sometimes as though she was just wearing a dozen different masks, depending on the time of day. That must have been what Gert meant about her making a good spy. But spy for what?

“If he’s trying to make decisions for me behind my back, that’s not caring,” Melindra said, her voice hard.

“It didn’t seem like that. It seemed like he was trying to—to protect you,” Lanadel said.

“That’s even worse.” Suddenly Melindra looked away. “Can you—do you mind leaving me alone for a while?”

Lanadel stared. Was Melindra crying?

“I don’t know what to tell you about what you heard,” Melindra said, her voice muffled. “I just need to think right now. Can we talk in the morning? Please?”

“Of course,” Lanadel said quickly, jumping to her feet. She wanted to reach out to Melindra. To comfort her. But she had no idea how. She backed silently out of Melindra’s room, but not fast enough to miss a single, heartrending sob.

Back in her own sleeping cave, she stared up at the ceiling. Even Melindra had no idea what Gert and Nox had meant about sending her somewhere else. And why was Melindra so ready to risk her life on a mission that had already probably killed another member of the Order?

Nothing made any sense, and it was clear she wasn’t going to get any sleep tonight. As she lay there, she remembered the feeling of incredible peace that she’d felt as she looked out across the beautiful, shimmering landscape of Oz, when she’d used her own power to bring them back to the top of Mount Gillikin the first day Mombi had taught her magic. She didn’t need Mombi or Melindra around. She was strong enough now to use her power on her own. If she wasn’t going to sleep, she might as well enjoy the view.

She closed her eyes, feeling power surging through her like a huge, wild current. She knew what she was doing was dangerous—not to mention stupid. If she couldn’t control the river, she’d be washed away. Mombi had told her explicitly not to so much as move a pebble without supervision. That her anger could take control—and that would be the end of her. But the thought of trying out her new strength was too tempting. Take me to the top of the mountain, she thought.

The energy pulsed through her as though every cell in her body was coming alive in a whole new way. And then she wasn’t in her stuffy, tiny sleeping chamber anymore. She was outside, breathing in the clean, lavender-scented air. Overhead, the dazzling stars sparkled and turned. She was so high up she could see the slender silver threads from which they hung. Pale wisps of moonlit clouds blew across a velvety, deep-purple sky.

“I don’t understand you anymore,” a familiar, raspy voice said behind her, and that was when Lanadel realized she wasn’t alone.

The voice was Melindra’s. Lanadel knew without looking that she was talking to Nox. Just like she knew she had no business eavesdropping for the second time that day. But neither one of them had seen her, or felt the brush of her magic as she teleported herself to the top of the mountain. And as the power in her body ebbed away as quickly as it had come, she realized that for some reason she wasn’t strong enough to teleport herself back. She would have to walk back down to her sleeping cave—but Melindra and Nox were standing in front of the caverns’ entrance. There was no way to get past them without them seeing her.

She’d been lucky enough to materialize on the far side of a boulder big enough to hide behind, but if she moved or made any noise Melindra and Nox would spot her. She had no choice but to hide. And from where she crouched, she could hear Nox and Melindra’s every word.

“You knew what this was going to be like,” Nox was saying. His voice sounded tired. As if he’d been carrying too much weight for far too long. There was something almost vulnerable about him now.

“I knew we were both fighting for the same thing,” Melindra said angrily. “That doesn’t mean we have to be fighting each other, Nox. Just once, can you let me in? I know there are things you aren’t telling me.”

“I’m doing the best I can,” Nox said. “But there’s so much we have to think about, Melindra. We can’t afford to take time for each other right now. I’m sorry.”

“With you, there’ll never be time,” Melindra said. Lanadel could hear the effort in her voice. It was taking everything she had to keep herself under control. She was in love with Nox. There was no other reason she’d be talking to him like this. “I’m not just talking about us, Nox. I’m talking about the Order. About all the secrets you’re keeping from me.”

“What secrets?” Nox asked cautiously. “What do you know, Melindra?” Lanadel held her breath. Was Melindra going to reveal what Lanadel had told her? If Gert and Nox knew she’d spied on them, they’d probably kick her out of the Order.

But she should have known better. Melindra wouldn’t betray her. Unlike Nox, Melindra actually seemed to care about her.

“It doesn’t matter,” Melindra said. “I just know you’ve been lying to me. All along, as it turns out. About us, about the Order—about all of it. Do you know where Annabel is, Nox? Are you and Gert and Mombi just tallying up the body count along with all your secrets?”

“No!” Nox said hoarsely. “Melindra, no. I’m trying to protect you.”

It was the worst thing he could have said, even if it was true—and Lanadel knew that it was, from what she’d overheard. Melindra’s pride would never let her take it as a gesture of caring. She would only see him as trying to patronize her.

“I don’t need protecting, Nox,” she spat. “I need honesty.”

“You know I can’t tell you everything,” Nox said again helplessly. “I don’t even know Gert and Mombi’s plan. I’ve never told you anything different—”

“You’ve never told me anything!” Melindra hissed. Now her control was slipping. “Look at where we are, Nox! Look around us!” She gestured wildly at the stars, the dusky sky, the moonlight night. “This is the most beautiful place in Oz and we’re arguing about whether or not the Order will let us be together! Mombi doesn’t control you, and neither does Gert, no matter what you think. You have so much power, so much strength. You’re their equal. You don’t have to let them push you around. We could be so much stronger together, you and I, than we are on our own, and you can’t even see it.”

“I owe Mombi so much. She saved me from—you know what she saved me from,” Nox said. “I can’t just turn my back on her for you, Melindra.”

“You don’t have to turn your damn back on anyone!” Melindra’s voice was rising now, spiraling upward as she lost her temper fully. Lanadel cowered behind her rock. “So maybe you were raised by witches, but that doesn’t mean you can’t act like a human being sometimes! Why won’t you just let me get through to you, Nox?”

Nox was so stubborn, so unable to see what was right in front of his face. Melindra was right. There was no reason they couldn’t be together. Nothing that the Order could do to stop them. Gert and Mombi were hiding the truth from everyone. From Lanadel. From Nox. From Melindra. Why was he so loyal to people who didn’t even seem to care about what he wanted?

“We’d be so much stronger together than either one of us is on our own,” Melindra said. “We don’t have to stop fighting Dorothy just because we—just because I . . .” She stopped short of actually saying it, as if she couldn’t bring herself to utter the word “love.” And now it was obvious even to Lanadel that she was crying. She could feel her own heart trying to pull itself apart in her chest. Why was someone like Melindra giving this much of herself to someone like Nox? Couldn’t she see that he would never—could never—be the person she wanted?

“Melindra, I can’t be what you want me to be,” Nox said, as if he was speaking Lanadel’s thoughts out loud. “I can’t—I can’t feel the way about you that you want me to feel. I only have room for the Order. You know that. You’ve always known that.”

“You only have room for your own pain, you mean,” Melindra said. Now her voice was low and deadly. “We’ve all lost something to Dorothy. Even those little fools Holly and Larkin. And none of us are acting like the weight of the Order is on our shoulders—”

“The weight of the Order is on my shoulders, Melindra!” Nox yelled. “I’m responsible for all of you! Mombi doesn’t care in the end what happens to any of you. Neither does Gert. Neither does Glamora. You know that just as well as I do. It’s all down to me, Melindra. To me. Do you think I like watching the kids I train die? Do you think I like living like this? Do you think I don’t know what I’m turning into? Do you think—” And then his own voice broke. Lanadel felt tears running down her cheeks.

“I don’t think you think at all,” Melindra said quietly. “I don’t think you know how to think for yourself anymore, Nox. I don’t think you know who you are.”

The silence was deafening. It stretched out for what felt like forever. Nox looked at Melindra, unblinking, but he didn’t say a word. And a sob caught in her throat before she choked it down again.

“So I guess that’s it then,” she said quietly. “If I die out there . . .” She didn’t finish, and Nox still didn’t answer. Her voice was stripped raw. There was so much pain in her eyes that Lanadel wanted to break cover and run for her, but she didn’t dare move. Melindra reached one hand out to Nox and then snatched it back before she touched him as if she’d burned herself.

Without another word, she disappeared in a wisp of pale smoke. Nox stood staring at the place where she’d been, still silent. Lanadel held her breath. And then her cramped leg twitched, sending a pebble skittering across the overlook. Nox whipped around.

“Lanadel?” he asked.

She flushed scarlet and stood up, not daring to meet his eyes.

“How much of that did you hear?”

“Hardly anything,” she lied. Nox snorted softly.

“Right. Well, then you know hardly anything about my personal business, and so you have nothing to tell anyone else. Right?”

“I—I wouldn’t dream of telling anyone anything,” she stammered. That much was the truth. Whatever had just happened between Nox and Melindra, it was deep and ugly and painful. Melindra’s anger came from a depth of love Lanadel had only ever imagined but never experienced herself. She wondered suddenly if someday someone would be able to hurt her as badly as Nox had just hurt Melindra. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to know.

“You’d better not,” he said. His voice was dangerous.

“She loves you, you know,” Lanadel blurted. Nox jerked back, and for a second she thought he was going to hit her.

“That’s none of your business,” he snarled. “None of this is any of your business. And if you tell anyone—and I mean anyone—about what you just heard, I’ll throw you off this mountain so fast you won’t have time to pray before you hit the bottom.”

The way he was looking at her—there was something frightening about it. As if he wanted to hurt her. As if he wanted to make her disappear. As if he hated her.

And then she realized why. He wasn’t angry at her for accidentally spying on him. He was angry because she’d seen that he could be hurt—and that Melindra was the one who could hurt him. He was angry because for once she’d seen through the shell to whatever he was underneath—and the person he was underneath wasn’t brave enough to choose love over everything he knew.

She didn’t like Nox, but she understood him. She felt, sometimes, like they were the same. Working with the Order, for the Order, was the only way of working through the pain. Without the Order, without some goal, pain would be all that was left in her.

But Lanadel wasn’t ready to hurt the only friend she had in this world to get the revenge she so desperately wanted—and she’d just watched Nox basically stab Melindra in the heart. So maybe they weren’t the same, deep down. Nox had really meant what he said. The Order was the only thing he had. But in the last few weeks, she’d learned something important: a friend could make her forget about her pain, too. Not for long. Not for good. But it was something. And, she realized, it was something Nox had never had. And if Melindra really was going to Dorothy’s palace on a mission that would almost certainly kill her, it was something she might never have again. She could forgive Nox his pain. She could forgive him for hurting the girl she cared about more than anyone else living that she knew. But if he didn’t stop Melindra—if he let her go to her death—then he was no different to her than Dorothy. And if Melindra died, she’d make him pay, too. Because, she realized, there was a part of her—yet another Lanadel—who felt something more for Melindra. Something messier and more complicated than just friendship. Just another piece of herself to add to the list of all her different selves. All the different directions her heart wanted to go.

“Well?” He raised an eyebrow. “Shall we go back?”

“I—I can’t,” she admitted. “I think I used up all my magic getting here.”

He smiled without any warmth behind it. “Too bad. I guess you’ll have to take the long way home,” he said, and vanished with a pop as faint as a bursting bubble. Lanadel took one last look at the stars and sighed. She had no idea how far up she was. But she was pretty sure it was a long walk back to her bed.

EIGHT

The next morning, she got up at dawn as usual. She hadn’t slept after making her way down the endless twisting and turning tunnels that led back to the Order’s caverns from the mountaintop lookout. She wasn’t looking forward to facing Nox after what she’d seen last night. And how could she possibly hide what she knew from Melindra?

A cloud of silence hung over the breakfast table. Even Mombi seemed subdued. Melindra’s eyes were red-rimmed and she tore furiously at her bread crust in silence. Holly and Larkin kept exchanging wide-eyed glances, clearly dying to know what was going on. Nox was staring at his bowl of gruel, refusing to look up as Lanadel entered the cavern. She took a deep breath, trying to decide where to sit.

And then suddenly there was a cracking noise and a flash of light from the far end of the cavern. With a pop, all of Glamora’s enchantments vanished: the Flutterbudgets, the chandeliers, the fire, the food. Where the magical fire had burned a second earlier, someone—or something—was crumpled on the floor, unmoving. Nox leapt to his feet and rushed over with Melindra close behind him. Holly, Larkin, and Lanadel ran after them and Mombi waddled in the rear as fast as her short legs could manage.

As Lanadel got closer she could see Nox was bending over a girl not much older than she was. It was impossible to tell what she was wearing; it might have been a plain dress, but it was so dirty and torn that hardly any of the original garment remained. She was bleeding from a dozen cuts, her exposed skin covered in blood, and a terrible wound gaped from her forehead. The girl’s eyes were closed and Lanadel thought for an awful moment that she might be dead until she saw the faint rise and fall of her chest.

“Summon Gert and Glamora,” Mombi said to Nox in a low voice. “Now.” Nox jumped to his feet and put two fingers to his mouth as though he was about to whistle, but no sound came out of his open mouth. A few seconds later Glamora and Gert appeared next to Mombi with a pop.

“Oh no!” Glamora gasped, her hands flying to her mouth. “Her horn!”

What horn? Lanadel wondered.

“We have to get her to the healing pool at once,” Mombi said, pushing the trainees out of the way. “Melindra, help me carry her. I’m afraid to move her using magic.” But the girl’s eyelids were fluttering. She coughed weakly and rolled over onto her side, wheezing for breath.

“Not—bad—as it looks,” she whispered. “Let me—walk.”

“Not a chance,” Melindra said, gathering the girl up in her arms with infinite tenderness. She stood again as if the girl’s limp body weighed nothing at all, the muscles in her back and arms rippling.

“Forget about me,” the girl wheezed. “You have to—” But she broke off, hacking and coughing. Blood bubbled from her mouth. Gert leaned forward and brushed the girl’s forehead with her fingers, her eyes closed.

“Oh dear,” she said. “Oh, this is not good at all.” She opened her eyes and looked at Mombi. “Dorothy is moving far more quickly than we expected. We sent poor Annabel into terrible danger without realizing it.”

Lanadel drew in a breath—this was Annabel, the missing member of the Order who they’d been so worried about. She was alive—but barely.

“We all know the risks,” Nox said in a low voice, but his face was strained with worry. “This is what we’re trained for. This is why we’re here. Melindra,” he said, “if we don’t get her to the healing pool, she’s going to die.”

“I know that!” Melindra snarled.

“How much time do we have?” Glamora asked, her face suffused with concern.

Gert shook her head. “Not much, I don’t think. But Nox is right—she’s in no shape to be questioned. Her thoughts are a jumble. I can barely make anything out. We won’t get anything useful out of her until she’s healed.” Melindra was already walking past her.

“Lanadel, why don’t you come with me and help get her in the water.” Lanadel heard the emotion thick in her voice, but Melindra didn’t break her stride or look back.

“Go,” Mombi said. “Quickly. Bring Annabel back as soon as you can.” The old witch jabbed a finger into Lanadel’s chest. “And don’t let her die!”

Lanadel raced after Melindra and found her as she was entering the cavern with the healing pool. Without hesitating, Melindra stepped into the water with the injured girl in her arms, sinking to her chest and letting the girl’s body float in the warm, clear spring. Cradling Annabel in her left arm, she gently pushed the girl underwater with her right.

“Can it—can she—” Lanadel didn’t even know what to ask. Annabel was hurt so badly it was hard to believe that even the pool could heal her.

Melindra held her underwater with both hands and closed her eyes. “I don’t know,” she said. “Now would be a good time to pray, though.”

The seconds passed so slowly they felt like minutes and still Annabel didn’t move. Her blood bloomed upward like droplets of ink spreading in a glass of water. If the water didn’t heal her, would it drown her? Melindra’s face was set in grim concentration and Lanadel was too frightened to ask.

And then, just when Lanadel was certain Annabel was dead, she began to thrash furiously underwater. Melindra pulled her back to the surface. Annabel coughed and hacked, spitting water. As soon as her mouth was clear, she let out a scream so bloodcurdling that even Melindra flinched. Melindra grabbed her tightly, pulling Annabel in to her chest. “You’re okay,” she said into the girl’s ear over and over again. “You’re okay. You’re in the caverns. You’re safe.” At last the girl’s horrible screams subsided and she leaned into Melindra’s chest, sobbing.

“Help me get her out of the water,” Melindra ordered Lanadel. Between the two of them, they gently lifted Annabel out of the pool. She curled up on the rocky floor of the cavern, still crying, and covered her eyes with her hands. Melindra squatted next to her, stroking Annabel’s back with one hand, until finally her crying slowed and she pushed herself up into a seated position. Melindra snapped her fingers, and a soft white robe materialized next to her. She gently wrapped Annabel up and offered her a handkerchief she plucked out of thin air.

Annabel blew her nose and nodded thankfully to Melindra. Her face was pale and drawn, but the pool had healed her injuries—except for a huge, round scar in the middle of her forehead that looked almost like bone. Melindra touched it hesitantly, and Annabel flinched. “Can you walk?” Melindra asked gently.

Annabel nodded. Melindra shot a look at Lanadel and she hurried forward to offer the girl her arm. By slinging her arms around both their shoulders, she was able to limp her way back to the dining hall, where Mombi, Gert, Glamora, and Nox were waiting anxiously. Holly and Larkin had vanished.

They helped Annabel sit down at the table, and Gert pulled a steaming bowl of broth out of the air and set it in front of her.

“Tell us everything,” Mombi said.

“Mombi!” Glamora chastised. “She’s exhausted. Let the poor girl rest first.”

“We don’t have time for that,” Mombi retorted. Glamora opened her mouth to protest again, but Annabel interrupted her.

“She’s right,” Annabel said weakly. “There’s not much time. I have to tell you what I’ve seen. It can’t wait until I . . .” Unexpectedly, her eyes filled with tears, and she brought her hand to the scar on her forehead. Glamora and Melindra both flinched visibly.

“Take your time, dearie,” Gert urged, taking one of Annabel’s hands and squeezing it gently. Hypocrite, Lanadel thought, and Gert looked up sharply. Almost as if she could read Lanadel’s mind.

Annabel nodded and took a deep breath. “It was just a regular recon mission,” she began. “I mean, you know that—you sent me to look into the rumors that Dorothy is somehow stripping magic out of Oz.” She touched her forehead again and another tear ran down her cheek. “I didn’t think you could be right,” she said dully. “Pulling magic out of Oz? Just the idea is totally insane.”

“It is insane,” Nox said grimly. “But unfortunately that doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

“Yeah, well, it is,” Annabel said. “I traveled through Gillikin Country and Quadling Country before I headed to the Emerald City, and Dorothy’s troops are everywhere. They’re raiding villages, burning homes, taking prisoners—they don’t often leave survivors, but everyone I found was completely terrified, and they told me anyone Dorothy’s soldiers had taken was never seen again.” Annabel shuddered. “The Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman are experimenting on people. Making these awful half-tin soldiers that are basically slaves with no will of their own.”

“They’re making soldiers?” Mombi broke in.

Annabel nodded. “I heard rumors in some of the outlying villages. Creatures that were part flesh, part steel. That seemed to be controlled by some kind of outside force.”

“That’s crazy,” Nox said. “That’s never—no one in Oz would do that. Not even Dorothy.”

“It’s not crazy,” Lanadel said, surprising even herself with her outburst. “I saw them.”

They all looked at her, startled, as if they’d forgotten she was there. “The people—the things that came to my village, that”—her voice wavered but she pressed on—“killed my family, they looked like that. They had yellow fur, like the Winkies. But their hands—where their hands should have been—they had knives. And these horrible wheels at the ends of their legs. They were ruthless. When people begged for—when people begged them for mercy, it was like they couldn’t even hear.” Next to her, Melindra grabbed her hand and squeezed. Nox inhaled sharply.

Annabel nodded sympathetically. “I heard stories like that everywhere I went. Creatures that were part Winkie, part metal. I didn’t believe it was true. How would something like that even live? Like you said, Nox, it was too crazy to be real.” She shook her head. “And then . . .” She bit down on the words. As if what she had to say next was too painful even to speak about. “And then I saw for myself. A whole troop of them. I was lucky they didn’t see me—I’d stopped to rest outside of a village, and it was only luck that I arrived after Dorothy’s troops had already started killing people and burning houses to the ground. I saw them. Her soldiers.” She shuddered again. “It was—horrible. They looked like creatures we know. But they’d been twisted into something—something awful. Part machine. Knives where their hands should be. Just like you said,” and she nodded at Lanadel. “It’s worse than we ever imagined, what Dorothy’s doing. I couldn’t face them, so I—I ran.” She buried her head in her hands.

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Nox said. “None of us could have confronted a whole army alone. You did the right thing, Annabel.”

“I left those people to die,” Annabel whispered. “I just kept going. I wanted to come back here right away but I needed more proof. Something to show for my mission.” She straightened, almost proudly. “So I kept going. I scouted more villages. I didn’t see any more of Dorothy’s soldiers. But I—” She stopped talking, as if whatever came next was too hard to say. Harder even than talking about walking away from a burning village while Dorothy’s soldiers murdered its citizens.

“Annabel, what happened? What happened to your horn?” Melindra prompted. “Tell us.”

Her horn? And then Lanadel realized—Annabel was a Horner. Had been a Horner, anyway—one of the rare, magical horned people from Quadling Country. But who would cut off her horn? It was like chopping off someone’s arm or leg for no reason.

“Dorothy’s trying to figure out a way to get all the magic of Oz for herself,” Annabel said. “The rumors are true. But it’s not that easy. You can’t just snap your fingers and take it. So she’s offering a reward for magical objects, for starters. Big rewards.” Annabel touched her forehead. “People are desperate in some places. Dorothy’s raids have left them starving. They have nothing.”

“Wait—Dorothy’s soldiers didn’t do this?” Melindra gasped.

Annabel shook her head. “A bunch of farmers,” she said, laughing bitterly. “So much for my training. They didn’t have real weapons, but they still managed to beat me half to death before they got my horn. I was just barely able to teleport back here before I bled out all over their field.”

Lanadel stared at the girl, still wrapped tightly in Melindra’s white robe. It was unthinkable. The people of Oz didn’t do things like that to each other. They didn’t murder each other over some stupid reward. They didn’t betray each other. It was bad enough that Dorothy had some kind of army of monsters attacking her own citizens, but she was from the Other Place. Maybe they were just like that there: bloodthirsty monsters who fought wars for no reason and killed innocent people for the fun of it. But this was Oz. Things like this didn’t happen in Oz. People didn’t hurt each other. Oz was peaceful.

“No,” Lanadel said in a low voice, only realizing she’d spoken aloud when the others turned to look at her. “It’s Dorothy. It has to be Dorothy’s fault. We’re not like that.”

“Believe me,” Annabel said. “I wish you were right.” She coughed weakly. “Ozians turning on each other—it’s like something out of a nightmare.”

“You’re wrong!” Lanadel cried, tears springing to her eyes. “You must have been confused. It was Dorothy’s soldiers. It had to be.”

Annabel closed her eyes. “It was a bunch of farmers,” she said. “They could have been my old neighbors in Quadling Country. They could have been my friends. Dorothy’s soldiers were nowhere to be seen. But they’re on the move—that’s why we don’t have time. Word of the Order is spreading. If Dorothy’s troops find this place, we’re done. We have to go out and fight.”

“I’m not fighting with liars!” Lanadel yelled. “It was Dorothy! It had to be!”

Melindra and Nox’s jaws dropped in astonishment. And she turned her back on them and ran from the dining hall.

NINE

It was Nox who found her, of course. It didn’t take him long. She wondered sometimes if he had some extra, sixth sense that told him everything she was going to do before she did it. That would explain why he’d known it was her on top of Mount Gillikin. Why she could never beat him in a fight. Well, and the fact that she’d just learned how to fight a couple of months ago.

She’d stopped crying long before she heard his footfalls on the rock behind her. Without realizing it, she’d run all the way to the place she’d overheard his fight with Melindra. Only now, it was daylight, just as it had been when Mombi had showed her the mountaintop for the first time. From here, she could see all the way down into the valley, and the dim purple mountains against the horizon as far as she could see, jagged as a torn piece of paper against the blue sky.

Nox sank down on his haunches next to her, and after a minute, when it was obvious she wasn’t going to move, he stretched out his legs and sat down on the rough stone. She had to fight the impulse to move away from him. He could pretend to be her friend now. But after last night, she knew different. She knew his concern was nothing more than a face he put on when it suited him.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said finally, after a long, painful silence.

“You don’t know anything about me,” she said sharply. “You never asked, because you don’t care. You don’t even know where I’m from, or what happened to my family, or—”

“Two brothers,” Nox said, not looking at her. “Both older. Good with the harvest. Your parents had high hopes for them. They doted on you—took you with them everywhere, but teased you constantly. Your parents were older and didn’t think they could have any more children when your mother got pregnant with you. Until Dorothy’s troops found your village, they were ordinary farmers. Poor, but happy. Her forces tried to take as many of the strong young workers as they could, but your brothers fought harder than most. It was someone in your own village who betrayed them. The head councilman. He cried for help and when your brothers ran to his aid he locked them inside his house and called to Dorothy’s troops. He promised them your brothers in exchange for sparing the village. But they killed him anyway. Dorothy’s soldiers beheaded both of your brothers in front of your parents, and then killed your parents, too. You saw the whole thing—you were hiding under your parents’ bed in your family’s one-room cottage. By the time you came out, everyone in your village was dead or abducted and your village was burning. You walked all the way here. By the time you found the Order, you were nearly dead. But you didn’t care. Avenge your family or die with them: those were the only options.”

Lanadel stared at him. “How did you know all that?” she finally asked. “Is nothing safe from you people? My whole history? Annabel’s life? None of it matters when it comes to the cause?”

“Gert can read minds,” Nox said calmly. “She thinks it’s best if I know what I’m getting into when I train someone. And it comes in handy to ensure there are no traitors in our midst. It’s nothing personal.”

“Nothing personal?” Lanadel spat. “Just my entire life? A story I never told you myself?”

“Knowing other people’s secrets doesn’t seem to bother you,” Nox snapped. “Toughen up, Lanadel. These are times that none of us ever imagined we’d see. Dorothy is bad enough, but the idea that our own people would turn on each other—”

“Dorothy made him!” Lanadel shrieked. “He was a good man, Head Councilman Alder! He was fair and just and—and—”

“He was trying to save his own skin,” Nox said. “That’s the worst part, isn’t it? He didn’t care about the village. Half the people in your village were already dead. He only cared about himself and he was willing to sacrifice your brothers for his own safety. Not that it worked.” Nox snorted. “Say what you like about Dorothy’s army, but apparently they don’t take bribes.”

Lanadel looked at him in horror.

“Hard to hear, Lanadel? That’s nothing, believe me. You have to be able to face the truth if you’re going to fight with us. You have to accept that this is a war that affects all of us. That anyone can turn on us. The Tin Woodman, the Lion, the Scarecrow—you think they’re from the Other Place? You know they’re Ozians, same as the rest of us. The Scarecrow used to be king. Sure, he wasn’t great at the job, but he wasn’t turning Winkies into killing machines either. Dorothy’s not a savior anymore. She’s a monster. Any one of us can be corrupted. Any one of us can be a traitor. You can’t trust anyone.”

“Turning Winkies into killing machines?” Lanadel asked dully.

“That’s what we sent Annabel to find out. That’s who’s responsible for what happened in your village. We’d heard rumors—that the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman were working together to create an army for Dorothy somehow. We needed to know the truth.” He sighed. “Turns out the truth is even more horrible than the stories. And that’s why we have to move now. That’s what I came up here to tell you. The healing pool helped, but Annabel’s still traumatized from what she went through out there. I don’t want to send her out again until I’m certain she’s recovered.” His face was blank. “But it’s time. Time for Melindra to go to the Emerald Palace—and time for you to go to Ev.”

Lanadel stared at him, her mind reeling. That was what he’d been talking about with Gert? Ev, the fabled country across the Deadly Desert, supposedly a twisted mirror image of Oz? Ruled by a crazy, centuries-old king? The Nome King must have been the he they’d meant. She was supposed to be a spy in his ancient, corrupt court.

Except that Ev didn’t exist. It was a story parents scared their kids with when they were misbehaving, not a real place. “Ev is just a myth,” she said. “And even Melindra can’t—I know what those creatures can do. You send Melindra out there, she’ll die.” She remembered what she’d overheard on the mountaintop. Even Melindra, with all her confidence and her strength, knew that a trip to the Emerald City was almost certain to be a one-way ticket.

“I’m not sending her to fight,” he said. “I’m sending her to spy. Just like I’m sending you. Ev is real, Lanadel—as real as Oz.” She shook her head in disbelief, but he was serious. “And whatever is giving Dorothy her power just might come from there. Mombi and Gert have suspected for a long time that there’s some force in Ev that is partly responsible for bringing Dorothy back. You’re the one who’s going to find out.”

“Has anyone from Oz ever even been to Ev?”

“Lurline,” Nox said. “Maybe.”

“I don’t have experience. I can barely use magic. Shouldn’t you send Holly? Or Larkin?”

“Holly and Larkin are good fighters, but they’re not . . . subtle. Neither is Melindra.” His voice was so flat it sounded refrigerated. “I need someone who can play the innocent. Someone who is still innocent. Someone like you. We don’t know what you’ll find out there.”

“So you’re sending me into a total unknown and you’re sending Melindra to her death,” Lanadel said, her voice hot with fury. If she’d been angry at Nox last night, that was nothing compared to what she felt now. Nox had been trying to protect Melindra when he’d argued with Gert. He’d wanted to keep her out of unnecessary danger. But now he wasn’t thinking twice about sending her into the Emerald City. He wanted Melindra as far away from him as possible. And she knew exactly why.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with skill, does it? You don’t want either of us around. You don’t want anyone to distract you from your precious Order.” She knew what he’d told Melindra that night. That he hated watching his trainees die. But it was as if that Nox had been a different person. And the Nox in front of her now was all walls. There was no chance of getting through to the person who’d told Melindra how much he wanted to protect her.

“That has nothing to do with this,” Nox said sharply. “This was Mombi and Gert’s decision.”

“Oh, I’m sure it was,” Lanadel said, her voice icy. “It just happens to be an incredibly convenient decision for you. But is it just me, or is sending your best fighter on a death mission a really bad idea, Nox?”

“She won’t be in danger,” Nox said. “Much danger,” he amended. “She’s just going to infiltrate the Emerald Palace, get some information for us, and come back.”

“You know she can’t do that!” Lanadel yelled. “She’s told me a million times! Glamora tossed her out of etiquette lessons because she couldn’t pretend to be a courtier!”

“She doesn’t have to be a courtier!” Nox snapped. “She’ll be a servant. And the details of her mission are none of your business, anyway. This isn’t your decision, Lanadel. I’m only telling you because—because—”

“Because you want me to know what happens when you actually have feelings for someone,” Lanadel said coldly. “You send them into the occupied Emerald City to die. I won’t let you do this.”

“I don’t have—” He cut himself off. “It doesn’t matter. She’s already agreed.”

“When could she possibly have had time to do that?”

Nox jerked his head toward something behind her. “You can ask her yourself.”

Melindra had come up behind them without Lanadel hearing her. “Is it true?” Lanadel asked her. “You’re going into the Emerald City?”

Melindra’s expression was filled with raw pain as she looked at Nox. “Somebody has to do it,” she said. “We need information about Dorothy’s soldiers if we’re going to fight them. How the Woodman’s creating them. If they have weaknesses. That kind of thing.”

“It’s a suicide mission,” Lanadel said desperately. “You can’t let them send you into the—”

“I wanted to go,” Melindra said, still not taking her eyes off Nox. “I volunteered.”

Lanadel opened her mouth to protest and then stopped. She knew why Melindra had volunteered, and it had nothing to do with the Order. Nox had broken her heart. But she couldn’t stop Melindra from going without admitting that she’d overheard their fight on the mountain. And she knew that Melindra, just like Nox, would never forgive her if she knew Lanadel had seen her at her weakest.

Melindra and Nox were so much alike—except that Melindra had learned how to let go of her tough exterior when something really mattered to her, and Nox was trapped by it. Melindra didn’t care if she died in Dorothy’s palace. She didn’t care if she never came back at all. She was going to go into the most dangerous place in Oz, and there was nothing Lanadel could do to stop her. It was like losing her family all over again. Tears welled up in her eyes and she dashed them away angrily with the heel of her hand. Lanadel wanted to beg her again to stay. To tell her that it was not worth it. But she knew down deep that her words could not stall Melindra from leaving. Only Nox’s could.

“When do I go to Ev?” she asked. She was proud of herself for keeping the tremor out of her voice. Melindra looked at Nox, startled out of her ice queen act.

“You’re sending her to Ev?”

“In a few days. It’s already been decided,” Nox said. Pure rage flickered in Melindra’s eyes before she tamped it down.

“I’ll be fine,” Lanadel said, although she had no idea if that was true. The last thing she wanted was to make Melindra worry about her. She grabbed Melindra in a sudden tight embrace, her nostrils filling with the sea-salt smell of Melindra’s hair. Words bubbled up again. Ones that she could not say. Ones that Melindra would never return. She took a deep breath and chose other words.

“Stay alive,” she whispered into her ear. “Please. For me.”

Melindra hugged her back fiercely. “You too,” she said quietly. “For all of us.”

“Mombi and Gert are working on a spell to get you across the Deadly Desert,” Nox said. Reluctantly, Lanadel let Melindra go. She didn’t—couldn’t—say what she wanted to. That the Order wasn’t worth dying for. That Nox wasn’t worth dying for. But she knew exactly how it felt to be willing to die because you had nothing left to live for. And she knew there was nothing she could say to Melindra that would make her change her mind.

“Anyway, the risk of death is worth it if it means I get away from Holly and Larkin for a while,” Melindra said. Her voice was light, but her eyes were distant. There was a cloud of sadness around her so thick Lanadel could almost touch it. “I’m going to check in on Annabel,” she added. Lanadel nodded. Nox watched her go, his expression unfathomable, and then continued as if they hadn’t been interrupted. “They’re figuring out another spell to get you back once you’ve gathered information. Mombi will have more instructions for you once the spell’s complete. Your mission may be dangerous,” he added unnecessarily.

“I knew what I signed up for when I got here,” she said. In just a few short months, the Order had transformed her into a fighter. But she owed them nothing. They’d never had any intention of helping her avenge her family. They just wanted another pawn—like Nox himself, even though he couldn’t see it. And she wasn’t going to help them anymore. Not unless they really had a way to stop Dorothy. Not unless they were really going to fight—and not just train all day in their mountain hideaway like children playing at being an army. Without Melindra, there was nothing to keep her here. And she wasn’t going to die for an Order that was willing to sacrifice someone like Melindra just because Nox didn’t want her around.

“It’s not what you’re thinking,” Nox said, looking at her. “Lanadel, I swear. She’s better than I am,” he said quietly, his eyes not leaving her face. “I’m doing what I can. You have to believe me. What you saw last night—it’s not everything.”

She ignored him. “When do I leave?” she asked coldly.

“As soon as the spell is complete.” He kept trying to catch her eye, but she refused to look at him. He could say whatever he wanted, but she knew the truth. Nox didn’t care about Melindra. At least not enough. He certainly didn’t care about Lanadel. The only things he cared about were himself and the Order. And they were one and the same. She turned to go.

“Lanadel,” Nox said. His voice was pleading. But she refused to look at him.

“I’ll go find Mombi and Gert,” she said.

She turned away from Nox and walked back into the caverns. Nox might have a plan for her, but that didn’t mean she had to follow it. She was on her own now. Forget the Order; she was going to find a way to avenge her family herself. On her own terms. They’d given her the skills she needed, and now she didn’t need them anymore. It didn’t matter. Gert and Mombi were giving her a ticket out of the mountain. Away from the Order. Let them think they were ordering her around. Let them send her away. She didn’t care anymore what the Order did. She could play their game even better than they could. She could be a dozen different people if that was what they wanted. A dozen fake selves, so that no one would ever guess which one was the real her.

The Order could send her to Ev. But no matter what happened, no matter what they wanted from her, she was never coming back. This time, she was really, truly alone. And she was going to make everyone who’d hurt her pay.

EXCERPT FROM NO PLACE LIKE OZ

SEE HOW DOROTHY’S RISE TO POWER BEGAN:

ONE

They say you can’t go home again. I’m not entirely sure who said that, but it’s something they say. I know it because my aunt Em has it embroidered on a throw pillow in the sitting room.

You can’t go home again. Well, even if they put it on a pillow, whoever said it was wrong. I’m proof alone that it’s not true.

Because, you see, I left home. And I came back. Lickety-split, knock your heels together, and there you are. Oh, it wasn’t quite so simple, of course, but look at me now: I’m still here, same as before, and it’s just as if I was never gone in the first place.

So every time I see that little pillow on Aunt Em’s good sofa, with its pretty pink piping around the edges and colorful bouquets of daisies and wildflowers stitched alongside those cheerful words (but are they even cheerful? I sometimes wonder), I’m halfway tempted to laugh. When I consider everything that’s happened! A certain sort of person might say that it’s ironic.

Not that I’m that sort of person. This is Kansas, and we Kansans don’t put much truck in anything as foolish as irony.

Things we do put truck in:

Hard work.

Practicality.

Gumption.

Crop yields and healthy livestock and mild winters. Things you can touch and feel and see with your own two eyes. Things that do you at least two licks of good.

Because this is the prairie, and the prairie is no place for daydreaming. All that matters out here is what gets you through the winter. A Kansas winter will grind a dreamer right up and feed it to the pigs.

As my uncle Henry always says: You can’t trade a boatload of wishes for a bucket of slop. (Maybe I should embroider that on a pillow for Aunt Em, too. I wonder if it would make her laugh.)

I don’t know about wishes, but a bucket of slop was exactly what I had in my hand on the afternoon of my sixteenth birthday, a day in September with a chill already in the air, as I made my way across the field, away from the shed and the farmhouse toward the pigpen.

It was feeding time, and the pigs knew it. Even from fifty feet away, I could already hear them—Jeannie and Ezekiel and Bertha—squealing and snorting in anticipation of their next meal.

“Well, really!” I said to myself. “Who in the world could get so excited about a bit of slop!?”

As I said it, my old friend Miss Millicent poked her little red face out from a gap of wire in the chicken coop and squawked in greeting. “And hello to you, too, Miss Millicent,” I said cheerily. “Don’t you worry. You’ll be getting your own food soon enough.”

But Miss Millicent was looking for companionship, not food, and she squeezed herself out of her coop and began to follow on my heels as I kept on my way. I had been ignoring her lately, and the old red hen was starting to be cross about it, a feeling she expressed today by squawking loudly and shadowing my every step, fluttering her wings and fussing underfoot.

She meant well enough, surely, but when I felt her hard beak nipping at my ankle, I finally snapped at her. “Miss Millie! You get out of here. I have chores to do! We’ll have a nice, long heart-to-heart later, I promise.”

The chicken clucked reproachfully and darted ahead, stopping in her tracks just in the spot where I was about to set my foot down. It was like she wanted me to know that I couldn’t get away from her that easily—that I was going to pay her some mind whether I liked it or not.

Sometimes that chicken could be impossible. And without even really meaning to, I kicked at her. “Shoo!”

Miss Millie jumped aside just before my foot connected, and I felt myself lose my balance as I missed her, stumbling backward with a yelp and landing on my rear end in the grass.

I looked down at myself in horror and saw my dress covered in pig slop. My knee was scraped, I had dirt all over my hands, and my slop bucket was upturned at my side.

“Millie!” I screeched. “See what you’ve done? You’ve ruined everything!” I swatted at her again, this time even more angrily than when I’d kicked her, but she just stepped nimbly aside and stood there, looking at me like she just didn’t know what to do with me anymore.

“Oh dear,” I said, sighing. “I didn’t mean to yell at you. Come here, you silly hen.”

Millie bobbled her head up and down like she was considering the proposition before she hopped right into my lap, where she burrowed in and clucked softly as I ruffled her feathers. This was all she had wanted in the first place. To be my friend.

It used to be that it was all I wanted, too. It used to be that Miss Millicent and even Jeannie the pig were some of my favorite people in the world. Back then, I didn’t care a bit that a pig and a chicken hardly qualified as people at all.

They were there for me when I was sad, or when something was funny, or when I just needed company, and that was what mattered. Even though Millie couldn’t talk, it always felt like she understood everything I said. Sometimes it even almost seemed like she was talking to me, giving me her sensible, no-nonsense advice in a raspy cackle. “Don’t you worry, dearie,” she’d say. “There’s no problem in this whole world that can’t be fixed with a little spit and elbow grease.”

But lately, things hadn’t been quite the same between me and my chicken. Lately, I had found myself becoming more impatient with her infuriating cackling, with the way she was always pecking and worrying after me.

“I’m sorry, Miss Millicent,” I said. “I know I haven’t been myself lately. I promise I’ll be back to normal soon.”

She fluffed her wings and puffed her chest out, and I looked around: at the dusty, gray-green fields merging on the horizon with the almost-matching gray-blue sky, and all of it stretching out so far into nothing that it seemed like it would be possible to travel and travel and travel—just set off in a straight line heading east or west, north or south, it didn’t matter—and never get anywhere at all.

“Sometimes I wonder if this is what the rest of life’s going to be like,” I said. “Gray fields and gray skies and buckets of slop. The world’s a big place, Miss Millicent—just look at that sky. So why does it feel so small from where we’re sitting? I’ll tell you one thing. If I ever get the chance to go somewhere else again, I’m going to stay there.”

I felt a bit ashamed of myself. I knew how I sounded.

“Get yourself together and stop moping, Little Miss Fancy,” I responded to myself, now in my raspy, stern, Miss Millicent voice, imagining that the words were coming out of her mouth instead of my own. “A prairie girl doesn’t worry her pretty little head about places she’ll never go and things she’ll never see. A prairie girl worries about the here and now.”

This is what a place like this does to you. It makes you put words in the beaks of chickens.

I sighed and shrugged anyway. Miss Millie didn’t know there was anything else out there. She just knew her coop, her feed, and me.

These days, I envied her for that. Because I was a girl, not a chicken, and I knew what was out there.

Past the prairie, where I sat with my old chicken in my lap, there were oceans and more oceans. Beyond those were deserts and pyramids and jungles and mountains and glittering palaces. I had heard about all those places and all those things from newsreels and newspapers.

And even if I was the only one who knew it, I’d seen with my own eyes that there were more directions to move in than just north and south and east and west, places more incredible than Paris and Los Angeles, more exotic than Kathmandu and Shanghai, even. There were whole worlds out there that weren’t on any map, and things that you would never believe.

I didn’t need to believe. I knew. I just sometimes wished I didn’t.

I thought of Jeannie and Ezekiel and Bertha, all of them in their pen beside themselves in excitement for the same slop they’d had yesterday and would have again tomorrow. The slop I’d have to refill into the bucket and haul back out to them.

“It must be nice not to know any better,” I said to Miss Millicent.

In the end, a chicken is a good thing to hold in your lap for a few minutes. It’s a good thing to pretend to talk to when there’s no one else around. But in the end, if you want the honest-to-goodness truth, it’s possible that a chicken doesn’t make the greatest friend.

Setting Miss Millicent aside, I dusted myself off and headed back toward the farmhouse to clean myself up, change my dress, and get myself ready for my big party. Bertha and Jeannie and Ezekiel would have to wait until tomorrow for their slop.

It wasn’t like me to let them go hungry. At least, it wasn’t like the old me.

But the old me was getting older by the second. It had been two years since the tornado. Two years since I’d gone away. Since I had met Glinda the Good Witch, and the Lion, the Tin Woodman, and the Scarecrow. Since I had traveled the Road of Yellow Brick and defeated the Wicked Witch of the West. In Oz, I had been a hero. I could have stayed. But I hadn’t. Aunt Em and Uncle Henry were in Kansas. Home was in Kansas. It had been my decision and mine alone.

Well, I had made my choice, and like any good Kansas girl, I would live with it. I would pick up my chin, put on a smile, and be on my way.

The animals could just go hungry for now. It was my birthday, after all.

TWO

“Happy Swoot Sixtoon,” the cake said, the letters spelled out in smudged icing. I beamed up at my aunt Em with my brightest smile.

“It’s beautiful,” I said. I’d already changed into my party dress—which wasn’t that much different from the dress I’d just gotten all dirty in the field—and had cleaned myself up as best as I could, scrubbing the dirt from my hands and the blood from my knee until you could hardly tell I’d fallen.

Uncle Henry hovered off to the side, looking as proud and hopeful as if he’d baked it himself. He’d certainly helped, gathering the ingredients from around the farm: coaxing the eggs from Miss Millicent (who never seemed in the mood to lay any), milking the cow, and making sure Aunt Em had everything she needed.

“Sometimes I wonder if I didn’t marry a master chef!” Henry said, putting his arm around her waist.

Even Toto was excited. He was hopping around on the floor yipping at us eagerly.

“You really like it?” Aunt Em asked, a note of doubt in her voice. “I know the writing isn’t perfect, but penmanship has never been my strong suit.”

“It’s wonderful!” I exclaimed, pushing down the tiny feeling of disappointment that was bubbling in my chest. A little white lie never hurt anyone, and I didn’t doubt the cake would be delicious. Aunt Em’s food might not usually come out looking fancy, but it always tastes better than anything else.

Oh, I know that it’s how a cake tastes that matters. I know there’s no point in concerning yourself with what it looks like on the outside when you’ll be eating it in just a few minutes.

But as it sat lopsided on the table with its brown icing and the words “Happy Sweet Sixteen” written out so the e’s looked more like blobby o’s, I found myself wishing for something more.

I just couldn’t let Aunt Em know that. I couldn’t let her have even the smallest hint that anything was wrong. So I wrapped her up in a hug to let her know that it didn’t matter: that even if the cake wasn’t perfect, it was good enough for me. But then something else occurred to me.

“Are you sure it’s big enough?” I asked. “A lot of people are coming.” I had invited everyone from school, not that that was so many people, and everyone from all the neighboring farms, plus the store owners at every shop I’d been to on my last trip into town. I’d invited my best friend, Mitzi Blair, and even awful Suzanna Hellman and her best friend, Marian Stiles, not to mention a reporter from the Carrier who had taken a special interest in my life since the tornado. Plus, Suzanna would be dragging her horrible little sister, Jill, along.

Aunt Em glanced down nervously. “There was going to be another layer, dear, but we were running low on eggs . . . ,” she said, trailing off, her weathered face suddenly rosy with embarrassment.

Uncle Henry came quickly to the rescue. “I just won’t have a second helping,” he said, rubbing his belly, which is not small. “It wouldn’t hurt me to skip a first helping, come to think of it.”

My aunt swatted his arm and chuckled, her worry momentarily gone. All those years of hard Kansas life had taken their toll on her, but when she was around my uncle, her eyes still lit up; when he made a joke, she still laughed a laugh that sounded like it belonged to a girl my age. “You’d eat the whole thing if I let you!” He swiped a bit of frosting with his finger and grinned.

Seeing them together like that, happy and playful and still as much in love as they’d ever been, I felt a swell of affection for them, followed immediately by sadness. I knew that, once upon a time, they had been as young as I was. Aunt Em had wanted to travel the world; Uncle Henry had wanted to set off to California and strike gold. They just hadn’t had the chance to do any of those things.

Instead, they had stayed here, and when I asked them about those days now, they waved away my questions like they were ashamed to admit that they’d ever had dreams at all. To them, our farm was all there was.

Will I be like them, someday? I wondered. Happy with crooked cakes and gray skies and cleaning out the pig trough?

“I’m going to go hang the lanterns outside,” Henry said, walking to the door and reaching for his toolbox. “People expect this place to look nice. After all, they helped build it.”

“Only after you got it started,” Aunt Em reminded him.

After the tornado had swept our house away—with me in it—everyone had figured I was dead. Aunt Em and Uncle Henry had been heartbroken. They’d even started planning my memorial service.

Imagine that! My funeral! Well, sometimes I did imagine it. I imagined my teachers from school all standing up one by one to say what a wonderful student I was, that there was something truly special about me.

I imagined Aunt Em all in black, weeping silently into her handkerchief and Uncle Henry the very picture of stoic grief, only a single tear rolling down his stony face as he helped lower my coffin into an open grave. Yes, I know that without a body there could be no coffin, but this was a fantasy. And it was at that moment in my fantasy that Aunt Em would bolt up, wailing, and would race forward to fling herself in after my corpse, stopped only at the last minute by Tom Furnish and Benjamin Slocombe, two handsome farmhands from the Shiffletts’ farm. Tom and Benjamin would be crying, too, because of course, they both harbored a secret admiration for me.

Well, if one’s going to daydream, one might just as well make it a good one, don’t you suppose?

Of course, I know it’s vain, and petty, and downright spoiled of me to do such a thing as daydream about my own funeral. I know it’s downright wicked to take even the slightest pleasure in imagining the misery of others, especially my poor aunt and uncle, who have so little happiness in their lives as it is.

I try not to be vain and petty and spoiled. I certainly try not to be wicked (after my experiences with Wickedness). But we all have our bad points, don’t we? I might as well admit that those happen to be mine, and I can only hope to make up for them with the good ones.

There was no funeral anyway, so no harm was done. Just the opposite, in fact! When I showed up again a few days after the cyclone—without so much as a scratch on me, sitting by the chicken coop, which had somehow remained undisturbed through everything—people had assumed that my survival was some kind of miracle.

They were wrong. Miracles are not the same as magic.

But whether you want to call it a miracle or something else, every paper from Wichita to Topeka put me on the front page. They threw a parade for me that year, and a few months later I was asked to be the head judge at the annual blueberry pie contest at the Kansas State Fair. Best of all, because I came back from my adventures minus one house, everyone in town pitched in to build us a new one.

That was how we got this new house, to replace the old one that was still back in you-know-where. It was quite a spectacle to behold: it was bigger than any other for miles around, with a second story and a separate bedroom just for me, and even an indoor commode and a jaunty coat of blue paint, though that was just as gray as everything else in Kansas soon enough.

Henry and Em didn’t seem particularly happy about any of it. They were humbled, naturally, that our neighbors had done all this for us, especially seeing as how they had all suffered their losses in the cyclone, some of them bigger than ours. Of course we were grateful.

But when the neighbors had done their work and gone home, my aunt and uncle had examined all the unfamiliar extravagances and had concluded that the old house had suited them just fine.

“An indoor commode!” Aunt Em exclaimed. “It just doesn’t seem decent!”

How silly they were being. Grumbling about the gift that had been so kindly given to us.

On the other hand, I had to admit that even I felt that the new house left a few things to be desired. Nothing could compare to what I had seen while I had been gone. How do you go back to a two-bedroom farmhouse in Kansas when you’ve been in a palace made of emeralds?

Once you’ve seen castles and Munchkins and roads of yellow brick, once you’ve faced down monsters and witches and come face-to-face with true magic, well then, no matter how much you might have missed it while you were gone, the prairie can seem somewhat dull and—truly—downright dreary.

All I wanted to do upon my return was tell my aunt and uncle everything about what I’d seen. The whole time I’d been in Oz, I’d imagined Aunt Em’s amazed face when I told her about the fields of giant poppies that put you right to sleep, and I’d thought about how Uncle Henry would sputter and spit his coffee back into his cup when he heard about the town where all the people were made of china.

They hadn’t given me quite the reaction I’d been hoping for. In fact, they’d hardly reacted at all. Instead, they’d just exchanged a worried glance and told me that it must have been some fanciful dream I’d had when I hit my head during the cyclone. They warned me not to repeat the story, and to get some rest. They said nobody liked a tale-teller.

Never mind that a bump on the head didn’t explain where the house was now, or why no one had ever found it. And it didn’t explain how I’d gotten home. When I told them about the magical Silver Shoes that had carried me back across the Deadly Desert, they seemed even less convinced than ever. After all, the shoes had slipped from my feet somewhere along the way.

I can see why some people might have thought I was crazy, or a liar, or had made the whole thing up. Around here, they don’t believe in anything they can’t see with their own two eyes.

Aunt Em and I brought the cake into the living room and set it on the table by the modest spread of food she’d already laid out. As I looked at the room, all spruced up and decorated with a careful, loving hand, I reminded myself of how much they were doing.

The birthday party had been my aunt and uncle’s idea—I’d overheard them talking just a few weeks ago about how blue they thought I’d seemed lately, and how a big birthday party might be just the thing to cheer me up.

I’d asked them not to do it, of course. I knew we didn’t really have the money to spare.

Even so, I must admit that I was secretly pleased when they insisted on doing it anyway. As my “wild ride”—as so many people called it—had begun to recede further into memory, I was growing eager for something to break the monotony of the farm and school and then the farm again.

“Dorothy, what is your scrapbook doing out?” Aunt Em asked, noticing the book with all my newspaper clippings sitting on the table next to the buffet. “Your guests will be here any moment.”

I quickly picked the book up and moved it aside so that it didn’t fall victim to any smudges of icing or stray crumbs. “Oh,” I said. “I thought someone might like to look through it at the party. A lot of people who are coming were quoted in the articles about me, after all. It might be fun for them to see their names in print.”

Aunt Em didn’t appear to think that was a very good idea, but she didn’t try to dissuade me. She just shook her head and started humming one of her old songs again as she scurried around, busying herself with last-minute tasks.

I sat down and began to flip through the pages of my scrapbook myself. Toto hopped up into my lap and read along with me. At least I had him. He knew it was all real. He’d been there, too. I wondered if he missed it the same way I did.

THE GIRL WHO RODE THE CYCLONE.

That headline, from the Star, was my favorite. I liked the way it made me seem powerful, as if I’d been in control rather than just some little kid swept up by forces of nature.

In Oz, I hadn’t been just some little kid either. I’d been a hero. I had killed two witches and freed their subjects from tyranny; I’d exposed the humbug Wizard and restored order to the kingdom by helping my friend the Scarecrow, the smartest creature I’ve ever met, claim the throne.

If only those things were in my scrapbook!

Here, I knew that I would never, ever make as much of myself as I did in my short time in Oz. It just wasn’t possible. Here, it wasn’t even considered proper to think about such things.

And yet I had wanted to come back here. All those brave things I’d done: I wasn’t trying to be a hero. I was just trying to get home.

It would have been too cruel to leave Uncle Henry and Aunt Em all alone here, thinking that I was dead. It wasn’t all to spare their grief either. I would have missed them terribly if I had stayed. All the magic in the world—all the palaces and beautiful gowns and fields full of magical flowers—all the friends I’d found—could never have replaced the people who had taken me and raised me as their own after my parents had died. I would never have been able to be happy with them here and me there.

But sometimes I still wondered. Could there have been another way? Was this really home at all?

“Oh, Toto,” I said, closing the cover of the scrapbook harder than I intended to and tossing it aside onto the couch, where it landed just next to Aunt Em’s embroidered throw pillow. Maybe the words on that pillow were more right than I knew. Maybe you couldn’t go home again.

Either way, it would have been a nice consolation if I’d gotten to keep those shoes.

EXCERPT FROM DOROTHY MUST DIE

FOLLOW AMY GUMM’S MISSION TO TAKE DOWN DOROTHY:

ONE

I first discovered I was trash three days before my ninth birthday—one year after my father lost his job and moved to Secaucus to live with a woman named Crystal and four years before my mother had the car accident, started taking pills, and began exclusively wearing bedroom slippers instead of normal shoes.

I was informed of my trashiness on the playground by Madison Pendleton, a girl in a pink Target sweat suit who thought she was all that because her house had one and a half bathrooms.

“Salvation Amy’s trailer trash,” she told the other girls on the monkey bars while I was dangling upside down by my knees and minding my own business, my pigtails scraping the sand. “That means she doesn’t have any money and all her clothes are dirty. You shouldn’t go to her birthday party or you’ll be dirty, too.”

When my birthday party rolled around that weekend, it turned out everyone had listened to Madison. My mom and I were sitting at the picnic table in the Dusty Acres Mobile Community Recreation Area wearing our sad little party hats, our sheet cake gathering dust. It was just the two of us, same as always. After an hour of hoping someone would finally show up, Mom sighed, poured me another big cup of Sprite, and gave me a hug.

She told me that, whatever anyone at school said, a trailer was where I lived, not who I was. She told me that it was the best home in the world because it could go anywhere.

Even as a little kid, I was smart enough to point out that our house was on blocks, not wheels. Its mobility was severely oversold. Mom didn’t have much of a comeback for that.

It took her until around Christmas of that year when we were watching The Wizard of Oz on the big flat-screen television—the only physical thing that was a leftover from our old life with Dad—to come up with a better answer for me. “See?” she said, pointing at the screen. “You don’t need wheels on your house to get somewhere better. All you need is something to give you that extra push.”

I don’t think she believed it even then, but at least in those days she still cared enough to lie. And even though I never believed in a place like Oz, I did believe in her.

That was a long time ago. A lot had changed since then. My mom was hardly the same person at all anymore. Then again, neither was I.

I didn’t bother trying to make Madison like me anymore, and I wasn’t going to cry over cake. I wasn’t going to cry, period. These days, my mom was too lost in her own little world to bother cheering me up. I was on my own, and crying wasn’t worth the effort.

Tears or no tears, though, Madison Pendleton still found ways of making my life miserable. The day of the tornado—although I didn’t know the tornado was coming yet—she was slouching against her locker after fifth period, rubbing her enormous pregnant belly and whispering with her best friend, Amber Boudreaux.

I’d figured out a long time ago that it was best to just ignore her when I could, but Madison was the type of person it was pretty impossible to ignore even under normal circumstances. Now that she was eight and a half months pregnant it was really impossible.

Today, Madison was wearing a tiny T-shirt that barely covered her midriff. It read Who’s Your Mommy across her boobs in pink cursive glitter. I did my best not to stare as I slunk by her on my way to Spanish, but somehow I felt my eyes gliding upward, past her belly to her chest and then to her face. Sometimes you just can’t help it.

She was already staring at me. Our gazes met for a tiny instant. I froze.

Madison glared. “What are you looking at, Trailer Trash?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Was I staring? I was just wondering if you were the Teen Mom I saw on the cover of Star this week.”

It wasn’t like I tried to go after Madison, but sometimes my sarcasm took on a life of its own. The words just came out.

Madison gave me a blank look. She snorted.

“I didn’t know you could afford a copy of Star.” She turned to Amber Boudreaux and stopped rubbing her stomach just long enough to give it a tender pat. “Salvation Amy’s jealous. She’s had a crush on Dustin forever. She wishes this were her baby.”

I didn’t have a crush on Dustin, I definitely didn’t want a baby, and I absolutely did not want Dustin’s baby. But that didn’t stop my cheeks from going red.

Amber popped her gum and smirked an evil smirk. “You know, I saw her talking to Dustin in third period,” she said. “She was being all flirty.” Amber puckered her lips and pushed her chest forward. “Oh, Dustin, I’ll help you with your algebra.”

I knew I was blushing, but I wasn’t sure if it was from embarrassment or anger. It was true that I’d let Dustin copy my math homework earlier that day. But as cute as Dustin was, I wasn’t stupid enough to think I’d ever have a shot with him. I was Salvation Amy, the flat-chested trailer-trash girl whose clothes were always a little too big and a lot too thrift store. Who hadn’t had a real friend since third grade.

I wasn’t the type of girl Dustin would go for, with or without the existence of Madison Pendleton. He had been “borrowing” my algebra almost every day for the entire year. But Dustin would never look at me like that. Even at forty-pounds pregnant, Madison sparkled like the words on her oversize chest. There was glitter embedded in her eye shadow, in her lip gloss, in her nail polish, hanging from her ears in shoulder-grazing hoops, dangling from her wrists in blingy bracelets. If the lights went out in the hallway, she could light it up like a human disco ball. Like human bling. Meanwhile, the only color I had to offer was in my hair, which I’d dyed pink just a few days ago.

I was all sharp edges and angles—words that came out too fast and at the wrong times. And I slouched. If Dustin was into shiny things like Madison, he would never be interested in me.

I don’t know if I was exactly interested in Dustin, either, but we did have one thing in common: we both wanted out of Flat Hill, Kansas.

For a while, it had almost looked like Dustin was going to make it, too. All you need is a little push sometimes. Sometimes it’s a tornado; sometimes it’s the kind of right arm that gets you a football scholarship. He had been set to go. Until eight and a half months ago, that is.

I didn’t know what was worse: to have your shot and screw it up, or to never have had a shot in the first place.

“I wasn’t . . . ,” I protested. Before I could finish, Madison was all up in my face.

“Listen, Dumb Gumm,” she said. I felt a drop of her spit hit my cheek and resisted the urge to wipe it away. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. “Dustin’s mine. We’re getting married as soon as the baby comes and I can fit into my aunt Robin’s wedding dress. So you’d better stay away from him—not that he’d ever be interested in someone like you anyway.”

By this point, everyone in the hallway had stopped looking into their lockers, and they were looking at us instead. Madison was used to eyes on her—but this was new to me.

“Listen,” I mumbled back at her, wanting this to be over. “It was just homework.” I felt my temper rising. I’d just been trying to help him. Not because I had a crush on him. Just because he deserved a break.

“She thinks Dustin needs her help,” Amber chimed in. “Taffy told me she heard Amy offered to tutor him after school. Just a little one-on-one academic counseling.” She cackled loudly. She said “tutor” like I’d done a lap dance for Dustin in front of the whole fourth period.

I hadn’t offered anyway. He had asked. Not that it mattered. Madison was already steaming.

“Oh, she did, did she? Well why don’t I give this bitch a little tutoring of my own?”

I turned to walk away, but Madison grabbed me by the wrist and jerked me back around to face her. She was so close to me that her nose was almost touching mine. Her breath smelled like Sour Patch Kids and kiwi-strawberry lip gloss.

“Who the hell do you think you are, trying to steal my boyfriend? Not to mention my baby’s dad?”

“He asked me,” I said quietly so that only Madison could hear.

“What?”

I knew I should shut up. But it wasn’t fair. All I’d tried to do was something good.

“I didn’t talk to him. He asked me for help,” I said, louder this time.

“And what could he find so interesting about you?” she snapped back, as if Dustin and I belonged to entirely different species.

It was a good question. The kind that gets you where it hurts. But an answer popped into my head, right on time, not two seconds after Madison wobbled away down the hall. I knew it was mean, but it flew out of my mouth before I had a chance to even think about it.

“Maybe he just wanted to talk to someone his own size.”

Madison’s mouth opened and closed without anything coming out. I took a step back, ready to walk away with my tiny victory. And then she rolled into her heels, wound up, and—before I could duck—punched me square in the jaw. I felt my head throbbing as I stumbled back and landed on my butt.

It was my turn to be surprised, looking up at her in dazed, fuzzy-headed confusion. Had that just happened? Madison had always been a complete bitch, but—aside from the occasional shoulder check in the girls’ locker room—she wasn’t usually the violent type. Until now.

Maybe it was the pregnancy hormones.

“Take it back,” she demanded as I began to get to my feet.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Amber a second too late. Always one to take a cue from her best friend, she yanked me by the hair and pushed me back down to the ground.

The chant of “Fight! Fight! Fight!” boomed in my ears. I checked for blood, relieved to find my skull intact. Madison stepped forward and towered over me, ready for the next round. Behind her, I could see that a huge crowd had gathered around us.

“Take it back. I’m not fat,” Madison insisted. But her lip quivered a tiny bit at the f-word. “I may be pregnant, but I’m still a size two.”

“Kick her!” Amber hissed.

I scooted away from her rhinestone-studded sandal and stood up just as the assistant principal, Mr. Strachan, appeared, flanked by a pair of security guards. The crowd began to disperse, grumbling that the show was over.

Madison quickly dropped her punching arm and went back to rubbing her belly and cooing. She scrunched her face up into a pained grimace, like she was fighting back tears. I rolled my eyes. I wondered if she would actually manage to produce tears.

Mr. Strachan looked from me to Madison and back again through his wire rims.

“Mr. Strachan,” Madison said shakily. “She just came at me! At us!” She patted her belly protectively, making it clear that she was speaking for two these days.

He folded his arms across his chest and lowered his glare to where I still crouched. Madison had him at “us.” “Really, Amy? Fighting with a pregnant girl? You’ve always had a hard time keeping your mouth shut when it’s good for you, but this is low, even for you.”

“She threw the first punch!” I yelled. It didn’t matter. Mr. Strachan was already pulling me to my feet to haul me off to the principal’s office.

“I thought you could be the bigger person at a time like this. I guess I overestimated you. As usual.”

As I walked away, I looked over my shoulder. Madison lifted her hand from her belly to give me a smug little wave. Like she knew I wouldn’t be coming back.

When I’d left for school that morning, Mom had been sitting on the couch for three days straight. In those three days, my mother had taken zero showers, had said almost nothing, and—as far as I knew—had consumed only half a carton of cigarettes and a few handfuls of Bugles. Oh, and whatever pills she was on. I’m not even sure when she got up to pee. She’d just been sitting there watching TV.

It used to be that I always tried to figure out what was wrong with her when she got like this. Was it the weather? Was she thinking about my father? Was it just the pills? Or was there something else that had turned her into a human slug?

By now, though, I was used to it enough to know that it wasn’t any of that. She just got like this sometimes. It was her version of waking up on the wrong side of the bed, and when it happened, you just had to let her ride it out. Whenever it happened, I wondered if this time she’d be stuck like this.

So when I pushed the door to our trailer open an hour after my meeting with the principal, carrying all the books from my locker in a black Hefty bag—I’d been suspended for the rest of the week—I was surprised to see that the couch was empty except for one of those blankets with the sleeves that Mom had ordered off TV with money we didn’t have.

In the bathroom, I could hear her rustling around: the faucet running, the clatter of drugstore makeup on a tiny counter. I guess she’d ridden it out again after all. Not that that was always a good thing.

“Mom?” I asked.

“Shit!” she yelped, followed by the sound of something falling into the sink. She didn’t come out of the bathroom, and she didn’t ask what I was doing home so early.

I dropped my backpack and my Hefty bag on the floor, slid off my sneakers, and looked over at the screen. Al Roker was pointing to my hometown on one of those big fake maps. He was frowning.

I didn’t think I’d ever seen America’s Weatherman frown before. Wasn’t he supposed to be reassuring? Wasn’t it, like, his job to make us feel like everything, including the weather, would be better soon? If not tomorrow then at some point during the extended ten-day forecast?

“Hey,” Mom said. “Did you hear? There’s a tornado coming!”

I wasn’t too worried about it. They were always predicting disaster around here, but although nearby towns had been hit a few times, Dusty Acres had always been spared. It was like we had cliché to shield us—Tornado Sweeps Through Trailer Park, Leaves Only an Overturned Barbecue. That’s something that happens in a movie, not in real life.

My mom emerged from the bathroom, fussing with her hair. I was glad to see her vertical again, freshly scrubbed with her face all done up, but I had to wince at the length of her skirt. It was shorter than anything I owned. It was shorter than anything Madison Pendleton owned. That could only mean one thing.

“Where are you going?” I asked, even though I knew the answer. “For three days, you’re one step away from a coma and now you’re heading to the bar?”

It was no surprise. In my mother’s world, there were only two pieces of scenery: the couch and the bar. If she wasn’t on one, she was in the other.

She let out an accusatory sigh. “Don’t start. I thought you’d be happy that I’m back on my feet again. Would you rather I just lie on the couch? Well, you might be content to mope around the house all day, but some of us have a life.” She fluffed up her already teased hair and began looking for her purse.

There were so many things wrong with everything she’d just said that I couldn’t even begin to process all the ways it was infuriating. Instead, I decided to try the sensible argument. “You’re the one who just told me there’s a tornado on the way. It’s dangerous. You could get hit by a tree or something. Won’t Tawny understand?”

“It’s a tornado party, Miss Smarty-Pants,” Mom said, as if that explained things. Her bloodshot eyes lit up as she spotted her purse lying on the floor next to the refrigerator and slung it over her shoulder.

I knew there was no point arguing when she got this way. “You need to sign this,” I demanded, holding out the slip of paper Strachan had given me. It was to show that she understood what I’d supposedly done today, and what the consequences were.

“I got suspended,” I told her.

It took her a few seconds to react, but when she did, her face registered not surprise or anger, but pure annoyance. “Suspended? What did you do?” Mom pushed past me again to get to her keys. Like I was just a thing that was in the way of something she wanted.

If we lived in a regular house, with one and a half bathrooms, I wondered, would she still hate me this much? Was resentment something that grew better in small spaces, like those flowers that Mom used to force to bloom inside in little vases?

“I got in a fight,” I said evenly. Mom kept staring. “With a pregnant girl.”

At that, Mom let out a long, whistling sigh and looked up at the ceiling.

“That’s just great,” Mom said, her voice dripping with something other than motherly concern.

I could have explained it to her. I could have told her exactly what happened; that it wasn’t my fault. That I hadn’t even hit anyone.

But the thing is, at that moment, I kind of liked having her think I’d done something wrong. If I was the kind of girl who got in fights with pregnant girls, it meant it was on her. And her stellar lack of parenting skills.

“Who was it?” Mom demanded, her plastic purse slamming into the counter.

“Madison Pendleton.”

She narrowed her eyes but not at me. She was remembering Madison. “Of course. That little pink bitch who ruined your birthday party.”

Mom paused and bit her lip. “You don’t see it, do you? She’s already getting hers. You don’t need to help it along.”

“What are you talking about? I’m the one who was suspended.”

Mom flung her hand out and gripped the air, mimicking a pregnant belly. “I give her a year. Two tops before she’s got a trailer of her own around the corner. That boy she’s with won’t stay. And she’ll be left with a little bundle of karma.”

I shook my head. “She’s walking around like she’s God’s gift. Like she and Dustin are still going to be prom king and queen.”

“Ha!” Mom hooted. “Now. But the second that kid comes, her life is over.” There was a pause I could drive a truck through.

For a split second, I thought of how things used to be. My before Mom. The one who’d dried my tears and challenged me to a cake-eating contest at that fateful birthday party. “More cake for us,” she’d said. That was when I was nine. After Dad left, but before the accident and the pills. It was the last time she’d even bothered remembering my birthday.

I didn’t know what to do when she acted like this. When we were almost having a normal conversation. When she almost seemed like she cared. When I almost saw some glimmer of who she used to be. I knew better but I leaned into the kitchenette counter anyway.

“One second, you have everything, your whole life ahead of you,” she said, fluffing her hair in the reflection from the stove. “And then, boom. They just suck it all out of you like little vampires till there’s nothing left of you.”

It was clear she wasn’t talking about Madison anymore. She was talking about me. I was her little vampire.

Anger pricked in my chest. Leave it to my mother to turn any situation into another excuse to feel sorry for herself. To blame me.

“Thanks, Mom,” I said. “You’re right. I’m the one who ruined your life. Not you. Not Dad. The fact that I’ve been taking care of you every day since I was thirteen—that was just my evil scheme to ruin everything for you.”

“Don’t be so sensitive, Amy,” she huffed. “It’s not all about you.”

“All about me? How could it be, when it’s always about you?”

Mom glared at me, and then there was a honk from outside. “I don’t have to stand here and listen to this. Tawny’s waiting.” She stormed to the door.

“You’re just going to leave me in the middle of a tornado?”

It wasn’t that I cared about the weather. I wasn’t expecting it to be a big deal. But I wanted her to care; I wanted her to be running around gathering up batteries for flashlights and making sure we had enough water to last through the week. I wanted her to take care of me. Because that’s what mothers do.

Just because I’d learned how to take care of myself didn’t mean I didn’t still feel panic setting in every time she left me like this—all alone, with no clue when she’d be back, or if she’d ever be back at all. Even without a tornado on the way, it was always an open question.

“It’s better out there than in here,” she snapped.

Before I could think of a good enough retort, she was gone.

I opened the door as she slid into the front seat of Tawny’s Camaro; I watched as Mom adjusted the mirror to look at herself and saw her catch a glimpse of me instead, just before the car vroomed away.

Before I could have the satisfaction of slamming the door myself, the wind did it for me. So maybe this tornado was coming after all.

I thought of Dustin and his wasted scholarship, and about my father, who’d left me behind just to get out of here. I thought of what this place did to people. Tornado or no tornado, I wasn’t Dorothy, and a stupid little storm wasn’t going to change anything for me.

I walked to my dresser, pushed up flush against the kitchen stove, and opened the top drawer, feeling around for the red-and-white gym sock that was fat with cash—the stash of money I’d been saving for an emergency for years: $347. Once the storm cleared, that could get me bus tickets. That could get me a lot farther than Topeka, which was the farthest I had ever gone. I could let my mother fend for herself. She didn’t want me. School didn’t want me. What was I waiting for?

My hand hit the back of the drawer. All I found were socks.

I pulled the drawer out and rifled through it. Nothing.

The money was gone. Everything I’d spent my life saving up for. Gone.

It was no mystery who’d taken it. It was less of a mystery what she’d spent it on. With no cash, no car, and no one to wave a magic wand, I was stuck where I was.

It didn’t matter anyway. Leaving was just a fantasy.

In the living room, Al Roker was back on TV. His frown was gone, sort of, but even though his face was now plastered with a giant grin, his jaw was quivering and he looked like he might start crying at any second. He kept chattering away, going on and on about isotopes and pressure systems and hiding in the basement.

Too bad they don’t have basements in trailer parks, I thought.

And then I thought: Bring it on. There’s no place like anywhere but here.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DANIELLE PAIGE is a graduate of Columbia University. Before turning to young adult literature, she worked in the television industry, where she received a Writers Guild of America Award and was nominated for several Daytime Emmys. She currently lives in New York City.

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BOOKS BY DANIELLE PAIGE

Novels

Dorothy Must Die

The Wicked Will Rise

Yellow Brick War

Novellas

No Place Like Oz

The Witch Must Burn

The Wizard Returns

Heart of Tin

The Straw King

Ruler of Beasts

Order of the Wicked

Collections

Dorothy Must Die: The Other Side of the Rainbow Collection

COPYRIGHT

ORDER OF THE WICKED. Copyright © 2016 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition © June 2016 ISBN 9780062423801

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FIRST EDITION

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