I returned the canister to Jellia and she took a little for herself, refreshing her smile before placing the goop back in her apron. When her hand came back out, she handed me a silver hairbrush.
“Remember—it’s a thousand strokes. Not a thousand and one and not nine hundred ninety-nine. Don’t lose count. Dorothy will know. She always does—we’ve lost more than one girl that way. If there’s one thing to say about Hannah, it’s that she certainly could count.”
Jellia knocked on the door and, after getting no response, pushed it open. As she entered, she looked over her shoulder and whispered back at me with one more bit of advice. “Whatever you do,” she said, “don’t touch the shoes.”
Dorothy’s room was wall-to-wall pink. Pepto-Bismol pink, cotton-candy pink, sunset pink, and every nauseating shade in between. A canopied bed was encircled with pink silken drapes; the floor was wall-to-wall pink shag carpet; and the ceiling overhead was covered in what looked like pink rhinestones that would probably make you go blind if you stared at them too long.
If Madison Pendleton ever made it to Oz, I thought, she could probably get a job as Dorothy’s personal interior decorator.
In the center of the room, a few feet from the bed, some kind of green powder had been sprinkled onto the carpet in a wide circle. Inside it, a little black terrier was racing around in excitement, chasing his own tail.
I knew exactly who that was. Toto. When he spotted us, he bared his tiny teeth at me and growled.
Jellia stepped carefully around him. I did the same, and as I did, Toto lunged at me but hit an invisible barrier. Undaunted, he got back up on his little feet and tried again. I jumped, despite myself.
“Don’t mind him,” Jellia said, waving her hand. “He’s having another time-out. He’s a sweet little thing, but he sometimes has problems controlling himself.”
It was no surprise that Dorothy’s little dog was as vicious as she was. As for Dorothy herself, though, she was nowhere to be found.
Jellia pulled the fluffy bedspread a hair tighter as she passed by. “Yoo-hoo!” she singsonged. “Your Majesty!”
There was no response.
“She’s probably in her favorite place,” Jellia said, pulling open a door.
Calling it a closet was an understatement. It was as big as one of the caves back in the Order. There were dresses, mini and maxi, corseted and flowy, and ball gowns and short-shorts and skinny pants. The clothes were endless in their variety, but they all had one thing in common: they all bore a familiar, blue-checked print.
When I reached out and ran my fingers against the fabric of a checkered jumpsuit, it dislodged itself from the others and floated out ahead of us as if it were being worn by an invisible model. I touched a hat next, and it joined the dress on its strut down the runway.
Jellia gave me a sharp glance and touched both items, launching them right back to their original spots. I grimaced in silent apology.
We continued through the closet with no Dorothy in sight. Besides Her Royal Awfulness, there was something else that was conspicuously absent amidst the rows and rows of clothes: there wasn’t a single pair of shoes.
We finally found Dorothy in the back, stretched out on a chaise covered in pink paisley swirls. She was wearing a long, silk robe—still in that blue gingham pattern—and the toes of her red heels poked out from underneath it.
Even in her pajamas, she never took them off. Did she sleep in them?
“You’re late,” Dorothy said icily, looking up from a fashion magazine called Her Majesty. Her own face PermaSmiled at me from the cover.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Jellia said, casting her eyes to the floor. “There was a disturbance with one of the other maids. Astrid here will be taking Hannah’s place.”
Dorothy glowered at me. “Can she count?”
“She’s a wonderful counter,” Jellia said. I nodded in agreement, but Dorothy had already stopped caring. She threw her head back and stretched, clapping her hands together.
“Where are we on the guest list for the ball?” she demanded.
“Everyone who’s anyone will be there,” Jellia asserted. “Jinjur, Polychrome. I even heard from Scraps, the Patchwork Girl.”
Dorothy frowned, like she wasn’t all that impressed with her guest list. Well, maybe if she weren’t always exiling and executing people, they would want to come to her parties.
“Whatever,” Dorothy snapped, and pointed to the tray of nail polish that was sitting on a small vanity in the corner. “Anna. Nail polish.”
It took me a second—and a look from Jellia—to figure out that Anna meant me. I nodded shyly and brought the tray over, wondering where I was supposed to put it. Jellia just tapped it quickly and it floated right out of my hands, hanging steady in the air.
“What would you like today?” Jellia asked, surveying the rainbow of polishes. I was happy to see that at least when it came to her manicures Dorothy had a sense of variety. There must have been at least a hundred different colors.
Dorothy sat up and swung her feet to the ground. As she did, her shoes made a ruby-red comet’s tail through the air. I had to stifle a gasp. It was like they were glowing from the inside, like they wanted me to notice them.
Jellia and Dorothy were prattling on, deciding on the best nail art for the day—stripes or swirls or sparkles? They sounded like they were talking from the end of a long tunnel. I couldn’t take my eyes off the shoes. I was transfixed.
So beautiful. So shiny. So perfect.
Whoa, get a grip, Amy.
I’d taken pride in wearing the same ratty pair of knockoff Converse since freshman year. They were broken in, comfortable, and something the Madison Pendletons of the world wouldn’t wear in a million years. I’d never given a crap about shoes before, especially not the bedazzled variety. So why now? Something wasn’t right.
Even as I reasoned with myself, the glow from the shoes intensified. I realized they were shining just for me, that Dorothy and Jellia couldn’t see them, not like I could. They were calling to me.
A numbness spread over the skeptical part of my mind.
I wondered what it would be like to have people wait on me the way we were waiting on Dorothy. What it would be like to have a closet full of dresses. What it would be like to have power.
Power that came from those shoes.
I want them, I thought. I need them.
I should just take them.
I was vaguely aware of my body moving, my hands clenching and unclenching. Slowly, I reached toward Dorothy’s feet.
“Astrid,” Jellia warned, yanking my elbow back.
I ignored her. I wanted those shoes.
“Astrid!” she said again, this time angrily. She snapped her fingers right in my face, tearing my eyes away from Dorothy’s feet. I blinked. Looking up at Jellia, I felt like myself again, and I knew that the shoes had been doing something to me.
Jellia just glared, as if to say Didn’t I warn you?
Dorothy was busy holding up a bottle of polish to the light, thinking about her impending manicure. When I glanced in her direction, I saw her eyes narrow and her mouth twitch up in the tiniest sneer. Had she noticed? Did she know what her shoes were doing?
“Astrid,” Jellia ordered firmly, “the princess needs her hair brushed.”
“One thousand strokes exactly!” Dorothy snapped, still not looking up at me.
I took a deep breath and moved behind her. I grabbed the brush from my pocket and pulled it slowly through Dorothy’s thick auburn locks. Her hair smelled like lemons and sunshine. I expected there to be a rotten note underneath, but there wasn’t. It was all sweetness and light. This is what evil smells like, I realized.