“I just wish Amy could be here to see this.” In her palm, she held out a coin with the number six on it. Styrofoam Cup gave her a hug and a pat on her back.
“Six months sober,” she said. “I just wish it hadn’t taken losing everything I care about to get it.”
No matter how tough you think you are, there are certain things that just get to you, and they’re usually the little things. The ones you don’t expect.
I wiped a tear from the corner of my eye. It was only one, but still. I couldn’t believe that Mom had changed so much.
It hurt my feelings a little, that she had done it all without my help, but it made me proud, too. Proud of her. Suddenly I missed her very badly.
Yet at the same time I didn’t want to go home. I wasn’t finished here. Just like my mom had changed, so had I. That place where she was—Kansas—didn’t feel like home anymore.
Mom had found purpose without me. And I had surprised myself by finding a purpose here.
I remembered what my mom had said about Madison Pendleton, about how bullies always got what was coming to them.
Tonight, I planned to prove her right.
Chapter Forty-One
Sindra was inappropriately excited considering just yesterday her predecessor’s arm had gotten hacked off.
“Isn’t Dorothy generous?” she asked as we all lined up in the back of the ballroom, waiting for the party to begin. “These new uniforms are just lovely. And so comfortable, too!”
I smiled and nodded. It was true that the smooth green satin of the dress we’d been instructed to wear for the party felt good against my skin, but I thought comfortable was a little extreme. For one thing, it was too short, and I kept having to stop to yank down the skirt to be sure my underwear wasn’t showing.
Since I’d last seen it this morning, the ballroom had been lavishly tricked out and transformed to the point where it was unrecognizable. A hundred ruby-red disco balls glittered against the dark, domed ceiling, but unlike the disco balls I knew from back home, these weren’t suspended by anything. They floated on their own, pulsing in time to the music and dipping and hovering and twirling like shiny beating hearts.
Meanwhile, the wooden parquet I’d spent so many hours hunched over and scrubbing was magically gone, replaced by a transparent dance floor that looked down onto a brilliant, starry night sky, every constellation brighter and closer than they’d ever looked from the ground.
Instead of the usual cloth coverings, the tables were veiled in pink, hazy mist that looked like it had been torn straight from the clouds during sunset. Sprouting from the middle of each table was a centerpiece that I recognized: the giant, ever-changing flower from the greenhouse—the one with the blossom that transformed right before your eyes from a rose to a dahlia to an orchid to a lily and on and on in a kaleidoscopic rush that was enough to almost make you dizzy.
“It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?” Sindra whispered reverently. “Glinda did the decorating. She always does such a good job.”
It’s a little tacky, I wanted to say, but the truth was, I couldn’t help thinking it was beautiful, too. Knowing what was coming—that blood would almost certainly be spilled across the stars—made me feel a little sad.
“Yes,” I told Sindra. “It’s amazing.”
I could feel the magic coursing all around me and wondered how much of Dorothy’s power was dedicated to running this place. It must’ve been part of the Order’s plan; with all the magic happening here, hopefully no one would notice the witches performing their wards outside the palace. Not until it was too late.
The doors swung open and as the guests began to stream in, the trays we held magically filled themselves with hors d’oeuvres and drinks. The cocktails were garnished with what looked like real emeralds and rubies that floated upon the surface.
My heart fluttered. It had begun—no turning back now. The only way I was going to get through the night was by convincing myself that nothing was out of the ordinary—that killing Dorothy was just another thing to check off my list of duties for the day. No big deal.
“Okay, gals,” Sindra announced, facing the rest of us. “You’ve seen what happens to screwups, right? Let’s, um, do the opposite. Let’s make this ball one they’ll be talking about for years to come!”
Oh, that won’t be a problem, I thought to myself.
The maids dispersed, each of us making our way around the room and presenting the partygoers with their choice of food and drink. I served a group of Flutterbudgets who took forever to decide what to drink, each of them reassuring the next that they were making the right decision, then throwing their selections back like they needed to loosen up more than anything. Next was the stern-looking royal family of Winkie Country, all dressed in sparkling pressed-tin suits that would’ve made the Tin Woodman envious. They barely looked at me when I passed.
As soon as our trays were empty, they filled themselves up again. No one talked to us or paid much attention to us at all. All we had to do was look pretty and not trip.
The whole place thumped with music and all the guests were laughing and chattering. They gathered around Scraps, the Patchwork Girl, and began to cheer as she pranced and pirouetted in an acrobatic routine that was somewhere between break-dancing, voguing, and gymnastics.
When she cartwheeled into a perfect split, a roar went up from the crowd. Scraps stood and bowed for her audience, and then the music shifted to something slower and moodier. All of the disco balls that had been whirling around began drifting toward the highest point in the domed ceiling. There, they merged together and began to pulse in time with the music like a huge ruby heart.
The heart began to descend slowly. The chatter of the room went silent, and everyone stood still watching it. I scanned the crowd, trying to pick out all the important players. Surprisingly, most of them seemed to be missing: I didn’t see the Wizard, or Ozma, or Glinda, or Dorothy. The Scarecrow, the Lion, and the Tin Woodman were missing, too.
For now at least, it was just the B-list.
When the glass heart reached the floor, it exploded in a shower of red glitter. Something landed on my arm and I realized the flashing dots of red light thrown by the disco balls had magically solidified into rose petals. I brushed them off, trying to see through the haze of glitter, confetti, petals, and pink-hued smoke.
She really knew how to make an entrance, I’ll give her that. There, in the center of the room where the glass heart had been just a moment ago, stood Dorothy. Her entourage appeared, too, fanning out behind her—the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, the Lion, and Glinda—but they dispersed quickly into the party.
Dorothy looked radiant and majestic, every inch a princess. Her lips were glossed but not with PermaSmile—her smile easy and relaxed, and somehow giving off physical warmth if you looked directly at it. Her nails were bedazzled with actual rubies; her hair was pulled up into a spiraling tower of curls, streaks of gold running through it, leading to an ornate emerald hair comb at the pinnacle—the road of yellow brick and the Emerald City, I realized.
She wore a long, formfitting, beaded gown that flared out at the bottom and was corseted so severely that I wondered how she could breathe. Her breasts weren’t the only thing Dorothy was trying to show off: the fishtail was slit up the side, revealing her most important assets.
Her shoes, of course.
The crowd went wild at Dorothy’s entrance. Their cheers and whoops resounded thunderously through the huge room. Dorothy batted her eyelashes and flicked her wrist, all fake-humble like Aw, shucks.