Across the table, the witches just sat there staring at me like I was a crazy person while I laughed hysterically. The boy frowned so hard, his eyes turned into slits. Finally, after a few minutes, I managed to calm myself down and wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.
“You want me to kill Dorothy,” I said. It was so ridiculous that I didn’t even know where to start.
“That’s the idea,” Glamora said. The look in her eyes said she didn’t think it was very funny at all.
I couldn’t believe they were being serious. “Um, I think you’ve got the wrong person. Before I got here, the last fight I had was with a pregnant girl. And I lost.”
“I saw you back in the palace,” Mombi said. “In your cell. You managed to hold your own in there. I don’t see why you couldn’t do the same with Dorothy.”
I had to admit, that was true. But I was still sure that the knife Mombi had given me had done half the work. And anyway: “That was different,” I said. “That was magic, I’m sure of it. But I couldn’t kill someone. I wouldn’t even know how.”
“We’ll teach you, of course,” Glamora said. “Everyone has to start somewhere.”
They were acting like we were talking about learning how to sew. This is not what I signed on for. When I had met Indigo on the road, I was just planning on making my way to the Emerald City and maybe getting one of those cool moving tattoos. This was way heavier than anything I expected.
“Listen,” I said. “I have my own problems. I’m sorry about what’s happening to Oz—I really am—but I don’t see what you think I can do about it. I’m not even from here.” I wasn’t from here. But even as I said it, a little part of me couldn’t help but feel that because of Indigo, because of Ollie, because of my time in the cell . . . I was linked to Oz somehow.
Glamora cocked her head. “Dorothy’s not from here either,” she said. “And look what she’s done with the place.”
Gert drove her point home. “It’s precisely because you are not from here that we think you can do this. You’re from the same place as her. You know how her mind works. You understand her.”
I wasn’t from here. I was from Kansas. Just like Dorothy. I’d come to Oz on a tornado. Dorothy had changed their world once, and now they expected me to help them change it back.
“People from the Other Place have always had a special place in ours,” Gert said. “The Wizard. Dorothy. Now you. We don’t know what power it was that brought you to Oz, but we know that if you’re here, it must be because you have a role to play. We want to make sure it’s the right role.”
I shivered. The story was true. The Wizard of Oz had been real. Dorothy Gale had really been swept up by a tornado and brought to the Land of Oz. True, what I was living now didn’t seem like the kind of storybook tale I was used to. But it didn’t mean they didn’t exist.
For the first time, the boy spoke up. His voice was low and gruff.
“Gert, Glamora, and Mombi believe that you are our only hope.” He sounded like he wasn’t so sure about that. “My job is to train you.”
“Are you a witch, too?” I asked. It came out in a more confrontational tone than I’d meant it to, but I didn’t care.
The boy looked offended. “I’m a warlock,” he said drily. “Or a wizard, if you like that better. It doesn’t really matter, does it?”
Gert looked over at him as if remembering her manners. “Amy, this is Nox. He’s the newest member of the High Council of the Order of the Wicked. He’s the strongest fighter we have.”
“Good for him. No offense or anything, it’s just, I’m not a killer. I’m not the girl you’re looking for here. I think it would be pretty amazing to know what you guys know. But you all have magic; you know what you’re doing. I’m sure you can handle her without me.”
I probably should have been scared of these people—they called themselves the Order of the Wicked, after all—but talking back to them felt good. Then again, lately I didn’t seem to be able to keep myself from talking back to anyone, really.
“You haven’t been trained yet,” Glamora said. “You don’t know who or what you are yet. Oz is different. You can be different here. You can be stronger. We’ll teach you how to do all of it. To fight. To use magic.”
“Amy,” Gert said. She placed a reassuring hand on my back. “We’re going to teach you to be a hero.”
Me. A hero. The idea of having power—of learning magic—rattled around in my head. But reality chased after it: missing Mom, scary Dorothy, a circle of self-proclaimed wicked witches who wanted to make me into an assassin. Besides, even if they could teach me all that stuff, it wouldn’t change who I was on the inside. Salvation Amy from Flat Hill, Kansas. Just a trailer-park girl with a bunch of stupid dreams that would never come true.
Weirdly, something my mom had told me once came back to me: You are not where you are from. She’d meant it to cheer me up. To make me believe that growing up in Flat Hill didn’t have to define me for the rest of my life.
But the witches thought I was special because of where I came from.
It’s more than that, child. Much more.
Gert was fishing around in my brain once more.
I looked at Nox again. He stared back at me and gave me a shrug like, See if I care. He was the only one—except me, of course—who didn’t seem thrilled about this whole idea. Even if I agreed with him, I couldn’t help taking it a little personally. What did he have against me anyway?
“What happens if I say no?” I asked.
“You can’t say no,” Mombi said. “The pact, remember?”
“I told you,” Nox said, not even bothering to look at me. “Just because someone dropped out of the sky doesn’t make them the key to saving us.”
What was wrong with these people? I felt my blood begin to boil. Nox turned to Mombi and shrugged. And that shrug is what put me over the edge.
“I’m in,” I said quietly.
Mombi looked at Gert, who nodded as if to say that my words were true. But they weren’t. I had to say yes to joining the Order—I didn’t seem to have a choice in that. I was bound by the pact I’d made with Mombi. But I was determined to find a way out of the whole teen assassin part.
And Gert knew it.
A few minutes later, Gert led me to my room. “We let Glamora decorate. Of all of us, she misses the creature comforts of Oz the most.”
My cave room wasn’t pretty—it was majestic. It was the kind of bedroom I’d always wished for growing up. There was a circular bed that seemed to be sunken into the center of the floor, piled with pillows and silky bedding in rich shades of red. And in the center of the ceiling, instead of a chandelier, there was another upside-down tree. This one was way smaller than the one I’d seen before. And it was in bloom. Black branches held out strange but beautiful poppy-like blossoms, big and white with a blush of pink almost the exact color of my hair. The pale gold walls were covered in wallpaper with those same pink flowers bursting across it. When I looked closer, I realized they were actual flowers. More tiny flowers grew along vines that stretched from the floor to the ceiling, stopping in the middle to swirl into paisley loops. Beneath my feet, a rug made from golden fur rippled.