“You’ll manage,” Glamora said. “And one more thing. I don’t think you like me very much. And I know you don’t trust me. That’s a good thing. You shouldn’t trust me. But you shouldn’t trust anyone else here either. Every smile, every kind word—every cookie—it’s all done with one goal. And that’s a dead princess.”
“I know that,” I said defiantly. “What’s your point?”
“My point is that in Dorothy’s world, words like Good and Wicked are meaningless,” Glamora replied. As she ran her brush through her hair, it began to deepen in color, from fiery red to a deep, rich auburn. She smiled sweetly as she spoke, like she was trying to do me a favor.
I knew what she was doing. She was trying to shake my faith in Gert. But why?
“What is wrong with that woman?” I asked Nox as he escorted me to dinner on the night of my first lesson with Glamora. He took the books she’d given me and they dematerialized into thin air—I presumed back to my room where I could study them later.
He looked at me wryly. “You got yourself beat up and you’re learning how to do magic—but you’re mad about reading a couple of books?” He laughed. “Glamora should be the easiest part of your day.” But the corner of his mouth was turned up just barely in a way that suggested he knew exactly how difficult Glinda’s twin could be.
“There’s just something about her,” I said. “Something that creeps me out.”
“She’s Glinda’s twin,” he replied. “What do you expect? Imagine having your other half turn on you, and knowing that one day you’ll have to face her in battle.”
I stopped in the hallway. Nox turned to look at me, his face aglow from the tracks of fire that lit our way from above. There was the barest hint of impatience beneath his cool surface. I picked at it like a scab.
“Gert asked me who I was, but the truth is I don’t know who any of you are. Not really. And I don’t even know one detail of this big plan that supposedly hinges on me.”
“You don’t have to know every turn of the road in order to walk down it.”
“It would help to know the destination.”
“You do—we’re taking down Dorothy.”
“You know what I mean. Can’t you drop the good soldier crap for a second and just be a person?”
He paused for a second, as if seriously considering the question. Finally, he said, “Only Mombi and Gert know the whole plan. The rest of us only know pieces. That way if someone gets caught, all isn’t lost.”
“But what if—?” The sound of Glamora clinking a glass prevented me from asking more questions.
“Some stories aren’t mine to tell,” Nox said curtly. Then, as if feeling bad, he added, “Welcome to your first official dinner with the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked.” And with that, he led me into the dining room.
The dining room was formal like Glamora. But spooky, too. The table was a round piece of slate suspended in air in the center of the cave. The walls were a warm chocolate brown with real live honeysuckle flowers growing all over. The table was set with black china. Another upside-down tree was suspended over the table.
Mombi, Gert, and Glamora were already seated.
Nox nodded toward a chair and then took the one next to it. I sat down nervously.
I hadn’t had a sit-down dinner with my mom since I was twelve. Our trailer only had a foldout table that Mom had covered with tabloids and unpaid bills.
Gert mumbled a few words under her breath, and our glasses filled with red liquid. I guessed if we were old enough to fight, we were old enough to drink wine.
The plate in front of me was again piled with green goo. At least I had a reason to appreciate Glamora now. Her tea parties might be the only appetizing food I’d be getting from here on out.
“Well . . . how did our girl do?” Mombi asked, looking at me.
“She had absolutely no manners,” said Glamora crisply, all too eager to answer first. “Whatever they were teaching her on that tin farm, they should be ashamed.”
They weren’t teaching me anything. If I followed Mom’s example I wouldn’t even know how to use a fork. When she actually bothered to eat, Mom’s food of choice was Bugles right out of the bag. Or if I pushed hard enough, cereal right out of the box.
“But she has fine bone structure. Don’t you think, Nox?” Glamora continued, winking at Nox.
I swallowed a gulp of the wine, which tasted vaguely like flowers. Did Glamora actually just give me a compliment? And what was with the winking?
“Amy has great potential,” Gert jumped in.
Potential was a word that had hovered over my head for the last five or six years at school. Wasted potential. Had it followed me here?
Mombi pressed the subject. “Did she accomplish anything without your aid?”
“No, but she will,” Gert said.
Mombi sighed.
“We don’t have much time.”
“It’s just that for a girl who says so much, she does not yet know herself.”
Ouch. It sounded different when Gert said it just to me instead of saying it in front of everyone else. Plus, they were talking about me as if I weren’t sitting right in front of them.
Nox cleared his throat. Here we go, I thought. Now he has a chance to really lay into my failures.
“You can’t judge her now. She’s doing the best that she can under the circumstances.”
The wineglass slipped in my hand. I caught it, but not before a few drops spilled on the table. Nox glanced at me and raised an eyebrow. Was he seriously defending me?
Glamora erased the spill with a wave of her hand.
I looked up at Nox. It didn’t make any sense. Mombi studied him appraisingly, as if she was just as surprised as me.
“It takes most charges years to learn what we want her to do in a month,” he explained. “She isn’t even from here. What did you expect? No one can do that.” Suddenly I realized why he was being so nice. He genuinely sounded like he couldn’t wrap his head around the idea of me ever being a real witch.
“You did,” Mombi countered.
“I was a kid. It’s easier.”
“Dorothy did,” Glamora added.
“I can speak for myself!” I blurted. “And honestly, what do I really have to know how to do in order to be bait?” I had put it all together in my head. I was now a fugitive from the palace—and one who Dorothy had a very personal interest in. They wanted to use me to distract her. That had to be it.
“I’m right. I’m bait, aren’t I?”
Gert opened her mouth to answer—probably to say something comforting—but she stopped herself. She actually looked surprised, which was a real feat for someone who could read minds. But then I realized she wasn’t looking at me. I swiveled in my chair to follow her gaze and gasped. Standing behind me were two girls, dripping in blood.
They weren’t like any girls I had seen before. The tall one had red hair and a deep purple scar in the center of her forehead, about the size of a silver dollar and as smooth as exposed bone. The other girl had blonde hair and piercing green eyes and a small, heart-shaped mouth. But honestly it was hard to focus on that, because, while half of her face was flesh, like mine, the other half was made out of metal, the two sides bolted together with big, thick screws. Her neck was the same—divided down the center—and her left arm was metal too. I couldn’t see her legs under her pants, but I wondered if her whole body was the same way.
The two girls were leaning against one another. Or rather, the tin girl was leaning into the taller one. I couldn’t see the wounds underneath all the blood, but she looked more hurt.
Mombi was at the girls’ side in a blink. “Where? What?”