“Amy!” Nox’s voice brought me back to myself. He was running across the battlefield, screaming my name. Amy. I was Amy. I felt the dark magic churning within me, unwilling to let go. Release me, I thought. Please, release me.
Dorothy’s shoes flashed silver. I screamed in agony as my bones cracked and twisted, Lulu’s body separating from mine. This time, the transformation wasn’t easy. It was so painful I thought I was going to die right next to Toto. I sobbed in pain and fear as my claws retracted and my fangs sank back into my gums. A moment later, Nox’s arms were around me. I clung to him like a life raft in an ocean of pain.
“You’re okay,” he whispered into my hair, rocking me back and forth. “You’re okay.” Slowly, the agony ebbed away, leaving exhaustion in its wake. “Never do that again,” Nox said. “Ever. I thought I lost you.” The emotion was thick in his voice.
“What the hell was that!” Lulu was yelling. “What the hell did you just do, you little witch?”
“Dorothy,” I gasped as Nox helped me to my feet. “Find Dorothy.”
Dorothy was lying in the grass next to Toto’s body, one leg twisted under his massive carcass. She struggled to sit up, trying feebly to push Toto’s body off her as I limped toward her. It felt as though the magic in the diamond-studded boots was the only thing keeping me upright.
“You,” she said, her voice more exhausted than angry. “It always comes back to you, doesn’t it.” She closed her eyes, almost as if she was so tired she couldn’t even keep them open. I knew how she felt. She’d given in to the same magic that had almost destroyed me just now. She’d given everything she was to Oz. Even returning to Kansas hadn’t undone the damage Oz’s magic had caused. I realized that whether or not I was the one to end her, Dorothy was doomed.
“You can’t kill me,” she said. “And you’re not going to win.” Her red heels flashed with a pulse of ruby light, and I flung up one hand to protect my eyes from their radiance. “Don’t forget about me, Amy,” she said with a ghost of a smile, and then she was gone.
“Is it too much to ask that you just kill the bitch?” Lulu grumbled. All around us, the monkeys were still fighting off Dorothy’s army, but with Dorothy gone and Toto dead her soldiers began to mill around in confusion. Some of them sat down where they’d been fighting, staring off into the distance like machines whose switches had been flipped off. Others threw down their weapons, or joined the monkeys in battling Glinda’s army. Most of Glinda’s soldiers seemed dazed and disoriented, no longer sure who they were even supposed to be fighting.
“What just happened to you?” Nox asked in a low voice. I shook my head.
“I don’t know. The shoes saved me, I think. I don’t know how or why. But listen—something is different. This time, I could have killed Dorothy, unlike before. I knew it somehow.” I looked down at my sparkling boots. “I think everything is different now, with these.”
Before he could respond, the witches suddenly crashed to the ground behind us.
“Glinda,” Nox said. “We have to help Glamora fight her.” They were so covered in blood it was impossible to tell which witch was which. I knew Glamora wanted this fight to be hers alone, but I couldn’t let her die. I gathered my wits, knocking aside Glinda’s soldiers and the occasional rogue creation of the Tin Woodman’s as I raced toward the two of them.
When I got closer, I saw that Glinda was on her back. Glamora straddled her, her hands wrapped around Glinda’s throat. I should have felt elated, but it was like watching a horror movie. There was something about the expression on Glamora’s face that gave me chills. She wasn’t even using magic anymore, just her fists. “This is for everything—you took—from me,” Glamora snarled, punctuating her words by slamming Glinda’s head into the ground. She wasn’t trying to kill her—she just wanted Glinda to suffer.
“Glamora!” I cried. I don’t know what I thought I was going to do. She was winning—and it’s not like I wanted to help Glinda. I just wanted Glamora to go back to being the witch I knew—fierce but elegant, beautiful and kind, not this bloody inhuman banshee who was taking so much pleasure in her sister’s suffering. But as Glamora looked up at me in surprise, Glinda slapped her across the face. Startled, Glamora let go of her sister’s neck and Glinda struggled to get out from under her. Glamora punched her so hard that Glinda’s head snapped back and she lay there, completely stunned. And then Glamora sank her fingers to the knuckle in Glinda’s eye sockets.
Pink light blazed outward from Glinda’s face. Glamora threw her head back, her face fixed in an awful smile. I fell to my knees as Glamora screamed triumphantly—and then her scream changed to something else as the pink light flowed up her arms and chest and reached her face. Her jeweled features twisted.
“Glamora!” I shouted again, scrabbling toward her on my hands and knees.
She was flesh and blood again now, and the face she turned toward me was somehow hers and Glinda’s at the same time, the scar on Glamora’s cheek transforming into a scar on Glinda’s forehead and then switching back again, first Glinda and then Glamora looking out at me from those haunted blue eyes.
TWENTY-FIVE
As I watched helplessly, Glinda’s form dissolved into pink light, flowing upward into Glamora’s arms. Glamora’s body rose slowly into the air, revolving in a pink cloud of power. Her mouth was open in a silent scream, her eyes staring outward sightlessly. “Glamora!” I cried, lunging forward. And then a final flash of pink light exploded outward, knocking me backward with a huge boom.
“Are you okay?” Nox was at my side, helping me to my feet. I nodded, too winded to speak. Only one witch lay crumpled on the ground. The other one was gone.
We started at the inert body curled up on the bloody dirt. I kept my knife at the ready as we tiptoed toward it. Nox gave the body a shove with his foot, and the woman flopped over on her back.
At first, I didn’t know who I was looking at. Her eyes were closed, but the rise and fall of her chest told us she was still alive. Her skin was flawless porcelain, with neither Glamora’s gaping scar nor Glinda’s ugly new wound. Her golden hair tumbled around her, as clean as if she’d just washed it. And she was completely, totally naked.
There was something tragic about seeing her like that. Someone like Glamora, for whom manners were everything.
“Give me your shirt,” I ordered Nox.
“My what?”
“Your shirt, idiot.” I tugged at the garment in question. Slowly, comprehension dawned and he tugged it over his head, his muscles rippling. He cleared his throat and I realized my mouth was hanging open.
Blushing, I grabbed his shirt and threw it over Glamora. If it was Glamora.
“We have to figure out what just happened,” Nox said. “If that’s Glinda . . .”
“I saw Glinda disappear,” I said. “At least, I think that’s what I saw. It was like they just fused into a single person somehow.”
“I’ll stand guard over her in case she wakes up,” he said. “Why don’t you make sure everyone else is safe.”
“Already a step ahead of you,” Mombi said, coming up behind us with Gert close on her heels. Melindra was behind them. I didn’t see Annabel, or most of the other fighters who’d come to the castle with them.
“Annabel?” I asked, and Melindra shook her head, her face full of sorrow. Next to me, Nox caught his breath.
“Annabel and I have known each other since . . .” He trailed off, his voice catching, and bowed his head. I could hear Lulu barking orders somewhere nearby.
“I am so sorry, Nox,” I said. There was an extra layer of guilt there because I had never liked her. And now she was gone.