Nox saw my face. “Are you okay? What happened? And you said something before about the shoes somehow letting you be able to kill Dorothy?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “I was right. The shoes can protect me from the effects of Oz’s magic. I don’t want to push my luck, but I can use magic if it’s necessary. And yeah—whatever was binding me to Dorothy before—the shoes have undone.” Nox shook his head, but he didn’t reply. I knew he thought I was wrong, that magic was too much of a risk. I knew, too, that there was a strong possibility he was right.
“Get out of here,” he said to Pete. “And if I see you again . . .” He trailed off, but the threat was clear.
“Do you want to teleport me away, or should I use the door?” There was no mistaking the note of sarcasm in Pete’s voice—or the hurt.
“The door is fine,” I said. Pete’s eyes met mine, his expression unreadable and his mouth set. I wondered if I’d just made us a new enemy.
Pete turned and hugged Ozma close. Her eyes opened wide, and for a second I saw a spark of clarity. “Checkmate,” she murmured, burrowing into his shoulder. Pete closed his eyes, stroking her long dark hair, before pushing her away gently. “Take care of her,” Pete said to us. He half raised one hand as if to wave, and then shrugged helplessly and dropped it. Before he turned away I saw that his eyes were filling with tears.
“Good-bye, Pete,” I said quietly. I watched his back recede across the long, dusty hall.
“I hope we’re not going to regret this,” Nox said quietly.
“So do I.”
“Checkers?” Ozma asked, pointing to the board.
TWENTY-SEVEN
That night, a mournful group of the Wicked filled the Tin Woodman’s palace. Four beat-up, exhausted witches, a handful of battered soldiers, a half-tin girl, an unusually quiet army of monkeys, and me.
I looked out over my friends and companions as Nox and Mombi conjured up a simple meal of bread, cheese, and water. Battle-hardened and weary, we were all filthy, bloody, and bruised. I wasn’t even sure if we had won. And Dorothy was still alive somewhere, waiting to strike again. It was too much to think about. I remembered Annabel’s smile, her long red hair, and squeezed my eyes against the tears I could feel coming. I wondered if I’d ever see the day where I could leave the war behind. Somehow, the brief moment in Kansas where I’d been able to pretend I was just a normal girl again made everything else worse.
All the witches were subdued. Nox had disappeared soon after we’d finished eating, and I let him go. Glamora was barely coherent after her battle with Glinda, and sat out the celebration, huddled in a corner of the Tin Woodman’s old throne room wrapped in a blanket and nursing a mug of foul-smelling tea that Lulu insisted was restorative (I hoped it wasn’t made out of the same stuff as the monkeys’ artisanal napalm). The most seriously injured monkeys rested with her.
I was worried about Glamora. She seemed more than just tired—she seemed like a zombie. I thought of the monster I had turned into, and I wondered if the spell Glamora had cast to transform herself had made her lose some piece of her humanity.
“She’ll be fine,” Gert said, interrupting my thoughts. She was seated next to me at the banquet hall’s long table, and she’d been quiet for most of dinner. “She just needs to rest. Glinda was one of the most powerful witches in Oz. It’s impossible to fight someone that strong without coming out of the battle a little worse for wear.”
As if she could read my mind, too, Mombi waddled over to us. “There’s no time to rest,” she said. “We have to plan our next move.” Gert nodded, and went to get Glamora and Melindra.
I looked around the hall, where monkeys curled up into sleepy balls. Lulu was already snoring loudly at the table. But there was no rest for the Wicked, I thought ruefully. I followed Gert, Mombi, and Glamora upstairs.
This time we found a small chamber with a few unbroken chairs instead of hanging out in the Tin Woodman’s bedroom, which made me grateful. Sure, he was dead, and he hadn’t lived in this palace since before I’d come to Oz, but it was hard not to see that creepy cabinet where he slept without thinking of all the horrible things he’d done to people I cared about. Starting with Indigo, my very first few hours in Oz, the Munchkin who the Tin Woodman had tortured to death in front of me after we’d helped the wingless monkey Ollie escape. People who helped me out tended to get hurt in Dorothy’s Oz, I thought suddenly. By now, the list was long. Indigo. Ollie. Polychrome and Heathcliff. Jellia. Even Pete, although it was harder to feel sorry for him.
Mombi wasn’t going to give me any time for moping. She closed her eyes and snapped her fingers as soon as the rest of us sat down, and after a minute Nox shuffled into the room. Being connected to the Quadrant had a lot of drawbacks. Pure power on the one hand, being summoned like a dog when you wanted time alone on the other.
“Let’s get down to business,” Mombi said gruffly. “The landscape has shifted a little, to say the least. That tends to happen a lot around here, doesn’t it?”
“Dorothy’s power is eating her alive,” Gert answered. “And Glinda is the one who was helping her. But from what Amy discovered in Kansas, it seems more and more possible that the Nome King has been moving against us all along. It’s entirely possible that he brought Amy to Oz once he realized that Dorothy would be swallowed up by its magic. And now that Glinda’s dead—”
“Is Glinda dead?” Nox interrupted, staring at Glamora. “How do we know for sure?”
“The spell I performed on the battlefield would have found any traces of Glinda if she still remained in Glamora,” Mombi said.
Glamora smiled gently. “It’s me, Nox, I promise. But the final battle with my sister has given me important information that will factor into our plans. I was able to see inside her mind in those last moments, and I know why Dorothy and Glinda’s paths diverged.” She looked at me. “But I’m not the only one with a connection to our enemies, am I, Amy? You have Dorothy’s shoes. You can tap into their power to see what Dorothy’s planning next.”
“No!” Nox said immediately, jumping to his feet. “It’s not safe. We’ve covered this already. I don’t care what Amy says about the shoes protecting her—she can’t use magic in Oz.”
“I’m right here,” I said sharply. “I can speak for myself. I also have news—I can kill Dorothy. The shoes seem to have broken whatever link we had.”
Glamora smiled again, her blue eyes glittering. “Why don’t I start by telling you what I saw in Glinda’s mind,” she said.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Glamora stood up, leaning heavily on the back of her chair, as if to emphasize the seriousness of what she was saying.
“There’s been trouble between Glinda and Dorothy for a while now,” she began. Despite her obvious exhaustion, her voice was clear and unwavering. “My sister has been trying to control the throne of Oz for a long time, and Dorothy is only the most recent of her little . . . plans.”
Glamora’s knees wobbled and she gripped the chair more tightly for support, taking a deep breath. “But like Ozma, Dorothy proved to have a mind of her own—only in this case, Dorothy was soon so warped by her power that she decided to set herself up as tyrant in chief. Glinda has been looking for a way to quietly get rid of her.” She looked at me. “I think Dorothy guessed that Glinda would turn against her, but the Wizard’s spell took you both to Kansas before she could do anything about it. Now . . .” She shrugged. “If the Nome King is the one who’s been trying to control Dorothy all along, all the more reason to kill her. And if he isn’t—well, we all know Oz isn’t safe as long as she’s alive. I don’t like it any more than you do, Nox, but Amy has to use the shoes at least once more.”