Dorothy Must Die

Chapter Forty

Dorothy quickly named Sindra the new head maid.

Although Sindra tried to be humble about it for the sake of Jellia’s memory, she couldn’t hide her excitement. She took to the role easily, sliding into her newfound authority as if it had been custom-made to fit her.

She made us draw straws to decide who would clean Jellia’s blood from the throne room.

“I’ll do it,” I volunteered, before the process could even get under way. The other maids looked grateful, even Sindra.

It was my fault her blood was spilled. The least I could do was clean it up.

I’d been concerned with keeping my head down after Jellia’s arrest, but it turned out that I had nothing to worry about. In the twenty-four hours before Dorothy’s gala, we were all being worked so hard that there was no time for me to do anything suspicious.

Anyway, with the mystery of the missing monkey supposedly solved, no one around the palace seemed to be very suspicious anyway. Dorothy was too egotistical to realize that Jellia had just been the tip of the iceberg. I didn’t let myself think about what could be happening to her down in the Scarecrow’s laboratory. She only had to hold out for a little while. Once Dorothy was dead, the first thing I planned to do was free Jellia.

So the rest of the maids and I scrubbed and cleaned and dusted every possible surface. We reviewed checklists of each guest who would be attending and their strange and dumb requests. The Governor of Gillikin Country could only have purple sheets; the Shaggy Man wanted a pantry stocked with nothing but baked beans and a closet filled with the finest dirty rags. I didn’t bother asking who the Shaggy Man was.

That night, I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. I’d spent the day working so hard that I hadn’t even had a chance to let my mind linger on what was coming.

In my dream, I scoured the cobblestones of the throne room, cleaning up Jellia’s blood. It was exactly how I’d spent my afternoon, except when I was finished I didn’t move on to preparing the guest bedrooms for the mayor of Gillikin’s entourage like I had in real life. Instead, I moved on to the hallways and the ballroom, the kitchen and the solarium, every room of the palace smeared with blood and in desperate need of cleaning. The sounds of my scrubbing echoed through the empty palace. Whatever happened here, I got the feeling it was my doing. I wasn’t sure if Dorothy’s palace being an abandoned, bloody mess was a good thing or a bad thing.

I woke up with a strange feeling in my stomach. It was the first-day-of-school feeling, but it was the day before summer vacation feeling, too—I was nervous about what I had to do, but excited to know that it was all almost over.

Tonight. Tonight was do-or-die. Literally.

Could I do it? I wondered. Could I really kill another person—even someone like Dorothy?

I put my uniform on slowly, catching a glimpse of Astrid’s face in the mirror for what might be the last time. When I was dressed, I pulled my magic knife from the air and turned it over in my hand, admiring it. The shining, intricately engraved blade; the hilt that Nox had carved just for me.

I stared at that knife, feeling the blade pulsing with magic in my hand, and I realized that not only could I do it, but I wanted to do it. Seeing what Dorothy had done to Jellia, the callous disregard for her life, and her look across the crowd like this could be any of you. Dorothy was a monster.

I couldn’t help thinking about what Nox had said when he had given me the weapon, about why he had chosen the Magril on the handle especially for me. He’d told me it reminded him of me because of the way it transformed itself from something ordinary into something special—into something magical and fierce.

I had already changed, I knew. I was nothing like the girl in the trailer park, nothing like the girl who had arrived here in Oz. But was the transformation complete? I had a feeling that it wasn’t. When I killed Dorothy tonight, I would be someone different afterward. But who?

I didn’t know. I couldn’t picture it. Maybe I didn’t want to.

That day, as I went about my chores under the careful eye of Sindra, I watched in curiosity as the palace began to fill up with strange visitors. I saw Cayke the Cookie Cook—flanked by bodyguards—her diamond-studded dishpan laden with an assortment of baked goods, a gift for Dorothy. Polychrome, the Daughter of the Rainbow, floated down the hallway and then passed through a wall as if she were a ghost, leaving a misty, multicolored trail behind her. There was a giant frog in a three-piece suit and a top hat; a small, round hairy guy who looked kind of like a really angry troll.

At first I thought that was the baked-bean-loving Shaggy Man, until Sindra muttered something under her breath. “Wow,” she said. “The Nome King is getting fat.”

I wondered how many of these people actually liked Dorothy, and how many of them were here because they didn’t have any choice? Which ones were Order operatives? When everything went down tonight, would the giant frog guy have my back? Would I have to avoid getting clocked by a diamond-studded baking sheet? I wished Nox had given me some idea who our allies might be.

Were all of Dorothy’s guests as evil as she was, as corrupted as the Scarecrow and the Lion and the Tin Woodman? Or were they all just here to keep her happy, knowing that ignoring an official invite from Her Royal Highness was basically asking for a palace-mandated Attitude Adjustment?

It didn’t matter, I decided. I already knew my enemy. That was enough.

In the late afternoon, Sindra gathered a handful of us in the maids’ mess hall.

“All right, everyone,” she beamed, clapping her hands excitedly. “I’ve selected you lucky ones to be the waitstaff at the gala this evening. That means you get the rest of the day off to rest, wash up, and get it together! It’s the biggest night of your careers so don’t screw it up.”

It was the last night of my maid career, thank goodness. As the other maids tittered excitedly on their way back to our chambers, I broke off, ducking down a hallway before I even realized where I was going.

The solarium. I needed to do one thing before all this happened. Just in case it was the end.

I passed a half dozen Munchkins in bright-colored formal wear on the way, along with a pair of palace guards, but I kept my eyes straight ahead like I was seriously intent on getting some cleaning done, and no one stopped me.

The solarium was clear, so I shut the door behind me and approached the magic painting.

“Magic picture,” I said, quiet but firm, “show me my mom.”

It took the painting a moment, like it was having trouble tracking my mom down—what else is new?—but after a stressful few seconds where I worried she might be dead, the painting started to rearrange itself. The seascape gradually shifted to a giant room, possibly an auditorium or maybe a gym. Fluorescent lighting, folding chairs, and a crowd of people, none of whom I recognized.

This didn’t look like any of my mom’s usual haunts, and at first I wondered if the picture had somehow gotten confused and tuned into the wrong signal. Until the image panned to a table with a coffee urn and bags and bags of Bugles. That was when I knew my mom couldn’t be too far away.

There she was, elbow deep into a bag, but somehow managing to look classed up—at least compared to the last time I saw her. Her hair was smoothed into a sleek ponytail, her makeup tastefully applied. She was smiling as she spoke to a woman holding a Styrofoam cup.

“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.