“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.

“What happens now?” I asked. “You lock me in here until I agree to be your killer and actually mean it? Because I know that you know I didn’t.”

“No, we train you. I know that you aren’t ready, child. Just put one foot in front of the other. The rest will come in time.”

She sounded so sure. Like she knew something that I didn’t.

“And if it doesn’t?” What would they do to me if I didn’t do what they wanted?

“There is something you don’t know about being bound—we can’t hurt each other as long as we are in the circle. There is much to fear outside the circle, but you don’t have to fear that.”

I felt myself exhale and nodded slowly. Whether or not she was telling the truth, her answer would have to be okay for now. I just wished I could read her mind, too.

“No matter what, you’ll still be a witch.”

“But what kind?” I asked.

“Good question, child,” Gert said, slinking off into the dark.

I was standing in the middle of an all-white cave. Nox had led me there, then excused himself to change into clothes that he could better torture me in. I waited impatiently.

If I was being honest, the decor of this cave was kind of freaking me out—which was saying something, considering all the others I’d seen.