“Illusions,” whispered Nox as a Munchkin appeared behind him.

“Look at your partner!” Glamora barked.

In seconds the ballroom had filled with fake couples, swirling around us.

It made sense that Nox could do this. He was the most coordinated, most physical being I’d ever met. But still, with every step we took in unison, I grew more aware of him. Even if he was annoying, and arrogant, and too serious all the time, I had to admit it: he was hot.

I didn’t look up. I didn’t want him to see anything other than indifference in my eyes.

Prom was coming up in a couple of months back at school. There were already posters in the halls with a really cheesy silhouette of a couple lit from behind by the moon. The theme was “A Night to Remember.” I was never going to go to prom anyway. And it’s not like anyone would be dancing even remotely like we were now. But I suddenly realized that this might be as close as I would come to “A Night to Remember.” Dancing with a witch boy who didn’t want me here.

As we danced, I dared to steal glances at his face. In this moment, Nox didn’t look like he didn’t want me here. Maybe it was years of Glamora instruction, and he was simply good at being a gentleman. Maybe it was the tapping of her foot to the music against the floor that was almost hypnotic. But he didn’t look completely tortured.

“Remember,” Glamora said, her voice floating across the dance floor. “This isn’t a battle. Unless it is—in which case you should still keep your eyes on one another, to make sure that no one makes a move that isn’t wanted.” Glamora laughed, like it was an inside joke with herself.

Nox’s face shifted suddenly, like he was remembering something.

“You think that you’re too good for us,” Nox said, the brightness of his voice not matching up with his words.

“Excuse me?” No one ever thought I was too good for anything. I grew up in a freaking trailer.

“Gert says you’re holding back. You’re afraid to be like us.”

“That’s not true. I’m afraid to be like Dorothy. Not the rest of you.”

“You’re already like us, you know. You wished for this. You wished to be as far away from your mom as you could get and your wish came true.”

“How do you know that? And anyway, that doesn’t make me Wicked. Or formerly Wicked either,” I argued. I tried to drop his hand but he wouldn’t let me go.

“You’re afraid to do anything but wish for things to happen to you. You wish you could go show up on your dad’s doorstep, meet his new wife and new kid—you wish you could say all the things you want to say to him. You wish you could have left your mom on your own. You’ve wanted to run away for almost as long as you can remember. But it took a tornado to do it. You couldn’t even make that happen on your own.”

He gripped my hands even tighter and pushed me forward in the dance like I was a puppet.

Why was he saying all this? More importantly, how did he know?

Gert. Nox wasn’t in my head reading my thoughts. Gert was. She’d fed him my secrets, my entire life it seemed.

I had never done anything, he was right. I did go through my life just reacting to other people. When I was young I had escape plans—big, grand, dumb ones. I was going to start fresh somewhere where no one knew me and no one would call me Salvation Amy. But that part didn’t sting as much as the Dad thing did. I did think about going to visit him, all the time. I’d have some excuse like I was selling candy for school. And I would see the life he left us for. The pretty wife who was no prettier than Mom before she started with the pills. The little girl or boy, technically my sister or brother, who she was pregnant with when they moved away to Jersey. I was going to show up and meet them and warn that little girl or boy that one day Dad would get tired of him or her, too.

Glamora tapped her foot on the glass floor to the beat of the music. “You’re losing the beat, Amy.”

Nox leaned in and dropped his voice to whisper words that I hadn’t heard since I stepped into Oz.

“Am I right, Salvation Amy?”

The room spun. I wasn’t sure if I was dizzy from him or from my anger. I dropped his hand.

He reached for me—but his hand missed me completely and grabbed the air next to me.

I was standing in a new spot. Across the room from where I started.

“What the hell? How did I . . . ?”

Had I—? Was it possible—? Had I moved myself across the room?

Don’t you see? You did it. I heard Gert’s voice. She appeared in the center of the room. She’d been here all along. I felt hot. More specifically, my hands felt hot from casting the spell.

She had done this on purpose, made Glamora and Nox bring me to this room and beat at me until I couldn’t take it anymore. Like dipping me under the spring, she did what she thought she needed to do. But this time she’d gone too far.

The room spun again. My hands got hotter—light seemed to shoot from them. Not the gentle glow I’d seen from Gert. A searing red glow. Like darts of fire.

The fire darts seemed to be seeking Nox. But Nox lit up with a weird blue light of his own and the darts seemed to deflect off him. More darts came off my hands even though I wasn’t actually directing them. They shot straight up into the air and showered down like firecrackers.

I was angry. Too angry. No-turning-back angry.

I wanted to run away from him, from Gert, from all of them, but I couldn’t move. Nox made a beeline toward me and grabbed my glowing hands with his own. In a blink we were standing outside the caves on the same spot he’d taken me the first day of training—the peak of the mountain, this time looking out into a deep black sky dotted with strange constellations where the familiar ones should have been.