“Without Gert, we no longer have the power to reliably hide ourselves from Glinda and Dorothy. They will be looking, and it’s now only a matter of time before they find us. As a result, we have decided to move our plans forward earlier than expected.” She folded her hands primly in her lap.

“Good,” I said.

Glamora gave me a careful once-over. “Do you understand what that means?”

I was pretty sure I did, but I took a second before I answered, just to let it sink in. “Yes,” I finally said, sitting up straight and squaring my jaw in resolution. “It means it’s time for me to do what I came here to do.” As I said the words out loud, the numbness inside me seemed to let up. Not a lot, but enough that I actually felt something other than a dull and aching emptiness.

Mostly anger. Cold and burning anger at the same time.

“Are you sure you know what you’re agreeing to?” Glamora asked.

I didn’t know why she cared.

“I understand,” I said, tossing my hair defiantly. “It’s time for me to kill Dorothy.”

Glamora nodded, satisfied. “I wish more than anything that I could do it myself,” she said. “But it has to be you. There’s no other way.”

At first I thought she meant it to be something like an apology, but then I noticed the way her shoulders had tensed up in a barely concealed combination of rage and regret, and I realized that she was actually envious of me. That, to her, it was a privilege.

Well, maybe it was.

With that, the witch stood and ran her hand along her nightgown. It rippled like water and resolved itself into a more presentable outfit for the day: a tailored tweed suit in a somber mauve shade, cut primly to the knee.

“No matter what the occasion, we must present the proper face to the world,” she said, sounding like she was speaking more to herself than to me. “Now, come. We have to have a talk with Mombi. You’ll be leaving for the palace today.”

Mombi had showed up a second too late; a second after I’d laid Gert’s lifeless body onto the ground. At just the second when it didn’t do us any good.

She’d come swooping in through the trees in a swirl of purple light, fists clenched and eyes blazing, ready to fight, but when she saw me and Nox, she stopped in midflight and hung in the air. A look of sick understanding passed across her face. She landed with a thump before kneeling and placing a hand to the side of Gert’s face.

“There was a child . . .” She stopped to collect herself. I had never imagined that Mombi could seem so human. “I couldn’t leave her. I thought Gert would be able to handle it on her own. I thought . . .”

She betrayed no emotion after that. Instead, she bowed her head and began a solemn chant.

I somehow knew instinctively that this wasn’t a spell to bring Gert back to life. There are some things that no amount of magic can accomplish, and this was one of them. This was a ritual to lay Gert to rest.

Mombi’s muttered words were unintelligible and ancient-sounding, with a wandering melody buried somewhere deep below their surface. The chant sounded like one of those weird songs you sometimes hear flipping through dials on an old radio only to pause on a station that barely comes in, the tune so far away that it’s hard to tell if it’s even a tune at all or if it’s just static.

The old witch passed her hands up and down along Gert’s body as she sang, and as she did, Gert began to melt into a pulsing, flickering puddle of mystical electricity that slowly seeped its way into the earth.

Whatever magic Gert still had left in her, she had given it back to Oz now.

Then Gert was gone without a trace, like she had never been there at all.

But she had been there. She had sacrificed herself to save us. No, forget that. She had done so much more. Even if I had never quite been able to figure out—never really been able to tell where the Good ended and the Wicked began for her—I had known, by the end, that she had believed in me. Not just as the one who would be able to defeat Dorothy, but as Amy Gumm.

None of us spoke as we joined hands and shot up through the trees and into the air. There was nothing to say. This time I didn’t bother looking at the ground as we soared over Oz. I had seen enough for one day.

Mombi had disappeared as soon as we were back in the caves.

Nox took me by the hand and walked me back to my room. He pressed a gentle hand to my shoulder. I opened the door and stepped inside, not looking back.

That was yesterday. Now it was today.

Glamora and I found Mombi in the war room, seated at the table across from a girl I’d never seen before. She looked terrified. Her shoulders heaved silently as she cradled her face in her palms.

Glamora and I each took a seat.

“This is Astrid,” Mombi said. The girl rocked back and forth, not looking up. “Until last night, Astrid was a servant in the palace. Today, she has been given the opportunity to join our cause. Astrid, meet Amy.”

“Hi,” I said, not quite understanding where this was going.

“If all goes well, Astrid will be returned unharmed to the palace when our mission is complete.” Mombi cast a meaningful, ominous look in Astrid’s direction. “If she chooses to make a nuisance of herself, things will not be so pleasant for her.”

If all goes well. Then I got it. Astrid hadn’t decided to join the Order. She hadn’t been rescued from a burning village. She had been kidnapped. That was why she looked so scared.

A chill shot down my spine as I remembered that things were never easy around here. Good and evil were always changing places with each other.