When I reached a carved oak doorway, the ringing stopped. I’d really been hoping the bell would lead me to one of the normal doors, but of course it put me in front of this monstrosity at the end of the hall. The door was carved into a landscape scene that twisted and moved as I stared at it, almost like crude animation. In it, dozens of blackbirds repeatedly dropped dead over an endless field of corn.

I knocked, and then jumped back as a blackbird exploded into a puff of feathers beneath my knuckles.

An impatient, somewhat familiar voice told me to enter. My heart sank when I saw the Scarecrow sitting on the edge of his bed in the center of the room, waiting for me. Or rather, waiting for Astrid.

“Yes, Your Royal Scarecrow?” I chirped in my sweetest voice, even though I was shaking on the inside. I was face-to-face—and alone—with the monster who’d experimented on Melindra. I felt my hand tingling and I was comforted with the knowledge that my knife was there if I needed to summon it.

The Scarecrow’s room looked less like a bedroom and more like an enormous, filthy study. Every surface was cluttered with loose papers and dirty plates and bits of straw. The whole place smelled stale and moldy, like the bootleg firewood our neighbor used to wheelbarrow around Dusty Acres. Lying on the floor near my feet I noticed a bound leather book open to a drawing of a monkey’s internal anatomy, with little notes in shaky handwriting penciled in the margins.

I shivered and forced myself to look away, letting my eyes travel upward, where walls of bookshelves stretched beyond the reach of the candlelight.

“Well? What took you so long?” the Scarecrow snapped. My eyes snapped, too, back down to where he sat, his creepy button eyes looking right through me. “Why didn’t you just zap yourself to me?”

“Zapping is forbidden in the palace,” I said, the words out before I could even think about them.

I let out an internal sigh of relief when the Scarecrow seemed exasperated but not suspicious. “You should know by now that those silly rules don’t apply when I ring,” he grumbled. He gave me a meaningful look.

Oh no, I thought. Please please please don’t tell me he’s Astrid’s secret boyfriend.

But he just scowled as he gestured toward a square metal tray that was sitting on a table next to his bed. “I’m feeling duller by the second here.”

Doing my best not to disturb his mess, I carefully stepped over piles of junk and picked up the tray.

It took everything I had to stay calm when I saw what was actually on it: knives and scalpels and curved needles and pliers and an assortment of other things I didn’t even want to think about. Some of them were still bloody.

These were probably the same tools this monster used to dissect and experiment on innocent Ozians. On people like Melindra.

And what did he want me to do with them? I was still trying to figure it out as he casually leaned his stuffed body against his bed’s ornate headboard and started removing a series of straight pins from his scalp, dropping each one carefully into a metal wastebasket near his feet.

I noticed that they had blood on them, too. I cleared my throat and nodded toward the horror show of instruments on the tray.

“What would you like me to do with these tonight, Your Eminence?” I kept my voice detached, like a good, subjugated servant girl, even as my skin crawled at the scene before me. I hadn’t been prepared to face the Scarecrow within minutes of my arrival. I hadn’t been prepared for the Scarecrow at all.

He looked me up and down with his dead and shiny button eyes. “I want you to do the same thing I always want. What’s gotten into you?” Without waiting for me to answer, he plucked a scalpel up from the tray I held and began carefully using it to break apart the stitches that held his canvas skull together. “I got started without you. The syringe is already filled.”

I noticed it then: a syringe with a needle at least four inches long was sitting right there next to the rest of the bloody utensils. I picked it up, wishing I’d learned a spell to keep my hand steady.

When I turned around the Scarecrow was lifting the flap off his head, revealing his brain.

I’d seen a monkey brain once in biology class. This was kind of like that, only pinker and goopier. The whole thing was suspended in red, gelatinous mush that I’d mistaken for blood.

I picked up the syringe. I gave it a little squirt like I’d seen nurses do on hospital shows. Where was I supposed to stick it? My borrowed Astrid instincts were quiet. Maybe the magic only went so deep, or maybe she’d done such a good job blocking out these traumatizing scenes that they didn’t transfer over, or maybe my own instinct to run away screaming was overriding my Astrid sense.

Either way, I stood there holding the needle like a dummy.

When I waited a moment too long, his gloved hand shot up and grabbed my wrist with a steel grip. His hold was tight, yet I could feel his straw insides crunching as he squeezed. I almost flinched away, but that wouldn’t be an Astrid move. I kept my eyes downcast and frightened.

“Get it right, girl. Or I’ll be the one sticking needles into you next.”

“Yes, sir,” I said meekly, adding a shudder that wasn’t entirely feigned.

When he let go, I went for it, jamming the needle into the pinkest part of his brain mass. Part of me hoped there might be an air bubble in the needle or something, and my next job as servant girl would be mopping bits of Scarecrow off the walls. I pushed the plunger, releasing the fluid. The Scarecrow let out a long moan of relief. His head lolled over to his shoulder and a little felt tongue I didn’t even know he had dangled limply from his mouth. I willed myself not to throw up.