“Quickly, now,” the hooded witch said urgently. “While she’s still weak.” She threw back her hood and my jaw dropped.

“Gert?” I gasped. “But you’re dead!” I had watched her die. I had mourned for her. And now here she was, alive, in front of me.

“No time to explain right now! We’ll never have a chance to destroy Dorothy like this again!”

Glamora, Gert, and Mombi joined hands and began to chant, and I recognized the shimmer of magic in the air over their heads. Nox reached for Mombi’s free hand, and she took it without interrupting her chant. His voice joined the other witches’.

I tried again to summon my own magic. I was sure this time: there was nothing there. I flexed my fingers, panicking. The magic was gone. My power—all of it. Dorothy was sitting up and looking at her hands in confusion as if she was discovering the same thing. Something had happened to us in that journey through the Wizard’s portal—something that hadn’t affected Nox and the other witches. And then I knew. Dorothy and I were both from Kansas. I’d never cast a spell in my life before I came to Oz—because whatever magic Kansas supposedly contained, I had no idea how to tap into it—or if I even could. The Wizard had insisted Oz was pulling its magic out of the very dirt of Kansas, but Dorothy and I were out of luck. We were back in a world where we didn’t have magic. And if Dorothy was completely powerless, so was I.

“Help us, Amy!” Nox yelled over the other witches’ chant.

“I can’t!” I said desperately, and his eyes widened in surprise. Dorothy’s body was beginning to glow with a pale light that slowly overwhelmed the pulsing from her shoes. But realization suddenly dawned in her eyes.

“We’re in Kansas,” she said, her voice hoarse and weak. “You brought me back to Kansas. And I hate Kansas.” She struggled to her feet and the witches’ spell dimmed as her shoes began to glow even more fiercely. She flicked her fingers at us and scowled when her magic failed to appear. “I want my palace back,” she hissed. “And my power. And my dresses.” She looked down at the red shoes and they blazed with a brilliant crimson light.

“No!” Gert cried. “Stop her!” But the pale glow of the witches’ spell dissolved into a puff of iridescent glitter as Dorothy’s shoes radiated light and power. She wobbled a little, clearly exhausted. Her eyes were sunk deep in her skull. Her skin looked dry and stretched over the bones of her face. Her hair was lank and bedraggled.

“Take me home,” she whispered feebly. “Please, shoes, take me home.” Mombi lunged forward, her own hands radiating the light of a spell, but it was too late. With a flash of red and a sharp pop like a champagne cork shooting out of a bottle, Dorothy vanished.

Dorothy had gone home. And we were stuck in Kansas. For good.

TWO

Mombi and Glamora quickly conjured up a silk tent that, fragile as it looked, kept out the dust and the relentless Kansas wind. I hadn’t seen much of Glamora lately, and her resemblance to her sister Glinda startled me all over again when I first saw her in the gentle glow of the strands of lights she strung up inside the tent. In a flash, the memory of the time I’d spent with her in the Order’s underground caverns came flooding back: her lessons on the art of glamour, her love of beautiful things, and the intense determination in her face when she told me about what Glinda had done to her. She’d nearly lost that first battle with her sister, and I knew how badly she wanted to bring Glinda down. But it still shocked me how close to impossible it was to tell the sisters apart. I’d seen more than enough of Glinda in action for her sister’s face to creep me out a little, no matter how much I knew Glamora was on the side of the Wicked. The thing I needed to figure out now, I was realizing, was how much the Wicked were on the side of me.

I tried getting Mombi, Glamora, and Gert to answer my frantic questions, but they ignored me as they bustled around our temporary home plumping cushions and pulling dishes and silverware out of thin air. “What just happened?” I hissed at Nox. He gave me a helpless look, and I wanted to smack him.

“There was too much to tell you, Amy. You know the Order has always had to keep secrets to survive.” I shook my head in disgust. When had anyone ever told me the whole truth? I’d thought I could trust Nox at least. Clearly, I’d been wrong. I was furious. More than that, I was hurt. Nox and I weren’t just soldiers who fought together anymore. My feelings for him were way more complicated than that—and I’d thought he cared about me.