Dorothy Must Die (24 page)

Jellia and Dorothy were prattling on, deciding on the best nail art for the day—
stripes or swirls or sparkles
? They sounded like they were talking from the end of a long tunnel. I couldn’t take my eyes off the shoes. I was transfixed.

So beautiful. So shiny. So perfect.

Whoa, get a grip, Amy.

I’d taken pride in wearing the same ratty pair of knockoff Converse since freshman year. They were broken in, comfortable, and something the Madison Pendletons of the world wouldn’t wear in a million years. I’d never given a crap about shoes before, especially not the bedazzled variety. So why now? Something wasn’t right.

Even as I reasoned with myself, the glow from the shoes intensified. I realized they were shining just for me, that Dorothy and Jellia couldn’t see them, not like I could. They were calling to me.

A numbness spread over the skeptical part of my mind.

I wondered what it would be like to have people wait on me the way we were waiting on Dorothy. What it would be like to have a closet full of dresses. What it would be like to have power.

Power that came from those shoes.

I want them
, I thought.
I need them
.

I should just take them
.

I was vaguely aware of my body moving, my hands clenching and unclenching. Slowly, I reached toward Dorothy’s feet.

“Astrid,” Jellia warned, yanking my elbow back.

I ignored her. I wanted those shoes.

“
Astrid!
” she said again, this time angrily. She snapped her fingers right in my face, tearing my eyes away from Dorothy’s feet. I blinked. Looking up at Jellia, I felt like myself again, and I knew that the shoes had been doing something to me.

Jellia just glared, as if to say
Didn’t I warn you?

Dorothy was busy holding up a bottle of polish to the light, thinking about her impending manicure. When I glanced in her direction, I saw her eyes narrow and her mouth twitch up in the tiniest sneer. Had she noticed? Did she know what her shoes were doing?

“Astrid,” Jellia ordered firmly, “the princess needs her hair brushed.”

“One thousand strokes exactly!” Dorothy snapped, still not looking up at me.

I took a deep breath and moved behind her. I grabbed the brush from my pocket and pulled it slowly through Dorothy’s thick auburn locks. Her hair smelled like lemons and sunshine. I expected there to be a rotten note underneath, but there wasn’t. It was all sweetness and light.
This is what evil smells like,
I realized.

One, two, three, four . . . I counted silently, being careful not to yank too hard when I hit a rare tangle. It was actually sort of relaxing—I felt much better now that I had something to focus on other than the shoes.

“Let’s do the hearts,” Dorothy finally decided. “Use the pink glitter. Blue for the base.” She extended her hands to Jellia and I realized that there was something gnarled about them. The rest of Dorothy was perfect, but her hands looked like an old woman’s.

Jellia pulled up a stool and picked out the first color. Dorothy began to hum a low waltz under her breath while Jellia got to work.

Jellia was an artist. Her fingers moved delicately and quickly over Dorothy’s nails, tracing the outlines of tiny hearts without even the tiniest mistake. Still, you could tell it wasn’t easy. Jellia’s brow crinkled in concentration and it quickly began to shine with sweat as she worked.

“Tell me the gossip,” Dorothy demanded. “No one ever tells me anything. There must be something interesting going on in this palace of mine. I know you know. The servants always do.”

“Let me think,” Jellia said. As she spoke, she glanced up at me, probably to check on my progress. I was at two hundred. I met her eyes, flashed her a reassuring smile, and then nearly nicked the back of Dorothy’s ear with the brush.

Dorothy didn’t even notice, she just went on humming her stupid waltz. But Jellia did, flinching on my behalf at the close call. That’s how it happened.

Jellia’s hand slipped. A drop of nail polish fell from the brush. I watched it go, as if in slow motion.

The sparkly pink polish landed in a blob on the pink carpet.

Dorothy shrieked.

The thing is, the polish almost matched the color of the carpet. Even if it wouldn’t come out, it was just a tiny little drop. No one would notice. But Dorothy would know.

“You idiot!” she screamed.

Jellia didn’t move. Her lips twitched at the corners of her frozen smile. “Princess Dorothy—Your Highness—I am so
very
sorry. It . . .”

She dropped to her knees in panic, dabbing frantically at the carpet with a handkerchief to blot out her mistake. But Dorothy put her hand out to halt the maid.

“Don’t. You’ll just smear it and make it worse.”

Jellia looked up, eyes impossibly wide above her frozen smile. But Dorothy was over it. Sort of. She shook her head.

“Should I send for soap and water?” Jellia asked. “I’m certain I can have it out in a moment.”

“Soap and water,” Dorothy repeated, snorting. She muttered something under her breath and a sizzle of energy sparked from her fingertips. The minuscule stain instantly disappeared. “The atrocious mess is not the point, Jellia. The point is that you were careless. Very careless. I’m used to better from you.”

“I’m sorry,” Jellia repeated, still trembling, sitting back down on her stool. “So
very
sorry. I can’t imagine what came over me.”

I swallowed. In a way, Jellia was covering for me. I’d distracted her.

Dorothy’s voice suddenly filled with syrupy kindness. “Oh, Jellia, dear. You can’t cry over a little spilled nail polish. I’ll think of
some
way for you to make it up to me.”

I resumed my brushing.
Two hundred and one.
I hadn’t forgotten my place. Jellia picked up the bottle of polish. I expected her to be relieved, but she was still quivering.

“I’ll just need to think of the appropriate punishment,” Dorothy said.

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“I wonder what it should be. . . .”

Jellia’s hand was shaking so much that she had to put the bottle down again.

“Did I tell you to stop?” Dorothy asked. Jellia’s eyes widened and she picked the bottle back up to continue. Her mouth was still stretched ear to ear but the rest of her face was crumpled in terror.

This
was what Dorothy did to people. I had known Dorothy was cruel, but the joy she took in her cruelty filled me with disgust.

I thought of Madison Pendleton and all her minions, the people who had taken the same delight in tormenting me back in school. I thought of Gert, and of Indigo, and of Ollie hanging from the little post by the side of the road. I thought of all the new orphans in the village of Pumperdink.

Then another thought came to me. It seemed so clear. I hadn’t heard from the Order since I’d gotten here. Maybe they’d forgotten about me. Regardless, I was within clear cutting distance. What if this was my best chance? If I was going to kill someone, I needed to be in control, and not rely on someone else to tell me when the time was right. Nox had made that mistake in the woods—he’d waited for Gert and Mombi before attacking the Lion, and look where that had gotten us. It had gotten Gert killed.

I could do it now. Dorothy was distracted, completely absorbed with punishing Jellia. She would never see it coming. She wouldn’t even have time to scream.

My heart was racing, but I took a deep breath. I didn’t pause in my brushing.
Three hundred and seven
.

I shifted positions ever so slightly and dropped my free hand out of Jellia’s line of sight, just behind Dorothy’s back. My knife materialized in my hand, its warmth spreading up through my arm.

I wrapped my fingers tightly around it. No one had noticed. I was inches away from her neck. Without even consciously casting a spell, I heard Dorothy’s blood pulsing through her veins.

I had the bitch right where I wanted her.

I pulled my elbow back and raised the knife so that it was just a centimeter from Dorothy’s spine. Would it be quicker to slit her throat or stab her in the back?

I hesitated. A moment ago, I’d been possessed by a pair of pretty shoes. Was that happening again? Were they controlling me right now? No. I
wanted
to kill Dorothy. I could undo everything she’d done, return the beauty and magic to Oz, create a happily ever after. It was all just one blade stroke and one seriously ruined carpet away.

Was I ready, though? Was I ready to be Amy the Assassin? God knows Dorothy deserved it, but—

Dorothy let out a high-pitched, ear-shattering scream that rustled the rows of dresses. She jumped up from her chaise, knocking it over. The brush snagged on her hair and flew out of my hand. I froze, unsure whether to hide the knife or lunge forward and stab her.

“Guards!” she bellowed.

Shit, shit, shit,
I thought in panic. I made a split-second decision—maid or assassin—and willed the knife to disappear. I was pretty sure Jellia hadn’t seen it. But had Dorothy? Had she sensed the magic? I decided playing dumb was the best option.

The Tin Woodman appeared in a burst of smoke, his ax poised to attack. “Your Majesty!” he said. “What’s wrong?”

My eyes darted around, looking frantically for a way out, just in case Dorothy pointed a finger in my direction.

Instead, Dorothy had righted the chaise and climbed atop it, shaking, but also managing to delicately smooth out her robe. Jellia stared up at her in confusion and I followed her lead.

Dorothy could barely get out the words. “A—A,” she stuttered. “There was a—” She pointed to the corner, and every muscle in my body relaxed when I saw that it wasn’t me she had been reacting to. She had no idea I’d been about one second away from killing her.

“Catch it,” she wheezed, pointing to the corner just in time for us to see a tiny brown ball of fur streaking under the skirt of one of her floor-length gowns. “Kill it!” Dorothy screamed, jumping ridiculously from foot to foot.

A mouse. It was just a mouse.

The Tin Woodman looked at Dorothy with concern. “Of course, my princess,” he said, with something approaching actual tenderness in his voice. He stepped forward and began to carefully pull the clothes aside. “I can’t imagine how upsetting this must be for you.”

“No,” Dorothy said. She reached out blindly, found the top of my head, and used it for balance as she lowered herself back onto the chaise. Her fear seemed to have suddenly twisted into something else. “Not you.”

“Princess?” the Tin Woodman asked, confused.

Dorothy thrust a long, half-manicured nail at Jellia. “You. You catch it.”

The maid’s face was stoic. “Yes, ma’am,” she said quietly. Jellia dropped to her hands and knees and began to crawl across the floor, disappearing behind the dresses. We all watched her.

“Did I tell you to stop, Amanda?” Dorothy snapped. “My hair’s not going to brush itself, now is it?”

I picked up the brush.
Three hundred and twenty-eight.
I didn’t even know
what
I was feeling anymore as I went back to work.
Three hundred and twenty-nine
.

The garments rustled and every now and then we caught a glimpse of Jellia as she searched, but ninety strokes of the brush later she still hadn’t emerged. Dorothy, the Tin Woodman, and I all watched intently.

“It would be an honor if you let me catch the foul creature,” the Tin Woodman suggested finally. “With my speed and training, it would take me no time at all.”

“No, you’ll get oil on my dresses,” Dorothy said irritably. “I guess I have to do
everything
around here.”

Even with a concerted effort not to look directly at them, I noticed that Dorothy’s shoes were glittering brighter than before. She twirled a finger in the air and a pink bubble materialized at the tip of her nail.

“Come on out, Jellia,” she ordered, “now that you’ve disappointed me on every possible level.”

After a few tense seconds Jellia emerged on her hands and knees and crawled back toward us, her face ashen but still PermaSmiling eerily, her hair messy and matted with sweat.

“Stay,” Dorothy commanded. Jellia froze on her hands and knees.

Dorothy gave a little flick and the pink bubble went spinning. It twisted and darted in the air the same way Nox’s tracing charm had, back in the forest outside Pumperdink the night that Gert died. After a few seconds, it zipped into the pink folds of the closet and, not thirty seconds later, returned, now rolling along the ground. Inside the glowing bubble-gum orb, a tiny mouse barely bigger than my thumb squirmed and scratched.

Four hundred and ninety-nine.
I kept on brushing. The ball spun across the carpet right up to where Jellia still knelt.

The maid looked up at Dorothy in fearful anticipation.

“Pick it up,” Dorothy said.

Without rising to her feet, Jellia complied, and as she did, the bubble faded away, leaving just the mouse in her hand.

“Now kill it,” Dorothy said.

Jellia paused, looking down at the mouse’s little face. “But Dorothy. Your Majesty—”

“Do it.”

“How?”

Even the Tin Woodman seemed a little confused as he looked on. He cocked his head curiously and swung his ax over his shoulder, waiting to hear what the princess had in mind.

Dorothy giggled girlishly. “Oh, Jellia,” she said. “I
knew
you were stupid but I didn’t know you were
that
stupid. I mean, all you have to do is squeeze.”

“But . . . ,” Jellia said.

“Jellia, it’s you or the mouse,” Dorothy said, the sweet, girly tone gone from her voice and replaced by an icy coldness.

I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. Dorothy’s favorite maid took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and made a fist around the little animal. She clenched it tight and, as she did, I heard a single squeal. Her eyebrows scrunched together in distress.

“Make sure he’s dead,” Dorothy instructed.

Jellia clenched tighter. A trickle of blood spilled out from between her fingers, but she placed her other hand underneath in time to catch it before it hit the carpet.