“It hasn’t killed Dorothy. Anyway, I can’t use magic at all here,” I said, throwing my hands up in the air. “So it’s kind of a moot point for the time being. But if my magic returns somehow, or if we get back to Oz—using magic is my choice to make. Not Gert’s. Not Mombi’s or Glamora’s. Not yours.”
“It isn’t just your choice, Amy,” he said, looking deep into my eyes. “I can’t just think about you. I have to think about all of Oz. If you turn into something like Dorothy . . .” He trailed off, tugging helplessly at the Quadrant cloak. “This is so much bigger than just us.” I knew what he meant; he didn’t have to say it out loud. If Oz’s magic made me into another Dorothy, he’d have to kill me, too. But being told what to do still stuck in my throat. Especially after Nox had refused to tell me the whole truth for all this time.
“You care about Oz more than you care about me,” I snapped, hurt and angry. I wanted to take the words back as soon as they were out of my mouth. Of course Nox cared more about Oz than he did about me. Oz was his country, his home, the only world he’d ever known. Oz was his entire life. I was a bitchy, needy teenager who’d crashed the party at the eleventh hour and learned how to be an assassin. If Oz’s magic corrupted me, it would be my own fault. Dorothy’d had no idea what the shoes would do to her. But me? I knew all too well the dangers of using magic in Oz.
“You know that’s not true,” he said. The reproach in his voice was gentle but unmistakable. I wondered how much damage I’d just done acting like a spoiled little kid. I could feel a new distance, like someone had hung a curtain between us.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. My throat hurt like I’d swallowed a pincushion, but I was sick of crying. For some crazy reason, in that moment I thought of Dustin. Good old Dustin of Dusty Acres, my old high school enemy Madison Pendleton’s trusty sidekick. Like me, Dustin had wanted out of this dump. I wondered if he’d gotten it. I wondered if Madison had had the baby that had been threatening to pop out when the tornado hit. I wondered if going back to high school meant I’d have to see her—see both of them—again.
“I wish things were different,” Nox said. His voice was tight with some emotion I couldn’t pinpoint. Anger? Sadness? Probably he was regretting spending any time with me in the first place. This was war, like everybody kept telling me. Feelings only got in the way. And I was only getting in Nox’s. I owed it to him to give him distance. He had to save the world and he didn’t need me holding him back.
“Yeah, well, so do I,” I said, making my voice cold and hard as I stood up. “But they aren’t. So I guess I’d better get to work, since I’m the one trying to save all your asses.”
“Amy—” This time there was no mistaking the hurt in his voice, but I turned my back on him. It took all the strength I had not to look back at him as he watched me walk away.
FOUR
“All right,” I snapped, pushing my way back into the tent. Gert looked up, startled. “Let’s get this done. The last time I saw my mom she was a hot mess. Where’d she end up? How did you find her?”
“Not the last time, Amy,” Gert said gently. “You saw her again. Remember? You saw her in the scrying pool.”
I knew exactly what Gert was talking about, but I didn’t want to acknowledge it. So maybe I’d had a vision of my mom in a new apartment somewhere, pathetically cuddled up to my favorite sweater. And maybe in the vision she’d been clean. But if that was true, it was just as pathetic. She’d had to lose me, her house, and her entire life in order to get her act together? If she’d been a real mom she’d have managed it while I was still around. Normal people didn’t need tragedy to tell them not to blow the rest of their lives chasing their painkillers with booze.
“How do I even know if that was real?” I asked. “She could be passed out in a ditch somewhere for all I know. Or dead by now.”
“She isn’t dead,” Mombi said, looking a little exasperated. “We found her in a broadsheet!” she added proudly.
“A what?”
“A sheet with news and announcements,” Gert said slowly, as if talking to an idiot. “In the Other Place they have pictures”—she turned to Glamora—“can you believe that? Pictures! I think that’s a splendid idea.”
“You mean a newspaper?” All three witches looked at me, and in spite of myself, I stifled a giggle. “Okay, right. So she was in the newspaper.”
“The broadsheet described the movements of the tornado survivors,” Mombi explained importantly. “I used that information and compared it to a map of the surrounding countryside.” She brandished a tattered old highway map that looked like she’d found it in a culvert.
“You could have just Googled her,” I said, laughing.
“I don’t know that spell,” Mombi said gruffly.