The End of Oz
Page 18

“So you’re a mobster,” Madison said. She sounded impressed.
Lang shrugged. “I prefer the word entrepreneur. I saw an opening and filled it. And in a way, my clubs bring people together. Rich and poor alike mingle at the roulette wheels and card tables. I have a dress code, but I don’t turn anyone away—unless they misbehave. That used to happen at first. Now that my reputation has spread, people don’t misbehave so much anymore.”
Most prisoners did not run Vegas-like empires. “So the Nome King just lets you . . . have all this?”
“The Nome King likes to think of himself as generous. And gambling provides a healthy distraction for the masses, which benefits him.”
“Distraction from what? Do you know why the Nome King rescued Dorothy and brought her to Ev?” Nox asked.
Lang shook her head, her clean, glossy hair rippling around her shoulders in a way that made my fingers itch for magic. I could’ve at least touched up my filthy and ragged dress, smoothed my hair to something resembling cleanliness. A little lip gloss—wait, who was I? Madison? Nox had seen me covered in blood, dirt, and worse. He’d seen me turn into a literal monster, and he was still around. I was tough, awesome, competent, and good at fighting. It wasn’t like she was flirting with my semi-maybe-non-boyfriend. If anything, her attitude toward him suggested she despised him.
But then I thought of that line from Romeo and Juliet that our sophomore year English teacher had drummed into our heads: My only love sprung from my only hate. You had to feel strongly enough about someone in the first place to hate them. Was this what jealousy felt like? Sort of being sick to your stomach all the time? I’d never had a reason to be jealous before.
I’d never been in love with anyone before Nox. My dopey kindergartener’s crush on Dustin was nothing compared to what I felt for Nox. And realizing that I had absolutely no idea what was going on in his head, that he might have an entire history with someone that ended before I’d even met him—a history that I wasn’t part of, and knew nothing about—was enough to make me insane.
If being in love felt like this all the time, then being in love kind of sucked.
I sighed out loud. Jealousy was exhausting; I was giving myself a headache.
“Did you have something you wanted to share with the class, Amy?” Madison said drily. They were all staring at me.
“I’m fine, thanks,” I said hastily.
“You said something about resting?” Madison asked hopefully.
“You can’t stay here for long,” Lang said. “If the Nome King realizes you’re here it could jeopardize everything I’ve worked for, and I’m not his only spy. The magic outside hides much of what goes on here, even from him, but it’s still only a matter of time before he realizes you’re in my palace.”
“If you don’t want our help, we’ll be on our way,” Nox said haughtily. “Clearly, the road brought us here for something else.”
I wanted to shake him. What the hell was he thinking? Nox was always strategic but it felt like he was acting on pure emotion here. We were in a completely different country where Lang was the only potential ally we’d encountered. Our magic wasn’t working and we had no idea why. We had no food, no water, no shelter, and no way to hide from the Nome King. Prickly and unstable as she was, Lang was the only chance we had to figure out why the road had brought us to Ev and what we needed to do next. Nox might have some bad history with her, but her magic was obviously powerful. We needed her more than she needed us, especially if we couldn’t fully access our own power. Pissing her off was completely the wrong strategy.
“What he means is, we don’t want to put you in any danger,” I said quickly. “But if we could rest for a while before we travel on, we’d be grateful.”
Nox opened his mouth again to speak and this time I did kick him. He shut it with a snap.
Lang looked at me warily. “One night only,” she said.
“That’s really generous,” I said. “Thank you.” One night wasn’t much time. But hopefully it would be enough for me to figure out how to convince her to help us. Or to let us help her. Which, I was guessing, she was smart enough to figure out was basically the same thing.
Lang beckoned Greta, and the beetle clicked forward, looming over us. Madison swallowed hard.
“Greta, show them to the guest chambers,” Lang said. She smiled thinly. “You’ll forgive me if I leave you now.” The air around her face shimmered and seemed to solidify. As I watched, the silver mask re-formed over her face. But her magic disappearing act didn’t stop there. The shimmer spread outward, enveloping her entire body. The kimono swirled around her.
And then she was gone.
Madison’s mouth was hanging open. “Whoa,” she said softly. “That was . . .”
“Magic, yeah,” I said.
“Can you do that?”
“I’ve never tried the mask part. But disappearing, sure.”
She stared at me. “Prove it.”
“Right now it’s complicated,” I began, but Greta was already clicking toward us. One of its—her—heads nodded toward a mirror-framed doorway, and she pointed with one long, segmented leg.
“Ugh,” Madison muttered under her breath, staying as far away from Greta as possible as the beetle led us out of the room and down a hall. I hoped Langwidere’s sinister servant wasn’t easily offended. If anything, Greta seemed almost to be smirking. If a multiheaded giant beetle whose faces all had completely different expressions could be said to smirk, anyway.
Greta stopped in another long hallway studded with doors. The decor was just as sinister here as it had been in the other parts of Lang’s palace. Bodiless heads grinned at us crazily from the walls, and where the hallway ended, a huge wooden guillotine with a polished silver blade sat where a normal person might have put an end table.
“Home, sweet home,” Nox said. Greta indicated three of the closed doors with another wave of her leg, and then clicked back the way we’d come. Madison shrank against the wall as the beetle passed her. I could’ve sworn Greta brushed up against her deliberately. I also could’ve sworn the giant beetle was laughing.
But despite the horrible murals in the hallway, the doors Greta had shown us opened up on small, plain bedrooms with blank walls and simple furnishings. I sank onto a bed with a sigh of relief, grateful to have escaped the eerie stares of Lang’s creepy wallpaper.
“Now we rest?” Madison asked hopefully, sitting down next to me. But Nox was pacing the floor, deep in thought, and I shook my head.
“You can if you want,” I said. “But we have to figure out what to do next—before Lang throws us back out there. Once the Nome King realizes we’re here we’re in danger. And I don’t know how long we have. The Wheelers seem to report to Lang, but if they give him information, too, or if he can sense when someone crosses the Deadly Desert . . .” I trailed off. As usual, there was so much we didn’t know. If Lang had found us, odds were, the Nome King wouldn’t be far behind.
But first, I wanted to know where we stood with Langwidere, and why she was so eager to kick us out. Which, I was pretty sure, had at least something to do with Nox. Possibly a lot. Possibly some stuff I would regret finding out. But if there was one thing I’d learned the hard way in Oz, knowing the truth was always better than being in the dark.