Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige Page B

about her since I’d come to Oz, but now I couldn’t stop wondering whether she had made it through the tornado, about whether she was searching for me or whether she was laid up somewhere, drunk or stoned or whatever else.
    If there was even a chance she was out there, looking for me or hoping I’d make it home okay, then I couldn’t give up. I’d made a promise to myself that I’d do anything to help Ollie and his family, thinking that my mother was beyond my help—but now I realized that, no matter how far away my mother was, no matter how far gone she might be, I would always feel a sense of obligation to her.
    Then again, it’s not like I was in much of a position to help anyone right now. Honestly, I could use a little help myself.
    After two or three days—I think, but who knew?—Pete came to me again.
    “I don’t have long,” he said, stepping through the door. His voice was strained with uncharacteristic panic. “Your trial is tomorrow,” he said. “The news is all over the palace.”
    I sat up in bed with a start. I had been down here so long now that I’d nearly forgotten I had a trial coming up at all. The wild look in Pete’s eyes reminded me that, as bad as things were, they could still get worse.
    “What exactly does a trial entail?” I asked, still holding out some irrational hope that maybe I could be exonerated.
    He shook his head and looked down at his hands.
    “Just tell me,” I said. “Maybe there’s some trick to it. Things like that always work in fairy tales.”
    “Do you honestly think this is a fairy tale?” Pete asked.
    “Just tell me what to expect.”
    He sighed, finally relenting. “Her Royal Highness’s kangaroo court. It’s a total joke,” he said. “I think the only reason she bothers with trials at all is because she likes wearing the big white wig. Once you go to trial, you’re already as good as guilty. I don’t think there’s ever been a not-guilty verdict as long as the court’s been in existence.”
    In the face of my impending Fate Worse Than Death sentence, I found that I was surprisingly calm. Maybe it just didn’t seem real.
    “So what do I do?” I asked.
    Pete looked at his hands. He tousled his hair, and then looked back at me in sheepish apology. “We could make a break for it,” he said. “Maybe with two of us, we could fight our way past the guards.”
    We both knew what a dumb idea it was. “That will just get us both killed,” I said. “What’s the point of that?”
    “Yeah,” he said. “I know.”
    “What about magic? I mean, this is Oz, right? Isn’t there some spell that would work? It doesn’t even have to be a good one.”
    He shook his head. “I never learned to do magic,” he said. “I was never good at it, and no one ever thought it was important for a gardener to learn, especially once Dorothy made it illegal for anyone except her and her friends to practice it. I wouldn’t even be able to cast a simple extinguishing spell without it setting off the magical alarms and going on trial myself.”
    “What about someone else? Do you know anyone who would give you, like, some kind of mystical trinket or something? I mean, I don’t know . . .”
    “I thought of that. I talked to every illegal practitioner I could think of and none of them will help. It’s too risky. Anyway, I doubt anything like that would work down here. There are anti-magic wards everywhere in the dungeons. You’d have to be really powerful to break through them. Like, Glinda powerful.”
    “Some magic shoes would really come in handy right about now, huh?” I said.
    “Seriously. Maybe . . .” He stopped himself.
    “Maybe what?”
    “It’s nothing. It’s just—there might be one more person who . . .”
    “Who?” I asked eagerly.
    “No,” he said. “It would never . . .”
    “Who?”
    He spoke with finality this time. “No. It won’t ever work.”
    “Please,” I said. “Whatever you can do. Please just try.”
    Pete nodded.