Except for at the very center of the map. The green blob was glowing with more intensity than any other spot, burning so bright that I had to squint to look at it.

I looked up at Glamora and then around the table, where Mombi, Gert, and the boy were all watching me expectantly.

“We need your help,” Mombi said.

“The magic is disappearing from Oz,” said Gert.

“It doesn’t look like it’s disappearing,” I said, gesturing toward the center of the map. “It’s just moving.”

“Correct,” Glamora said with a narrow-eyed smile. “And can you guess why it’s moving?”

I looked at her blankly, and then it dawned on me. I remembered the pit in Munchkin Country that my trailer had fallen into, and Glinda with her Munchkin machine. I remembered what Indigo had told me about magic mining.

“Someone’s taking it,” I said. Glamora arched a perfectly plucked eyebrow, waiting for me to figure out the rest. “It’s Dorothy,” I realized. “Dorothy’s stealing the magic.”

“Now you’ve got it,” Glamora said. “And losing its magic to Dorothy will mean the end of Oz. That’s why you’re here. We need you to stop her.”

I sat up straight. I didn’t know the first thing about magic. I didn’t know the first thing about Dorothy. “Me? I just got here. How am I supposed to stop anyone from doing anything?”

All eyes turned to me at once. The boy fixed me with an especially hard gaze. Finally Mombi spoke.

“Simple. You’re going to kill her.” She looked right at me and said, “Dorothy must die.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but all that came out was laughter. Everyone was surprised—no one more so than me. I tried to stifle it, but it had been so long since I’d found something funny, and soon I couldn’t control myself. It all came spilling out. The fight, getting suspended, my mother jetting off to her tornado party, the trailer lifting up off the ground and landing me here. I thought about who I was back in Kansas, and who I was in Oz. What had I done to make them think I was a potential teen girl assassin? I mean, I got suspended for not punching Madison Pendleton. I had maybe been responsible for Indigo’s death, but it was only because I’d been trying to save an innocent monkey’s life. Taking someone down off a stake in the ground was the opposite of taking someone out. This was madness.

Across the table, the witches just sat there staring at me like I was a crazy person while I laughed hysterically. The boy frowned so hard, his eyes turned into slits. Finally, after a few minutes, I managed to calm myself down and wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.

“You want me to kill Dorothy,” I said. It was so ridiculous that I didn’t even know where to start.

“That’s the idea,” Glamora said. The look in her eyes said she didn’t think it was very funny at all.

I couldn’t believe they were being serious. “Um, I think you’ve got the wrong person. Before I got here, the last fight I had was with a pregnant girl. And I lost.”

“I saw you back in the palace,” Mombi said. “In your cell. You managed to hold your own in there. I don’t see why you couldn’t do the same with Dorothy.”

I had to admit, that was true. But I was still sure that the knife Mombi had given me had done half the work. And anyway: “That was different,” I said. “That was magic, I’m sure of it. But I couldn’t kill someone. I wouldn’t even know how.”

“We’ll teach you, of course,” Glamora said. “Everyone has to start somewhere.”

They were acting like we were talking about learning how to sew. This is not what I signed on for. When I had met Indigo on the road, I was just planning on making my way to the Emerald City and maybe getting one of those cool moving tattoos. This was way heavier than anything I expected.

“Listen,” I said. “I have my own problems. I’m sorry about what’s happening to Oz—I really am—but I don’t see what you think I can do about it. I’m not even from here.” I wasn’t from here. But even as I said it, a little part of me couldn’t help but feel that because of Indigo, because of Ollie, because of my time in the cell . . . I was linked to Oz somehow.

Glamora cocked her head. “Dorothy’s not from here either,” she said. “And look what she’s done with the place.”

Gert drove her point home. “It’s precisely because you are not from here that we think you can do this. You’re from the same place as her. You know how her mind works. You understand her.”

I wasn’t from here. I was from Kansas. Just like Dorothy. I’d come to Oz on a tornado. Dorothy had changed their world once, and now they expected me to help them change it back.

“People from the Other Place have always had a special place in ours,” Gert said. “The Wizard. Dorothy. Now you. We don’t know what power it was that brought you to Oz, but we know that if you’re here, it must be because you have a role to play. We want to make sure it’s the right role.”

I shivered. The story was true. The Wizard of Oz had been real. Dorothy Gale had really been swept up by a tornado and brought to the Land of Oz. True, what I was living now didn’t seem like the kind of storybook tale I was used to. But it didn’t mean they didn’t exist.

For the first time, the boy spoke up. His voice was low and gruff.

“Gert, Glamora, and Mombi believe that you are our only hope.” He sounded like he wasn’t so sure about that. “My job is to train you.”