“Taavi?” I ask, unsure if I should be putting weight on my leg. When he doesn’t stir, I grit my teeth and try again, more forcefully this time. “Toto,” I snap, and those prick ears of his swivel in my direction.
Lazily, the dog lifts his head and yawns before standing up and stretching the way he used to do every morning when my dad would call him out of the living room for his walk.
“Toto?” the girl asks, looking aghast as she puts a hand to her chest, right over that gold skeleton key of hers. “You call your guardian slave?” I ignore her as I pat the bed, and Taavi jumps up to join me, curling up near the pillows and panting heavily.
“Are you okay?” I lean forward and he licks my face happily, like he didn’t just shift into a giant faerie dog and tussle with the bitch sitting at the end of my bed. “Dude, you’re freaking me out. Do your shifting thing for me.”
“I’m afraid Taavi won’t be able to utilize his abilities for the time being,” the girl says, sliding off the end of the bed. Her green hair is in pigtails and when she smiles, her teeth are green, too.
Must be these awful fucking glasses.
I bare my own teeth.
The expression only makes the girl laugh.
“You may call me Tuala,” she says, tilting her head to one side and smiling at me. “Make yourself perfectly at home, and if you wish for anything, ring the bell. Dorothy will send for you tomorrow morning.”
“What have you done to Taavi?” I demand, forcing myself to stand up, even though the wound on my thigh throbs in protest. My hands are curled into fists by my sides, but that crackling energy I’ve been feeling in my fingertips over the past few days is gone.
I feel oddly powerless, almost naked, without it.
“Until we can be assured that the two of you will act with civility in the Emerald Court, we’ve had to take some precautions. Surely you can understand our need for caution?”
“What have you done with Stryker’s body?” I ask, feeling my body quiver with barely suppressed rage. As nice as this room is, as friendly as this girl—Twah-luh—seems to be, I will never forget that sight of Stryker’s head exploding into red mist.
“Stryker, the Vain and Arrogant?” she queries innocently, her dress made up of emerald green stripes and paler green stripes that I imagine would be white without the strange glasses locked onto my head. “You need not concern yourself with him. Rest well, and tomorrow you will be given the honor of meeting with Dorothy, the Small and Meek, herself. It is an honor given to few wizards.”
Tuala heads for the double doors at the far end of the room. There’s a wild, angry part of me that wants to pick up the green vase with the green flowers from my bedside table and smash her over the head with it. But at least the logical bit of my brain chimes in to remind me that this girl can turn into a giant dog with fangs as long as my fingers.
Instead, I wait for her to leave the room before I turn to Taavi. He sits patiently on the bed, black triangular ears perked up on the top of his head. His pink tongue lolls as he watches me expectantly, awaiting command.
“You might not be able to shift, but can you at least answer a question of mine? Like say, if I asked you to bark three times to let me know you understand me, could you do that?” Taavi sits up, like he can sense that I’m asking something, but doesn’t know how to respond.
I grit my teeth, but I don’t know enough about this world to puzzle my way through this. Maybe, if I’d spent more time in the last few days taking everything seriously instead of blaming it all on a coma, I’d be a bit more up to speed.
My heart begins to race, and I feel beads of sweat pooling on my lower back. I’m still not over the shock I felt when that plant bit me, when I bled, when it hurt.
Glancing down at my arm, I see that the wounds are gone, healed over without a trace. Frowning, I reach down and hike up the emerald green satin nightgown that I’ve been dressed in, noticing as I do that I’m still wearing the silver shoes.
Underneath the gown, there are green (probably white without the glasses) bandages on my thigh, covering up the bullet wound. Slowly, carefully, I peel them off and gape at what’s left of the injury. There’s a shallow pool of red with some shiny pink scar tissue around the edges, but nothing more. It looks like a scraped knee after a mild fall off a bike.
