“We need water. You think that pretty little creek out there is safe to drink from?”
“Nothing in Oz is safe,” Toto says, and I turn around, a slice of bread in one hand, a buttery knife in the other. He watches me carefully before standing up and running his fingers through his ebony hair. Underneath, I see a hint of brown, a mimicry of the pattern he had on his fur. “But you’re right: we’ll need water if we want to reach the Emerald City. I’ll get it.”
Toto starts toward the door, and I move to block him, noticing as I do that he’s still very much wearing his leather collar and tags. It looks … weirdly good on him. At the very least, I was able to find him some jeans to put on. They were in Aunt Em’s darning chest, a client’s jeans. She earns quite a bit of money fixing up other people’s clothes. Of course, Henry keeps all the money for himself and drinks it away, but that’s neither here nor there at the moment.
“You’re not going out there,” I say, and Toto stops where he is, turning to face me. His expression is tight, equal parts pained and frustrated. “So sit down and stay here.”
Without skipping a beat, he sits his ass on the floor.
Like a dog.
My brow goes up. Huh.
“This is so not happening to me,” I mumble again, still convinced that I’m in a coma of some sort. I can’t stop thinking of all the movies I’ve seen, the ones where the main character’s in a coma, but has to overcome obstacles in their own mind in order to wake up.
I’m thoroughly convinced at this point that I need to find Dorothy. Think of the symbolism there? A lost little girl, finding her way home? Learning life lessons along the way? Plus … Seattle is known as the Emerald City, and here I am trying to find my way there?
Yep, this Emerald City thing is happening.
Toto crosses his muscular arms over his chest and sighs, like he’s thoroughly frustrated with me.
“Mistress,” he begins, in an almost placating sort of tone. I hold up a hand to cut him off.
“No. Don’t call me mistress. It’s too creepy, what with you all … muscled up and sexy …” My face squinches up, and I cringe at the idea that this is my mind’s interpretation of my own dog. How weird is that? I’ve turned my pet into the perfect man. What sort of psychological issues do you think that harkens to?
“Sexy?” Toto asks, his voice strained. He looks away, toward the open front door (to be fair, it’s only hanging on by one hinge, and even that’s a stretch), like he’s ashamed or something. “You can’t find me sexy, Ozora.”
“’Kay, well, this is my hallucination, so I can do whatever I want. Here.” I move over to him and hold out the slice of bread. “Eat this, I’ll get us some water, and then we’ll see if we can’t figure out this bullet wound of yours.”
“Thank you for the bread, but there’s no need for you to worry about my wound,” Toto says, glancing down at the bloodied hole in his chest like it’s an inconvenience at most.
“Uh, you were shot,” I snap sarcastically, rolling my eyes and wiping butter on my jeans. Not that it matters: they’re crusted with dried blood. I pull my phone from my back pocket and stare at it for the hundredth time. It’s still on, and it’s got plenty of power, but there’s no signal. No Wi-fi. Ugh.
“My body will heal itself if given time.” Toto takes a bite of the bread, and then pauses to look down at his wound again. As we both watch, the bullet pushes itself out of his skin and pings across the rugged wooden floorboards of the old house. “Much better,” he says, reaching up to rub at the wound. “The skin should start knitting together shortly.” He polishes off the bread while I stand there slack-jawed. My mind is a weird, weird place, isn’t it? I mean, where am I coming up with this crap? “Do I have permission to stand and get water?” He looks up at me with those all-too familiar brown eyes of his.
“Permission?” I ask, and when I see that he’s damn serious about not getting up without it, I add, “sure, yeah, whatever.” Toto rises to his feet and heads for the door with me following along behind him. “So, you called that Good Witch guy, Bain, right?” Toto’s lips tighten into a thin line, and his eyes narrow to slits. “You two know each other?”
“You could say that,” Toto replies smoothly, moving over to the old wood chest that Uncle Henry nailed to the side of the house, to keep teenagers from stealing his tools. Toto reaches down, grabs hold of the lock, and pulls. It shouldn’t surprise me when he snaps the whole thing right off the chest and tosses it aside, but it does. I can tell myself I’m in a coma all I want, but this feels real. Reality is the one nightmare you can’t wake up from, isn’t it?
“Oh, come on, that’s a platitude. I could say that? So, do you know the guy or not? I feel like I deserve an answer, considering he just tounged me and all. Do you people not know the meaning of consent?”
Toto grits his teeth as he hefts a metal bucket out of the wooden chest, turning and heading across the green grass and through the colorful field of flowers to the edge of the stream. On the other side of the river, strange birds watch us from the shadowed foliage.
I take a step forward toward the water, and Toto throws up an arm to stop me.
“Wait,” he growls out, lifting his nose in the air and sniffing. That frown settles more deeply into his face as he glances right then left. “I smell a kelpie.”
“A kelpie?” I ask, thinking of my big brother’s Dungeons and Dragons sessions in the attic. “That’s, like, a faerie horse that eats people, isn’t it?”
“That’s exactly what it is,” Toto says, shoving me back violently. I pinwheel and land on my ass in the field of rainbow tulips as he swings the metal bucket as hard as he can, smashing it into the ghostly white face of a horse that I swear to god wasn’t there two seconds ago.
My eyes widen as the horse rears back, snarling with rage, its razor-sharp teeth glistening in a stray shaft of sunlight. The colorful birds scatter, screaming out their warning calls as Toto tosses the bucket aside and steps back.
“Ozora, your magic!” he calls out, turning to look at me over his shoulder. “Bless me with it.”
“Bless … you …” I start, and then the memory of that douchebag Bain kissing me comes to mind. Well … I’ve always wanted to be the heroine in my own story, right? I most definitely wasn’t, when my family was drowning in an ice-cold lake. Shoving up to my feet, I lunge toward Toto, grabbing onto either side of his face. One of his strong arms wraps my waist as I press my palms against his cheeks and kiss him hard.
I’m not expecting the wild surge of power that rises between us, making my skin burn with heat, my tongue sliding between his full lips. Toto is the first to pull away, pushing me back at the same time that he swings around to face the kelpie.
It’s dancing across the top of the water. No joke. The horse with the shark teeth is prancing over the surface of the creek, leaving ripples in its wake. It tosses its mane of slimy green kelp and snorts in frustration, pawing at the water with a sharp hoof.
There’s this energy crackling around us, like the air’s infused with electricity, a cool breeze picking up where there was none before, stirring the tops of the trees. I look up as the sky darkens, gray clouds sliding across the sun to block out its light.