Free The Wicked Will Rise by Danielle Paige

appeared to be magical silly string.
    Well, that makes it sound kind of lame. It wasn’t lame. It was literally the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. So beautiful that I had to try to touch it: I just reached out in front of me and tried to grasp one of the stray filaments floating randomly in theair. It swayed a little, but it didn’t really move, and my fingers passed right through it. When I tried to grab a fistful of them, I came up empty. But I found that if I sort of brushed my fingers against them, they responded to my touch as long as I didn’t push too hard. And if I was patient enough, I was able to move them around.
    It was weird and very cool, but I didn’t really see the point until I noticed that the wayward strings of magic that had seemed to be floating randomly through the air—the ones I’d been playing with—were actually slowly gravitating toward something. And that something was Ozma.
    They were flowing into her, sort of, but they were also twisting around her body, which was the brightest thing in the whole room. When I looked closely, I saw that she was just one big knot of magic.
    And what do you do with knots? Well, duh. You untie them.
    I didn’t want to hurt her. I just wanted to see what would happen. And so I hovered my fingers around Ozma, trying to see if I could get the jumbled lines of magic to untangle themselves.
    At first, it seemed like it wasn’t doing anything, but after a few minutes, I noticed that one tiny thread was now twisting out from her elbow, and I managed to catch it on my finger, and I tugged on it, feeling just the slightest bit of give.
    I bit my lip in concentration, careful not to pull too hard. And, just like I was tugging on a loose string on an old sweater from the thrift store, Ozma began to unravel.
    No—it wasn’t her that was unraveling, exactly. It was morelike I was unraveling some kind of spell. Meanwhile, Ozma herself was changing shape. She was getting bigger. Taller. Her shoulders broadened into a man’s. Well, a boy’s, I guess. And I could tell from his slouch and the tilt of his head that it was a boy I knew.
    â€œPete,” I muttered under my breath.
    As soon as I spoke, it all slipped away. I was back in the real world, Ozma was gone, and Pete was standing right in front of me, wide-eyed in surprise. He took a step backward toward the door and held up his hands, looking as guilty and sheepish as someone who has just been caught shoplifting a Hostess Twinkie from the Piggly Wiggly.
    â€œUm, hey?” he said. “So, uh, that was pretty weird, huh?” He scanned me up and down. “Nice outfit,” he said, grinning.
    I didn’t know what to think. All I knew was that Pete had played me one too many times already, even if I didn’t know why, and I wasn’t going to let him do it again.
    Still, I couldn’t help it if I was just a little bit happy to see him. Because it was Pete, who had saved my life about five minutes after I’d first arrived in Oz. Pete, who had kept me from going crazy when I’d been trapped in Dorothy’s dungeons. Pete, who had been the only person I could talk to when I had been posing as a servant in the Emerald Palace.
    â€œForget the outfit,” I said shortly. I took a step back and felt a sizzle of heat in my palm as my knife appeared without me even calling for it. “I think it’s time for you to do some talking.”
    He brushed his dark hair from his green eyes. The sameexact eyes that belonged to Ozma. He looked away and took a deep breath. When our eyes met again, I suddenly saw a sadness in him that I recognized from somewhere. “It’s kind of a long story,” he said. “Don’t we have better things to talk about?”
    â€œDude,” I said. I took a step toward him, and I saw him glance at my knife. I didn’t want to fight him, but I would, if it came to it. “I’ve known you