Page 80 of Search for the Lost

“I heard that.” The voice emanating from Crispin’s pocket sounded annoyed.

“No, not here, in this space.” Crispin looked around. “Why Kansas? Why did the Red Dukes bring her here?” He had an idea about that, but he needed to flesh it out. “Leo, tell me about Dorothy.”

Leo cocked his head. “Dorothy Zbornak, from Golden Girls?”

Crispin had no idea who that was. Were some Earth women actually golden? That, at least, would be interesting. “No. Dorothy from the Oz story.”

“Ah.” Leo’s brow screwed up in thought. “Dorothy Gale was a little girl from Kansas who gets caught up in a tornado and ends up in the magical land of Oz.”

Crispin nodded. He remembered that much. “Then what?”

“Hmmm. She meets a trio of unlikely companions, and they travel the countryside to the Emerald City to find the Wizard to help Dorothy get home. He sends them on a quest to kill the Wicked Witch of the West after she’d already dispatched the Wicked Witch of the East with her house⁠—”

“Yes, I remember that too.” Rather sloppy plotline, that. Killing someone with a house? “And then?”

Leo’s eyes went wide. “Dorothy was a serial killer! I never realized that as a kid.” He looked haunted.

“Cereal killer?” Aspin frowned. “Who goes around killing cereal?”

“Serial. With an ‘s,’” said Crispin. He and Leo had gotten through a couple seasons of the original Dexter together, so Crispin was familiar with the concept. When Aspin shot him a blank look, he just shook his head. “It’s not important. Leo, what happened then?”

“The Wizard took off in this big balloon without her. And she… she went home.” His eyebrows shot up. “We… we went to Oz. Ous. And we met three companions, Dietrich, Cypher, and Aspin. Hey, where is Dietrich?”

Crispin shrugged. “I think we lost him back at the tavern.”

No big loss. “Anyhow, we went to see a wizard. Well, two of them, actually. And we even have our little dog, Toto.” He looked pointedly at Minkis.

The boy paused in his rummaging through the tumbled mass of ancient wood to glare at Leo. “Squirrel. Not dog, Chaos Man. Squirrel.” If he’d still had his tail, Crispin was sure it would have been twitching back and forth in annoyance.

Leo laughed. “Fine furry-tailed companion, then.” He turned to Crispin. “Don’t you see? We’re on the Oz quest!”

Crispin nodded in assent. He’d suspected as much. Earth One, in addition to exporting the most excellent chocolates, seemed to be a magical hub of sorts for the Connected Worlds’ stories, and they’d somehow fallen into one of them. Another SIV? “So what part have we missed?”

Leo went pale. “We have to go to Kansas to kill the witch. I mean, technically they killed her in Oz—I mean Ous?—but we’re not going back there.”

Aspin rubbed his chin. “So who’s the witch?”

No one had a good answer for that one.

“What are you all doing— Oh my god, what have you done?” A young man in a blue shirt with a shiny gold badge appeared out of the darkness, holding a flashlight that he played over the wreckage. “They are so gonna fire me for this.”

All four mice-WOLFs hissed at him from Leo’s shirt pocket.

Aspin pointed toward the bright red exit sign. “Run!”

28

Leopold

Leo was the slowest of their group as they bolted through the nighttime streets of Kansas City, and also the first to stop, gasping for breath. He blamed the WOLF-mice, which were in his pocket and weighing him down, not to mention his burden of guilt over destroying the Arabia.

Crispin, bless him, didn’t make a big deal of Leo’s lack of athleticism. In fact, he stopped too, and yelled for everyone else to gather ’round.

“But they’re going to be chasing us for destroying their boat.” Aspin looked nervously in the direction they’d come from.

“Nobody’s chasing us,” Crispin assured him. “And Leo’s right—we need to pause, get our bearings, and make a plan.”

Leo hadn’t been thinking of either of those goals but did appreciate Crispin giving him credit. “Yeah, KC’s a big city. Even the Kansas side’s big enough. And if the gang of us runs around the streets at night, we’re going to look pretty suspicious. Someone will call the cops.” He’d had the police called on him more than once when he was innocent of wrongdoing but didn’t look like it, generally when his knack for disaster had kicked in heavily. Luckily, the police had never given him anything stronger than a lecture and a warning, but he had no confidence he’d be so fortunate this time. None of them even had ID, and if the cops started asking questions, they were going to get some really weird answers.