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Toto glances at him, her body still shaking as she tries to calm herself.

"We couldn't have known," Granger says, looking around the room. "Vera is insane."

"We knew that much," Leo snipes, storming from the room.

Toto throws his retreating back a curious look.

I follow him down the hall, not wanting to let anyone out of my sight. Granger will take care of Toto, but Leo's fear makes him hot-headed and unpredictable.

When I reach his bedroom, Leo is throwing things into a small backpack.

"You've got to be joking!" I grab for the pack.

He tugs it back from me angrily.

I throw my arms in the air, exasperated. "What's your plan? You going to hunt her down? Give her the chance to do to you what she's done to God knows how many others?"

"We can't sit around waiting for something to happen," Leo snarls.

"Hell no!" Granger appears in the doorway.

Leo closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. "Granger—"

"You suddenly want to confront her?" Granger demands. "You’re the one who’s stopped us from doing precisely that for years."

I expected Leo to argue, but instead he nods. "I'm tired of being scared." He slams the door of his dresser closed. "It's time I found some courage, don't you think?"

"This is ridiculous," Granger scoffs, looking at me for support and finding me conflicted.

"Nick, she would love for us to leave Oz so we're easy prey. We're walking right into her trap."

"Yes. We are." Leo slings his backpack over one shoulder. "But Fable Forest is the only way to get to Screaming Woods. And that's where we'll find the answers we're looking for."

"What about Dottie?" I demand. "She's just been kidnapped, and we haven't even seen her. I'm not leaving her when she needs us."

Leo's expression tightens. "You heard Pullier. She's under Boncharme protection. She's safer there than she would be with us, especially if Vera's coming after us."

I hate that he's right. I want to see for myself that Dottie’s okay, but if Vera really is targeting us, staying here could put Dottie in danger all over again.

I frown. "Screaming Woods?"

I’ve made furniture for a few of the residents over the years, though getting them clearance to enter Oz and collect their pieces was such a headache that I haven’t had many orders from there.

As far as I know, Screaming Woods used to be an ordinary human town until something happened one Halloween night and turned the residents into monsters. I’ve heard plenty of whispers about what happened, but never the full story.

Either way, I have no idea how anyone there can help us stop her.

And trekking into Fable Forest is dangerous. The place runs on fairy-tale magic—old, unpredictable, and notoriously unstable. People there live out stories that have a habit of taking on lives of their own, and messing around with that kind of magic is asking for trouble.

"Why there?" Granger asks, glancing at Leo before looking back at me.

"I don't know." Leo shakes his head, his expression painfully familiar. "I remember Vera mentioning it once, and I can't shake the feeling that whatever she's hiding from us started there."

The truth is, we don't remember anything from before we arrived in Oz. Everything before Dottie came into our lives exists in scattered pieces, with whole stretches simply gone.

Leo was the first of us to figure out that Vera was messing with our memories. After that, he started writing down as much as he could remember, hoping that if he kept a record, we might eventually be able to piece together what she'd taken from us.

I've looked over his notes more times than I can count. Some of what he wrote stirs fuzzy fragments of memory, but most of it feels like I’m reading about someone else’s life.