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“What do you mean, you can’t?” She rushes around the sofa, charges toward me. “Bring him back!”

“He’s been gone an hour. There is no coming back from that.”

“Bring him back!”

The house shudders, the crystal chandelier rattling above us.

“I can’t,” I tell her again, and she reaches forward and slaps me.

My head turns from the force. Blood is a tang on my tongue.

There is a buzzing in my skull that will not go away.

I should have been able to save him.

Why couldn’t I?

I should have been powerful enough.

But I wasn’t.

And if I wasn’t powerful enough to save Gabriel, I’m not powerful enough to save myself.

I will change that.

Glinda goes to the sofa and scoops Gabriel up in her arms. “Darling, I just got you back. You can’t leave me. Come back to me.” She gives his cheek a light tap. Then another. “Gabriel.” Her voice wobbles. “Baby, come back to me.”

I turn and walk away.

“Don’t you dare leave me! Bring him back!”

I make it to the foyer.

“Who did this?” she asks.

I cannot be absolved of this guilt. And yet I am desperate to shed it.

I threw the axe. But I did not hit the target.

“Dorothy,” I say. “It was Dorothy Gale.”

Glinda screams and the ground trembles beneath me.

I find Silas easily. He’s in a run-down tavern on the outskirts of the Hollow getting drunk on ozrum. In the crook of his arm, a bead of blood wells from a pinprick.

“What do you want?” he asks.

A bartender cleans glasses behind the counter. A gramophone plays music from the corner, but the record is scratchy and tinny.

I notice Silas’s back is carrying no weapon.

“Where is your axe?”

“I gave it away.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t need it anymore.”