by Eva Chase
“I should go look for her,” I said. If she even wanted to see me right now. Someone should be looking out for her.
I could chase down Chess first, tell him to keep an eye out. She wouldn’t have any reason to avoid him.
“Yeah, you probably should,” Doria said. “And—I think you should know, because I don’t like sneaking around on you… I’m going to the big meeting near the Tower this afternoon. There’s no way the White Knight is going to let me in on the run to the palace for the watch tomorrow, but if I can help somehow from the sidelines, I’ll take whatever role the Spades will give me.”
She braced herself as if she expected further argument. And a protest did instinctively spring into my throat. The wrenching of my resistance to the idea echoed the emotions that had gripped me when I’d lashed out at Lyssa. I stopped myself, absorbing the shape of that discomfort.
Maybe I shouldn’t be accusing other people of running from the fight when that was all I’d been doing for the past twelve years. This wasn’t even Lyssa’s world. It was mine. What had I done in all that time to help us toward freedom?
How could I ask more of her than I was willing to ask of myself?
“Where is that meeting?” I asked, the question dragging on the way out. “And when?”
Doria eyed me suspiciously. “I don’t need a babysitter, Dad.”
“I wouldn’t go to chaperone you,” I said. “I was simply thinking… I might want to find out how I can pitch in.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lyssa
The betrayal in Hatter’s eyes and the accusations he’d made dogged me through the city. I couldn’t walk quite fast enough to leave them behind.
I rambled beyond the buildings and out to the pond, peered into its salty depths until the restless tangle of my emotions urged me on again, and wandered farther until I reached the forest of giant mushrooms. The murmurs and laughter of the workers somewhere beyond my view made my skin prickle. I might be able to blend in while I was in the city, but no one else was walking this road. And even if Theo hadn’t warned me, I wouldn’t have wanted to venture all the way out to the bizarre hills where that jabberwock thing had come charging by.
I retraced my steps to the city and set off on a meandering path through the streets. Without any conscious direction, my feet carried me to the place in Wonderland I’d come closest to pure joy. I looked up and found myself staring at the whirling walls of the Caterpillar’s Club.
It was only mid-afternoon, the sun still beaming over the city, and the club gleamed with swirls of silver and gold. Too early for dancing, I thought, but as I was about to turn away, a couple of women—one an upright goat in a sundress and the other human-shaped other than her mink-like head—walked right up to the spinning building and blinked out of view into its depths.
The responsible thing would be… would be… I didn’t really know. Hatter hadn’t wanted my apologies. Theo didn’t need me for his plan until tomorrow. He’d told me to enjoy Wonderland as much as I could until then.
Fuck responsible, Melody would have said.
I hesitated for only a second, and then I strode in after the Wonderlanders, picturing the doorway that had opened up for me before.
As my feet hit the club’s uneven floor, a wave of calm swept over me. The vast room was hazily lit with softly pulsing lights that filled the space with a turquoise glow, as if I’d stepped into a vast tropical aquarium.
Clusters of Wonderlanders lolled together in the dips in the floor. Some of them chattered in soft yet bright voices. Others blew streams of colored smoke into the air from slender pipes. Over near the wall, a young man had draped himself against the side of a rise while his two companions, a woman and another man, kissed their way down either side of his naked chest.
I guessed Caterpillar’s club operated all through the day too.
One of the clusters of smokers had noted my arrival. “A Dreamer!” one woman murmured to the others in a delighted tone.
The man next to her waved me over. “Come join us, Dreamer. Have a pipe and savor Wonderland.”
They beamed at me so welcomingly that I let myself walk over. They didn’t look remotely suspicious about my being here. As long as I kept my mouth shut about how exactly I’d found myself in Wonderland, why shouldn’t I hang out with them while I figured out what to do next?
I hunkered down on the slope near them. One of the Wonderlanders made a beckoning gesture in the air, and a server appeared with one of those narrow pipes on a platter. He bent down to offer it to me.
“Um, I don’t know,” I said.
“Go on, go on,” the woman who’d identified me as a Dreamer said with a languid motion of her hand. “It’ll just make you dream a little more.”
Chess had warned me about the mushrooms. He hasn’t said anything about pipes being a problem. I took it off the platter, my fingers slipping over the warm clay surface. Tentatively, I raised the end to my lips.
The smoke tickled into my lungs and through my nerves like a drift of the softest snow, fluffy and sparkling, with just a slight nip of cold. It numbed the sharp edges of the memories that had been hounding me.
“That—that’s nice,” I said, and the whole group twittered. Their laughter sounded pleased rather than mocking. I inhaled another gulp of pipe-smoke and relaxed against the floor with a smile.
Their conversation, nothingness about the lights overhead and the shapes they could see in the smoke, flowed around me. Another server ambled by with little twinkling glasses, and I took one of those because everyone else did. The glittering liquid streamed down my throat with a sweet burn and filled my chest with giddy bubbles to dance amid the snow.
I wanted another one of those. I wanted to just lie here forever. There was nothing inside me or out right now that could possibly hurt me.
A new woman joined our pocket with a tray of paints and brushes. My companions oohed and ahhed. Soon the whole dip in the floor was dappled with looping vines and bushy ferns. I painted a ring of blooming flowers with delicate strokes. The man who’d invited me over in the first place dabbed petals along my arm.
The lights started to dim. Music drifted through the room, quietly at first and then rising as more people streamed into the club. A woman with a fox’s head tugged me to my feet and spun around with me.
The bubbles from the drink coursed up from my chest into my head. I laughed and whirled away into the growing crowd of dancers.
The music caught me like it had before. I swayed and bobbed across the undulating floor under the strobe lights. Just a speck tossed on a vast sea, no one to answer to but myself.
A server walked by with a platter of mushroom slices. My hand reached out to pluck one up. Chess had warned against them on the night I’d needed to make my way home. I wasn’t going anywhere tonight. It didn’t matter whether I kept my head clear.
I popped the slice into my mouth and bit down.
The cloying earthy flavor burst over my tongue. I swallowed automatically. A quivering shot through my limbs, my stomach lurched, and I was abruptly sure I’d made a bad decision. My spine was twanging and my head—my head was coming right up off of my body, peering down over the dancers I’d been in the midst of a moment ago. I groped at my neck—my neck that was stretching already twice its previous length, and—
“Lyssa.” Solid hands yanked me down. Chess grasped my shoulders, holding me beneath the heads of the crowd, his blue eyes wide. “What did you eat?” he asked in the most serious and urgent voice I’d ever heard him use.
I coughed and spat out the bits I hadn’t swallowed. “Mushroom,” I mumbled. The words had to travel so far up my still lengthening throat to my mouth.
Chess muttered something that sounded like a curse and tugged me through the crowd, keeping me low and close to his broad body. He sat me against the wall. My head listed to the side on my extended neck. My legs splayed out on either side of me as ungainly as a giraffe’s.
“Wait here,” Chess
said. “And try to look small.”
I might have laughed if I hadn’t felt so bewildered and out of control. I tucked myself as close to the wall as I could get and arched my neck to hold my head in my hands, willing the shadows to hide me. My eyes closed. The strobe lights flashed against my eyelids.
Then Chess was back, a warm presence at my side and a hand on my shoulder, slipping what felt like another sliver of mushroom into my hand.
“Eat that,” he said by my ear. “A bit at a time. We don’t want to go too far in the opposite direction.”
I was too full of bright snow, giddy bubbles, and terror to totally make sense of that, but he sounded like he knew what he was talking about, so I did what he said. The moment I’d gulped the first chunk, my legs and my neck began to contract. I stiffened, waiting out the sensation, and then nibbled some more when my body hadn’t quite returned to its usual state. After a couple more tiny bites, everything seemed to be where it should be.
“Can you walk?” Chess asked.
I thought I could, but when I tried to get to my feet, my legs wobbled under me. My head was spinning. Chess made an apprehensive sound and scooped me right into his well-muscled arms.
He tipped me against his chest and strode around the edge of the room to the exit. I grasped the smooth fabric of his shirt, inhaling the heady scent that rose off his skin, like licorice and red wine. So delicious my tipsy mind started wondering what he tasted like.
We slipped out of the club. Chess stopped somewhere dark and quiet amid the trees. He set me down on a log and sat next to me, close enough that I could lean on him if I needed to. I tried not to.
“What was that?” I said, rubbing my forehead, which thankfully was now no farther away from the rest of me than usual. “What happened to me?”
Chess’s grin was tight. “The mushrooms make us feel as if we’re growing larger or smaller. It appears that they affect Otherlanders in a more literal way. At least the Otherlanders who are fully here and not just dreaming their way in.” He gave my hair a playful tug. “It’s a good thing you grabbed the larger kind and not the smaller kind, or I might not have spotted you at all. Trampled by Clubbers—not the way I’d want to go.”
“No,” I said, and swayed.
Chess caught me with his arm around my back. He studied my face. “What else did you have, before the mushroom?”
“A very nice pipe,” I informed him. “And a sparkly drink. That was also very nice. Maybe I had two of those. I don’t totally remember.” I cocked my head in thought and got dizzy all over again.
“I think you’d better have some of this, then.” He produced a brass flask from his pocket, unscrewed the lid, and offered it to me.
I took a gulp and then another. The cool liquid inside coated my throat and stomach, and the snowy bubbly feeling eased off just a little. I peered at Chess over the top of the flask.
“Why are you so nice to me?”
He arched an eyebrow, his grin loosening a little. “Why shouldn’t I be? Don’t you think you deserve nice things, lovely?”
“Hatter doesn’t think I do,” I muttered, and tipped the flask to my lips again.
Chess chuckled. “I’d imagine the problem is likely more that Hatter doesn’t believe he deserves nice things. Perhaps it’s the pressure of all those hats weighing down on him over time.”
“What about you?” I asked. As the fog in my head retreated, it occurred to me that I’d had reasons to believe Chess might not be so nice after all. “You like the Diamonds.”
Chess’s jaw tensed. “What?”
“You were talking to that Diamond today. Doria said she was… the Duchess.” I waggled the flask at him accusingly. “You said you didn’t like them anymore.”
“Oh, Lyssa.” He nudged the flask back toward my mouth. “Finish that, and I’ll explain.”
I might not have accepted that answer, except whatever he’d given me, it was easing me down from the high I’d barely realized I was on with each passing second. When I’d drained the flask and handed it back to him, my thoughts were still a bit jumbled, but I could connect one to the next without much trouble.
The gnawing in my chest had come back too. I guessed I’d just have to live with that.
“The Duchess?” I prompted.
Chess tucked the flask away and leaned his elbows onto his knees, gazing into the night. “I told you I used to visit the Diamonds in the palace. I know her from then. The Queen’s people have noticed a few minor oddities around town, and she thought that I might have an idea why. That she might be able to coax something out of me more easily than the guards with their rods and their swords. She was wrong.”
“Why did you talk to her at all?” I asked, remembering how he’d stepped out of the air to meet her on the street. “You could have just avoided her.”
“The Duchess can be very tenacious when it comes to getting her way,” he said. “I thought it better to give her enough of an appearance to satisfy her and see her on her way than to leave her wandering our city all day.”
His tone was casual, but there was still something defensive in his stance. Because I’d implicitly questioned his loyalty? If he’d wanted to hurt the Spades’ cause somehow, all he’d have needed to do was not step in just now in the club and let my odd presence be discovered. Instead he’d done everything he could to shield me. I couldn’t see how I could ask for better proof of his allegiances than that.
“That makes sense,” I said. “You’d know what’s smartest better than I do.” I touched his arm, leaning in enough to breathe in his licorice-and-wine scent. “Thank you. For looking out for me.”
“Of course, lovely,” he said, his eyes glinting bright in the darkness. I could have sworn I saw a flicker of desire in them, that he eased a little closer to me with a wash of heat. But then he was jerking his gaze away and standing up.
He’d never answered my question about what he thought he deserved, had he?
“I should get you back to Hatter’s,” he said. “Whatever he said to you, I expect he regrets it now. He’s been looking for you, you know, with rather a lot of urgency.”
Because Hatter was worried I was off causing some catastrophe, probably. That didn’t mean he hadn’t meant what he’d said to me.
The thought of going back to the apartment and facing his caustic tongue again made me want to curl up into a ball and go to sleep right here next to this log.
That wasn’t my only alternative, though. My pulse skipped in my chest with an eager flutter as I remembered an open invitation.
“No,” I said, pushing myself to my feet. “I think Hatter needs a break from me. I told Theo I’d come by today—I never ended up doing that. Walk me to the Tower?”
Chess hesitated for a second—out of a friend’s loyalty to Hatter, I guessed. Then he produced his familiar carefree grin and offered me his elbow. “Of course. Lands know our White Knight will take care of you.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Lyssa
Chess picked his way through the city so craftily we didn’t encounter another Wonderlander, even though I heard distant whoops and laughter—and once an eager moan that sent heat prickling through my chest. The Tower stood like a brilliant spire painted against the night sky, light streaming down over its silver walls from its peak.
Even though I could have operated the elevator myself, Chess came up with me, his hand resting protectively on the small of my back. As if he couldn’t feel quite secure until he saw me deposited directly into the White Knight’s care.
I couldn’t say I really minded his attentiveness.
Theo stepped out of one of the office’s side rooms just as we came in. “Here you are,” he said, with a slow warm smile for me. His gaze slid to Chess. “There wasn’t any trouble?”
“I believe I satisfactorily saved our Otherlander from herself,” Chess said, winking at me.
“I’m sorry it’s so late,” I said. “I got distracted…”
Theo waved
off my concern. “Now is fine. You’re doing me a favor, not the other way around.”
I ducked my head. “I was kind of hoping you could do me a favor too. I think it’d be better if I stayed here in the Tower tonight, like you said I could if I needed to. If that’s still all right.”
“Of course,” he said, his tone softening. “It’s no problem at all. I’m not in the habit of extending offers I wouldn’t see through.”
Chess gave my shoulder a light squeeze. “Good night then, lovely. Until tomorrow’s adventure.”
“Is everything ready for tomorrow?” I asked Theo with a stutter of my pulse as Chess vanished into the elevator. I’d gotten so carried away I’d forgotten how much he and his people might need me for the preparations. The tangled bramble of my emotions dug its thorns in deeper.
“There’s one thing I’d have you do now,” Theo said, “and you’ve come at the perfect time to see that through.” He motioned me over to one of his worktables, striding to meet me there with his unflappable air of assurance. Watching him, it was hard to imagine him ever doubting himself.
I recognized the pocket-watch retriever sitting on the table from yesterday’s visit, although the current version had a few more wires running through it and other bits I didn’t think had been on it before. Theo set his hand on it with a fond smile. He liked making his contraptions for more than just being able to use them, I could tell.
“This is finished,” he said. “With the best possible materials I’ve been able to track down. I’ve tested it, and I’m sure it’ll do what we need it to do—as long as we keep it with us in its current form when the day flips over tomorrow. Just picking it up like you did yesterday should be enough.”
I eased my hands under it and lifted it. The retriever was awfully light for that much metal. I held it up for a few seconds, just in case the effect needed a little while to take hold, and then replaced it on the table with a questioning look toward Theo. He nodded, his brown eyes bright, as if he were picturing how that device with my magical Otherlander touch would bring him the victory his people needed.
