It's a Charmed Life

by Selene Charles

  “I know. I’m goddess awful at thank-yous. Least that’s what Ich always tells me.”

  He glanced over at me. “Ich?”

  I rolled my wrist. “Ichabod Crane, my sometimes partner.”

  If I’d hoped to see even a hint of jealousy in his eyes, I was quickly relieved of the notion. His face was an implacable and unreadable mask.

  I squeezed my fingers. The case. The case, and then I’d go home.

  Locking the strange thoughts and feelings in a box that I would never again open, I shoved it down deep and took one last breath. The kiss had happened, truths had been shared, and it was over.

  It had to be. I wasn’t the type that could afford to get my feelings entangled. Seemed like anytime I did, things never ended well for my lovers. There was always a price to be paid when a siren thought she could have her own happily ever after.

  Squaring my shoulders, I nodded, silently communicating my resolve. He dipped his chin, letting me know he understood and agreed as well. Nothing but the case. That was all that mattered.

  By the time we cleared the pathway, my head was back in the game. We stepped out into a chaotic, busy city square, this one less filth-ridden than central Wonderland, but still with the fast, dizzying pace of city dwellers.

  The buildings towered high into the heavens, twisting and turning into fantastical and strange designs. They appeared held together not by bricks and mortar or even thatch, but by fat, thick vines full of wicked thorns that actually seemed to inhale and exhale at measured intervals. I grimaced. I really hated vines.

  Hatter began a brisk march down the cobbled street, turning toward our left and heading deep into the city center.

  A vendor selling oysters on the half shell was hawking his wares with that fast-paced patois all vendors seemed to share. “Oysters, get yer oysters, ‘ere,” he said in a high-pitched squeak.

  My stomach chose that moment to growl. Loudly. I frowned, realizing I’d not eaten much in days. That wasn’t uncommon for me when I was on a case.

  Without missing a beat, Hatter turned toward the vendor and held up two hands. In seconds, the vendor, with a gray Fu Manchu mustache and thick, walrus-like chin rolls, was shoveling fat oysters on the half shell into a broadleaf sack. I reached into my pocket to pay, but Hatter was quicker. He handed me the sack.

  “You didn’t have to pay for my lunch,” I said as I turned to follow him down a smoothly paved sidewalk.

  “It’s customary to say thank you in times like these, Detective,” he said smoothly, with that hint of mocking laughter he always seemed to have.

  I rolled my eyes and snatched the sack out of his hands, far too hungry for niceties or false modesty. I was starving. Reaching into the sack, I scooped out a handful of oysters and tossed them into my mouth, shells and all.

  I felt his stare on me, and when I turned, it was to note a hint of revulsion in it. I grinned. “What? Good for calcium.”

  “If you say so, Detective.”

  Snorting but not bothering with words because these were the sweetest, most succulent oysters I’d tasted in quite some time, I demolished them in seconds flat. Hatter had barely gone through half his sack, when he shoved his bag into my chest.

  “Here. I’m done anyway.”

  I tipped my head in a nod and, in another few minutes, had his sack cleaned out too. Stomach pleasantly bulging, I burped once—a sign of a good meal where I came from—and grinned.

  “That did it.”

  “Goddess, you’ve the manners of a feral dog,” he said, lips curled, but eyes glittering with humor.

  Shrugging a shoulder, I wadded up the empty sacks and tossed them into a trash receptacle made of twisted vines and thorns.

  “Yes, well, if you’d fed me better...”

  “Ha. Ha. I laugh.” He snorted, and I grinned back. The constable was fun to tease.

  I rolled my wrist. “Sirens burn an ungodly amount of calories in or out of water. It’s part of our chemical make-up. And unfortunately, when I’m on a case, I tend to forget that I should eat at least a thousand calories every four hours or so.”

  His peaked brows rose high, as if surprised. “I did not know that.”

  Again, I shrugged. “Think about it, Constable. Have you ever seen a siren with an abundance of curves?”

  Scrubbing at his jaw, he murmured, “Come to think of it, I’ve not.”

  I was curious about just how many sirens he’d come across in his life, but decided against asking since that seemed slightly more personal than not.

  “My point, exactly.”

  Suddenly, Hatter grabbed at my sleeve, tugging on it. I looked up and saw that, instead of continuing down the street, he was now walking toward a massive black wrought-iron trellis covered in—who would have guessed it?—breathing vines and thorns. A sign on the trellis, which was actually more of an arched entryway, read The Looking Glass.

  Above us, the sky reverberated with the bass rumble of thunder. Forks of jagged lightning cut through the darkening canopy above us. The storm had come on quick. I frowned, smelling the water that saturated the air. There was going to be the mother of all storms in just a few seconds.

  “Hatter, rain and I do not mix.” I hugged my arms to my chest.

  “C’mon, siren. Let us get you to dry land.”

  As we stepped under the archway, the vines grew and grew, twining and twisting as they often did, to create a waterproof screen above us. The second we had a mostly solid covering, the sky opened up, and it sounded like a geyser of water had just ripped open the heavens, spilling like a silver blade into what now looked like deep night.

  Pedestrians were running, seeking shelter wherever they could find it, and the Looking Glass, which had been all but empty just seconds ago, was now jam-packed with bodies waiting out the storm.

  But Hatter wasn’t waiting around with them. He was still tugging on my shirt, winding a slithering path through the crush of Wonderlandians as we made our way deep into the heart of the place.

  We continued to walk down a long, dimly-lit pathway until I felt the cool wash of cavernous air pressing against me. When we stepped off the pathway and into the darkness of a room, our heels clacked jarringly in the absolute stillness. Not even the sound of the tsunami-like rain reached us back here. It was dark and blessedly quiet.

  “Take my hand, Detective,” he said, and I did without question.

  Instantly, I was more at ease when I felt the rough smoothness of his palm press against mine. Just after our hands joined, though, I felt the ground beneath our feet give, and I cried out in surprise.

  “It’s fine, just the automated pathway that guides us through the zoo.”

  “This is a zoo?” I asked, frowning at the absolute pitch black of the place. Only the coolness of the air gave me any kind of sensory information about direction.

  “Of a sort.”

  “I don’t like it. I don’t enjoy being without my senses. What the hells kind of zoo is this, anyway?”

  His chuckle was deep and throaty, alleviating my restless anxiety as I moved just a little bit closer to him, needing the tactile sensation of touch so as to not completely lose my nerve. I lived in the deep, and I was used to darkness, but there was always something around—lights, colors, the movement of currents. Here, there was absolutely nothing at all. I tried to look over my shoulder, but Hatter’s deep voice stopped me cold.

  “Do not look back, Detective. This place was built by a creative madman, a genius to be sure, but one with a terrible sense of humor.”

  “Let me guess, the ground drops out from beneath my feet and we go tumbling into the never?”

  “Something like that,” he said, sounding amused.

  I huffed, digging my nails into his palm as my own were now starting to perspire.

  This was why anyone not of Wonderland needed a guide. If he’d not been here, I’d have tried to walk out.

  “Why are we here?”

  “Because here is where the bandercoot
lives,” he said succinctly.

  I jerked and looked at him, or at least where I suspected he might be. “What, here? In a zoo?”

  “Of sorts,” he repeated and patted my hand like one would a little child asking too many bothersome questions.

  I thinned my lips but said nothing else.

  We sped by in the darkness for what felt like an eternity before I finally saw my first wisp of color. Just a vague blink of it really, silvery blue and brilliant, like a blaze in the absolute pitch black of the place. Then there was another blink and another until the blinks began to coalesce and take on form.

  The pathway we were on suddenly gleamed like cut diamonds beneath my feet, like a trail of glittering stars, and above us was a glass-like dome with strange and wondrous creatures that glowed in every shade of phosphorescence, odd and unusual things of no form, but they danced and swayed like silk in water.

  I ahh’d; enchanted, despite myself.

  “What in the bloody hells are those things?” I asked as one particularly pretty one, the color of reddest plum and with a trail of what looked like aquatic feathers, disappeared back into the void of darkness beyond.

  “No one’s certain.” He shrugged. “All we know is that they’re terribly lethal. One touch of those pretty feathers to skin will eat away one’s flesh like acid. We lost many lives before we figured that one out. So they are kept behind the dome where we can admire them and not die.”

  I chuckled. “They look aquatic, but I’ve never seen anything like them.”

  “I’m sure you haven’t, Detective. Wonderland is unlike any other realms out there.”

  I nodded. “I’m figuring that out.”

  “Do you like it here?” he asked thoughtfully, quietly, as though he wasn’t sure whether he should.

  “What, the zoo? Or Wonderland itself?”

  His grin was crooked as he spread his arm to encompass the strange but alluring place. “Either. Both. Doesn’t matter.”

  I narrowed my eyes.

  The smile slipped from his face. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked something so personal.”

  “Hardly personal,” I corrected, “just curious that you’d care, is all. Yes and no is the simple answer.”

  He looked at me with raised brow, saying nothing, but I knew what he was thinking.

  I turned to look back at the tunnel of never-ending glass and the odd little floating creatures that danced above it.

  “I don’t hate Wonderland. But I’ve a healthy respect for it. Though, some of the people are...”

  “Odd?” he supplied.

  “Well, I was going to say interesting. But odd definitely applies.”

  That crooked grin of his tipped his mouth again, and I’d have been a liar if I’d said I didn’t want to kiss him right then—not with the same hunger and carnality I’d felt after leaving the Crypt yesterday. But I could still imagine the phantom press of his lips on mine and the buried strength within that he kept so tightly checked.

  Bothered by these thoughts, I turned back around and said nothing, holding on to his hand with only the lightest of touches, wishing I could just wrap up this investigation and leave already.

  “Do you think I’d like Grimm?” he asked into the thick silence between us.

  I huffed and shook my head, trying in vain to clear the intimate thoughts from my brain. “If you can handle Wonderland, I’d hazard a guess that you could handle Grimm, Constable.”

  Neither of us said anything more for a while after that.

  Soon, though, the surroundings shifted yet again. This time, the automated pathway took us into another cavernous room, just as dark as the one before. In this one, there were long, vertical mirrors that seemed to stretch toward infinity in both directions. Within them were creatures, strange and unusual beasts I’d never seen before in my life.

  I breathed, leaning forward on my tiptoes. But Hatter placed his hand against my chest and pushed me back. “Careful,” he warned, and I nodded, but turned quickly to look at the mirrors. Each reflective surface shimmered with a different landscape inside, all of it of Wonderlandian nature. There was a fascinating oddness to everything.

  One showed us a green sky and blue grass, with prancing, hopping bunny-like creatures sporting fangs as thick as my wrist as they tore into the carcass of one of their fellows.

  Another glass showed us a seascape, and within it were fish that looked like flowers, their tails hooked one to the other, creating unbelievable works of living, moving art.

  In another, there was a forest of those writhing, breathing vines, with strange, furry, bipedal man-like animals. They looked like black-furred monkeys with long white tails but with smooth green heads and reptilian-slitted eyes. What must have been a male and female stood side by side on that stretching, breathing vine, staring right back at me just as surely as I stared at them.

  And on and on the house of mirrors went. I saw things I’d never imagined possible, like rocks that writhed and wriggled like worms on a hook, and an enormous field of flowers with melted-looking faces inside their blossoms that coughed and hacked out plumes of colorful and noxious gases.

  I swallowed hard, glancing to my left and right, dizzied by the endless scope of the place. Hatter reached out his hand and touched his finger to one particular looking glass.

  The constantly revolving swing of mirrors stopped instantly, and the pathway stopped moving. In what seemed like a very mundane image of a forest was a thatched-roofed cottage with a cheery plume of smoke coming out of its chimney stack.

  But the sounds coming out of the cottage—obnoxiously loud caterwauling and the screams of babies and children—made me wonder if there wasn’t a murder taking place right now.

  I glanced at Hatter in question, but he merely pointed at the mirror without looking at me. When I turned back, I was shocked to see an animal standing on its hind legs, with beautiful, silky fur marked with leopard’s spots, walking forward.

  This beast didn’t act like a beast or even look much like one. Its face was a mix of rabbit and rat, with its long pointed snout and bright pink nose. But on its face, it wore a small pair of golden-framed spectacles, and it was dressed in its Sunday-best pea-green suit and paisley tie. He, and it was surely a he, even wore a pair of patent-leather shoes.

  But the shoes were scuffed at the toes and had seen better days. The suit was holey in places, especially around the collar, and the tie was askew. This was a harried looking fellow if ever there was one.

  He plopped his hands onto his rather substantial paunch and eyed us speculatively. I immediately noticed the length of his claws. They were enormous in proportion to the rest of him and were a perfect match to the one I still carried. I idly ran my fingers over the bulge in my pocket.

  “Constable Hatter,” he said with a squeaky-pitched Wonderlandian drawl. “Well, this is a surprise.”

  I blinked. Not that I should have been surprised, but I was. I’d never seen a talking rodent before, though I’d heard rumors of their existence in Wonderland. I’d always thought the rumors nonsense, until now.

  The bandercoot twitched his nose thoughtfully, causing his meticulously groomed and evenly trimmed whiskers to twitch too. He turned tiny black eyes upon me. “And I see ye’ve brought company, ye have. ’Ew is she?”

  Hatter grinned pleasantly. “Boris, this is Detective Elle from Grimm PD.”

  “Oh my, oh my,” he said, rubbing his little bright-pink paws down his front repetitively. “I knew I’d get caught. Told him so, I did. But he promised me it weren’t nothing. I needed coin, ye see, to feed the missus. We just had a new bairn, ye ken. Times been rough, not many comin’ to see me no more. Ye understand, don’t’cha?”

  He rambled, causing his whiskers to twitch spasmodically as he swallowed with obvious nerves, looking at Hatter then at me and then back at Hatter again.

  I cleared my throat, remembering at the last second not to take a step. “Boris, was it?”

  He clamped his mouth s
hut and nodded miserably, his tiny eyes looking frighteningly large behind his spectacles.

  “I’m guessing, then, that you know why we’re here?”

  “I’m fairly certain of it, aye.”

  When I’d first found the bandercoot’s claw, my initial impression had been that he’d been one of the main culprits involved. But he was trapped behind glass, so how the bloody hells had his claw wound up in my crime scene?

  “Tell me, Boris, when was the last time you left your mirror?”

  He shook his head wildly, as did Hatter.

  “The glass is merely a peek into the mad outer realms of Wonderland. Anything within the glass can never leave the glass,” Hatter said.

  I looked at him. “So how in the hells did his claw wind up at my crime scene?”

  “Well, now,” Boris squeaked, snagging my attention. “I can explain that, I can.”

  I raised a brow. “I’m waiting with bated breath.”

  Hatter cleared his throat, and I rolled my eyes, suddenly annoyed by all the silly rules of this place. Back home, if I had to interrogate a person of interest, I interrogated them as I wished, no kid gloves required. Bloody Wonderland.

  Boris was again rubbing his strange little hands over his paunch, a nervous gesture of his, no doubt.

  “The thing of it is that I canna leave, but those with access to the realms may enter.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “But you’re in Wonderland, no? So couldn’t anyone gain access to—”

  “No. No.” He shook a tiny clawed finger at me. “No, they can’nae. The outer realms are steeped in madness, ye ken, and only thems with warding spells may enter here. It’s too dangerous for anyone else.”

  “He’s telling the truth,” Hatter said in his gravelly rumble.

  I grinned, wishing I could stomp on Hatter’s foot for not preparing me. “Instead of asking me whether I liked Wonderland, it might have been nice to, oh, I don’t know, tell me all this to begin with,” I said, turning on him with sugary venom dripping off my tongue.

  At least he had the good graces to look contrite about it. Hooking a finger beneath his too-stiff collar, he dipped his head in agreement. “As you say,” he mumbled.