Ensnared (8 page)

“How can you say that?” Dad presses. “After all the grief he’s brought down on our family?”

“Because we wouldn’t be a family if he hadn’t carried you out of Wonderland and kept your identity hidden all these years. He didn’t have to do that.”

Dad’s scowl deepens. “I’m not sure I agree with your reasoning.”

“There is no reasoning when it comes to Morpheus. You just accept him as he is.”

“Well, I
don’t
accept him. He caused this to happen. He’s to blame for your mother and Jeb being in—”

“You’re wrong,” I interrupt before shame can intrude on my overdue confession. “
I’m
the one who set everything in motion.”

“Allie, no. I get that in some way you had a hand in the rabbit hole being clogged. But I also know it was an accident.”

“It’s more than that.” I grind out the words between clenched teeth. “I unleashed Queen Red but was afraid to face her. I failed to go back to Wonderland, so she came to our world. And now Mom, Jeb, and Morpheus are all victims of my cowardice.”

The righteous indignation on Dad’s face melts away. A knock at the door causes us both to jump. Uncle Bernie peeks in with the water he promised.

“Bad timing?” he asks.

Dad waves him in, and I take the glass. The drink slides down my
throat cold and clean, although it does nothing to calm my stomach. I still haven’t told Dad the worst part of all. How I unleashed a power at prom that I knew almost nothing about, and caused Mom to be dragged into the rabbit hole before it caved in on itself.

“You don’t look so good,” Uncle Bernie says, pressing the back of his hand to my brow. “No doubt a residual effect of the mushroom tea.”

I let his explanation hang in the air, though Dad and I both know it’s so much more than that. I preoccupy myself with the tiny diary. Taking the drawstring from the torn ballet bag, I thread it through the book’s locked latch to form a necklace. Then I drape it over my head so the diary is beside the key that’s three times bigger. I’ll have to resize one or the other when it’s time to open the pages and unleash the volatile memory magic upon an unwitting Red.

“You both need to eat something,” Bernie suggests. “And the dining hall is empty enough now that she’ll be safe.”

My uncle leaves our room and Dad looks pointedly at me. “You shower first. We’ll finish our talk over dinner.”

The dining hall is carnival gaudy like our chambers, with the addition of a dozen cushioned table and chair sets and the aroma of food. Only one table is occupied, and the guests are netherlings.

They’re fixated on the pit a few feet below restaurant level where four human knights are fencing. It reminds me of the staged jousting dinner matches in the human realm, à la Las Vegas.

One set of knights wears red tunics under chain mail mantles, and the other team wears white. Each duo consists of an older man and a boy somewhere between eight and twelve years old. The older knight on the white side is Uncle Bernie. The boys fight as the elders
coach them. Their swords bend, and puffs of gray ash sweep up, almost cloaking them at times.

“So, dinner with a show?” I whisper to Dad.

“They’re using foils . . . flexible swords with blunted points,” Dad says while watching the activity in the ring with a faraway glint in his eyes. “It’s part of fine-tuning our concentration, making us perform in front of patrons at a young age. We have to keep a cool head while being aware of the eyes on us, and the scent of food . . . the sounds of voices. We can’t get distracted.”

“What’s with the ash?”

“Ash covers a large portion of AnyElsewhere’s terrain. So we learn to move in it without slipping or slowing down.” After kissing my brow, he gestures toward an empty table in the corner. “Order something. I want to say hello.”

He makes his way down stone stairs toward his relatives.
Our relatives.

The knights set aside their daggers and swords as he walks over. He fits right in with the white ones, dressed in the same tunic and tan suede pants.

I glance down at my red tunic. The long underwear beneath my pants, although a far cry from the lacy underthings I was hoping for, feels soft against my freshly scrubbed skin. They must’ve given me a boy’s size, because the fit is decent. Best of all, the shoulder seams are torn to make room for my wings. I’m still wearing my Barbie boots, the only shoes that fit.

I look as mismatched and jumbled on the outside as I feel on the inside. Dad’s relatives wave, not even fazed by my eye patches and wings.

I wave back, feeling shyer than I’d like.

They all turn their attention to Dad as he shrugs into a chain mail mantle. He takes the sword offered him and walks into the middle of the pit with his brother. They bow; then, in a blink, they’re fencing. Ash flies up around them with each lunge and parry.

Dad seems out of his element, his movements jerky and imbalanced. He gets tripped and pinned to the ground by Bernard’s sword a few times. But soon, it’s like a switch flips on. His thrusts with the sword become fluid and natural. His fingers, wrists, body, and arms settle into a cadence as graceful as a waltz. The clang of swords rings in the air. It’s a good thing he’s stayed in shape via racquetball and jogging, or he’d never have the stamina for this.

The epiphanies and events of the past twenty-four hours start to spin around me. I stumble toward the empty table Dad pointed out and slide into my seat. The netherling customers I saw earlier still haven’t noticed me.

One is a reptilian creature. The other is monkey-faced and woolly. The lizard looks like a floating head and hands. Queen Red’s memory of Bill the Lizard resurfaces—the details emotionless and distant. The lizard’s body seemed to disappear when his clothes took on the color of leaves around him. It was like his suit was the chameleon instead of him.

Is this Bill? If so, my kingdom is in more danger than I imagined. Grenadine, Red’s amnesiac stepsister and my temporary stand-in as queen, doesn’t have the royal blood or crown-magic pulsing through her that I do. She’ll be hopelessly lost if the lizard isn’t showering her with ribbon reminders. By getting Bill stuck here, I’ve made things even worse.

“It’s an optical
delusion
, just so you know.”

My attention snaps up to a white, egg-shaped creature standing over me. Parts of his oblong body are studded with colored beads and shimmering ribbon glued in place. He looks like a giant Fabergé egg that escaped from a museum.

He sets down a glass of water, plops a basket of steaming rolls on the middle of the table, then slides a menu toward me. “My customer you keep gaping at. His suit is hooded and made of simulacrum silk. Comes from enchanted telepathic silkworms. It’s transparent when pulled over other clothes. It connects with the wearer’s mind and reflects their surroundings. Observers are deluded into seeing only the body parts that are bared. Tricky, aye? Comes in handier than you’d think.”

His yolk-yellow eyes, red nose and wide mouth remind me so much of the egg-man I met in Wonderland, I can’t help but blurt the name. “Humphrey?”

“
Hardly
,” comes the sour answer. “Name’s Hubert. Didn’t anyone ever teach you how to make a proper acquaintance?”

Wow. He even sounds like Humphrey. I squint. “Uhhh . . .”

“Well, are you going to sit there with your brain idling, or are you going to order some fare?” One praying-mantis arm straightens the collar beneath his chin, while the other balances a tray with a pad and pen as he awaits my answer.

“You’re his brother, aren’t you?” I ask, pushing aside the menu. The yeasty bread smells too good to resist so I grab a roll and sink my teeth in.

Hubert’s cheeks burn red. “Oh, I see. Since we’re all the same shape and color, we must all be related, right? An egg by any other name and all that rot.”

“Well, no. Since you work here, and the place is named after him.” I take another bite of my yeasty roll. “Figured it was a family thing.”

“Firstly,” he snorts, “I’d ask that you not speak with your mouth so full of bread. And secondly, if you’ll take a look at the menu, the inn is called ‘Humphrey’s and Hubert’s.’ Centuries of lazy-tongued patrons shortened it. But it’s right there in print, so see that
you
don’t.”

“So you’re business partners.”

“That would be a
were
.”

I wince. “Right. I’m sorry, I just thought—”

“Psssh. I know all about you and your dastardly thoughts.” He waves his buglike arm. “You’re the one who plugged up the rabbit hole.”

My own cheeks grow warm as the latest bite of bread forms a doughy lump, almost too big to swallow. “Th-th-that was an accident.”

“An accident.” The flush of Hubert’s cheeks bleeds into his whole face and body. I worry he might explode, sending his beaded embellishments ricocheting off the cushioned walls and floors like bullets. “An accident like the one that broke Humphrey’s shell and caused him to be exiled to the garden of souls? An accident like that?”

Thumping the prongs of my fork against the breadbasket, I frown. “Well, yeah. He fell off a wall. And later he tripped over Chessie’s head.”

“
Pushed.
He was pushed off that wall. By your great-great-great-grandmother. All so Humphrey would crack atop Rabid White. All so his innards could coddle that little fellow’s flesh. Eat it away so Queen Red could ‘save’ him.”

I shake my head. “What happened to Rabid was an evil spell . . .”

“Oh, it was evil. But it was no spell. Our innards are like acid. Unless you possess the curative potion. Which of course Red just happened to have on hand, conveniently.” He huffs. “Why did you think Humphrey was in Sister One’s keep at the cemetery? Simply for his soul? He had so many cracks after falling twice, he could no longer be patched. He was a danger. It’s why everything here is cushioned, so I might not bring the same fate upon my patrons.”

Hubert’s Fabergé-egg appearance makes sense now. He’s patched himself up. At the first appearance of any crack in his shell, he glues something else in place.

“But that’s not logical,” I say, all the while knowing things rarely are where Wonderland is concerned. “Red manufacturing an accident just to have Rabid in her pocket? Someone that powerful would’ve had willing subjects left and right.”

A loud grunt bursts from the pit below. I glance down to see Dad helping his brother to his feet. The other knights gather around Dad and congratulate him. They’re all smiling and laughing, even Uncle Bernie.

Hubert shoves the menu into my fingertips.

“You seem to know a lot about what happened with Queen Red,” I stall, glaring up at him.

He scowls. “I heard it from the source. Your great-great-great-grandmother visited my inn. Her compatriot, Rabid, came with her. He told me his story, how she saved him. But I already knew the truth, because Humphrey had told me that she pushed him.”

“You’re saying Red came
here
. To the human realm. Do you mean after she’d been banished from Wonderland?” Even before the question leaves my lips, I know that can’t be right. Red would’ve been
wearing her Alice imprint if it had been after her banishment, living the life of a small human girl.

“She came here while she still ruled,” Hubert corrects. “Long before the Alice brat wormed her way into the rabbit hole and caused all the mayhem and Red’s downfall.”

My tongue dries. I take a gulp of water. “Why would Red have come to the human realm
before
the Alice incident?”

“Are you daft? She visited because she was lonely. Her husband was betraying her. Seemed like she forgot herself after that, along with the kindness her royal parents had once instilled. She even forgot how to make friends of her own kind.”

Red’s disgruntled and discarded memories shadow my thoughts. Hubert doesn’t know how right he is about her forgetfulness, or how deliberate it was.

“The only way she could believe someone was loyal,” the egg-man continues, “was if they were indebted to her. Seems that’s the only way anyone in your bloodline can secure devotion. Just as you did by closing up the rabbit hole. Now we’re all dependent on you to open a way back, so we can’t possibly shrink you to bug size and squash you under our shoes as we’d like.”

Hubert’s voice is shrill and echoing. The lizard creature and his woolly companion snap their gazes to us. The moment they see me, they grimace.

“I’m
nothing
like Red,” I growl, surprised at the rage behind the words.

Although, technically, I did bully the carpet beetle conductor to get my way . . . and I did force my dad to eat a mushroom and ride a butterfly across the world to London. But it was for the greater good.

I clamp my jaw. “I’m not a tyrant like her. I’m just . . . determined.”

“As was she. Determined to improve our world. She went so far as to study the humans, as if they’re better than us somehow. Something
we
should aspire to be.” The egg-man looks over my shoulder. “Those wings aren’t the only proof of your heritage. You’re a traitor, sending us all up river so you could save your petty mortal half. You’re nothing short of a—”

“Benedict,” I interrupt between clenched teeth.