Hookah (Insanity Book 4) (8 page)

So what? I am going to ignite the vehicle with the kids inside and just try to escape Mushroomland?

It doesn’t really sound like a plan, and now that I’ve given the children hope, it really doesn’t sound like a plan.

“Think, Alice.” I bang my hands on the wheel, staring at the machine gun men in the distance. It’ll only be minutes before they come back.

My hatred for the Pillar increases. Or maybe I should blame myself for counting too much on him. Who was I fooling? I wasn’t the least bit surprised when I learned he was a drug lord. I bet he marked children like the Executioner does. That bastard.

I fiddle with my umbrella, realizing it only has a few bullets. I can go back to put one in the Executioner and then another in the Pillar, but what good will that do for the children?

Suddenly, one of the machine gun men sees us and blows red fireworks in the sky, exposing the Jeep for everyone to see.

It’s too late now for a plan. Survival instinct at its core.

I push the pedal and bump into every hedge and mushroom in my way, trying to chug my way out of here.

Jeeps start following me, shooting at us.

Now I’m worried one of the kids will get hurt. I ask them to duck, but for how long?

Farther I drive, my hands gripping the wheel, my brain still foggy.

Alice save us. Had the boy’s mother predicted my arrival, like Constance believed in me?

What do you do when everyone believes in you, and deep down inside you know you’re insane?

I take a left onto an even muddier road. The Jeep slows down. But I am not stopping. I grip the wheel harder, grit my teeth as I push the pedal against its capacity.

But it’s not the chasing that stops me. It’s the flaring white light someone directs in my face.

I end up seeing nothing, only feeling the weight of the Jeep rolling on its side. My head bumps into something, and all I end up with is the aching sound of the wheels circling the air.

Are the children hurt?

It’s only a minute before I see the Executioner looking down on me. “I should have killed you once I saw you.” He pulls his gun out again.

Next to him, the Pillar’s face comes into focus. His face is inanimate. And for the first time, I can see his real intentions. His eyes are so dead I don’t think he ever cared for me one bit.

He tucks his cigar back in his mouth and says, “Love that look on someone’s face, just before they die.”

Westminster Palace, Margaret Kent’s Office

M
argaret stood in front of her favorite mirror in her office, checking out her face. She wanted to see if her surgeons, who’d cost her a fortune, had messed up anything in her operation.

But on the contrary, everything was just fine.

The face she’d asked for to cover up her ugliness, and put her Duchess days behind, was like nothing she’d ever seen. In fact, she loved how she looked. It suited her prestige and made people trust her—which was most crucial to her title in the Parliament.

Then why did the Queen of Hearts keep calling her ugly?

Margaret looked away from the mirror and out at the River Thames. She knew why the Queen treated her this way. Because she couldn’t forget how ugly she was in Wonderland. Because the Queen envied her for being able to pull such a trick in the real world.

The Queen herself had asked the same doctors to make her taller—the Queen’s biggest setback. But science in this world only knew how to make extreme makeovers with faces. Making someone taller wasn’t an option yet.

How Margaret wished to kill this obnoxious Queen. How she wished to rip her to pieces.

But none of that was feasible before they collected the Six Impossible Keys.

It just had to be done. And now she had to find someone to send after that madman, the Pillar who seemed to be looking for a cure in Columbia.

Never mind that Columbia was the best place to look for those who created this plague, but it was also where Margaret had made most of her fortune.

Margaret had been one of the first to arrive from Wonderland. With her political position, she was able to make millions of pounds by endorsing drug trafficking and child slavery in Columbia.

A very profitable business, indeed.

She worried the Pillar would mess up things there. His travel to Columbia seemed to have a deeper reason behind it. True, he was there to find a cure of sorts, but why go back to that place he hated so much?

Why go back to that dark pit of his past?

Margaret sighed, deciding her priority was to find a cure and keep her assets in Columbia safe. She had to call someone to do it.

She walked back to her desk, and dialed a number. It belonged to the last Wonderlander she’d ever work with, but it seemed that every Wonderlander needed to make a stand now.

Either you were part of Black Chess, or you were an Inklings. There was no other way around it now. 

Mushroomland, Columbia

W
ith the gun’s barrel in my mouth, I can only speak in nonsensical vowels.

And even though no one understands me, the Executioner ends up curious to know what I have to say before I die.

“I was only coughing.” I wipe the gun’s staining powder from my lips. From the corner of my eye, I can see the kids aren’t hurt.

The Pillar raises an eyebrow at me, probably impressed with my comeback.

The Executioner loads his gun again, ready to finish me.

“Wait,” I say. “Since you’re a Wonderlander, you must be looking for the keys like everyone else.” My look is sharp and challenging. “The Six Impossible Keys.”

The Executioner pulls his gun to a halt. I believe I caught his interest. Behind him, the Pillar scratches his temples.

“Continue...” The Executioner waves the gun at me.

“I know where one of them is,” I say, reminding myself I’ll never tell about the one key I have hidden in my back pocket. The one Lewis Carroll gave me. “Last week, the Mad Hatter took it from me.”

“From you?” The Executioner seems skeptical. “Why would you have a key to Wonderland?”

“Well.” I rub the back of my neck. “Like I said before, I am Alice from Wonderland. I just don’t remember a lot of it. I had the key hidden in a bucket in the basement of my family’s house.”

The Executioner scans me from top to bottom.

“You don’t want to kill me, in case I know of the whereabouts of the other keys,” I follow up, not sure if the Pillar will back me up if I mention him to the Executioner, so I don’t. He wanted me dead a minute ago.

The Executioner gazes back at the Pillar and then back at me. His eyes are sharp, as if he’s trying to read through my soul.

It’s a long moment. I take advantage of it and smile at the children behind me, assuring them they will be all right.

The moment stretches even more, and I begin to worry the Executioner won’t believe me.

But he breaks the long silence with a spitting laugh. His men laugh with him. He lowers his head toward me and says, “You’re the maddest girl I have ever seen.” He raises his eyebrows. “I love mad people. That’s why I will not kill you until I’m thoroughly entertained by your hallucinations.”

T
he Pillar, me, and the Executioner are sitting around a table in the middle of his garden. I can hear the sounds of war in the distance, still not sure what his men are fighting over.

But the war is the least of my worries now. It’s the Executioner and his sadistic games. He literally wants us to play a game now.

“It’s a very easy game,” he says. “But most entertaining to me.”

The Pillar says nothing, and neither do I. The Executioner had each of us hold a gun and place it atop the table, both hands placed palm down.

“Here is how it’s going to be played,” the Executioner says. “I will ask you a question.” He is talking to me. I’ve become his priority now. He thinks I am mad, and it amuses him. “If you give the right answer, you will pass for this round. If it’s wrong, I will shoot you.”

“Suspenseful.” The Pillar puffs his cigar. “I love suspense.”

“Then it’ll be your turn to ask me a question.” The Executioner is still talking to me. “If I answer it the wrong way, you can shoot me.”

“Justice,” the Pillar says nonchalantly. “Not a fan.”

“Then Senor Pillardo will join in,” the Executioner follows. “Easy game. Say the truth and you will live.”

“How can you tell I am telling the truth when you ask me?” I say.

“The same way you can tell I am telling the truth when I ask you.” The Executioner grins.

“Nonsense,” the Pillar comments. “My favorite.”

“I’m not following,” I tell the Executioner.

“Here is the thing, young lady,” the Executioner says. “This is a game of nonsense—which, if you think you’re Alice, you should know a lot about.”

“Trust me. Nonsense has been my middle name since I met the Pillar—I mean, Senor Pillardo,” I say. “But I still don’t have a grip on this game.”

“Here is how this game is really played,” the Pillar finally interjects “The thing is that all questions asked have only one answer.”

I tilt my head, worrying I am not going to grasp this fully.

“All questions in this game are answered by saying ‘Hookah Hookah,’” the Pillar explains, his eyes on the Executioner. I am more curious than ever to know whatever is happening between those two. “I ask you, ‘How are you?’ You answer, ‘Hookah Hookah.’ I ask you, ‘Where have you been?’ You say...”

“Hookah Hookah, I get it,” I say. “So how is anyone supposed to know if the other is telling the truth?”

The Pillar and the Executioner exchange mean looks for a moment.

“It’s how you say it, Alice,” the Executioner explains. “If you can convince me with you tonality and facial expressions it’s the truth, then it’s the truth.”

I
don’t have enough time to object.

The Executioner demonstrates the game by asking the Pillar, “What’s your name?”

“Hookah Hookah,” the Pillar says, as if he’s just used to answering it this way. It’s mind boggling how believable he sounds.

“Where are you from?”

“Hookah Hookah,” the Pillar answers with a home-sick expression on his face. I suppose that deeper in his mind he was saying ‘Wonderland.’

Then the Executioner turns to face me. “Do you think the Pillar is a good man?”

Now, that’s a shocker.

Sneaky. The Executioner just asked the question I’m not sure how to answer. The game demands confidence and truth in the way I say Hookah Hookah.

It takes me a while to answer. “Hookah Hookah.”

In my mind, the answer is ‘I don’t know.’ It’s the truth. I try my best to sound as if I mean it.

The Executioner’s sharp eyes pierce through me, his fingers reaching for his gun.

I shrug.

“Good answer,” he says. “I don’t know either.”

What? He read my mind?

“My turn,” I say. “Do you truly believe I will not shoot you without waiting for the next question?”

“Hookah Hookah.” He nods toward his guards standing all around us.

Okay. He can actually read my mind. And I am toast because of the guards. But wait!

“But this means that even if I catch you lying in this game, I won’t be able to shoot you,” I argue. “Because your guards will shoot me first.”

“Smart girl,” the Executioner says. “In this game, only you or the Pillar will end up dead. Can you see how nonsense always plays in my favor?”

Somewhere in the streets of London

T
he mayhem in the streets of London fascinated the Cheshire.

All those lowlife human beings getting in fights with each other, some of them taking it far, as in really hurting one another. That was just fantastic.

He roamed the streets on foot, possessing one person after another and contributing to the madness. A punch in the face here. A tickle there. Setting a place on fire here. It was all fun.

Revenge on humankind felt so sweet he was about to purr like his ancestors once did.

Blood was everywhere on the streets. Traffic had stopped hours ago. This was better than anything he’d ever seen. He wondered what kind of plague it was, but couldn’t put his paws on it.

Lewis Carroll turned out to be one mad nut, even crazier than all the rest. How hadn’t the Cheshire ever known about this man’s crazy tendencies to spread chaos to the world?

But even though he enjoyed possessing a soul after another, it suddenly occurred to him that he had no idea of who
he
really was.

Of course, he was a cat in a way or another. But he’d even lost his recollection of what he looked like as a cat many years ago.

Who was he, really? What did he look like? What was the look that really suited his personality?

Had the Cheshire been lost among the many faces he’d possessed, now that he was just a nobody?

His thoughts were interrupted by a phone call. Yes, he possessed many souls, but always passed on his phone so he’d be in contact with whoever wanted to benefit from his expertise.

Like all cats, the Cheshire needed to make a living.

“It’s Margaret,” the Duchess told him on the line. “I need your help.”

“You know I stopped assassinating for you long ago.”

“Yes, but this isn’t about assassinations,” she explained. “I want you to send someone after the Pillar in Columbia.”

“What’s the Pillar doing in Columbia?”

“He’s looking for a cure for the plague.”

“Why? I was beginning to just enjoy it. Did you know it doesn’t affect Wonderlanders?”

“No, I didn’t. That’s good to hear. But the Queen made her point.” Margaret explained how none of them would benefit from the end of the world. Not an argument the Cheshire was fond of.

Who said I wouldn’t be happy with the end of the world?

Although he’d never been on good terms with the Queen of Hearts in Wonderland, he’d started to warm up to her and Black Chess a little. After all, he’d been a bit too lonely in this real world.

It was time to choose a side. Black Chess or Inklings.

“Okay,” he said. “I will send someone to Columbia.”