Ensnared (31 page)

We kiss again—his touch no longer illusory but confident and urgent. He lays me back, covering my body with his delicious weight as he teases my mouth open. I hold his face to savor the movements of his jaw, the flavor of his skin captured in droplets left by the ocean, the feel of his crooked incisor against my tongue, reacquainting my favorite parts of him.

“I missed you, Al.” His kisses trail my chin, my neck, and down the center of my collarbone, following traces of dried water. The splitting fire behind my sternum soothes to tolerable under his lips. I sigh and arch into him, but he freezes.

“Shh. Do you hear that?” he murmurs.

A cacophony builds from somewhere in the distance across the ocean’s lapping tide: thrashing wings and screeching wails. I lift my head as a flock of condor-size flying beasts soars toward us. Goon birds are straddled atop their backs, wearing diving helmets that look like brass gumball machines with glass viewing holes.

“Bats!” Jeb shouts, rolling off. “Get to the lighthouse, now!”

Carroll’s rendition of
Twinkle, Twinkle
blinks through my mind, but the giant creatures flying toward us are the antithesis to all things whimsical and little. And they look nothing like tea trays.

Fierce gusts rip through our hair. I choke on a puff of blowing sand. Jeb pushes me behind him the instant a bat swoops down. Sleek as crimson leather, the mutant creature lifts off, carrying Jeb into the sky with its talons.

An eagle-faced goon opens the glass window on his helmet and laughs from his seat atop the bat’s back. “Easy as catching sunning snails.”

“You fool. It’s the girl Manti wants!” another one shouts from his winged perch. “And remember, she’s to be kept intact!”

“Then I’d say we got here in the nick of time,” blurts a chicken-beaked goon crudely. His compatriots howl with laughter before turning their airborne mounts toward me.

“Jeb!” I scream.

“Get to the lighthouse!” he yells from up high as he wrestles the claws curled around him.

No way.
I release my wings. As I launch toward Jeb, three bats swoop at me from different directions. So tuned in to their target, their goon riders don’t notice each other. The closest bat dips a swanlike neck. The center of its starfish-shaped muzzle opens, thrusting out a cluster of six-foot long, slimy tentacles lined with sharp fangs. One of the teeth snatches my diary necklace and breaks the cord.

Shrieking, I toss out my hand to pry the string off the bat’s fanged tongue, but the bat swallows the tiny book. The other two goon birds veer deathly close. I dive at the last minute. The bats collide and plunge into the ocean with their riders. Flattening out my wings along a current of wind, I skim over the water and ascend.

Silhouetted against the starry sky, Jeb breaks free of his captor and hangs on to a talon while calling upon a wave. The water lifts high enough for him to drop into place. He slides down a slanted plane of foam toward me, catches me around the waist, and skates us both to the lighthouse’s entrance.

We rush inside and slam the door, locking it behind us.

Upstairs, Dad is still sleeping. Jeb and I inch toward the porthole. Amid screeches and thundering wings, our tower shakes. Bits of the wall crumble away, forming a wide crack. More bats gather at the
opening, trying to dig through the rock. The sky thickens as they circle overhead, taking turns attacking our sanctuary.

The beacon flashes across them in intervals, spotlighting hideous tentacles and veined wings. More and more holes appear in the tower as the walls fail to withstand the collisions.

Gusts from giant wings filter through the openings. The curtains swirl around Dad’s canopied bed and my bare skin chills.

Another bat hammers the tower. I struggle to keep balance. “We’re outnumbered!”

“Not even close,” Jeb answers calmly. His eyes sparkle with netherling sorcery. With a sweep of his fingers through the porthole, grainy cyclones stir up from the ground surrounding the lighthouse. “We have regiments as innumerable as the sands.”

Inspired by his ingenuity, I try my hand. “And arsenals as uncountable as the stars.” Using the trick Morpheus taught me, I reassign Jeb’s night sky a new task: guided missiles.

The stars careen in the direction of our attackers like giant flaming rocks, herding them toward Jeb’s sand funnels. Several goons avoid the cyclones by diving off their bats. They flap deteriorated wings across the ocean in hopes of escape. My star missiles catch them, ripping through feathered chests and knocking off helmeted heads. All that’s left are their corpses—bright orange cinders and black ash afloat atop the frothy waves.

The sand cyclones carry the bats away through the room’s exit.

As the dust settles, we survey the mess around us.

I snort, a bemused and nonsensical sound that’s completely out of place with what just happened.

Jeb glances over at me, grinning. “We still make a great team,” he says, his hair catching a breeze.

“Just like in Wonderland, when you didn’t have any magic at all.”

He doesn’t answer, only studies me thoughtfully. He looks away to wave his hand across the cluttered floor. The tower repairs itself, holes sealing up bit by bit, until only a powdery residue remains.

“Will there be more of those bat things?” I ask.

“They’re harmless without their riders,” Jeb answers. “I’ve got to see how the break-in happened. The graffiti army should’ve stopped it. I also need to make sure the other rooms are okay.”

The concern in his voice touches me. He’s worried about his creations.

“We should both get some clothes on first,” I remind him.

He pauses, his gaze traversing my body. My arms cross self-consciously, though such modesty seems unnecessary after all I’ve promised him. The key at my neck meets my inner wrist and I remember the lost diary.

As if sensing my thoughts, Jeb frowns. “What happened to the book?”

“One of the bats swallowed it. Red’s memories are gone.”

He curses.

Dread and nausea make my head swim. I glance over my shoulder at the bed. The curtains are tangled around the posts, exposing Dad’s peaceful, sleeping face.

“It’s going to be okay, skater girl.” Jeb’s voice is close and soft. He runs a fingertip along my left wing, sending a thousand titillating sparks through my spine.

“I hope so.”

He pulls me into a hug, stroking my frizzed-out hair. “It will. Because you’re not just a girl anymore. You’re powerful and brave. A better queen than Red could ever hope to be.” The heat from his
bare torso seeps into my chest, warming me all the way to my toes.

A hissing sound erupts outside the porthole. Jeb breaks our embrace to face the cloud of orange, glittery mist seeping in.

I sigh in relief. “Chessie.”

Jeb holds out his hand for the hovering embers.

The little netherling’s smile appears, although it’s actually a frown because as he materializes on Jeb’s palm, he’s upside down, his tail skewed like a question mark. Tied to his paw is a corked vial. The label reads
Stone Counteractant
, just above a black-and-white drawing of a scorpion fly.

“You got the cure,” Jeb says, incredulous.

“Thank you!” I take the vial, so relieved I can’t contain a smile.

The furry netherling flips upright but his whiskers droop further downward.

“What is it?” I concentrate on his whirling eyes. “Wait.
Morpheus
got the cure?” I translate for Jeb. “He went into the castle? But he had a plan for tomorrow.”

He would never do something so spontaneous. Unless he really was convinced I wouldn’t survive another encounter with Red. I’m the only one he would put himself at risk for, because I’m a queen and Wonderland is his utmost priority. But even beyond that . . . because he loves me.

My soul sinks, acutely aware of how I’ve hurt him tonight. And he doesn’t even know. “Where is he?” I ask.

When the answer surfaces within Chessie’s pupils, I drop to my knees.

“Al.” Jeb kneels beside me and forces me to look at him. “What did he say?”

I grind my teeth to keep from screaming. “Morpheus has been
captured. He’s scheduled to be the entertainment at the Hallowed Festival tomorrow. The queen is going to harvest his beating heart.”

We pour the curative down Dad’s throat and Jeb releases him from his dream state. Then we take turns showering, getting dressed, and explaining to Dad everything that happened while he was out. Neither Jeb nor I mention our engagement. It feels wrong, to give my dad reason to celebrate while Morpheus’s life hangs in the balance.

Our plan is back on for first thing in the morning when the gates open. We choose our clothes wisely. It would be a mistake to have the added vulnerability of water-soluble outfits on such a precarious mission.

Dad and I will wear the tunic and trousers from Uncle Bernie, while Jeb dons all that’s left of his prom tuxedo: navy blue flocked velvet vest and navy pants. Paired with a navy T-shirt from his painted wardrobe, his outfit is complete.

I’ve yet to fill Dad in on the small detail of Red’s pending possession. Now that I’ve lost the diary, it’s the only way to save Wonderland. He would never go along with the plan if he knew. I’m back to lying to him for his own good.

While Jeb and Chessie search the mountain rooms, Dad soaks in a hot tub. Although the curative dissolved the stone, the muscles and bones in his leg sustained some damage.

He limps out of the bathroom fully dressed, rubbing a towel over his wet hair.

“Anything to eat? I’m starving.”

Jeb told me this would happen. It’s a side effect of the dream state. I load up a plate with the honeycomb-flower and rabbit jerky and take a couple of pieces for myself. The floating lanterns cast
amber light and shadows around us as I silently watch him wolf the rest down. I wonder if he was this ravenous when Mom rescued him from Wonderland. After all, he’d been sleeping for years that time.

Dad has started on his third helping when Chessie and Jeb return.

Jeb carries Dad’s duffel and the garment bag that contains my scorpion-winged dress. I can’t stop replaying Morpheus’s reaction when I loosened the drawstring. How he teased and joked to make light of the incredibly sweet gesture. How he dismissed all the cuts from the razor-sharp edges he must’ve endured before he finally had the centipede legs sewn in place as protective fringe.

“Are the simulacrum suits in the duffel?” I ask, trying to hide the tremor in my voice.

“We could only find two.” Jeb wipes paint from his hands on a towel. “Morpheus’s room was a wreck. All of them were. There were a couple of bats tangled in the graffiti. That’s how the goons got through the entrance. They came up through the ocean and sacrificed some of their rides for a distraction. I’m not sure how they found their way to the mountain in the first place. I never saw any signs of CC. Also not sure how they knew to use rainwater on the doors and rooms to melt everything away.” He tries to appear nonchalant, but his face is pale.

I know too well what it’s like to watch something you created die. A month ago, I breathed life into flames, then had to be the one to douse them to save my peers at school. It hurt, like losing a piece of myself.

Maybe it’s for the best. Maybe those dark and damaged parts of Jeb’s soul will at last be put to rest, and he can abandon this world and all the bitterness and doubts . . . leave everything behind without
a second thought. With the exception of the dreams in the willow room. I hope he holds on to those.

“The only other thing left in Morpheus’s room was this garment bag,” Jeb says, stirring me from my thoughts. “Do you know about the dress inside?”

“Armor,” I whisper, feeling numb as Morpheus’s words taunt me:
I rather hoped you’d wear it to face Red. It is the only coat of armor worthy of your dangerous beauty.

My netherling intuition rouses, a theory taking shape. It’s no coincidence that only one invisible suit is gone, that the goons knew how to destroy Jeb’s artwork, or that when everything melted away, the duffel and the garment bag were the two things that remained . . . because they’re real, not painted. It’s also no coincidence the goons had been sent for me.