[Jacques]

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players; . . .

—William Shakespeare,

As You Like It,

Act II: Scene 7

1

With Rancaster controlling all the mirror shards in the house, it only took a few minutes for him to locate one of the side halls leading to the inclined passageway into the lower floor, where the top landing split into a double grand staircase down towards the foyer below. The recessed paneling of the walls showed the remnants of mirrorless casings, every mirror now strewn in tiny shards along the mahogany steps and into part of the parquet flooring at the base of the stairs.

"Watch your step, bambina," Rancaster said, leading a winded ‘bambina’ downstairs past M. C. Escher lithographs and mezzotints, then stopped at the base of the stairs. “My my, this Katherine Hearn has quite an eye for detail—I'll give her that. And she loves reading books, too, it looks like," he added and pointed towards the entrance leading towards Katherine's dream library, then looked back at the ‘bambina’ still breathing hard from running around the hallways and nearly getting skewered onto the wall. “Tell you what. Why not take a little break and enjoy the wonders of this place for a bit? That library seems inviting enough, for a start. Care to have a looksie?"

The ‘bambina’ regained her breath and said, "Thank you, Father," and ventured into the library lined on all of the walls with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves stocked with books.

Rancaster sighed and said, "Listen, Auna. Despite what you think of me, you need not be so formal when it's just you and me. Try to lighten up, even for a little while."

The bambina turned and looked at Rancaster, managing the slightest hint of a smile, and walked into the library.

Here she scanned the first few rows of books on the shelves, running her fingers across the spines of several volumes of philosophical and political tracts, anthologies and collections and omnibuses, and used paperbacks and hardcovers of modern and old classics, till she came across an author she admired:

Lewis Carroll.

She smiled and picked it off the shelf, and her heart fluttered when she noticed it was a three-volume compilation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and The Hunting of the Snark, all three titles emblazoned on the cover in faded gold leaf. Several characters from the first two titles flashed through her mind, from Alice and the Cheshire Cat and the Queen of Hearts to the Red Queen and the White Queen and Humpty Dumpty and others. Then her mind drifted to L. Frank Baum’s Oz books that she hadn’t read yet, though she still remembered the old technicolor adaptation of the first book in that series. When she was younger, she used to think the Oz books were ripoffs of the two Alice books, but she had relented since then. How was she to judge a series of books when she hasn’t read them yet?

Turning from those thoughts, she took off the jacket draping her shoulders and threw it over a chair next to the cafe table, then went to the salon sofa and parted the book open to a random page. It happened to fall on the last page of Through the Looking-Glass, so she read the ending with a poem:

“A boat, beneath a sunny sky,

Lingering onward dreamily

In an evening of July—

“Children three that nestle near,

Eager eye and willing ear,

Pleased a simple tale to hear—“

And in her mind, she imagined her younger child self in a gondola floating down the Canale Veneziano into Arcadia Park, where the hubbub of downtown filtered through the air like faraway dreams. Her child self had longer hair in this dream, and she wore a sky-blue Sunday dress and skimmer hat atop her head, and carried an open umbrella shielding her from the afternoon sun of mid-July.

She continued reading:

“Long has paled that sunny sky:

Echoes fade and memories die:

Autumn frosts have slain July.

“Still she haunts me, phantomwise,

Alice moving under skies

Never seen by waking eyes.”

And in her mind, flitting on the edge of dreams, she saw herself through the eyes of her current teen self in a white Sunday dress sitting with her younger ten-year-old self, telling her younger self something reassuring but not hearing her own words. She kept assuring her younger self that it was okay, that she need not fear anything, that she was safe. Still, her younger self frowned and looked down, as though nothing she said could convince her otherwise.

She looked into the face of her younger self and saw anguish there, in her brows and in her eyes and in the grimace of her cheeks, and her heart yearned to comfort her however she could. So she kneeled down and kissed those eyes that were squinting back tears. She hugged her and let her cry onto her bare shoulder, rubbing soothing circles on her back, saying that it’ll get better. Maybe not today or tomorrow or the day after that, but it will get better. Someday. Just as the sun declines into sunset on tired wings, she said to her, so too will it rise again at dawn on wings of hope.

Tears welled up in her eyes as she continued to read:

“Children yet, the tale to hear,

Eager eye and willing ear,

Lovingly shall nestle near.

“In a Wonderland they lie,

Dreaming as the days go by,

Dreaming as the summers die:”

And in her mind, as shadows lengthened through the park in civil twilight, she got up and sat beside her, so her drowsy younger self could rest her head over her thighs. She took off her hat, letting it tumble to her feet, and felt her strands of hair tickle her inner thighs, the weight of her head like a bowling ball. In this way, she took up the umbrella lying to the side of the gondola and pitched it against the growing blaze of sunset, bleeding through the fabric in a soft golden glow. And as the sun declined over the horizon of the faraway mountains, turning into orange hues and then to shades of red, she let go of the umbrella.

She then ran her hand through the hair of her younger self, wiping the bangs from her forehead and letting her sleep on her lap. And like her younger self, she too felt drowsy, she too felt like she needed a nap, so she reclined herself against the cushioned seat and closed her eyes.

Now in the realm of dreams, she read the last verse:

“Ever drifting down the stream—

Lingering in the golden gleam—

Life, what is it but a dream?”

And in her dream, she felt lethargic throughout her body, her limbs heavy and her strength weak. Just as sunlight sunk below the horizon, she opened her eyes and noticed that her younger self had changed into the young woman she had become, clad in her Shad-Row uniform, her mirror image coming to life. This doppelgänger roused from her lap and propped herself up over her reclining self, while Auna struggled to move but to no avail.

Her mirror image had roving predatory eyes, the eyes of a she-wolf, wearing her own face and her own clothes but was not her. Those eyes lit up with mischief, hinting at forbidden desires coming to the surface like hellfire from unfathomable depths. And in those eyes, her doppelgänger carried a cesspool inside of bodily sensations that only wanted more, more of Auna’s body, more of her heart, more of her soul.

A slasher's smile stretched across her doppelgänger’s face, her mirror self lifting the hems of her Sunday dress up her thighs and past her waist. She pulled down her panties past her knees, even as Auna clamped her thighs together, revealing only the top part of her pubic hairs.

She then straddled her lap and looked down on her face, wiping the bangs from her forehead slicked over with sweat, staring into her crying eyes and peering at her soul and smiling at the things she saw there. Then, cupping her hands on her cheeks, she kissed her eyes and then her lips and said,

“This is who you are, my love,

And who you’re meant to be.

Wear your thousand fickle masks:

They can’t hide you from me!”

And in the lunatic seconds before awakening back into consciousness, Auna endured intrusive kisses from her mirror self, who placed them on her mouth and down her jaw and on her throat, which turned into hickeys further down over the skin of her collar bone and the center of her chest. Then she reached behind her neck and loosened the knotted bow that kept her summer dress on, and pulled it down to reveal her breasts. Her evil self fondled them in both hands and squeezed them and thumbed at her nipples till they were erect and sensitive, then went to work leaving more hickeys further and further down. Down to the area below her stomach and further still, where her thighs stopped straining and parted in defeat and exposed her to defilement.

At this point, Auna was a hot and heady mess, sweating and breathing hard against the strain, then waited in an ecstasy of anticipation and horror, waiting for the inevitable.

And she endured, balling her hands into fists against the force keeping her down, squeezing her eyes shut and gritting her teeth and holding her breath against stronger doses of pain and pleasure surging through her core, arching her back against sensations she dared not imagine in waking life, and losing her mind in a rush of endorphins that took her down the rabbit hole of unconscious sleep and back to the conscious sleep of dreams.

She gasped, taking in gobs of air as if coming up from a deep dive, and found herself sprawled over the salon sofa. Her head rested on a pillow over an arm rest, with her left arm over the edge of the sofa and her fingers over the book lying parted with its pages down on the parquet flooring. Her other hand was in her panties, and she pulled out and wiped the residue over her shirt and clipped on the fastener of her skirt.

“Was it fun?” a voice said.

And she sat up in a panic, blushing at the sight of Aaron Rancaster sitting at the cafe table, watching her.

She said, “How long were you there?”

“Long enough to see the whole show,” he said, getting up from the chair and approaching her, eyeing her on the sofa. “I never thought you’d be the type of girl that would enjoy pain.”

“You’re wrong, I don’t!” she yelled, turning away from his gaze, sitting erect with her hands balled into fists at her sides, clamping her thighs together and crossing her ankles, not giving an inch of shame.

“And getting off on a children’s book, too,” he added. ”I never thought that was a thing, but to each her own.”

“I’m not that kind of girl!”

“Oh, but it seemed that way to me. Did your father pinch you as a punishment when you were little?”

Auna kept silent, mentally cursing the accuracy of his deduction. She missed her father dearly, but that didn’t erase the things he did to her.

“No matter,” he said, bending down to pick up the book Auna had dropped in her delirium, and placed it back on the cafe table. “Back to business, bambina. Whenever you’re ready, meet me at the top of the stairs.”

He left, but Auna refused to face him till his footsteps receded past the library’s entrance and up the double grand staircase.

Only then did she allow tears for herself. So she cried, leaning over her knees and burying her face in her hands to muffle out the sniffling and hitching of deep unsteady breathing. She cried and cried, letting the tears cleanse the shame away, till she was an empty vessel of her shame-faced self, building back up a mask of indifference to hide her emotions.

Standing up from the sofa, she dried her face with her sleeve, then took her jacket off the chair and slung it over her shoulders like a cloak of armor over her heart. She steeled her nerves and hardened her heart in order to follow orders and to kill, leaving the remnants of her humanity on the sofa. Like it or not, this was who she was and who she was meant to be.

Before leaving, she paused at the cafe table and looked at Carroll’s book and felt a tugging at her heart. Her childhood vanished when her father started touching her when she was ten.

She said, “C’est la vie,” (Such is life) and walked out.

2

After reconciling, Celia and Katherine told Madison about Nico's harrowing experience at the hands of Aaron Rancaster, from her abduction along with her sister to their participation in Russian roulette and the subsequent confrontation with him and that gun-toting 'bambina' girl. When they finished, Madison was pale in the face and wide-eyed, looking from her sisters to Nico and then to Mara, sound asleep on the bed, then back to Nico.

For a time, Madison was speechless, then said, "Oh my God, Nico. I . . . I honestly have no idea what to say to that."

"That's okay," she said.

"No, it's not okay! That fucker is gonna pay for what he did, I swear—"

"Maddy, that's enough!" Katherine yelled.

Madison looked at her sister. "Then what do you suggest we do, huh? We can't just sit back and do nothing!"

"That's not what I meant. Just let me think—"

"Ah, Christ, you and your—"

"Maddy, please be reasonable for once!" Celia yelled. "You're not a one-man army!"

And before Madison could protest, Nico grabbed onto her arm, saying, "You already know what happened to me and my sister. I won't let you make the same mistake we did, okay?"

"Then what do we do?" Madison said.

Nico didn't reply to her, though; she only looked to Katherine for guidance. "This is your dream realm, so you're in charge. What do we do?"

With Madison, Celia, and Nico looking at her, Katherine remained silent for a time just rolling things over in her head, trying to come up with a plan that didn't involve a direct confrontation with Rancaster or that 'bambina' girl, but there was no getting around it. Sooner or later, they'd have to confront their foes if they wanted to get out of here.

She lowered herself back into her chair, staring at the floor beneath their feet, and said, "If I had control of all my mirrors in this place, I'd go out there with you, but I'm in no condition to fight at all." She then raised her gaze and looked at her three companions in their eyes, saying, "Take care of yourselves out there. Don't take risks if you don't have to."

“We’ll try not to,” Celia said. "What's the plan?"

So Katherine told them her plan for the next several minutes and asked them for their thoughts on it. Celia and Madison added their own observations on all the countermeasures she suggested, and finally Nico added in her own ideas with one more backup plan, should all else fail.

All three Hearn sisters looked at Nico.

Katherine said, "That's a huge risk."

"I know."

"You sure you wanna go through with that?"

Nico sighed, turning around to see her sister still asleep on the bed, then back to the faces of her newfound friends. "I'll do anything I can for my sisters—for all of you, not just Mara."

"Then have faith in us," Katherine said.

Nico looked at her elder sister and nodded, hoping against hope that their next run-in with Rancaster and that 'bambina' girl will be worth it. And something in her mind, in the deepest inner recesses of her thoughts, told her that it was.

She turned again and looked at her sister sleeping on the bed, thinking, Is that you, Mara?

As if in response, Mara's presence swept through Nico's astral body and filled her with warmth, like the warmth of their first kiss, sending color to her cheeks. Nico felt her sister's strength and will pouring into her, and her breathing became labored, her lips parted, and her heart drummed in her chest.

"What is it?" Celia said.

But Nico stayed silent, thinking, What are you up to?

And in response, an image flashed in Nico's mind of both sisters playing hide and seek when they were children, and driving her parents crazy for hours on end. Mara was up to her old tricks, and Nico would play along with her sister-in-crime.

Each of the Hearn sisters followed Nico's gaze.

Madison said, "Wait, is it Mara? Is she with us?"

Nico turned with a smile on her face, saying, "Yeah, she's definitely here. It just took her some time to wake up, but she won't be obvious about it."

"What do you mean?" Katherine said.

"Mara and I used to play hide and seek a lot when we were little, and we drove our parents crazy every time. We'll do something similar here," she said, "but we need your permission to mess with this place a little. It's your dream realm, after all."

Katherine looked in Nico's eyes and saw mischief there, and had qualms that Celia’s influence must've rubbed off on her. "Try not to mess with it too much, okay? I don't want a certain someone getting any ideas."

Celia protested, saying, "Hey, I'm not like that!"

"Sure, you're not." Katherine ignored further protests from Celia and said, "What have you got?"

When Celia calmed down, Nico looked at her fellow conspirators, and said, "Okay, here's the plan. First, we let Mara distract them, and trust me—they won't find her in this room. They'll be too busy with Mara messing with them. Once they're distracted, we'll separate them. Celia and Maddy will deal with that 'bambina' girl, and I'll handle Rancaster."

"Wait," Celia said, "are you sure about this?"

"Don't worry. I'm no longer afraid of him. He's messed with me one too many times, and I'll make sure he'll regret it."

"Wait," Madison said, "does he have a weakness?"

"His memories. He messed with me with his memories earlier, so I'll just return the favor." At this, she curled her hands into fists, till her knuckles were white. "I'll mind-fuck him till his brains leak out of his ears, the bastard!"

The three sisters noticed, and Celia said, "Geez, you're more devious than I am."

"I know. He has no idea what's coming to him."

"So that just leaves me with—wait?" Katherine started from her chair, looking at the empty bed. "Where's Mara?"

Madison and Celia looked at the bed, then back at Nico, then back at the bed again in disbelief.

"Mara's awake. She's just hiding right now, so don't worry," she said before any of the girls spoke, looking at her three conspirators. "We know what we're doing. And Celia," she added, turning to the girl in particular, "Mara's already forgiven you, okay? She gets angry, but she doesn't hold grudges for long."

3

At the top of the double grand staircase, Rancaster explained to Auna that the three Hearn sisters were not to be underestimated, especially the eldest one, Katherine Hearn. Out of the three, Katherine was the most formidable and decisive, and this very mansion they infiltrated was her domain, making her presence here difficult for even Rancaster himself to sense. So Rancaster warned Auna that under no circumstances was she to engage Katherine in a fight. In addition, he also warned her not to engage Kendra Tellerman again like she did in the hallways just before he had intervened and kept her from turning a mere complication into a catastrophe.

Auna fisted her hands into tight knuckle-white fists and said, “She never took me off guard.”

“She didn’t have to when Mara was the one who did it,” he said. “That girl almost skewered you to the wall, for Christ’s sake, and here you are still fuming over it when you should be thanking your lucky stars you got out of it unscathed.” He then put his hand on her shoulder and added, “Selfishness is not a good look for you, bambina. Kendra may be an enemy combatant, but you should thank her for what she did for you. At least she has a modicum of honor left in her, if nothing else.”

Indeed, Auna remembered the scene earlier tonight, in which was just about to fire a shot at Nico and send her away for good, wherein that shotgun-toting Kendra had blasted her way into the hallway through one of the mirrors and scared her off. Auna felt like kicking herself for getting spooked like that and said, “I’ll remember it.”

“Good,” he said.

“What about the Cairns twins?” Auna said.

Rancaster wavered a moment, seeming to weigh the possibilities in his mind against their previous engagements with Nico Cairns at the square in the old Rancaster district last night and in the hallways of Katherine’s dream mansion earlier tonight, let alone Nico’s involvement with Kendra’s meddlesome actions. Finally, he shook his head and said, “There are too many variables with those two, especially with Nico, so no. I won’t risk you killing Mara, nor will I let you tangle with her sister or Kendra. Is that clear?”

“But why?” she asked.

“Too many variables, bambina,” he said. ”Nico’s a sly one herself, and Kendra’s not to be trifled with, either, so let me handle these intruders in addition to Katherine.”

“So if I see the Cairns twins or this Katherine or this Kendra,” Auna said, “I should run?”

“Yes, run away and lead them to me,” Rancaster said.

Auna deflated a bit at his words.

So he added, “Believe me, I have faith in you, Auna. I’ll let you take care of the other two Hearn sisters. How you engage them, it matters not to me, but give Katherine a good show while you’re at it. I know she’s watching from somewhere in this place, so get the upper hand on her sisters, and you might draw her out.”

So Auna paused and gulped, then looked away when she said, “You’ll come to my rescue when I do, right?”

At this, Rancaster cracked a smile, saying, “With guns blazing and sword shimmering, I’ll be that very Prince!”

And with those words, he bowed to her and took her hand and kissed it, sending a hint of color to Auna’s deadpanning face. Then he turned on his heel and walked into a darkening haze enveloping the top landing of the staircase and disappeared before her eyes.

Now it was her turn to prove herself, so Auna put up a brave face and steeled herself for the hell to come, ready to follow his plan to a tee.

So she stalked back down the stairs and entered the library, coming to the cafe table where the Carroll book sat undisturbed.

She bit her thumb and drew blood, dripping a drop of it onto the cover, then placed her palm flat over it and imagined the two queens from Through the Looking-Glass, letting her life-blood flow through the ink between the pages, and the air inside the library grew denser and thicker, tinged with the metallic scent of blood and ink from the epicenter of her spell.

She said, “From page 34, enter the Red Queen! From page 91, enter the White Queen!”

And strings of sentences swept out from the pages and across the tabletop and down the stem and feet of the table to the floor, then swirled into two spirals before her, on which the Red Queen and the White Queen materialized.

Both queens had Auna’s face and short bobbed hair and wore crinoline dresses over their forms, one red and one white, but they wore different expressions and fashions. The Red queen wore a Lolita look, her bangs trimmed and hair neat above her shoulders, her face doll-like with small red lips and glassy eyes, and pristine clothes, but the White Queen had a grungy look, her hair unkempt and limp, her makeup a mess over a sweaty complexion and a maniacal stare about her eyes, and a tattered dress and soiled bodice. Both were opposite extremes of Auna herself in demeanor and dress.

“What do you want this time?” the White Queen said, still holding a dildo in her left hand. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”

“Manners, Shiromi, geez! And put that thing away!” the Red Queen said, elbowing her counterpart in the ribs. “Sorry about that, your Grace. What are your orders?” And she even curtsied, prim and proper and annoying.

Which irritated the White Queen, who dissipated the dildo from her hand and manifested a knife and pointed it at her red counterpart, saying, “You know what? Maybe instead of Akami, your name should be Goody Two-Shoes Period-Puss!”

The Red Queen’s face lit up, so she manifested a knife of her own, when Auna manifested a revolver in her hand and fired a shot that bit off a chink from the ceiling. Then she pointed it at the White Queen and said, “I created you, and like it or not, you are my subject. And if you haven’t noticed, I’m the one with the gun,” and she cocked the hammer and chambered a round.

Both queens stopped their tussle and curtsied, though the White Queen did so with a scowl on her face, saying, “What is your bidding, your Grace?”

“Rancaster and I are playing a game of chess with six others.”

“Who are they?” the Red Queen said.

“The Hearn sisters, the Cairns twins, and Kendra,” she said.

Both queens traded looks, and the Red Queen asked, “Who’s their queen?”

“A girl I haven’t seen yet,” Auna said. “Her name is Katherine Hearn. Rancaster said she’s powerful, so he’ll take care of her along with the Cairns twins and Kendra. You two will take care of the younger Hearn sisters, Madison and Celia. I’ve seen both, so you’ll recognize them when you see them, but stay alert. We’re on their home turf, you know.”

Both queens curtsied again and said, “Your word is our command, your Grace,” with the White Queen adding under her breath, “Fuck-face,” and getting glares from her Red counterpart. And before Auna reacted, they turned on their heels and skittered away.

“Don’t worry, your Grace,” the Red Queen said back to Auna. “When this game’s over, I’ll let you play bondage with her.”

But the White Queen had the last word, saying, “And be sure to invite Lord Rancaster, so we can have a foursome!”

Auna blushed and gritted her teeth, wondering how those two shared anything in common with herself.

4

The more Katherine thought about it, the more she hated the circumstances of her current predicament. Everyone had an active role except for Katherine. This place was her dream mansion, a little corner of the Phantom Realms in which she created and arranged everything down to the last detail, a labor of love and an exercise of her mental acuity. Now here she was, hiding in a private part of her dream mansion and relying on others to help take it back for her because of a little oversight on her own part. This, and the added humiliation of letting her sisters see her so weak, irked her like an unreachable itch.

“Don’t go yet,” Katherine said, and Celia, Madison, and Nico looked at her still sitting at her vanity table. “I’m not sending you out there till we know where they are.”

So she placed her hand against the mirrorless backing of the vanity mirror and summoned a bigger mirror, the one connected to her life-line, where it shimmered on contact against her hand. Closing her eyes, she concentrated on Rancaster’s presence in her dream realm but the image in the mirror stayed blurry.

“Shit,” Katherine said.

“What is it?” Nico said.

“Rancaster,” she said. “His presence is all over the place, so I can’t find his exact location. Nico, I think he’s doing what your sister’s doing, so be careful when you’re out there. I’m not sure why he’s doing this, though.”

“Maybe he’s trying to find her,” Nico said.

“Or maybe he’s just trying to throw us off,” Madison added.

“Or maybe it’s a trap,” Celia said.

“Yeah, those might be true,” Katherine said, “but I think he’s trying to find me, too. I’m the creator of this place, and I’m in a weakened state already. If he gets to me when I’m this way, it’s over.” She then paused in thought, rolling possibilities through her mind like balls of yarn and trying to grab at strings of logic, and added under her breath, “Unless I do something, we won’t get out of here.”

Closing her eyes again, she concentrated on Auna’s presence this time, and an image of Auna in the library appeared in the reflection.

“What’s she doing over there?” Celia said.

“Rewind the last half hour and show me,” Katherine said, and the mirror reflection rewound itself like a VHS tape on a videocassette recorder. And immediately, Katherine regretted doing that, and the girls averted their eyes in disgust at Auna playing with herself.

“God, that girl’s nasty!” Madison said. “Just stop it!”

“Wait,” Celia said. “What’s she masturbating to?”

“We don’t have time for your jokes, damn it!” Madison said.

And before Celia spat her comeback, Katherine said, “Pipe down!” And she zoomed in on the book lying on the parquet flooring and saw the three-volume compilation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass, and The Hunting of the Snark.

“What the fuck’s wrong with this chick?” Madison said. “If she did that in my dream world, I’d roast her ass on the spot!”

“Slut-shaming won’t get us out of here, Maddy,” Celia said.

“Voyeurism won’t either.”

“Shut up and let me think, geez!” Katherine said, zooming out of the closeup of the book. “Let me see the rest of it.” And the mirror showed Rancaster confronting Auna about how she spent her downtime (masturbating) before walking out and leaving her crying. “Show me upstairs.” And the mirror blurred out and focused on Auna talking with Rancaster, who directed her to ‘run away and lead them to me.’ She paused it, looked at Nico, and said, “You and Mara are staying with me, got that? Rancaster will have to get through me to get to either of you.”

“That’s risky,” Nico said. “If he captures all three of us, it’s over.”

Katherine ignored her observation and said to her mirror, “Show me the rest.” After Rancaster’s departure, the mirror showed Auna coming down the stairs and through the library entrance (“Show me the library.”), where she took up the book beside the couch, placed her hand over it, and summoned two doppelgängers. “She knows blood summoning and ink invocation.”

“Are you serious?” Celia said. “She can summon, too?”

“Damn this chick,” Madison said, folding her arms and eyeing Auna in contempt, heat surging through the room in waves of envy. “What the hell can’t she do, huh?”

“Gee, jealous?” Celia said, giving her elder sister a sidelong glance and a knowing smile. “I bet you are.”

“I’m not jealous!” Madison yelled. “Ugh, I just wanna go out there and burn her ass alive, the bitch!”

Katherine ignored her sisters and watched, gaining more information. “A chess match, eh? What else do you have for me?” When Auna threatened one of her doppelgängers with a gun, Katherine said, “She also knows transmutation alchemy. Interesting. Okay, what else?”

As she kept watching, Katherine garnered nervous looks from Celia and Madison and Nico, all three watching her watch another girl with the scrutiny of a stalker, all three wondering if she really had a taste for girls—or stalking tendencies, for that matter. The mere thought of it sent chills down the backs of Celia and Madison, while Nico puckered her lips at the sight of her older peer staring so intently at someone else in her mirror.

Then Katherine got up and paced around the room, completely oblivious to the unwholesome thoughts of her peers, while Celia and Madison traded questioning looks, and Nico sat apart from them on the bed, eying the pacer.

“What are you thinking?” Nico said.

“If Rancaster’s ultimate goal is to get to your sister,” Katherine said to Nico, thinking out loud, “then you and I are just extra pieces in his plan to get to her. In the end, he’ll use both of us to get to your sister, so having you two around in this place is too dangerous. But I know a place where you can hide.”

“Where?” Nico said.

“In my mirror,” she said. “It’s not just a doorway or a window into another part of this mansion. It’s an actual place in my soul, and it’s where I got my inspiration for this mansion. This mansion you’re in is a reflection of who I am, a reflection of my soul. Even if Rancaster somehow gets inside there, he’ll have a hell of a time trying to find you or your sister, because he’ll be dealing with me at my strongest.”

“How are you so sure?”

At this, Katherine cracked a smile and said, ”My soul is like a drop of water in the sea, and in that drop of water is the sea itself. I’m stronger than you think.”

Her words struck a chord in Nico, causing her heart to drum in her chest, as if Mara was trying to urge her into action. So she said, “Do you think it’s okay, Mara? Do you think she knows what it’s like?”

Katherine said, “Wait, has Mara—”

“Yeah, she’s been here this whole time. Sorry for not telling you earlier,” she said, and she got off the bed and walked in front of Katherine’s mirror, pointing to it. “Look in your mirror, and you’ll see.”

All eyes turned to Katherine’s mirror.

When Katherine blurred out the reflection of Auna inside the library, all three Hearn sisters saw Nico standing with Mara right next to her, two kindred doppelgängers in the mirror, both waving their hands with smiles on their faces as if they had been playing a game of hide and seek all along.

The Hearn sisters gasped in shock, then looked back and saw the twins bodily in the room.

“Good God,” Madison said, “don’t tell me I have to deal with two more Celia clones in one building. One Celia’s enough as it is!”

“Hardy har har,” Celia said, then teleported in between the Cairns twins and grabbed both their arms in hers, saying, “When this is over, you two are gonna have so much fun with me and Colbie. I just can’t wait!”

At her words, Nico frowned and averted her eyes, catching Celia’s attention.

“What’s wrong?” she said, then realized that it wouldn’t be that simple for Nico. “Nico, I’m . . . I’m really sorry.”

“That’s okay,” she said, then smiled a very Celia-like smile. “I have other ways of playing with those I like.”

Celia’s face lit up, her cheeks flaring at her words. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’ll find out later tonight,” Nico said, making Celia blush even redder than before, then said to Katherine, smiling, “Don’t worry, I’m not like that.”

But Mara qualified her statement, saying, “Most of the time.”

Katherine stared at the twins, then at Celia, and then at Madison, with all kinds of weird thoughts flooding her head involving her youngest sister and these two shady twins in weird circumstances. So she looked at Nico and Mara in their eyes, eyes that seemed to betray no ulterior motives despite their words, and said, “No funny business in my mirror, you two. Otherwise, I’ll know, and you’ll both regret it, trust me.”

Nico smiled, saying, “Celia was right about you,” and walked into the shimmering mirror before Katherine got out a word.

So she stopped Mara from entering and said, “What does she mean by that?”

“I don’t know,” Mara said, “I wasn’t awake yet at the time. Maybe ask Celia after this is over.” Then she turned and walked up to Celia, cupping her hands in her own, and said, “Celia, I never had a chance to thank you back at the Rancaster district for what you did for me and Nico, so I’m doing it now,” and she hugged her close like a soul sister, saying, “And I’m soooooo so sorry for stabbing your friend. I was so scared that time, and I’ve put you through so much, and you have no reason to be my friend for what I did, but you did so much for us,” and tears ran down her cheeks.

Celia was just speechless, not knowing what to say, and her heart fluttered like a swan taking flight.

When Mara stopped hugging Celia, she looked at each of the three Hearn sisters and said, “You three are more beautiful than you know.” And she walked into Katherine’s mirror that shimmered in her wake.

With that, the three Hearn sisters traded looks, and Madison and Katherine smiled at Celia as though she had passed a rite of passage with flying colors, proving herself their equal.

5

No sooner had Auna seen off the Red and White Queens when she felt a headache cleaving through her head like hatchet-strikes from an evil lumberjack. She squatted to the floor, clamping her hands against her temples to ease the pain, but to no avail. The hatchet-strikes continued, and her face contorted into a portrait of agony as she tried everything not to scream. And the headache continued, like hammer-blows against an anvil inside her skull, beating to the rhythm of her heart beats pulsing through the blood vessels in her brain, till she couldn’t take anymore.

Any more, and she’d go crazy even if ‘crazy’ was a concept completely alien to her psyche. Crazy was not the word she’d use to describe herself, not the quintessence of her personality, but deep in her soul, she feared her. And squinting through an agony of pulsing hatchet-strikes through her head, she saw her image flash through her mind’s eye.

Her image, but not herself. Whoever or whatever she was that wore her face, she was not the persona she had in mind to emulate, nor was she someone she was meant to be if Auna could help it. Yet the worst thing was this: she feared that she couldn’t help it.

She shook off these thoughts and stood up, went towards the cafe table and looked at the Lewis Carroll volume. She needed answers to her questions, even if they were on the sly. She bit the scabbing away from her thumb and drew blood, dripping another drop of it onto the cover, then placed her palm flat over it and imagined the eponymous object from Through the Looking-Glass, letting her life-blood flow through the ink in the pages, and once again the air inside the library grew dense and thick, tinged with another metallic waft of blood and ink from her spell.

She said, “From page 9, enter the Looking-Glass House!”

Once again, strings of sentences swept out from the pages and across the tabletop and down the stem and feet of the table to the floor, then swirled into a spiral before her, on which the Looking-Glass House materialized against the reflection of a giant mirror. The mirror had the same decorative trim on the edges of its frames, but it sat on the floor and not on the mantle like in the book. And instead of reflecting the inside of a mid-nineteenth century living room, it reflected rows of library bookshelves stuffed from floor to ceiling with books and books and books.

And framed inside that mirror in front of those books was Auna herself, or at least, the reflection seemed like herself. So she leaned towards the reflection and saw her face getting bigger and bigger, as though this second self were copying her movements to the last degree of pantomime. Auna then passed her hand across the reflected face, crossing her own line of sight, and saw a slight change in the expression of those reflected eyes.

And in that split second, she recognized the roving predatory eyes of that she-wolf wearing her own face and her own clothes, but was not herself. And those eyes lit up with mischief, hinting at forbidden desires coming to the surface like hellfire from unfathomable depths. And in those eyes, her doppelgänger carried a cesspool of bodily sensations that only wanted more, more of Auna’s body, more of her heart, more of her soul.

Then a slasher's smile stretched across her doppelgänger’s face, and it said, “It only happens when you’re not looking!”

And the words of her imposter filtered through her mind and took her down the rabbit hole of unconscious sleep and back to the conscious sleep of dreams. She found herself again on the sofa, but now she was sitting upright without her legs sprawled open and without her hand in her panties.

She looked and saw Rancaster looking down on her again, as though he had waited for her to wake up instead of touching her directly. She stole a quick glance to where the Looking-Glass House had stood and saw in its place the Red and White Queens standing rigidly at attention.

“You’re awake?” he said. “Good! Change of plans, bambina.”

“Wait, what do you mean?” And she looked at the Red and White Queens, adding, “And why are they back here?”

“Just what I said: a change of plans,” he said. “I can’t detect either of the Cairns twin’s presence in this house. I can only think that Katherine Hearn had something to do with their disappearance. Plan A is done for, so it’s Plan B from here on out, till we achieve our ends or Katherine and her sisters wake up at dawn, which is,” and he pulled out a pocket watch from his vest pocket, flipped the cover and read the time (4:08 a.m.), “about three hours from now. By the way, bambina,” he added, “do you know the significance of four o’clock a.m.?”

And indeed, Auna remembered that time as clear as a moonlit night, even at the tender age of nine, because that was the hour when she woke up to her father (her real father) moaning in his bedroom, and when she crept to his room to find out what was the matter and peeked beneath his shut bedroom double doors at what he was doing, she found him masturbating. She felt queasy at the memory, felt bile bubbling up and backing into her throat, so she took a deep breath and stood up, saying, “Wolves are most active at this time.”

“Ah, that’s my bambina!” Rancaster said, petting her head.

Auna blushed in her deadpan way, but she garnered hard looks from the Red and White Queens in sidelong glances. Even though they were formed from Auna’s life-giving blood, she felt that they had a will of their own beyond the confines of her wishes and beyond the parameters set in Through the Looking-Glass.

“So I assume,” he continued, ”you know what happens next?”

Indeed, she did. After months of subsequent spy missions on her father, she remembered the night when she was called to see him in his bedroom. With her heart pounding in her chest, she had obeyed his summons that night, a night that involved her father teaching her how to touch herself and later teaching her how to touch him, which escalated to her father pinching her in intimate places to make her touch him whenever she refused, which culminated in her frustrated father coming into her bedroom and dragging her into his and doing it to her for the first and only time when she was ten. Thus, with her first taste of carnal knowledge came the truth about wolves and feral men and how to slay them.

She knew it then as she knew it now, saying, “I do.”

“Good,” Rancaster said and smiled. “The stage is set, the time is now, and you are the star of the show,” and he bowed to her and took her hand and kissed it, sending color to Auna’s deadpan face. Then he turned on his heel and walked into a darkening haze enveloping the library and disappeared before her.

Taking a moment to breathe, Auna approached the Red and White Queens, both still standing at attention with ashen faces, and said, “What did Rancaster tell you?”

Both Queens traded glances between themselves, till Akami the Red Queen took Auna’s right hand in her own and said, “He told us what you’re going to do.”

“How do you feel about it?” she said.

“Don’t do it, Auna,” Shiromi the Red Queen said, taking Auna’s left hand in her own. “None of this is worth it.”

“Please, reconsider this, your Grace,” Akami added.

“I’m sorry,” Auna said, “but this is something I have to do.”

“But what about Wonderland?” Shiromi said.

“Don’t you want to become queen?” Akami added.

“I will become Queen of Wonderland,” Auna said, “but as a different person, not as you see me now,” and when Shiromi and Akami began to cry, she kissed each of their eyes and said, “Please, don’t either of you cry for me. This is not goodbye: this is only see you later, okay?”

Akami and Shiromi nodded that they understood, but their tears wouldn’t stop.

So Auna said, “I want you two to do something for me.”

“What is it?” they both said.

“After all this is over, find Mara and Nico,” she said, “and tell them that it’s my fault. Tell them I couldn’t get Rancaster to stop the show last night. Tell them that I’m sorry for what happened to their parents. And tell Mara I’m sorry for what happened to her sister. Can you do this for me?”

Akami and Shiromi cried, but nodded that they would, so as their last act of kindness to the girl who had given them their names, they both hugged Auna in a tight embrace and left long and lingering kisses on her lips, telling her that they loved her and will always love her, no matter what becomes of Auna or who she’ll become in the end.

Satisfied with their answer, Auna gave them her orders with tears in her eyes.

6

On entering the mirror into Katherine’s soul, Mara and Nico found themselves at the edge of a wooded park, or English garden, beneath a canopy of large trees overhanging their heads in soft shades. Nico took Mara by her hand ("Stay close to me, okay?") and led the way through the thick foliage, till she spotted a boarded walkway and they followed it out of the woods and into daylight.

They stopped at the edge of the walkway raised above the water margin of a large lake and marveled at the mirrored surface reflecting the heavy clouds above their heads that scattered all shadows into translucent shades around them. The walkway hugged the margins of the lake like the edges of a hand mirror against a forest backdrop of big trees and faraway mountains further back, while water lilies and lily pads hugged the edges of the lake near pillars below their feet.

They then looked across the mirror sheen of the lake and found big and small clusters of lilies and lily pads further out like floating dinner plates of greenery. And in the largest cluster of lilies and lily pads floated the biggest swan either of them had ever seen, about the size of a mid-size SUV. Its long white plumage curved down the folded wings over its back, and it ruffled its feathers when it spotted Nico and Mara looking at it.

“Look at that,” Nico said. “It’s so beautiful!”

“What’s it doing over there?” Mara asked. "And why's it so big?"

“I don’t know.”

The swan gazed back at them, then spread and beat its wings against the air and ran atop the surface of the lake, its long neck stretched forward and its eyes locked onto Mara and Nico on the edge of the water margin. Running and running across the water, it beat its wings on larger tufts of air till it raised its legs behind itself and flew towards them like a fighter jet.

So Nico and Mara both cursed and ducked, cowering and shielding their heads with their hands as they hid behind one of the bigger trees overlooking the lake, when the giant swan swooped up above their heads, rustling the leaves and branches of overhanging trees, and scattered itself into feathery shards of shimmering light.

With both of their hearts thumping in their chests, they emerged from their hiding spot and looked up beyond the leaves and saw no swan above them. So they looked towards the lake, but found no sign of the swan anywhere near it.

“Where is it?” Nico said.

“How should I know?” Mara said.

“Looking for someone?” said an unknown voice.

Both Cairns twins squealed and jumped, then lost their footing and fell into the lake with a splash, brimming the waters into spreading ripples, while the stranger laughed into gut-busting hysterics, holding onto her sides when it began to hurt.

When both sisters emerged through the water, they had scowls on their faces and contempt in their eyes.

Nico said, “Hey, what gives? Why did you—?” And she stopped.

So Mara looked over and saw—“Kathy, is that you?”

Their gazes fell on a Katherine look-alike, but unlike the one with brown front and side bangs and braided twin-tails behind her head, this one simply wore her hair down in long silky strands that would have shimmered under a sunny sky. And on top of that, she had cut-off slacks that revealed a generous amount of leg and a loose blouse tucked into the slacks.

“Well,” this Katherine said, eying Mara with a smile, “I am in a general sense, but . . . I’m not exactly like her. I’m a little different, as you can see.” Then turning to Nico, she said, ”But to answer your first question, I give my apologies. And to your second question, it was a joke—no harm intended, I assure you. Now reach out your hands,” and when they did, she grasped their hands and pulled them up from the water that soaked through their clothes. “You’ll catch a cold in those clothes. Follow me to the house and I'll get you dry ones,” and she led the way on the boarded walkway to a house hidden behind thick forest and foliage.

Nico and Mara traded questioning looks, noting the different mannerisms between the Katherine they knew and this other Katherine, but they followed, anyway.

“Um,” Nico started, ”should we call you Katherine or Kathy or—?”

“Cooley,” she said. "Call me Cooley."

Mara stayed silent, though, wondering how she could transform into a swan. Or maybe she was a spirit animal or guide of some kind, but she had no way of knowing for certain.

“Oh, and if you’re wondering about the swan thing,” Cooley said, “just know that swans are my spirit animals, and so they are Katherine’s spirit animals, too.”

“Wait, you can read minds?” Mara said in awe.

“Not really,” she said, turning and giving her a wink, “but I can read emotions fairly well and, sometimes, peer into other people’s hearts.” Then she stopped along the path and turned to face her new-found friends and said, “I know of the plight you both suffered, and your actions and words have moved me as much as they have moved my counterpart in your world. However long you need to stay here, I’ll give you all the time you need.”

Her words were like a tonic, soothing frayed nerves and offering respite.

So for the first time in a while, both sisters smiled.

7

“All right, back to business,” Katherine said, looking at Celia and Madison for a moment, then put her hand to the mirror and concentrated on the locations of Auna’s two doppelgängers, and the mirror showed them in a lonely corner of the maze of hallways. They had joined hands and were now turning counter-clockwise and saying an incantation that Katherine couldn’t hear, but she guessed what it was when she spotted the summoning circle glowing under their feet. “They’re using an invocation spell, but I’ve never seen it done like that, or at least, I don’t think so,” she added, searching through the hidden library of her mind for any ideas. “How are they doing it?”

Celia and Madison got a closer look at the spell casting in progress playing on the reflection.

“I don’t see any candles anywhere,” Madison said, “so they’re not doing it through flames, and that rules out a fire elemental, thank God.”

“I know that,” Katherine said, “but . . .”

“But they look alike, those two,” Celia said.

“Well, duh,” Madison said. “They’re twins, Captain Obvious!”

“Hey, I was just making an observation!” Celia said. “If you—”

“You may be onto something,” Katherine said, beginning to see a pattern in their deliberate use of symmetry in their invocation, as if they were replicating something into existence, but they weren’t using any mirrors. Katherine had made sure that all of the mirrors in her mansion were broken, except for the one she was using, yet she knew there had to be a means to their method of invocation. There just had to be!

“See?” Celia said, looking at Madison and smiling an all-knowing smile. “What did I tell you?”

“Lucky guess,” Madison said, “for a lucky brat.”

Before Celia was about to talk back, Katherine caught on to the deliberate symmetry of their method and said, “I think they’re using doubles.”

“Are you serious?” Celia said.

“But doesn’t that involve a body double as a vessel?” Madison said, looking at the Red and White Queens continuing their counter-clockwise spell chanting. “Where’s the vessel?”

“Wait a minute,” Celia said, “where’s that ‘bambina’ chick?”

“Do you think she’s the vessel?” Katherine said.

“Yeah,” she said. “Can you find where she is?”

“I’ll try,” and Katherine concentrated on the smaller imprint of the gun-toting ‘bambina’ girl’s location, but . . . “I can’t find her. She must be using charms to hide her location from me. Fuck!” And she winced, almost taking her hand off of the reflection and cutting off the image, and gritted her teeth against the jolt of paint running through her arm.

“What’s wrong?” her sisters said.

“Fuck, someone’s putting a curse on me!” Katherine said, gritting her teeth and wincing against the pain running through her arm.

“WHAT?” her sisters said, looking on in horror, as they began to see the effects of the curse in the blurring and warping of the walls surrounding them in Katherine’s boudoir. Something was getting in, digging through the cracks in Katherine’s psychic barrier, little by little, warping its way through an already weakened Katherine.

“You have to go!” she said, grimacing against the pain as tears squeezed out of her eyes. “I can’t hold out much longer!”

“We’re not leaving you like this!” Celia said.

“What’s gonna happen to you?” Madison said.

“I’ll deal with it. Just do what you have to do. I’m putting all of my trust in you two,” she said and looked into her sisters’ eyes. “Don’t worry! I’ll be fine. NOW GO!”

So Celia and Madison looked at the Red and White Queens in the mirror, and Celia threw her seal below both of their feet and blinked out of sight.

Katherine then pulled away and collapsed to her knees, doubling over on the floor and nursing her arm tight against her stomach, till the pain subsided enough for her to raise her head and look at the mirror. The mirror’s reflection was a spider’s web of cracks showing a swirling black mass of energy, reminding her of the death of her grandmother and the unwitting role her own mother had played in it, as well as the man who had orchestrated it.

“Rancaster, you fucker!” she said.

つづく