Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!

Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways: . . .

—William Butler Yeats,

“To the Rose upon the Rood of Time”

1

Auna Wenger looked up at the face of this older woman, her name just on the tip of her tongue, lilting the L-sound on the palette of her mouth and hinting at some recognition just beyond her words. Something about this woman reminded her of someone close to her, though she couldn’t recall who. It was like recalling the fleeting ghost of another ghost, an image imposed on another image, separating the observer further from the original with an imitation.

The reflection then morphed into something else, and she saw the same Mandarin dress-wearing girl from the hallway. Instinct took over, and she manifested a gun in her hand and—

The girl in the mirror rolled out of the way as the library filled with a percussive report, and the mirror became a spider’s web of cracks, obscuring the girl from view.

Then Auna ran from the mirror and threw herself over the solan sofa, repositioned her stance behind it and aimed her gun, keeping it trained on the mirror for any sign of movement in the reflection, then waited for the inevitable.

She waited and waited and waited.

2

On the other side of the mirror, Kendra was breathing hard and holding her gun in both hands, edging herself closer on the periphery of the mirror within a tangent of its reflection, so the other girl couldn’t get a clear shot at her. Making sure to keep herself within the profile of the mirror frame, Kendra surveyed her surroundings and took stock of the composition of the furniture around the mirror, as well as the mirror’s overall position inside the library.

Looking back on the doorway she had entered and taking a sidelong peak through the bigger shards in the mirror’s reflection, she figured that any direct appearance would get her shot. And somewhere around these premises, somewhere behind these objects, she knew her opponent was waiting for Kendra to slip up and reveal herself in the reflection. Yet in shooting first, her opponent had given her an unexpected advantage.

There in front of the mirror lay a large shard, large enough for Kendra to use like a hand mirror and take advantage of the situation, yet the blasted thing was right there in front of the Goddamn mirror. And on top of that, the shard was far enough away from the reflection to rule out any direct attempt on getting it, since that would expose herself to getting shot. Even if Kendra attempted a leap-and-roll maneuver, presenting herself as a moving target (and thus a harder target) to shoot, she couldn’t take the chance if one chance was all her opponent needed to take her out.

After taking one more look at her surroundings, Kendra closed her eyes and visualized the battlefield in her mind like a painter visualizing the scene on a blank canvas. If Kendra was a painter, and her object was to paint this collection of objects in Katherine’s library onto a canvas using the confines of a mirror to frame and compose the “shot” (Kendra smiled at this pun in her mental observations), she would need to focus on one object in particular as a focal point to ground the observer’s interest. From there, the observer would compose the “composition” shot in the confines of the picture, and by analogy, her opponent would compose the “kill” shot in the confines of the mirror. Hence, Kendra would attempt no idiot heroics this time, for it was idiot heroics that got her into this mess in the first place.

Kendra opened her eyes and looked back at the doorway through which she had entered and remembered what she had seen. In that prior composition shot, the mirror dominated her observational interest and drew her steps to it without her thinking about it, and just like any object in a painter’s composition, a painter was free to move the objects around to create a new focal point. Therefore, applying these observations to her situation, all Kendra needed to do to take advantage was to move the mirror and create a new focal point in the reflection.

Kendra had found her solution, and now was the time to put it into practice. She dissipated her gun in her hand and placed her hands on the frame of he mirror, making sure that her eagle-eyed opponent won’t take a shot and take out a finger, and turned the mirror away from the shard and obscured her opponent’s line of sight, then picked it up and looked at it.

It was just like a hand mirror, but instead of taking it with her and potentially revealing her position with it in the reflection of the bigger mirror, she looked at her surroundings once again and listed them off, one by one:

1. bookshelves;

2. cafe table with chairs;

3. solan sofa.

All three were immovable objects in the composition, while the fourth object (the giant mirror) and the auxiliary fifth object (the mirror shard) were under Kendra’s control. Observing these objects, she ruled out the bookshelves and the cafe table with chairs, since they afforded no cover for her opponent to hide behind. That left the solan sofa, so she walked towards the sofa and placed the shard next to one of its legs on the floor. She then went back to the giant mirror and turned it towards the sofa, all the while focusing her attention onto the shard on the floor and found the feet of her target behind the sofa.

3

Auna stared at the movements in the reflection of the mirror even as the mirror itself was stationary, whereon the reflected image shifted along the bookshelves, becoming bigger and tapering its growth as it began to face the shelves head on. When she turned to her left towards the shelves behind her, she noticed her mistake (“Fuck!”) and rolled out of there just as a shot took a chunk of foam and stuffing from the backing of the sofa. She then sprinted towards the back of the mirror, taking deep breaths to quell the beatings of her heart, berating herself for overlooking such a tactical error. Auna knew she had her limitations (her fight with that teleporting Hearn girl had proven that much), but this oversight on her part churned her stomach. Whoever was on the other side of this mirror was a thinking and formidable opponent.

When Auna thought about the way she had entered the hallway, somehow defeating Rancaster’s reflection spell in the process (something she herself failed to do numerous times during her training with Rancaster), she could expect nothing less from such an opponent. But however good her enemy was in strategy, Auna made up for in imaginative brilliance, for she knew her Lewis Carroll.

She sprinted for the cafe table and took the Carroll book and sprinted back behind the mirror. With her gun clutched in one hand, she bit her thumb and pressed it to the cover, then placed her palm flat over it and imagined the Pool of Tears from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, letting her 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 23, enter the Pool of Tears!”

And strings of sentences swept out from the pages and across the floor of the library, and Auna took up the book and flung it to the sofa as a sheen of salt water flooded the library floor like a giant watery mirror.

And encompassed within this mirror’s reflection stood Kendra in perplexity, so Auna stepped forward and pressed the muzzle of her gun into the small of her enemy’s back and said, “Checkmate,” and she froze on the spot. “Drop your gun and kick it away.”

And she dropped her gun, which thudded to the floor, and kicked it towards the corner of the bookshelf, rippling the mirror sheen.

“Raise your hands in the air,” she said, “and turn around and face me. Slowly.”

And she raised her hands past her shoulders and turned around in slow deliberate movements like a loaded gun and faced Auna, face to face, with her palms open and empty.

“Rancaster told me about the Hearn sisters, but he never mentioned you,” Auna said. “Who are you?”

“I’m Kendra Tellerman,” she said.

Auna noticed the slit in and the bloodstain on the stomach of her dress and said, “Why didn’t you let her do it?”

“Do what?” Kendra said.

“That girl in the hallway,” Auna said, keeping her aim trained on her stomach. “She had me up against the wall and was about to stab me. Why didn’t you let her do it?”

“Because you posed no threat to her,” Kendra said.

“Even if I was the enemy?”

“I’m not like you.”

“How do you know who I am?” Auna said. “You’ve never met me.”

“I know your name,” Kendra said. “You’re Auna Wenger.”

“And who told you that?” she said.

“A friend of mine.”

“And did this friend of yours hurt you?” Auna said and aimed her gun at her stomach, drawing Kendra’s eyes.

“No,” she said. “It was a friend of yours.”

“This friend of mine,” Auna said. “Can you tell me her name?”

Kendra shook her head and said, “The only other name I’m aware of is Alice Liddell, but I don’t think it’s her.”

“Did you kill her?” she said.

“Not before she did the same to me,” said Kendra.

That’s when Auna lowered her gun, dropping her aim, and got a good look at Kendra’s face, the face of the enemy who wouldn’t let her die, even when Auna herself would've done her in had Rancaster not prevented her.

“Did you meet Alice Liddell?” Auna said.

“My friend, Colbie, has,” Kendra said.

At her words, Auna was about to ask her a question that burned her to know, but decided to put it to the test, so Auna handed her own gun to her opponent, face to face, the handle pointing forwards, and said, “Take it, Kendra Tellerman.”

Kendra didn’t take it, though. “A truce?”

“Whatever you want to call it,” Auna said, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

And with those words, Kendra paused for a moment longer and eyed Auna, then took the gun from her hand.

Now was the time to put up or shut up, and Auna knew it. She turned her back on her opponent and breathed in and out to stem the thumping against her chest, then walked away from her towards the doorway, committing her every step to the chance that she might kill her with her own gun, knowing full well that if Kendra wanted to she could very well do it at any moment now as she bent down and picked up Kendra’s gun and turned back expecting to see her own gun pointed right back at her.

But to Auna’s relief, she was mistaken.

Kendra stood there with her gun in her hand, so she walked back to her with Kendra’s gun, but then Kendra did something unusual. Kendra took out the clip from Auna’s gun and said, “See? I didn’t take out any bullets while your back was turned. Can we trust each other now?”

Auna said, “How do I know those aren’t blanks?”

So Kendra shoved the clip back in, pulled back the slide, chambering a round, raised her gun and fired a shot that bit off a chunk from the ceiling and said, “There. Are you happy now?”

Both girls traded each other’s guns, but then Kendra hefted her gun around as if to test its weight, before looking back at Auna and saying, “Fuck you!”

Auna held the magazine clip in front of her like a candy bar and said, “You can’t be too careful now, can you?”

Kendra grabbed the clip from her hand and reloaded her pistol and dissipated it into thin air, then said, “Can I ask you something?”

“What is it?”

“Why’d you turn?” Kendra said. “And don’t give me any B.S. about me saving your life and all that. Last time we met, you were still going to kill us had it not been for Rancaster. What made you turn?”

At those words, Auna thought of her last agonizing moments alive on the bottom landing of the stairs with that Hearn girl, then thought of her mother and said, “I still remember my mom’s tears when she gave birth to me. Nobody else has cried for me since then,” and she thought about the Hearn girl who never wanted to injure her or see her die like that, “till that Hearn girl cried for me even after everything I put her through.”

“You mean, Celia Hearn?” Kendra said.

“Is she a friend of yours?”

“Yeah,” she said. “She and I don’t always get along, but she’s a good friend.”

“When you meet her again,” Auna said, “tell her it wasn’t her fault she injured me. And tell her she wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger, even when Rancaster made her do it. And tell her,” she added, as tears now trailed her cheeks even as she wiped them away, “she was the first person who’s ever cried for me since my mom died.”

And for the first time in her life, in her life after her death, she felt another woman’s embrace surrounding her with a love she had never known and allowed herself to fall to pieces like the child she used to be.

4

Meanwhile, in another part of the Phantom Realms, a mirror appeared in the midst of an underground cavern on the water’s edge of a shimmering pond. And through that mirror walked a train of three older women holding each other’s hands: Amelia entering first, Ramona entering second, and Bridget entering last before the mirror dissipated into nothing behind her. And in front of the trio was another woman floating in the still waters of the pond, her glowing form lighting up their surroundings, her forearms crossed over her bosom, her face framed in a halo of long dark hair floating on the surface.

For a moment, all three women just stared at the woman, till Bridget said, “Who is she?”

“Her name is Lucy Cairns,” Amelia said, “and she’s the latest collateral victim of Rancaster’s plans. I couldn’t reach her husband before he passed on, but I managed to get to her at least. Hence, we’re here.”

“Is she still in limbo?” Ramona said.

“It’s been a full day since I last saw her, so I doubt it,” Amelia said. “Now help me get her out of there,” and she waded into the shallow waters, and Bridget and Ramona waded in with her deeper and deeper into the water, till they were about chest deep when they reached Lucy’s floating astral body. Amelia circled around Lucy’s head and hooked her arms under the woman’s armpits and said, “You two, take up her feet.”

And so, Bridget and Ramona did just that, and as one, the trio of women guided Lucy’s floating astral form towards the shore, then carried her once they waded out of the water and placed her gently on the bank by the water’s edge. They placed Lucy on the same spot where Mara and Nico woke up screaming, yet Lucy remained still and unresponsive.

Amelia then kneeled over Lucy and put her palm against Lucy’s forehead and put her other palm against her own forehead, closing her eyes for just a moment, then opened with an intake of breath. She then pulled back one of Lucy’s eyelids and saw both eyes rolled back and said, “She’s out of immediate limbo, but she’s still in a trance. I think something’s keeping her in this state.”

“Like what?” Ramona said.

“I don’t know,” Amelia said, “but we need to stay with her.”

“For how long?” Bridget said.

“Till she wakes up from the trance,” Amelia said.

“And how long will that be?” Ramona said.

“As long as it takes,” Amelia said.

“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute,” Ramona said. “We can’t stay here like this. We’re wet and cold, and God knows what’s in this place.”

“Oh ye of little faith,” Amelia said, smiling up at a pensive Ramona and Bridget. “I didn’t say we were going to stay here, did I? I only said we were going to stay with her, which means we’ll bring her with us.”

“Where?” Bridget said.

“To your family mansion?” Ramona added.

“No way,” Amelia said. “I don’t want to scare my granddaughters with a haunting at their house. Lima would be pissed if I did that. I have a better idea,” she added and got to her feet and stretched out her hand and summoned another mirror. “You two, pick her up, and I’ll lead the way,” and she passed through the reflection and shimmered its reflection in her passage. Then Amelia’s disembodied voice echoed through the cavern, saying, Come on, hop to it! We don’t have all day.

Ramona and Bridget just looked at each other.

“Is she always this bossy?” Bridget said.

“You’ll get used to it,” Ramona said and crouched down and hooked her arms under Lucy’s, while Bridget crouched and hooked her arms under Lucy’s calves, and both women hoisted her up and carried her towards Amelia’s mirror. Bridget entered first, then Lucy, and then Ramona, each of them shimmering the reflection in their passage, till the mirror itself dissipated into nothing afterwards.

5

At the bottom of the six o’clock hour, the doorbell rang. Celia went to open it and found a disheveled and weary-eyed Roy Dolan, noticing his five o'clock stubble, and figured that he hadn’t shaved this morning because of Kendra’s disappearance.

“Hey, Mr. Dolan,” Celia said, and led him into the entrance hall. “Are you okay?”

“I’m holding up,” he said, then looked at the divans and recliners in front of him. “Been redecorating?”

“No. It’s not that,” she said, and pointed into the family room. “Kendra’s there to your left on a sofa, but don’t try to wake her up or touch her, okay?”

“Did Kathy tell you that?”

“Yeah,” she said, then touched his hand and felt the calluses on his palm and added, “Oh, and I’m really sorry for what happened yesterday. If it wasn’t for me, I wouldn’t have gotten them in trouble in the first place.”

“Hey, at least you and your friends made it out of there unscathed,” he said. “So don’t sweat it, kid. Higher-ups may not see it that way, but most of us at the Station can understand why you did it.” With that, he entered the Hearn family room, and Celia entered with burning cheeks.

Madison then came up behind her and said, “Are you blushing?”

Celia humphed and pouted and turned to face Madison, refusing to give her vengeful sister the satisfaction of seeing her flustered. “Hardy har har. I’m not.”

“Oh, Celia, you’re so cute when you blush,” Madison said and pinched Celia’s cheeks, then looked at Roy Dolan talking to Katherine about what had happened to Kendra, then turned back to Celia and smirked. “I didn’t know you were into older men, you little gold digger.”

“I’m not into older guys,” she said, “and cops don’t make much money.”

“That’s why I put ‘gold digger’ at the end.”

Celia glared at her and said, “At least I don’t go after losers like someone I know.”

Madison’s face lit up, and Celia smiled a beaming smile, so Madison said, “I wonder what Kendra’s going to say with you being her step mother. Let me guess . . .”

“Fuck you, Maddy, God!” Celia said.

“Hey, no swearing when visitors are here,” Katherine said, with Roy Dolan raising an eyebrow at the feuding sisters. “And Maddy, if you’re gonna pick a fight with Celia, do it somewhere else, please.”

Both girls blushed at the sight of Roy Dolan eyeing them in his analytical detective way, so both girls apologized, and Madison grabbed Celia’s hand and pulled her into the entrance hall and up the stairs and into the upper hallway. All the while, they both heard Katherine apologizing to Roy for her sisters’ behavior, but Roy said, “It’s okay. I’m used to foul lingo. Now what exactly did you mean about . . .”

“Where are you taking me?” Celia said.

“To my room,” Madison said and opened the door and led her inside. “I need to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“About Kathy,” she said, and she closed the door behind her. “God, if there’s one thing that pisses me off more than your bullshit, it’s Kathy’s. Why does she have to keep secrets all the time? I just don’t get it!” And she sat on the edge of her bed and placed her hands on her knees, looking at the ground as though she was about to ‘roast it alive,’ as she was apt to say.

“What is it, Maddy?”

“Come here,” she said, patting the bedside next to her. “Sit with me. I need to know something.”

Celia sat beside her and waited.

Time passed. At first, Madison just kept her gaze to the floor, then looked at her younger sister and said, “Celia, when I got pissed that time and stormed off, what did Kathy tell you about Mom?”

“You mean, in the library?”

“Yeah,” Madison said. “What did Kathy say?”

Celia remained silent, thinking about Katherine’s words (or the lack thereof) on the subject of their mother, and said, “She didn’t say much about her. She kind of . . . I don’t know.”

“Swept her under the rug?” Madison asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “Do you think Kathy knows something about our mom we don’t?”

“I’m starting to think so, yeah,” she said. “I mean, take that giant ‘twinner’ mirror or whatever it is. Mom would ground us for a month, at least, if we did anything close to what Kathy’s been doing in this house.”

“You mean, all those mirrors she’s got hidden?” Celia said, then smiled at her elder sister. “Maddy, are you telling me that I’m not the only reason why she keeps all these mirrors around?”

“Well, okay, you are the brattiest little sister anyone could have,” Madison said, “but still . . . Having all those mirrors around is going overboard if they were just meant to keep you out of her naughty room.”

Celia blinked, then gulped. “How do you know about that room?”

“Oh, I’ve snuck in a few times,” she said, winking at her, “but I’m serious here. Kathy’s really paranoid about something if she removed all the door numbers in her dream mansion.”

“Which is why you got lost?” Celia said.

”Yep. Nico really saved my ass that time when she spotted me,” she said, then smiled a churlish smile. “When you meet her next time, kiss her for me. I really owe her one.”

“Maddy, geez!” Celia said, blushing. “How do you even know about that?”

“Ah, so it was her, then,” she said, smiling again. “Honestly, I never thought my dear little sister would swing that way, but tell me: Was that your first kiss?”

Celia stood up and said, “Stop, Maddy! I’m serious!”

“I’m serious, too,” Madison said to a flustered Celia and clasped her hand in both of hers. “Celia, I felt that kiss, too, and it’s the reason why Kathy and I made it to the mansion before Rancaster did. God knows what would’ve happened to you or the Cairns twins had we arrived too late.”

Celia calmed down, but stayed silent.

“Look, I’m not judging you, okay?” Madison said. “And if it makes you feel any better, that was my first kiss, too.”

Celia deadpanned. “How’s that supposed to make me feel better?”

“Hell, I don’t know, geez,” Madison said, then pulled Celia back beside her on the bedside. “Anyway, back to what I was saying. All those mirrors Kathy has in this house can’t be there just because of you. And that goes for her dream mansion, too.”

Celia considered her words for a spell, then said, “Maddy, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that something’s got Kathy spooked,” Madison said, “spooked enough to go overboard on all of those mirrors.”

Again Celia considered her words, specifically the word ‘spooked’ when Connie Davis talked to Roy Dolan over the phone back in the nurse’s office yesterday, and said, “When you say it that way . . . Maddy, you might be onto something. You remember the police calling off the search for Nico and Mara yesterday?”

“Yeah, I do,” Madison said. “Why?”

“Because when we got to the old Rancaster district, I could teleport in there just fine,” Celia said, “but when I did it again to take them out of there, I couldn’t do it. Someone had placed a magic barrier around the whole district.”

“Are you serious?” Madison said.

“Did they make an announcement about it on the news?”

“No, they didn’t,” Madison said. “For them to do that without making an announcement about it first . . . You think what scared the police was the same thing scaring Kathy?”

“Maybe,” Celia said, then looked her sister dead in the eyes. “Maddy, please, try not to get angry. I’m just gonna say it as a supposition, so don’t get angry, okay?”

Madison nodded.

“What if,” Celia began, “what Rancaster said about our mom was true? What if our mom really did kill Grandma? And what if Kathy knew about it? It’s just supposition, got it?”

“Got it,” she said, “but do you really think it’s true?”

“Maybe,” Celia. “Just hear me out, okay?”

Madison nodded again.

“Now,” Celia continued, “if Kathy knows that our mom killed Grandma, then she’d keep it a secret and avoid any mention of it to keep us safe from her. You get me?”

“Yeah, I get you,” she said.

“And,” Celia continued, “if our mom really did kill Grandma, and Kathy knew about it, then that would explain the mirrors she keeps in this house and her dream mansion: she’d keep all the mirrors in this house to keep something connected to our mom or Grandma from getting to us in our house; and she’d keep all the mirrors in her own dream mansion to keep something connected to our mom or Grandma from getting to her in her dreams. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah, when you put it that way,” she said, “but how would Rancaster know about that?”

“I’m not sure,” Celia said, rolling the implications and their consequences in her mind, “but maybe our mom or Grandma met Rancaster before we did.”

“But why would they meet him?” Madison said.

“I have no idea,” Celia said, “but maybe we could ask Mrs. Amame about it when she arrives. She was a friend of our mom’s when they were in school together, and she knew Grandma, too, so maybe she can help us figure this out.”

“I’ll ask her, then,” Madison said, “but should we tell Kathy about this?”

“For now, let’s not,” Celia said—

Just before the doorbell rang, and Kathy yelled from downstairs, saying, “Maddy, Celia, are you two done bickering? Someone’s at the door!”

“Coming,” both sisters yelled, and left Madison’s room and ran through the upper hallway and stomped down the stairs.

“Oh, and, Maddy,” Katherine said, “can you help me and Roy move the furniture back in place?”

“All right, all right, I’m coming!” Madison said.

6

Amelia had just finished changing into dry pajamas and was now getting out three more pairs of pajamas from the dresser drawer and placing two of them on top of her vanity table, while she draped the third pair over her shoulder. Amelia then doubled back towards the railing of her bedroom loft and folded her wet clothes on the drying rack by the railing when she heard the heavy tread of Bridget and Ramona carrying Lucy’s body through the mirror in the dining area. She looked over the railing at them, where the mirror dissipated, and waved her hands while calling out, “I’m over here.”

Both women looked up at her.

“Where do we put her?” Ramona said.

“Up here in the loft,” she said. “There’s a bed up here for Lucy, and there are stairs in the back of the kitchenette,” and she left the railing and descended the stairs to meet them and lead them up. “Careful now. The steps are a bit narrow.”

While Ramona carried Lucy by her armpits and walked backwards up the steps, and Bridget carried Lucy’s legs going forwards, Amelia got out of the way when they cleared the top step and carried Lucy over to the bed and laid her there.

Then Amelia said, “Hey, are you hungry or thirsty?”

“But we’re ghosts,” Ramona said.

“Do ghosts even eat or drink anything?” Bridget added.

“Of course, they do,” Amelia said. “The Ghost Festivals of China and Vietnam and Korea and the Bon Festival of Japan all honor the ghosts of the dearly departed with food and drink offerings from their descendants. And I should know. A few years ago, I was lucky enough to attend a Bon Festival in Tokyo with some of my ghost colleagues there, and the living were kind enough to let me partake of their food and drinks.”

Ramona and Bridget just stared at her, mouths agape and watery, and their astral stomachs growled.

“Ah, see what I mean?” Amelia said. “Oh, and I also brought out dry clothes for you. They’re on top of the vanity table, so get out of those wet clothes.”

While Amelia waited for the two women to finish changing into dry pajamas, she put their clothes on the drying rack beside her own, then proceeded to help a sleeping Lucy out of her wet clothes on the bed. She lifted the turtleneck sweater past Lucy’s bra and over her shoulders and slipped it along her arms, then tugged and pulled her jeans past her hips, little by little, and slipped it down her legs. All the while, Ramona and Bridget just stared and gaped, till she looked up at them.

“What is it?” Amelia said.

“What you’re doing,” Ramona said. “That’s kind of creepy.”

“Do you do that often?” Bridget added.

“Oh, come on,” Amelia said and gathered up Lucy’s clothes and folded them over the drying rack next to their clothes. “I don’t do this ‘often’ at all, and it’s not ‘creepy.’ I just don’t want her to get cold, that’s all,” and she returned to Lucy’s bedside and got her into the third pair of pajamas and then raised the sheet over her. “See? Now she won’t get cold.”

After that, Amelia passed the two shocked women on her way downstairs into the kitchenette, where she got out three cups and three bowls and a ladle and brewed some tea in a kettle over a burner. She placed the cups on the table and doubled back and filled a deep pan with water, then got out a few packs of dried ramen and cooked them over the stove, where the smell of something savory wafted up towards the loft and brought two hungry ghosts ready to eat something after years of existing in the Phantom Realms without food or drink of any kind to satisfy them.

“Take a seat,” Amelia said, and while her guests took their seats, the tea kettle began whistling, so Amelia turned off the burner and poured the steaming brew. “The ramen will be ready in a bit. Oh, and do you prefer chopsticks or spoons and forks?”

“Chopsticks,” her guests said.

Amelia smiled at that and doubled back and got out chopsticks from a side drawer, then went back to the stove and stirred the ramen, till the noodles were soft. She then grabbed a pair of tongs from the side drawer and put a good amount of noodles in each bowl, then grabbed the ladle and spooned a fair portion of ramen broth into each serving, then placed the bowls in front of her guests.

Amelia then took her seat with her guests and said in Japanese, “Tabemashou!” (Let’s eat!)

And so they ate in silence and drank tea, till their astral selves brightened to an almost fluorescent glow, and their emotional struggles from hours ago seemed to melt away from them. In fact, the more they ate and drank, the lighter and more energetic they became as if the weight of their tumultuous pasts had eased off of their shoulders, and they began to relax. It was the ghost’s equivalent of breaking a fast of many days like the 40 days of fasting that Jesus endured during his sojourn in the desert, giving Amelia’s guests a reason to take a deep breath and see things in a different light.

After they finished their spiritual breakfast, they all sat there for a moment in the blissful afterglow of utter relief.

“Feels good, doesn’t it?” Amelia said.

“Oh my God, you have no idea,” Bridget said as tears began welling up in her eyes, which she wiped away. “What have I been doing all this time? All these years of wandering when I could’ve just stopped to smell the roses and just be me for a change.”

“My God, I’ve spent all these years searching endlessly for that ‘informant’ fucker,” Ramona said, “when I could’ve just let it all go and be free for once.”

“I know what you mean,” Amelia said, taking one last sip and emptying her teacup. “I was the same way for years, till my ghostly colleagues from Japan helped me out of my own funk.”

“Really, from Japan?” Ramona said. “How did you even get to meet ghosts from Japan?”

“It’s a long story,” Amelia said, “but I got a recommendation from the Virgin Mary.”

“Are you serious?” Ramona said.

“Oh, you bet I am,” Amelia said, then looked at her empty bowl and teacup. “God, I was so obsessed over my own emotional hiccups in this astral world and the world of the living. And it looks like some of my obsessions over investigating Rancaster have rubbed off on Lima and Leslie and even you, Ramona. And for that, I’m sorry for dragging you into it. If it wasn’t for me, you’d still be alive.”

“There’s no need to apologize,” Ramona said. “If there’s one person who deserves what he’s gonna get, it’s Rancaster. Hell, you said it yourself. He’s the reason everything’s happened to me, to Mrs. Wenger, and even to Mrs. Cairns,” and she looked up at the loft where Lucy was sound asleep in slow-wave sleep.

“What exactly happened with you and Rancaster?” Bridget said.

“He killed me,” Ramona said, “and my husband.”

At this, Bridget put her hands to her mouth, saying, “Oh my God, I’m really sorry.”

“What about you, Mrs. Wenger?” Ramona said.

“Call me Bridget,” Bridget said.

“Bridget,” Ramona said, “how do you fit into all of this?”

“I never met this ‘Rancaster’ myself,” Bridget said. “All of this is from my woman’s intuition, so take this with a grain of salt, but I know what happened to my daughter. I’m not sure if this ‘Rancaster’ was the reason for what happened to her, but after my husband sexually assaulted her, this ‘Rancaster’ took my daughter in with him and changed her. I don’t know exactly what he did, but Auna has become someone else. I can feel Auna struggling to keep true to herself as I speak,” she added, cupping her hand over her heart, “and I wish to God I could be there for her, but I can’t. By God, I can’t!”

At this, Ramona reached out and put her hand atop her shoulder in a sisterly way, as if to say that she sympathized with Bridget even when she couldn’t fathom the horror of that kind of uncertainty.

“What about Mrs. Cairns?” Ramona said, glancing up at the loft again. “What happened to her?”

At this, Amelia said, “You haven’t heard, have you?”

“No, I haven’t,” Ramona said, shaking her head.

“What happened?” Bridget said.

“I only met Mrs. Cairns for a short time before she fell back into limbo,” Amelia said, “but while I was with her, I glimpsed her last memories just before she died. Rancaster had both of her daughters participate in a game of Russian roulette onstage, while Mrs. Cairns and her husband were forced to watch. One of her daughters died. Afterwards Rancaster shot and killed her husband and then Mrs. Cairns herself. That’s all I gleaned before she slipped back into limbo.”

Bridget and Ramona just sat there in wide-eyed horror, covering their gaping mouths with their hands, wrinkling their brows over the sheer cruelty of it all.

“I know. It’s so fucking sick,” Amelia said, sitting forward in her chair and propping her elbows up on the table with her hands laced together under her chin, and closed her eyes and wondered if she could muster up the nerve to tell them what she had only told Lima Hearn during the last few months before her own demise in one of Rancaster’s murderous schemes. Of all the people affected by that man’s devilry, Amelia had firsthand experience of just how far those schemes went, just how far one man would go to win back a family that had moved on from his archaic and draconian ways. She knew, and she expected her guests to pop the question, and she waited and waited . . .

Till Amelia opened her eyes and found Ramona and Bridget looking back at her, both on the cusp of asking.

So Amelia broke the ice and said, “You don’t have to ask. Yes, I’ve been affected, as well. And it’s not just me, either. My whole family has been tangled up with Rancaster for centuries, and God bless my mom and dad for trying everything they could to keep me from the influence of such a monster, even when curious me couldn’t take their restrictions anymore and traveled back in time using forbidden spells just to find out what the hell they were hiding from me. God, I was so stupid! I went back in time just to sate my own selfish curiosity and got tangled up with Rancaster in ways I still can’t comprehend even now, and my daughter and my granddaughters and even your own daughters are paying for it, my God!”

Then Bridget and Ramona got up and slid their chairs over towards Amelia, till both were now sitting on either side of her. Then Bridget grabbed Amelia’s left hand, while Ramona grabbed her right hand. And all at once, Amelia felt the warmth of their sisterly love seeping into her, filling her shaken nerves with the hardy resilience of tempered steel.

“You were there for me and Lima and Leslie,” Ramona said, “so we’re here for you now.”

“You’re not alone anymore,” Bridget added. “Just tell us.”

For a few moments, Amelia looked at both women in turn and gulped down her qualms, then smiled at them and wiped stray tears welling up in her eyes, then took a deep breath and said everything that she needed to say. Even when her own words sharpened the pangs of her guilt into stabs, she wielded them like a sword to protect those she loved and to cut down her monsters. And in giving voice to the emotional demons that have plagued her for decades, she let her words flow like a spring washing away her sins, no matter how painful they were, word for word, like a blessing in disguise. . . .

7

After a time, Auna let go of her newfound ally, and they found themselves in a garden lawn full of giant flower buds that have yet to bloom on a cool spring just as the sun was beginning to break through the mountains on the eastern horizon. The sound of sleeping maidens filled the air around them as they went, their every step pressing down on the lawn as if they were walking on a waterbed.

Auna stopped and placed her other hand on one of the buds, whereon she felt a warm thumping like a heart pulsing against her palm, even as the petals themselves were still slick with morning dew.

“Where are we?” Kendra said.

“I’m not sure,” Auna said, flipping through the rolodex of her mind for whatever dream associations came to her in this particular sequence. “I think . . . I’m not sure, but I think . . .”

“What exactly are you thinking?” Kendra said.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

“Because this place looks like a kid’s dream,” Kendra said, looking at Auna as if she was a child in a teenager’s body. “Girl, you must have some whacked-out dreams. Is this the kind of stuff you dream about when you sleep?”

“Not all the time,” Auna said, and grasped Kendra’s hand and pulled her with her through the flowerbed. “By the look of them, I think these are daisies.”

So Kendra put her hand on another giant daisy bud and wiped some of the dew off of its petals, saying, “Do flowers always get this big in your dreams?”

“This is the first time I’ve seen them this big,” Auna said, “so I’m thinking these are normal-sized, and we’re really tiny.”

“Or you ate something that didn’t agree with you, and we’re now in this whacked-out dream,” Kendra said, smiling, but Auna looked at Kendra like she had grown a mustache.

“I’m not laughing,” Auna said, and she folded her arms over her chest. “And I’m not crazy.”

“Okay, okay, geez! I was just trying to lighten the mood,” and Kendra walked ahead of Auna, touching more giant daisy buds as she passed them by, then turned around. “You coming?”

Auna ignored her for a bit and pushed aside some of the daisy petals and looked inside only to see—

She stepped back from the giant daisy in horror, raising a hand to her gaping mouth, gaping at what she had seen inside.

“Hey, are you okay?” Kendra said, running back to Auna and grabbing her shoulders. “What did you see?” And she was about to look and see for herself—

When Auna grabbed Kendra’s wrist and yanked her back and said, “Don’t look inside!”

Kendra pulled away. “And why not?”

“Just, don’t, okay?” she said. “I don’t want you to see me like that! . . .” When Kendra made a ‘What the fuck?’ expression on her face, Auna realized her mistake and said, “Fuck! Forget I said that. Just don’t look inside them, please!”

“Okay! Calm your tits down,” Kendra said. “I won’t look.”

With that, both girls walked through the flowerbed of giant daisy buds in an awkward silence, when the yawning and sighing of maidens fluttered around them, fluttered like birds inside the giant buds. Then, one by one, the daisy buds opened their petals, revealing numerous copies of half naked Auna Wengers sitting up on their sepals like seats on the stems and rearranging their dresses made of daisy petals.

With Kendra gaping in shock, Auna placed her hand over Kendra’s eyes and said, “I said, don’t look at them!”

Kendra pulled down her hand, saying, “Geez, we’re both girls. It’s no big deal if I see them, so get over it!”

Then all the heads of the petal-clad Auna Wengers looked at Kendra, and one by one they got off of the seat of their sepals and walked towards the girl, saying various come-ons:

“It’s okay,” one said. “Look at me all you want.”

“Wanna take a closer look?” another said, flashing her boobs.

“Wanna touch them?” another said.

“Wanna suck on them?”

And on and on it went, as the legion of Auna Wenger clones pushed themselves up against Kendra and crowded out the real Auna Wenger from her side, so she leaped and reached across the outstretched arms of her doppelgängers and grasped onto Kendra’s hand, before losing her hold of her and saying, “Kendra! Kendraaaaaa!”

She heard Kendra’s muffled voice in the epicenter of Auna Wenger clones that resembled a mosh pit when the other Auna Wenger clones lifted her up over their heads and carried her away from her friend.

8

“Come on, Ronnie, wake up,” Lt. Frank Shaefer said, his phantom reflection shaking Ronald Hamilton by the shoulder in the Secret Room of the Phantom Office.

At first, it took a while for Ronald to wake up. Even sleeping in the revivifying influence of the Secret Room was a slow-go for him, because he had expended more energy during his escape than he’d thought. Yet through the sluggishness, he pushed through the trance of the dead and came to himself on a four-poster bed.

When he sat up and swung his legs over the edge, he stretched and yawned and took stock of the new furnishings they’d included in his stay in this room: polished wood flooring, a giant oriental rug, paintings of Art Nouveau flowers on paneled walls, sconce lighting, and five cushioned wicker chairs around a square tea table, complete with a tea set and small sandwiches and scones on a silver platter.

Ronald whistled and smiled and said, “Are you trying to make me feel at home here?”

“That’s the idea, Ronnie,” Frank Shaefer said. “Is it too early for tea time?”

“It’s never too early for tea time,” Ronald said and followed Shaefer to have his tea and sandwiches at the table, where he took his seat with Shaefer on opposite sides of each other.

Shaefer took up the kettle and said, “How do you want your tea?”

“I’m feeling exotic today,” Ronald said. “So oolong tea.”

Shaefer poured for Ronald, then poured black tea for himself, and both men took up their tea cups.

“Your toast,” Shaefer said.

“Here's to Colbie Amame for saving my ass,” Ronald said and downed his tea in one gulp and clinked it on the table. “If I was still alive, I’d marry her.”

“She helped you escape?” Shaefer said and took a sip.

“Oh, more than that,” Ronald said, chuckling and grinning. “She saved me from a beheading from the likes of that prick Rancaster!”

Shaefer lowered his cup and said, “You’re kidding.”

“No, sir,” he said and smiled a wry smile. “I’m telling you, man, she really saved my ass—and in spectacular fashion, too. You should’ve been there!”

“What did she do, exactly?” Shaefer said.

“She threw that Rancaster.”

“No way!”

“Yes way,” Ronald said. “She threw that fucker on his ass!”

Shaefer smiled and said, “I can toast to that,” and he raised his cup again and downed his drink.

So Ronald refilled his cup and his own, then raised his own in the air and said, “Here’s to throwing fuckers on their asses.”

And both blokes downed their tea.

Now that the jovial atmosphere of the Secret Room had died down, Ronald got the feeling that Shaefer was done joking with him. So Ronald sat up a little straighter in his wicker chair, and Shaefer said, “All right, Ronnie. Time for the real stuff. Tell us everything you know about Rancaster’s operation.”

“Us?” Ronald said. “Who’s ‘us’?”

Shaefer pressed a button on the underside of the tea table and said, “Todd, come out.”

“Todd?” Ronald looked around himself for the old man. “Where’s that old geezer been hiding? Has he been here all this time?”

“Yes,” Todd Curvan said in his ear, making the poor man jump in his seat. “And if I’m a geezer, what does that make you?”

“A worthy gentleman, unlike you!” Ronald said, “Sit down, please, where I can see you.”

So Todd Curvan took his seat in between the two men, facing their profiles, and pulled a voice recorder from his pocket and said into the microphone, “This is Officer Todd Curvan and Lt. Frank Shaefer with the witness, Detective Specialist Ronald Hamilton, on December 4, 2018, at 6:45 a.m.”

Then Todd nodded for his partner to start the interview.

Shaefer said, “What do you know about Rancaster’s operation?”

“More than you know,” Ronald said, then breathed in and breathed out. “It’s not just an ‘operation,’ as you say. It’s a madman’s quest for an impossible dream made into a nightmare by the very methods he employs. It’s more complex than you know.”

“Then take as much time as you need,” Todd added.

Ronald nodded and said, “You wouldn’t believe me when I say this, but believe it or not, Rancaster and I were once boon friends and brothers in arms of the deadliest dye, like Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, or A. J. Raffles and Bunny Manders. That all changed just before the start of the War when I had a falling out with Rancaster, for which he threw me out of his house and told me never to come back again till I had regained my wits about the situation,” and here he chucked a mirthless laugh. “But it was a dastardly situation he’d brought upon himself and me! For the last month of our friendship, he was obsessed with obtaining an elemental under his power, of which he wouldn’t tell me its name. He said it was too dangerous for any mere mortal to know, as if he himself was something more than that, the prick!

“But the real falling out came after he had abducted the scion of the old Liddell line, Alice Liddell, and drugged her for the operation of a blood transfusion, so that he could use his blood seal over her. Up to that point, I was still Rancaster’s right-hand man, but what he wanted me to do for my part in the operation was a horrific act. Of course, I protested the matter, saying that the ethics of it was just inhuman, even for the purpose of obtaining control over said elemental. He threatened death upon me, but I threatened to reveal his plot and sink his career as Commissioner of the Phantom Office if he continued in this madness, for which he threw me out.

“Of course, I wasn’t just going to leave poor Alice to that wolf of a man. I wholly intended to come back and act the hero and save the sleeping beauty that was Alice, but I needed advice and sought it out from a peculiar scion of the Hearn line. You both know who I’m talking about by that fancy moniker of hers.”

“Amelia Hearn?” Shaefer said.

“That’s the one,” Ronald said.

“What did she tell you?” Todd said.

“She told me to go back and collect a sample of her blood to take back to her,” Ronald said, “so she could make a body double of Alice using a reflection spell against her mirror. Don’t ask me how that works. In addition, once she had created the body double from the blood sample, she’d help me secret this body double into Rancaster’s house and get the real Alice out of there.”

“So what happened next?” Shaefer said.

“Oh, nothing much,” Ronald said. “I mean, the bastard only captured me and drugged me and placed his blood spell on me, then had me ravish Alice under his spell. That’s what Rancaster wanted me to do in the first place and why I had my falling out with him. He then did something similar to what Amelia Hearn wanted to do.”

“Which is?” Todd said.

“To make a body double of Alice,” Ronald said as tears welled up in his eyes, and he wiped them away. “God, I wish I could forget that night!”

“Ronnie, I know this is hard for you,” Shaefer said, “but you need to tell us as much as you can remember, understand?”

Ronald nodded and said, “I was completely drained from Rancaster’s blood spell and couldn’t move under his psychokinesis, much less do anything else except watch him work his devilry upon Alice, while I was screaming for him to spare the poor girl. He drove a stake through her, pinning her over a pool of blood on the bed, then summoned his mirror overlooking his handiwork and captured her image in its reflection.”

“What do you mean by ‘captured?’” Todd said.

“Like a daguerreotype ‘captured’ in color over a glass surface,” Ronald said, then breathed in and out as if preparing himself for the worst of it. “May I continue?”

Todd nodded.

So Ronald breathed in and out once more and said, “I saw three Alices that night, one pinned to the bed, one in the mirror, and one that appeared to me as a ghost that night and later on during my incarceration and execution. No more questions, till I’m finished,” he added before Shaefer was about to ask. “Anyway, he placed his hand over Alice’s stomach and put his blood spell over her, and I saw the stake and the bloody wound disappear from her chest as the pool of blood beneath her became a bed of roses. And so, I saw Alice healed on the bed, while she remained wounded and bloody in the mirror. He then snapped his fingers, and the mirror blinked out of sight and reappeared before Rancaster, till he reached into the reflection and pulled out Alice’s body double out of the mirror and proceeded to . . . mutilate her body double in front of me! My God, how I screamed, screamed for him to stop, till I saw the ghost of Alice manifest before me with a scowl on her face. I said to her, ‘I’m sorry,’ and fainted.”

Officer Todd Curvan and Lt. Frank Shaefer remained silent, giving Ronald time to regain himself as he wiped away more tears from his eyes and cheeks.

Then Shaefer said, “What happened after that?”

“After that,” Ronald said, “Rancaster faked a crime scene with the mutilated body double of Alice and pinned her murder on me. God, can you believe the balls on this fucker? And what’s worse is that everyone fell for it, including the Liddell family, by God!”

“Did anyone outside of you, Rancaster, and Amelia Hearn know about this?” Todd said.

“I don’t know for sure,” Ronald said. “Amelia’s the only one of the Hearns I talked to during that time.”

“What about the Amame family?” Shaefer said.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I never met anyone of that family, till I met Colbie Amame today just before sunrise.”

“Okay,” Todd said. “So Rancaster set you up and had everyone fooled. Did his ruse go as planned?”

“Almost to a tee,” Ronald said. “Rancaster had me thrown into the slammer and said I was a tough little bastard and wanted his boys to squeeze a confession out of me. Said I was drugged, so they sweated me for hours and hours. I nearly died, but I had an ace in the hole.”

“Amelia Hearn?” Shaefer said.

Ronald nodded his head and said, “Before I went to Rancaster’s place, I said to Amelia that if I disappeared or ended up dead, or if anything else happened to me, I asked her to investigate the matter.”

“Did she find anything out?” Todd said.

“She did,” Ronald said. “Even suspects had visiting hours, so Amelia came to me incognito. They searched her, of course, but they found nothing on her person, so she was permitted to see me. When she arrived, though, she was flustered and crying. I bet they got in their kicks when they searched her, those sick bastards! Anyway, she said she snuck in and found Alice alive but not quite herself. I asked her what she meant, and she said that when she used her reflection spell to gain access to Alice’s location, she found her lying on a bed full of roses. She tried to wake her up, but just touching Alice made her feel something ‘revolting’ (her word) as though she had just touched a corpse. She then summoned a mirror in front of the bed on which Alice was lying, and in the reflection she found . . . nothing!”

Shaefer and Todd grew pale at his words, and Ronald knew why. Even in this world of magic and witches and wizards (oh my!), nobody would have given any thought to the existence of such things outside of folklore and strange tales like “The Vampyre” and Carmilla and Dracula.

Shaefer said, “Did she show any evidence to back that up?”

“She couldn’t,” Ronald said, “not with the guards looking in on us as we talked. We only discussed her research on the Rancaster baronetcy.”

“Anything important she said?” Todd said.

“Words are like daggers, Mr. Curvan,” Ronald said. “Like swords they could be wielded for good and for ill, to protect those you love and cut down your monsters, but words have two edges to them, especially under the surveillance of prison guards. I’m sure Amelia Hearn had good reason to leave some things unsaid, so as not to arouse the suspicions of the guards, but I trust in her judgment. Anyway,” he added, “before the interview ended, I asked her to investigate further into those matters. At first, she was reluctant, but she agreed. The night after that interview, Rancaster’s boys took me to Arcadia Park near the Canale Veneziano under moonlight, where Rancaster waited for me. He asked me if I had any last words, so I said, ‘Fuck you, fucker.’ He had his boys execute me under firing squad, but just before they shot me, I saw a confirmation of Amelia’s observations when I saw Alice herself standing by Rancaster’s side and smiling at me, but nobody else seemed to notice her presence that night.”

Todd and Shaefer remained silent after Ronald finished, and he figured they were thinking what he was thinking.

Sure enough, Todd said, “Jesus, Ronnie. What the hell do you think we are? Because we sure as hell aren’t vampire hunters.”

“But this is the Phantom Office,” Ronald said.

“But I’m not Van Helsing,” Shaefer said.

“Then what are you?” Ronald said.

Before either man answered his question, a voice came through Lt. Shaefer’s radio transceiver in a stream of static, saying, “Lt. Shaefer, this is Inspector Larking over at the Nayland Hospital.”

Shaefer unhooked the radio from his belt and pressed a button and said, “This is Lt. Shaefer. Did Mara Cairns tell you anything worth noting?”

“No,” Inspector Larking said. “I didn’t get a chance to talk to her this morning.”

Shaefer eyed Ronald and Todd at the table, then said, “Why’s that? Did she refuse or something?”

There came a pause at the other end, then Inspector Larking said through the static, “It’s not that, Lieutenant. Mara Cairns is missing.”

“Don’t fuck with me, man,” he said.

“I’m not,” Inspector Larking said. “By the way, who’s with you?”

“Only Ronald and Todd,” Shaefer said. “You mind telling us what’s going on?”

“I’ve placed the hospital on lockdown until further notice,” Inspector Larking said over the static, “and my brother and I are looking over the surveillance feeds as I speak, and the cameras overlooking Mara Cairn’s bed have cut out just before her disappearance. One moment she was there, and the next moment she’s gone. And Ronnie, it looks like you’re right.”

“Ah, shit!” Ronald said, standing up from his chair. “Don’t tell me I’m—”

“Yes, Ronnie,” Inspector Larking said over the radio, “you’re right for once.”

“Dear God, I wish I wasn’t,” Ronald said.

“You want us to come over there, Inspector?” Shaefer said.

“No,” Inspector Larking said. “Randall and I will finish up here, then join you at the second location. Looks like we’ll have to change our angle on this and do it your way, Lieutenant. Over and out.”

When the connection died, Lt. Shaefer put his radio transmitter back on his belt and looked at the faces of his friends and said, “Time for Plan B.”

“I don’t like Plan B,” Todd said.

“Me neither, but we don’t have a choice,” he said, then turned to Ronald: “Looks like we’re going vampire hunting. Have you got any crosses on you?”

“Nope,” Ronald said and got up from the table.

“Where are you going?”

“Going back to bed,” Ronald said, then turned and eyed his companions. “Cut me some slack, you two. If what Steve has got for us is as bad as my interview, it’s best to take a nap beforehand. Wanna join?”

Todd and Lt. Shaefer traded glances, and Lt. Shaefer said, “You go ahead, Ronnie. We’ll wake you up when Steve arrives.”

With that, Ronald stalked off towards the four-poster bed and just flopped onto the sheets, then placed his forearm over his eyes and thought of his last moments alive before the firing squad. As such, while Lt. Shaefer and Todd discussed other matters pertaining to the case between themselves at the table, Ronald focused on Alice Liddell’s ghost smiling at him by Rancaster’s side. So he repeated the same words he had said as Rancaster was driving a stake through Alice’s chest on that godless night, repeating the last two words he ever said just before the firing squad shot him, repeating them a third time in his mind:

I’m sorry. . . .

And those two words sent him screaming down the rabbit hole of sleep into the start of another dream sequence. In this dream sequence, Ronald was an Oyster on the beach dreaming that he was a Crow flying high over a yellow-brick road and looking for a suitable place to land.

9

Of course, Ronald’s information about Amelia’s involvement in the case was just a fragment of what really happened, for none of the men in the Secret Room of the Phantom Office (not even Ronald) knew of all the particulars of Amelia’s first encounter with Alice Liddell that night. She had withheld the most important aspect of that encounter, as Amelia admitted to Ramona and Bridget, because she never intended to show him or anyone else at the time. Only later on in life, when the nightmare began visiting her family, was she forced to reveal everything to Lima Hearn in the months before her death in 1994.

Indeed, Amelia’s road to that end began decades earlier in 1913 the day after Kendra Tellerman and Nico Cairns entered her shop at sunset, when she picked up a newspaper from the street vendor on her way to her shop after her latest visit to the local library. She noticed the headline on the front page, titled,

“Larkington’s Jack the Ripper,”

and subtitled,

“Alice Liddell and Her Murderer Found,”

and flipped it to the agony column, where the ads of missing people (among other personal ads) were advertised, and found the ad for the missing Alice Liddell missing from the column.

“Oh my God!” she said, so she ran past pedestrians and waiting Model-Ts parked near the curb and entered a narrow alley adjacent to her store, the Arcana Bookstore of Odds and Ends.

She placed her hand flat over the keyhole, said an incantation in her mind that turned over the deadbolt and freed it from the slip plate. She tripped the bell as she opened the door, then shut it fast and locked it and left the CLOSED sign where it was at the front display window and headed towards the backroom behind the cashier counter.

She then reached beneath the shade of a floor lamp and turned it on, causing the mechanism to click off a latch from the floor that resounded through the backroom, while she read the rest of the article. It was about Ronald Hamilton’s “detainment” (their words) for the “murder” (their words) of Alice Liddell, which sensationalized the murder in gruesome detail, noting Alice’s “evisceration” (their words) in the bedroom of Ronald’s residence in the Eastern outskirts of the Rancaster District, bordering the Woodley District. Thees details horrified the Liddell family during the inquest, and many Liddell family members called for Ronald Hamilton’s head, yet Commissioner Rancaster has yet to comment on the murder or on Alice’s disappearance a week prior.

After looking at the caption of Ronald’s black-and-white mug shot, she focused her attention on the caption of Alice Liddell and closed her eyes, materializing her face into her mind.

She then crouched and knocked on the floor three times, where the parallel hardwood design manifested the borders of a trapdoor. Here, she reached for a latch and opened the the false floor door, letting it rest against the shelves of a back wall, picked up the hems of her dressed and walked down the steps, then turned on the wall sconce and descended the steps to the basement below—

10

To a different part of the Phantom Realms, another pocket dimension blooming into view before her. When she alighted from the staircase onto the ground, Amelia's blood spell activated, opening into a colonnaded gazebo that overlooked a glassy sea, rippling against its water margin and stretching out towards an unseen horizon. Even though it was daytime outside in her shop, the whole place down here was enshrouded in a darkness more than night, like the dark night of an unfortunate soul or the abysmal depths of a subconscious mind.

She walked towards the water's edge and pulled out a needle from her jacket pocket and pricked her finger, then pinched it over the water's edge, letting her blood drip over the water.

One drop.

Another drop.

Yet another drop.

Amelia then put her finger in her mouth and licked it clean before spitting into the water, creating ripples growing into the darkness.

And when she crouched and touched the watery sheen, the mirror rippled from her finger out into the watery expanse towards the unseen horizon and glowed from the depths, manifesting into the image of a vaulted bedroom in the water. And lying in repose over a bed of roses was Alice Liddell in that rippling sheen, whose features bore none of the mutilations of her manufactured body double. She kept her finger in contact with the water and imagined the frame of her mirror bordering that image into a framed picture in her mind, and those same borders raised themselves from the surface of the water, encapsulating the image into a rippling window into that very bedroom.

Taking deep breaths, she alighted from the gazebo and stepped onto the shimmering image, whereon she laid herself along the length of the mirror and closed her eyes, saying, “My mind is my mirror as a pass through its depths. Let me seek what I have found through the door of my mind. Reflect!”

And the surface of the watery mirror glowed in shimmering ripples, then flashed and took her out of sight towards her first encounter with Alice Liddell.

11

After a time of being carried aloft, Auna was dropped onto the yellow-brick road, and the mass of daisy-clad Auna Wenger clones formed a widening circle around her, edging away from her as if she was a fallen peer amongst their sex.

Auna picked herself up and looked around her at the circle of her doppelgängers, looked into their stern faces full of judgment and condemning eyes. She felt their eyes on her as projections of a world she could never fit into, and when they whispered amongst themselves, their voices floated around her in half-heard rumors and half-told truths about her relationship with Alice Liddell. And with such accusations, she felt a stabbing in her chest like friends who abandoned their friends for dead, like the way Auna had abandoned Alice to forget her father’s atrocities, or the way Alice had abandoned Auna for her debut with Rancaster.

She averted her eyes in shame, saying, “I’m sorry, Alice. I should’ve been there for you. I should’ve been there with you,” and tears welled up in her eyes, but she wiped them away.

But her doppelgängers said in unison, “Empty words from an empty heart. You cannot mean what you say.”

And in the soul-sucking absence of her friend, she happened to look up at her accusers and saw them parting before her, parting before the approach of none other than Alice Liddell wearing a white Sunday dress and a skimmer hat atop her head.

“Alice, is that you?” Auna said. “Have you come back to me?”

“Only to see you off, dear,” Alice said, and she approached Auna and placed her hand on Auna’s cheek. “I’ve enjoyed your company as long as I could stand it, like sweet grape juice now fermented into sour wine.”

“But I’m still your friend, Alice,” Auna said, grasping her hand in both of her own. “Just give me a chance, and I’ll prove it to you!”

“Then prove it by leaving me in peace,” and Alice pulled away. “You’re just a visitor to my domain, and you’ve overstayed your welcome in these parts. Now be gone!”

“But . . . Alice, please,” and she grabbed Alice’s hand again.

“Unhand me!” And Alice pulled away and said, “You will no longer sully me with your influence, vixen.”

“But . . . Why?”

“You don’t even know who you are in these parts, do you?” Alice said. “You’re so head over heels infatuated with me, you can’t see your own destiny, can you?”

“What are you talking about?” Auna said.

At this, Alice sighed an exasperated sigh and said, “Then I’ll tell you, so you’ll understand, love. You’re the Queen of (broken) Hearts.”

And all at once, there came a collective gasp from the Auna Wenger doppelgängers around her, their hands raised against their gaping mouths, their eyes wide and pupils shrunken to bullet points of fright. And as before, they all began whispering amongst themselves about this diabolical queen-to-be.

Auna gaped in shock. “Now way!”

“Yes way, my dear,” Alice said, looking at Auna as though in pity. “If you stay here, you’ll turn into that bitter old woman that offs people’s heads, and you’ll become the terror of this land. You’ll be the death of all the good people here, and under your rule, you’ll corrupt everything.”

“I refuse to believe that!” Auna yelled.

“Which is why you’re blind to it, dear,” she said. “You can’t see the truth laid bare before you, because you lack the heart to see yourself as you really are.” She then wiped the bangs from Auna’s forehead and stared into her crying eyes and peered at her soul and smiled at the things she saw there. Then, cupping Auna’s cheeks in her hands, Alice 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 all at once, ere Auna could say a word against Alice’s charge, she felt a sudden lethargy coming over her eyes, and she fell down the rabbit hole of slow-wave sleep, down the descent into madness when her mind cracked open upon the sight of her father touching her there and there and there and further and further down to her secret place, where she clamped her thighs together and screamed through her tears—

12

When up the yellow-brick road, there came a red blur that lunged across Alice’s face, and she jumped back just in time to feel the sere of a knife wound on her cheek.

Alice raised a hand to her cheek and winced at the burn of it, then looked down on her fingers and saw blood there. She looked at the bloodied figure picking up an unconscious Auna Wenger onto her shoulder and said, “The Red Queen?”

“Don’t sully my title with your lips, you bitch!” she said, and held the point of her knife before Alice’s face.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Alice said, and she raised her hand to signal Auna’s doppelgängers and formed her hand into the shape of a gun. “On my mark!”

And like their new queen and sire, the mass of daisy-clad Auna Wenger clones manifested six-shot revolvers in the grip of their hands.

“You’ve a losing hand, dear,” Alice said to the Red Queen, and she raised the thumb of her make-believe gun hand. “Make ready!”

So the Auna Wenger clones pulled back the hammers of their revolvers, cocking their guns, and the Red Queen edged away from Alice’s firing squad.

“Aim!” And Alice aimed her gun at the Red Queen’s head, and Auna’s doppelgängers did the same, aiming their guns at the Red Queen’s head, and the Red Queen cursed and edged away from Alice’s firing squad. “Fire at wi—”

The Red Queen moved just before Alice completed her command, just before the brigade of Auna Wenger clones fired their weapons and tore her apart, and ran in a blazing red blur down the yellow-brick road through fields of giant roses and irises and pansies and tulips and sweet peas and bluebonnets and violets, etc. Indeed, she ran so far and so fast that she swayed all of these flowers like waves in the rush of her wake. And when she stopped, skidding to a halt and leaving the skid marks of her shoes on the yellow-brick road, the bluster of her wake rushed past her in a whirlwind and fluttered her hair and the skirts of her red Sunday dress.

With the air around her still a-flutter, she carried Auna off of the road and lowered her beneath the shade of a giant mushroom overlooking the road. She lowered herself on her knees, breathing hard and wheezing, and began coughing up blood in the palm of her hand that was now disappearing.

She had little time left in this world, so she wiped her hand against her dress and said to her sire, “You’re safe now,” and she ran her fingers across Auna’s bangs and kissed her forehead and shed her tears upon her cheeks. “I’ve failed you, my Queen! I don’t even know your name anymore, but I know you’re my Queen!” She then cupped Auna’s hands in her own, yet her hand passed through her hand, and shed more tears and said, “Please, even if you cannot forgive me, even if you cannot remember my name, even if you forget me the moment you see me, open your eyes, I’m begging you!”

And the soul of her plea breathed new breath into Auna’s lungs, and she roused and mumbled something the Red Queen couldn’t quite hear.

The Red Queen lowered her head to Auna’s chest and heard the thumping of her heart, then lowered her ear to Auna’s mouth and heard her whisper her name, “Akami . . .”

Renewed tears trailed down the Red Queen’s face, and her heart fluttered in her chest at the sound of her name on her queen’s lips, so she said,

“Remember me when I am gone away,

Gone far away into the silent land[,]

[Where I] can no more hold [you] by the hand,”

and she lowered herself and put her lips to Auna’s in a lingering kiss and breathed her last breath into her, breathing and mixing her spirit with that of her queen and sire. And as Auna’s eyes twinkled on the edge of conscious sleep, the Red Queen looked on those fluttering eyes, lingering on them as she began fading away and leaving the ghost of her image behind like a memory of a dream before it fades.

When Auna opened her eyes, she caught the afterimage of the Red Queen and raised her hand to it and trembled at the warmth of her life force wafting through her fingers in a lingering caress. Tears trailed down Auna’s face as she picked herself up, yet through her tears, she remembered the name she had given the Red Queen when she was eight years old.

She was Auna’s Red Queen, her loyal Akami, loyal to the end, and nothing could take that away from her.

つづく