My father wrong'd a maiden's mirth,

And brought her cheeks to blame,

And all that's lordly of my birth

Is my reproach and shame!

—Thomas Hood,

“Ballad”

1

Amelia awoke in her bed in the morning with a mild headache, opening her eyes and expecting to see Alice Liddell in her arms beside her, but she was no longer beneath the sheets with her. She sat up and felt a stabbing pain in her chest, so she put her hand to her bosom but felt no indication of blood pooling there. She only felt her heartbeats racing from the sudden burst of pain, a pain that was deeper than a mere stab through the heart, a stab of a deeper kind that reaches into the depth of the soul.

When the pain settled, she unclenched her eyes and found herself in the nude, exposed to the chill morning air, and found hickeys down the parting of her breasts and down her stomach and further down . . . She reached for the nightstand and grabbed her glasses and put them on, then turned the sheets aside and saw drops of blood there in the center of the bed. Her mind then drifted onto the sensuous turmoil of last night’s doings with Alice, her skin crawling from Alice’s residual touches and rubbings and bitings, but Alice herself was nowhere to be seen.

“Alice?” she called out. “Alice, where are you?”

“Are you sure that’s my name?” she said, and when she turned to the source of the sound, she found the girl inside of her body-length mirror.

“Of course it is,” she said, getting up and walking to the mirror leaning against the wall, “but how are you even inside my mirror? And why did you—”

“You don’t understand,” the girl said, shaking her head. “I’m not her. I’m not Alice. I’m not the girl you slept with.”

“Then,” Amelia said, “who are you? What’s your name?”

“I wish I knew,” the girl said.

“What do you mean by that?” she said, and reached out and put her fingers on the surface of the reflection. “Surely, you must have a name.”

The girl shook her head again and said, “I wish I knew,” and began dissipating from the mirror.

“Alice!” Amelia began tapping at the mirror, but the pain her chest flared up again, making her grit her teeth against it, till it subsided once again. “Alice, come back!”

The girl was gone, yet Alice might still be around here inside her shop, so she spent the next several minutes looking for Alice in the loft, then down the stairs into the dining area and kitchenette, then down the stairs into the shop and around the front counter, where she picked up a lamp and took it with her into the back room. The trap door lay concealed beneath the parallel hardwood design. The trap door had closed on its own in the middle of the night, so she knew Alice couldn’t have stayed down here.

She rushed back up the steps to her bedroom loft and got dressed and then ventured outside the shop, intending to ask the passersby if they saw Alice around the area, but she thought better of it when she looked around Richet Square for any passersby up and about this morning.

Alice was still missing, after all, and Amelia’s nosing around for her whereabouts at this time could tag her disappearance onto her, just as her murder was tagged onto the unfortunate Ronald Hamilton in the papers. After locking the doors, she turned her steps along the bystreet leading towards the jail, where Ronald was held, and asked the receptionist to see him.

“Family visitation?” the receptionist said.

Amelia nodded. “He’s a . . . brother of mine.”

So the receptionist handed her a clipboard and a pen, saying, “Sign in, please.”

Amelia paused for a moment, then signed her name as ‘Amelia Hamilton’ and slid it back over the counter, then said, “Now take me to him.”

“Hold your horses, ma’am,” the receptionist said, reading the name she had signed. “You don’t get to run the show, especially when we have a visitor for one of our flight-risk inmates. You’ll have to submit yourself to a search before you see him.”

“What?” she said. “What for?”

“Just following procedure, ma’am,” he said. “Don’t make this any harder on yourself than it already is.”

Amelia had no choice, so she submitted herself to an invasive body search, during which she was outraged when the three guards searched her for contraband in intimate places. Her skin crawled at the atrocities committed on her body during the search, from fondling and squeezing to pinching and rubbing, till her eyes were red with tears, and her breathing hitched in her throat. All the while, the three guards grinned and whistled and traded jokes amongst themselves and called her many insulting names. Yet through it all, she held her tongue, not giving them any reason to prolong their sick groping game.

Hence, she gritted her teeth and fisted her hands, till her knuckles turned white, as she followed one of these despicable guards down the narrow corridor lined with cell doors, from which criminals gazed at her through the bars with vacant faces. God only knew what these inmates have gone through at the hands of sick individuals like the one she was following.

So in her mind, she imagined herself grabbing the baton this guard was holding and cracking his skull with it, but she shook those thoughts away when she saw another guard standing by an open cell door at the end of the corridor.

“You have a visitor, Ron,” the guard said. “I never thought you’d have such a beauty for a sister.”

The other guard whistled and said, “Don’t worry, boyo, we’ll be taking care of her once he’s dead and buried.”

Both guards chuckled amongst themselves and loitered at the entrance of the cell, leering at Amelia through the bars.

She ignored the guards’ remarks and leers as she entered the cell and halted at the sight of a sweating Ronald Hamilton on the prison bed, fidgeting where he sat and wearing a haunted demeanor about his face and darting his eyes around the cell as if he was seeing a ghost in the corners of his eyes. When his gaze finally focused on Amelia, he seemed to relax and slumped his shoulders, letting out a long sigh.

“They roughed you up some, didn’t they?” Ronald said.

“Not as much as they did you,” she said, and she sat beside him on the prison bed. “God, what did they do to you? You look awful!”

“I’m in withdrawal,” Ronald said.

“They drugged you?”

“That,” he said, “and they sweated me.”

“You poor thing,” she said and placed her hand on the side of his face. “When I get you out of here—”

“Don’t,” he said.

“But I can—”

“You’ll only get yourself in trouble, dear,” he said, smiling back at her. “So don’t bother, but answer me this: what happened to Alice Liddell?”

“They say you murdered her,” she said.

“Bullocks,” he said, and before Amelia said anything else, he put his finger to her lips. “Did you find her?”

“I did,” she said, “but Alice isn’t herself anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just touching her on that bed felt revolting,” she said, “like touching the body of the newly deceased. I leaned over and put my face over her mouth and smelled no decay whatsoever, so I knew she was alive, but . . . it seemed to me she was in a state of suspended animation.”

“You mean comatose?”

“That was my original thought,” she said, “but . . .” And paused.

“But what?”

Amelia continued her pause, trying to organize the hellish encounter into some semblance of reality, and said, “Even when she seemed comatose, I went ahead with my plan and . . .”

2

After Leslie left to check on Colbie and Kendra in the waking world, and while Cooley and Blaze were looking after Nico in the vaulted room beneath Cooley’s mansion, Nico found herself in a repeating dream sequence that kept glitching in and out during the replay.

In it, Nico was with Celia at the top landing of the double grand staircase, where Nico sucked in breath. She looked over the railing and stared in awe at the beauty of the foyer below them and the mahogany double entrance doors ahead of them—at the recessed panelling and imbedded mirrors along the the walls, at the polished mahogany steps going down each staircase, at the intricate parquet flooring below their feet, and at the salon sofas upholstered in deep shades of red and blue.

"You're kidding me," Nico said, looking around at every possible detail. "This is your sister's dream realm?"

“Yeah, I know what—”

(And Nico’s dream sequence shifted into that of a long and spacious ballroom, wherein she heard the clang of crossing blades echoing down its length towards the entrance double doors barricaded in by another set of roadblocks and up to her perch atop the chandelier, from which she witnessed the engagement below her feet between her sister and . . .)

“—you mean," Celia said, taking her hand and leading her down the staircase past M. C. Escher lithographs and mezzotints, when Nico’s faltering steps made her look back. “Hey, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Nico lied, feeling the dizzy spell flooding her head like a jar full of water, but she regained her feet. “Really, I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?” Celia said.

“I’m sure,” Nico said. “Go on with what you were saying.”

At first, Celia looked around at the M. C. Escher lithographs and mezzotints on the walls of the staircase, as if to remind herself on the subject she was carrying, then said, ”Anyway, Kathy's got an amazing imagination for detail, I'll give her that."

"I'd really like to meet her," Nico said. "If she can maintain something like this in her dream world, I bet she's really strong and powerful."

"Yeah, she is. But then, Kathy's my eldest sister, so she's usually the overachiever of the family. She almost always gets straight A's, usually has a cortege of male admirers among the students and even some teachers, but unlike Maddy, she's very picky when it comes to dates."

Nico stopped at the bottom landing and looked at Celia.

"What?" Celia said.

"Are you jealous of her?"

"Um . . . Maybe, a little, but I'm not really the jealous type."

Nico smiled. "Sure, you're not."

"Really, I'm not jealous!"

"I'll take your word for it," Nico said, then added under her breath, "I'll ask her about it when I meet her."

Now it was Celia's turn to deadpan. "Now who's being a little too obvious, hmmmmmm?"

"It's called honesty."

"Are you saying I'm not honest?"

Nico looked back over her shoulder and smiled, saying, "I don't know. It depends on you," then ran headlong into the doorway leading into the library.

"Hey!" But Celia was one step ahead of her. She teleported to Nico's location, but ended up colliding with her—

(And Nico’s dream sequence shifted back to her tenuous hold onto one of the tethering chains, as she turned away from the sight of Mara ramming her kodachi into the sternum of the White Queen, and she heard her screams echoing up to Nico’s position and filling her stomach with bile . . .)

And toppling backwards and landing on her butt and then flat on her back, breaking Nico's fall with her body. "Owwwwww!"

Celia propped herself up on her elbows, wincing in pain at one of Nico's elbows digging into her solar plexus, while Nico herself had her face planted on Celia's breasts, struggling not to gag and throw up over Celia’s shirt. "Ow! Nico, please, have mercy on me and get off!"

That's when Nico shook off the queasy spell and raised her head, blushing her head off when she realized what she had done. "Oh, I'm sorry!" And she was about to get up, but then—

"Owwwwww!" Celia winced in pain again.

And that's when Nico realized where her elbow had landed, saying, "Oh my God, I'm so sorry! I—"

"Please, get off! You're hurting me!"

So Nico got off of her ("Owwww!"), but not before causing Celia more pain. "I'm so sorry! I'm so so sorry! I didn't mean to hurt you, honest!"

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Celia said, rolling onto her side and raising her legs up to her chest to relieve the pain, keeping that position—

(And Nico's dream sequence shifted to the sight of Mara below her feet pulling her blade from the White Queen's sternum and letting her fall to the floor with a thud, like the thud of a casket shutting over the dead, and a pool of blood spread out from her stomach onto the floor, at which Nico put a hand to her mouth and felt another spasm of bile reaching into her throat and filling her mouth with a bitter iron taste, and she was about to throw up . . .)

—till it turned into a more manageable ache. Celia sat up on the floor, but still hugged her knees close to lessen the aching in her solar plexus and said, "Man, why am I always the one who gets hurt?"

"I'm sooooo so so sorry, really," Nico said, getting to her feet and standing over Celia, offering her hand.

"Just let me rest for a bit," Celia said. "It's like you made an elbow drop from the top turnbuckle and hit me just below my ribs. You have any idea how much that hurts?"

The girl now sighed, crestfallen, letting her shoulders droop, and said, "I'm sorry," and started to walk away.

"No, wait! Ow! It's not like that!" Celia struggled to her feet, then ran after Nico, grabbing her hand and saying, "I'm not angry, okay? I'm really not."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure,” Celia said. “Come on,—”

(And Nico’s dream sequence shifted to the iron taste of blood in the back of her throat and the sticky sight of it in the palm of her hand, whereat another wave of nausea flooded through her head from the depths of her churning stomach, and she looked down on herself and saw blood welling up beneath the bodice of her dress, so she pressed her hand against it and felt the razor sere of a stab wound churning through her insides . . .)

“—look at me,” Celia said. “I’m not angry, okay?"

Nico doubled over and grasped onto her knees, feeling the ache of it in her stomach like knives shredding it into minced meat.

“Hey, are you hurt?” Celia said.

Nico felt at her stomach, then raised the hem of her dress and then her undershirt and checked herself, finding no gash there, and she breathed a sigh of relief and said, “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?” Celia said, and put her hand on Nico’s shoulder. “Come on, look at me, Nico.”

So Nico turned and saw Celia's imploring eyes, then flicked her gaze to the center of Celia’s chest that had now begun to bleed out from a stab wound to her sternum, and Nico fidgeted away from her. She felt that same sickening stab of horror beating through her heart, a feeling she only ever experienced when she witnessed Mara pulling her kodachi from the White Queen’s sternum.

"What's wrong?" Celia said, oblivious to the injury she had sustained, still holding onto Nico’s shoulder. "You can talk to me, Nico. What is it?"

“I . . . I . . .” Nico stammered, trying to find the words to describe the cognitive dissonance of such a horrendous wound on such an oblivious girl, who seemed to not even notice it. “I really should . . . I'm not sure I should."

Silence lingered after her words, as Celia (somehow clueless to Nico’s distress at what she was seeing) tried to digest her incomprehensible words through her mind, but instead of replying with words, she replied with actions, leaning close and kissing Nico's lips and saying, "It's okay, really. Whatever you need,—“

(And Nico’s dream sequence shifted once again to the churning of her insides just as her mind flashed on Kendra’s face, and she turned towards the white section of the ballroom where she saw Kendra on hands and knees, pressing a hand against her stomach that was bleeding out its contents through her fingers and into the spreading pool of it on the floor. She then turned back towards the astral corpse of the White Queen, lying face down below her feet on the floor in the violet section of the ballroom, and bleeding out a spreading pool of it . . .)

“—I’m here for you,” Celia said, and placed her hand on Nico’s cheek and began wiping the tears from her eyes with bloodstained fingers. “And I’ll bleed with you, Nico, and I’ll always love you even in death.”

At this point, the cognitive dissonance became too great for Nico to resist, so she gave into the glamor of her dream sequence. She really wanted this bleeding effigy that was Celia Hearn, so She began planting hungry kisses on Celia's bloody lips and partaking of the bitter iron taste, even fondling her breasts through her school uniform and staining her hand with blood, till her hand nudged the wound on her solar plexus.

"Ow!" Celia winced, but only slightly. Then she started giggling, as if it was the funniest thing in the world to be bleeding so much, but started wincing again and saying, "Ow! I'm not really sure I wanna go that far yet."

Celia took a few deep breaths to relieve the ache, and then led Nico towards the cafe table in Katherine’s library, where Nico found two personages at the table. One was a bloodied White Queen sleeping with her head cradled in her arms over the table, and the other was a bloodied Red Queen already pouring herself a cup of tea and then pouring her red counterpart a cup.

Nico sucked in breath and said, “Who are these two?”

“The one sleeping is the White Queen, and the one pouring tea is the Red Queen,” Celia said, guiding her towards her seat next to the Red Queen, and taking her own seat by the sleeping White Queen. “Come on, sit.”

So Nico sat and looked at the sleeping White Queen and the surly Red Queen, remembering Blaze’s account of her and Maddy’s skirmish with both queens in the hallways of Katherine’s mansion, as well as Kendra and Mara’s skirmish with both queens in Katherine’s ballroom. “What’s going on?”

The Red Queen turned to her and said, “I don’t know, Nico. The last time I’ve heard, I was dying beside my Queen of Hearts, so maybe I’m already dead, but I can’t tell,” and then she poured Celia a cup of tea. “Can you?”

Nico turned to Celia and said, “Do you know what’s going on?”

“Not a clue,” Celia said, taking her cup and downing it in one gulp. “We’re all a bit mad here.”

“May I?” the Red Queen said to Nico, holding the spout of the kettle over Nico’s tea cup.

“Sure,” Nico said, so the Red Queen poured, and Nico took up the cup and looked at the sparkling brew. “Why are you here?”

“I don’t know,” the Red Queen said. “Why are you here?”

Nico decided not to answer that and instead looked to the sleeping White Queen and said, “Why’s she here?”

“I don’t know, but don’t mind her,” the Red Queen said. “She has bad table manners.”

“Just like my sister, Maddy,” Celia said, smiling.

“Aren’t you going to drink that?” the Red Queen said, then took up her own cup and sipped it, then glared at Celia. “Ugh, it’s bitter! You can’t brew tea!”

“Hey, I’m no tea master, okay?” Celia said.

So Nico drank her own cup and tasted the bitter iron taste of blood, and all at once, Nico felt lightheaded and tipsy, then teetered out of her chair and swooned down through the rabbit hole of slow-wave sleep . . . to the top landing of the double grand staircase, where Nico sucked in breath. She looked over the railing and stared in awe at the beauty of the foyer below them and the mahogany double entrance doors ahead of them . . .

3

The moment Amelia stepped into Alice’s bedroom prison that night, stepping through the reflection of her teleportation mirror, she smelled the scent of poppies and looked up at the giant censer hanging from a tapered ceiling made up of five walls surrounding her. When her eyes had adjusted to the light of a pair of candelabra, she found a pair of ottomans next to a four-poster bed, which was set against one of the five walls. She spied the door to her right and the armoire cabinet and vanity table and chair to her left against one of the back walls opposite the door, so she moved her mirror between the bed and the door.

She approached the bed and pulled the curtain aside and saw Alice there, sound asleep and beautiful upon a bed of roses. And for a moment, Amelia was so entranced at the girl’s beauty that she reached out to touch her face—

And jerked her hand away.

Touching Alice was like pricking her fingers on the thorns of a rose. So she looked to Alice’s body, lying on those roses and wearing a white Sunday dress, while a skimmer hat lay beside her head. Never in her life had another girl looked so beautiful in her sleep, even in the sleep of comatose or even death, yet that very beauty seemed unnatural somehow.

“But how?” Amelia said under her breath.

She sat on Alice’s bedside with her hand hovering over Alice’s face, yet she felt no breathing or bodily warmth.

Then she looked back at the mirror she had used to enter Alice’s bedroom and jumped from the bed, looking from the mirror to the bed and vice versa. Amelia had no doubt that Alice’s body was still on the bed, but when she looked into the reflection of her own mirror, she saw the bed empty.

She placed her hand on Alice’s forearm, and goosebumps formed on her flesh, so she jerked her hand away and looked back at the mirror, expecting to see the empty bed.

And indeed, the bed was still empty in the mirror, but Alice herself was standing before the reflection inside of her own mirror facing her.

Again she looked to Alice on the bed and Alice in the mirror and said, “Alice?”

“Is that my name?” the girl in the mirror said.

“Of course, it is,” Amelia said, “but how . . .” And she looked back at the body of Alice on the bed and stalked back to the bed and shook Alice’s body, but to no avail, so she turned back to Alice in the mirror. “Why can’t you wake up?”

Yet Alice only smiled and said, “Are you here to rescue me?”

“I am, but . . .” she said, then: “Listen to me, Alice. You need to wake up now! Rancaster could be here at any time, so I need you to wake up. Otherwise—”

“I can’t wake up,” she said.

“Why?”

“That man,” Alice said, “took away the most important thing I hold dear.”

“What’s that?” Amelia said.

“My name,” she said.

“But your name’s Alice Liddell of the Liddell baronetcy,” Amelia said. “Alice, don’t you know who you are?”

But Alice shook her head and placed her hand up to the reflection, saying, “Remember me as you see me now, for the next time you see me, I’ll be a different person.”

“What do you mean?” Amelia said. “I don’t understand.”

“Remember me,” she said, before dissipating from the reflection.

“Alice, don’t go!” she said, banging the surface of her mirror with her fist. “What do you mean?”

Yet Alice in the mirror was gone, but when she heard rustling of roses on the bed, Amelia turned and saw Alice and rushed to her bedside, saying, “Thank God, you’re awake!”

Alice propped herself up on her shoulders, saying, “Mom?”

“What? No, I’m not your mom,” Amelia said, checking the girl to make sure she was all right. “Are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere? Alice, talk to me.”

“Alice?” she said. “Is that my name?”

“Of course, it is,” Amelia said. “I already said your name. Don’t you remember?” And she put the back of her hand against Alice’s forehead and said, “You’re still so cold. You must be freezing,” and she took off her jacket and draped it over Alice’s bare shoulders, then took her hands and bade her to stand up over the cold wooden flooring. “Geez, your hands are so cold!”

So Amelia cleared the bed of roses, letting them collect in clumps on the floor, and took the bedsheet and wrapped it around Alice who somehow didn’t seem to mind the chill.

Amelia then grabbed Alice’s hand and noticed the peculiar chill of her hand, as if she were holding a hand made of cold clay, and said, “Stay close,” and guided her steps towards her mirror—

4

And onto the deck boards of the pier in her dream realm, wherein she added, “I’ll get you something warm to wear when we get to my shop,” and led the girl by the hand for several paces before turning left onto another pier, their footsteps creaking along the deck boards as they went.

All the while, Amelia had a lot on her mind. A week had elapsed since Ronald Hamilton came to her shop asking for advice about this missing Alice Liddell, and six days since Kendra Tellerman and Nico Cairns came in asking for advice about this missing Mara Cairns. Both girls were missing, and both were connected with this Aaron Rancaster fellow, but now that she had Alice with her, she hoped Nico and Kendra had found or at least were closer to finding the missing Mara.

When she sighted the gazebo in the distance, she said, “We’re almost there, Alice. How are you holding up?”

“I’m fine,” she said.

Yet the deadpan way she said it and the lingering chill of her hand in her grasp, just beginning to warm, told her that she wasn’t ‘fine’ at all. Far from it, in fact, yet she puzzled herself as to why she thought so, for Alice gave no outward signs of emotion in her brief responses.

When they reached the threshold of the gazebo, passing between two pairs of columns of the circular colonnade, Amelia picked up the hems of her dress with one hand, while leading Alice with the other, and said, “Watch your step now.”

She now guided Alice up a set of steps—

5

That led towards a wall sconce above the wainscoted sidewall, which she turned on, lighting the top of the stairs and the entrance into the backroom of her shop. Amelia then reached into one of the pockets of her jacket that draped over Alice’s shoulders and pulled out a pocket watch and read the time.

“It's past midnight,” Amelia said and turned back to Alice. “Are you hungry?”

Alice shook her head.

“You sure you don’t want anything to eat?” Amelia said.

“I’m sure,” she said.

Under the light of the wall sconce, Amelia looked at Alice’s eyes, noticing the blank expression in them, and put her hand on her cheek and said, “We’ll go straight to Superintendent Leon Larking in the morning and clear everything up, but for now, you’ll stay with me. Do you understand?”

The girl nodded that she did.

Amelia led Alice up the stairs and through the backroom and past the front counter of her shop, then ascended another set of stairs leading to a dining area and kitchenette.

“You want some tea?” Amelia said.

Again Alice shook her head.

So Amelia led the girl into the dining area and past the kitchenette to another set of stairs leading to a bedroom loft overlooking the dining area. In this loft stood a wardrobe and a vanity table and chair, with a body-length mirror leaning against the wall. The ceiling slanted above their heads, so Amelia added, “The ceiling’s a bit low on the headboard side of the bed, so watch your head when you wake up.”

She had Alice unwrap herself from the old bedsheet and took off the jacket from Alice’s shoulders, dropping both items in the corner of the loft, and pulled the sheets over for Alice to climb into. Afterwards Amelia put her spectacles on the nightstand by the bed and undid her hair, letting it drop past her shoulders and down her back, and took off her shoes and dress and blouse as Alice watched her undressing down to a loose chemise.

Amelia noticed Alice looking at her from the corner of her eye, and so she smiled and said, “What are you looking at?” But when she saw Alice slipping out of her Sunday dress beneath the sheets, Amelia turned around and said, “Aren’t you cold?”

Alice said nothing as she discarded the item and raised the bed sheet up to her eyes.

“We’re both girls, so it’s okay,” Amelia said.

“Are you sure?”

Amelia smiled and climbed into bed and sidled up next to Alice beneath the sheets.

“Geez, you’re cold!” she said. “Did Rancaster leave you outside or something?”

Yet Alice didn’t speak, avoiding her gaze, so Amelia leaned in and kissed Alice’s forehead . . .

And lay down by the Maiden's side!—

And in her arms the maid she took,

Ah wel-a-day!

In that sisterly embrace, hugging Alice close to her body, Amelia gasped as Alice’s icy hands reached past the hems of her chemise and rested on the bare flesh below her shoulder blades. Amelia also felt the cold contact of Alice’s legs entwining around her thighs and the swell of Alice’s breasts against her bare stomach. She cradled Alice’s head close to her bosom, trying to get her to warm up, as she felt Alice’s nipples against her stomach and her cold breaths raising goosebumps on the base of her neck.

For a time, she stayed that way, but then got up and said, “God, you’re so cold. I’ll go make some tea.”

“It’s not that,” Alice said and put Amelia’s hand up to her chest, where pulses barely registered against her palm.

“Blood flow,” she said.

Alice nodded.

Amelia thought for a moment, till the idea of making love to another girl surfaced through her mind, so she said, “Do you really want to get warm that way?”

Again Alice nodded.

And Amelia gave it more thought, looking down on the nude girl before her, the mounds of her breasts waiting for her to caress. Amelia was a woman of the 1960s, a time when lesbians began to reveal their faces on magazine covers and when the first gay rights movements coincided with the Civil Rights movement. She had spent much of her life hiding her true self, living a masquerade amongst clueless parents and friends, till she couldn’t take it anymore and made her first leap from 1966 through the gulf of decades to 1913 to be someone else. Now, with Alice’s invitation and consent, she could be her true self in the arms of another woman who knew what it was like to be her.

So she lowered herself and planted a kiss on Alice’s lips, touching and caressing her and allowing her to do the same, a mutual contract between two sinners in time and space, two souls separated by half a century of human pain, two women mixing cups in a covenant of love. Amelia indulged in Alice’s kisses and caresses and rubs, till Alice’s cold breaths became hot steam, and the winter chill left Alice’s body, and Alice’s kisses turned into hickeys along her neck and between the parting of her breasts and down her stomach and lower still.

And before she could stop herself, before the thought of danger registered on her mind, Amelia succumbed to Alice’s spell as the body-length mirror against the wall began to shimmer and warp the reflection, warping the mirror of her mind and turning her desires onto those of her bedmate’s. And as with her body and mind, so went her soul into a spider’s web of fluttering strands, till . . .

Out flew the web and floated wide—

The mirror crack'd from side to side;

"The curse is come upon me," cried

The Lady of Shalott.

Amelia winced and gritted her teeth as a bolt of pain shot through her core into her stomach. And before she knew it, she felt Alice’s blood flaring through her arteries and veins and pulsing to the beats of Alice’s heart, as Amelia herself grew weaker beneath Alice’s domineering strength. And even as Amelia struggled against Alice’s hold over her hands, she still found herself pinned to the bed.

“Why?” Amelia said, ceasing her struggles and succumbing to the whims of her bedmate. “Who are you?”

“I wish I could say,” Alice said, who lowered herself and planted her own kiss on Amelia’s lips, making her turn away. “We all have our masks, my love, and I’ve worn so many that I have forgotten the name my mother gave me. I am the daughter of Lilith, the daughter of Night, the blight of all women cursed to bear me into their world. So welcome to my world, dear sister!” Then she smiled and kissed Amelia’s lips and said, “But just between you and me, I kind of like the name you’ve given me. So Alice Liddell I’ll be, and you . . . Who do you want to be?”

Amelia gulped down her qualms, entranced in the allure of Alice’s roving predatory eyes, the eyes of a she-wolf that lit up with mischief, hinting at forbidden desires coming to the surface like hellfire from unfathomable depths. And in those eyes, Alice carried a cesspool inside of bodily sensations that only wanted more, more of Amelia’s body, more of her heart, more of her soul.

“Anything you want me to be,” she said.

So Alice planted another kiss on her lips, and they made love for the rest of that night.

6

Amelia left out the love-making and the mirror-breaking part of her account on the night before her visit with Ronald in his cell, but she couldn’t suppress the tingling over the parts of her body that Alice had fondled and bitten and kissed. After everything she went through on that first night with Alice, she couldn’t bring herself to say the truth, so she changed what happened with her words. Just as words could reveal the truth, so too could they hide it.

Thus, she restricted her version of events to the ones that had happened in Alice’s bedroom in Rancaster’s mansion, saying no more than that she saw no reflection of Alice in the mirror when she aimed it on the bed she slept on.

“Wait,” Ronald said, “invisible? You’re kidding.”

“I’m not,” she said. “Vamps exist, trust me.”

“All right,” he said. “What have you found out about Rancaster? Anything worthy of note?”

Grateful that the interview steered off of dangerous waters, Amelia went over her week-long investigation into the Rancaster baronetcy. Over the course of that week, she had also gone to the local library and poured over all the public records available concerning the Phantom Office and its connection to Aaron Rancaster. The Rancaster baronetcy was one of the first families to settle this town before it was incorporated. The Rancasters were feared, too, known for their occult practices, as well as law enforcement and bounty hunting during the tumultuous Reconstruction years after the end of the Civil War. Afterwards, under the baronetcy of Ezra Rancaster, the 4th Baronet Rancaster, he established the Phantom Office in 1882 and headed it for the next fifteen years till his murder in 1897. After his murder, his son Tobias Rancaster, the 5th Baronet Rancaster, recruited Bat Masterson and Pat Garrett and Wyatt Earp and the Pinkerton agent Scott Hamilton (Ronald’s father) and had them investigate, till something forced him to call it off. Amelia had no idea why he called off the investigation, but further research into the matter informed her that the decision tarnished Tobias’s reputation and forced him to resign his post as head of the Phantom Office in 1900 after Leon Larking of the rival Larking baronetcy accused him of a coverup in a public letter in the newspapers, which resulted in Tobias going to trial and later getting sentenced to life in prison.

During this phase of Amelia’s research, she had switched gears to Leon Larking, the man that succeeded Tobias as the head of the Phantom Office for twelve tumultuous years, in which the Rancaster and Larking families feuded in small skirmishes in politics and the press, till Tobias’s mysterious death in prison in 1912 almost provoked a war. As a result, Leon Larking stepped down from the position and appointed Aaron Rancaster to head the Phantom Office in the fall of that year, which he has held for over a year now.

During her perusal of the score of run-of-the-mill murder and theft cases under Aaron Rancaster’s tenure, Amelia had considered talking to Rancaster’s deputies and guards, but their atrocious conduct during today’s body search inspired no inclination towards that route, so she had to devise another way into the fold.

“Good girl,” Ronald said, smiling for the first time since his imprisonment after she finished recounting the facts. “You’ve been quite the busy bee.”

“I’ll try to get Leon Larking to bail you out,” she said.

“You can’t,” he said.

“Why not?”

“He’s out of town,” he said, “on business.”

Amelia grimaced and cursed under her breath.

“Kiss me,” he said.

“What?”

“Kiss me,” he said and eyed the guards peeking through the bars. “We don’t have much time, so kiss me now.”

And so she did, but during that kiss, Amelia felt a metallic object passing between them, and just before she was about to say anything, he shook his head and whispered, “Not until you get back to your shop.” Then he grinned and said, following his own part in the act, “I’ve always wanted to do that to my dear own sister before I die, and so I have,” and he winked at her as if it was a game.

So Amelia feigned an insult and slapped his face, then stood up and walked from the cell without saying another word, hoping the guards bought the act.

7

During Auna’s journey, the sun had risen past the horizon, piercing through the canopy of trees in shallow slants of sunlight and throwing long shadows along the yellow-brick road. As such, Auna followed her shadow deeper into the woods, wherein she thought of Tweedledum and Tweedledee one-upping each other into a fight, till the Crow chased them away back into the woods. Only, it wasn’t a ‘monstrous’ crow in Carroll’s story: it was just the White Queen’s shawl that time. And there were no Tweedle brothers this time around, either: there was only silence accompanying Auna in her search for the White Queen.

Auna kept walking down the yellow-brick road through the woods, when she saw a large shadow crossing the road up ahead of her, making her cast her gaze up through the canopy of trees into the blue of the sky, but saw nothing there.

The next thing she knew, Auna heard the flapping of wings behind her and felt a sudden gust of wind flooding through the trees and fluttering her hair and the skirt of her Shad-Row uniform, but when she turned to look, she saw nothing there.

She kept her gaze trained on the sky and turned around, then caught the massive silhouette of a Crow passing overhead the same spot along the yellow-brick road ahead of her. She followed the massive silhouette through the canopy of leaves and heard its shrill caw echoing above her like a Devil’s trill, till its silhouette emerged on the other side and swooped down with its clawed feet stretched forward, throwing its shadow over her and fluttering her hair and skirt.

Auna sprinted off the road and into the woods, just as it landed on the yellow-brick road in a whirl of wind and eyed her with a fiery glare and cawed at her. She retreated backwards into the wood, manifesting her gun in both hands and aiming it at the crow’s massive form, and kept her gaze on its fiery eyes. As she kept backing away, the lights of its eyes kept following her through the shades and shadows of the trees like pixie lights, till at last she reached a clearing in the trees and the ghostly lights dissipated in the sun’s rays.

That’s when she turned and found the White Queen lying face down on the dewy grass, with a pool of blood spreading out from her stomach over the grass.

“Shiromi!” Auna said, running to her fallen friend, and crouched down and turned her over onto her back and found Mara’s bloody handiwork in the bodice of her dress, where the slit her stab appeared over her sternum. “Shiromi, can you hear me? Shiromi . . . Shiromi . . .”

Even as her words drifted away at the sight of her dead, the face of her White Queen remained a picture of repose in a dreamless sleep, her eyelids closed in a peaceful countenance. Yet even such a sleep as this couldn’t hide the truth from Auna’s own eyes, that her White Queen was disappearing in the sun’s rays, dissipating from her world.

“Shiromi,” Auna said, shedding tears upon the White Queen’s pallid cheek, “please open your eyes!”

Yet her eyes remained closed, even though they seemed just on the verge of opening, because . . .

She thought her dying when she slept,

And sleeping when she died.

So she picked up the White Queen’s dissipating hand and pressed it against her bosom, letting her heartbeats thump into the waning astral palm, then lowered herself and put her lips to Auna’s in a lingering kiss and breathed into her, breathing and mixing her spirit with that of her imaginary friend. And as the White Queen’s eyes twinkled on the edge of conscious sleep, Auna looked on those fluttering eyes, lingering on them as her White Queen began to leave the ghost of her image behind like a memory of a dream before it fades.

More tears trailed down Auna’s face as she picked herself up, yet through her tears, she remembered the name she had given the White Queen when she was nine years old. She was Auna’s White Queen, her rebellious Shiromi, rebellious to the end, and nothing could take that away from her.

Just as Auna was about venture back into the woods, she felt another spell of lethargy coming over her eyes, and her visions descended back into the madness when her mind first cracked open upon the sight of her father touching her there and there and there and further and further down to her secret place, so she clamped her thighs together and screamed through her tears as he was about to do it to her, till her mind finally cracked and she manifested a knife in her hand and . . .

Squinting back the visions, Auna fell to her knees and doubled over onto her hands, feeling the razor’s sear of a stab wound pulsing against her ribs like a heart attack, so she pressed her hand to her chest to ease the pain, but to no avail. Her aorta had been cut, and blood spurted out against her palm with every gasp she took, pumping through her fingers and pooling into a spread of it on the grass.

Against the weakening of her limbs, Auna struggled to her feet and hobbled to the nearest tree in the clearing, till she fell. She picked herself back up and crawled on hands and knees as blood dripped a trail of it on the grass behind her, and upon reaching the tree, she turned over onto her side and then onto her back, leaning against the base of the tree.

Blinking back the atrocities of her father’s crime, Auna thought of Kendra hugging her and Celia crying for her and Nico asking her name. All three personages merged together in her mind’s eye, and before she knew it, Auna fell asleep and dreamed of the “Jabberwocky” poem, in which the hero[ine] . . .

. . . took [her] vorpal sword in hand:

Long time the manxome foe [she] sought—

So rested [she] by the Tumtum tree,

And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought [she] stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

[She] left it dead, and with its head

[She] went galumphing back.

8

Amidst the crowd crush of Auna Wenger clones, Kendra managed only glimpses of the transition from the flowerbed of giant daisies to Katherine’s naughty room through the barrage of groping and kissing and other unmentionable acts. The clones restrained Kendra’s limbs over Katherine’s bed, straddling her arms and legs and rubbing themselves against her, and others kept yanking at her Mandarin dress till it tore along the seams, revealing her bra and panties, and still others ripped away even these unmentionables, exposing Kendra’s surging body to their caressing and groping and rubbing and pinching and kissing and nibbling and sucking.

Through it all, Kendra bucked and heaved and struggled against the combined exertions of the clones, before she gave out and squinted her eyes shut and gritted her teeth and curled her fingers and toes against the alien sensations crawling throughout her body like a virgin’s first time, for it was nothing like she imagined. She felt each sensation over her body merging into one and filling her stomach with spasms of bile, and she felt the acidic burn of it gurgling up past her gag reflex and hurling past her mouth in a wave of nausea, and the bitter taste and the sour smell of it rung tears from her eyes and mucus from her nose, leaving her a sniveling wreck of herself when they ceased their exertions and backed away from her bedside with gloating leers and wry smiles.

By then, Kendra was a wheezing mess, short of breath and long on exhaustion, her sweat-laden self struggling to move on the bed. She tried to get up, but her body wouldn’t let her, so she turned on her side and propped herself up the best she could and caught one more look at the Auna Wenger clones just as they disappeared before her, before Kendra allowed herself to succumb to exhaustion and sleep.

Here Kendra stayed for a time, wherein all was naught but the fleeting sensation of puckered lips touching the corners of her mouth. She thought it was Nico Cairns, and when she opened her eyes, she found herself tucked beneath the sheets of Katherine’s bed with Nico looking over her from the bedside.

“Nico?” Kendra said through bleary eyes.

The girl shook her head, smiling. “It’s the other one.”

“Mara?” Kendra turned on her side and propped herself on her elbows and allowed her eyes to focus, till she beheld Mara’s hickey-marked astral body and said, “Geez, what the hell happened to you?”

“The same thing that happened to you,” she said. “Did those clones hurt you?”

Kendra looked down herself and saw nothing there and said, “I don’t think so.”

“Are you hurting anywhere?” Mara said.

Kendra’s mind then flashed on the Red Queen’s stab, and she looked down on herself and still saw nothing there, but upon touching her stomach where she had been stabbed, she felt a residual tingling sensation there. “Not anymore,” she said, then raised her hand to her lips. “Did you kiss me?”

Mara smiled and shook her head, then held up a moist handkerchief and said, “You threw up in your sleep, and it looks like you still have some on you,” and she reached over and touched the corner of Kendra’s mouth with it. “There. How does that feel?”

“Better, I guess,” she said and propped herself up to a sitting position and thought of her words. “Wait a minute. If I was sleeping, then how did you know about those clones?”

“I was in this same bedroom when she did this to me,” she said, and Kendra couldn’t help but stare at the hickeys on Mara’s body.

“You mean, Alice?” Kendra said. “Christ, she did that to you?”

Mara nodded. “I’ve bed-wrestled before, and I’m pretty good at it, but she proved to be a monster. Almost insatiable, I’d say,” and she pointed to the sheet that had been pulled aside, indicating the impression of another occupant lying beside Kendra. “Afterwards I saw you in my sleep, and I saw what they did to you, those ghastly things. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine,” Kendra said, “but we have to get out of here,” and she flung the sheets away from her and sat on the edge, but then teetered over in mid-vertigo—

When Mara caught her and lifted her back onto the bed and said, “Careful, now. That dream must’ve taken a lot out of you. Let’s rest for a bit before we go, okay?”

Kendra tried to protest, but her body wouldn’t let her, so she just nodded and let Mara shift her legs over the edge and back onto the plush bedding. She then looked back at the impression that Mara had made beside her on the bed and said, “Did you sleep beside me the whole time?”

“Not this whole time,” she said, smiling again. “You were struggling in your sleep and woke me up, and you took up my side of the bed. Hence, here I am at your bedside.” Then she yawned and said, “Can you move over? It’s a little chilly.”

So Kendra moved over and let her climb in bed beside her, and Mara pulled the bedsheet up to her chin and smiled, saying, “I wonder,” but she let that thought drift away from the tip of her tongue.

“Wonder what?” Kendra said.

“Have you kissed a girl before?” she said.

At this, Kendra blushed and averted her eyes and said, “No.”

“Are you sure?” she said and smiled yet again.

“Why are you asking me this?”

“Because I know you kissed Nico,” she said.

“No, I didn’t!”

“Yes, you did,” she said, “and don’t you deny it.”

Kendra turned on her side and propped herself up, looking over Mara, and said, “How did you—”

“I felt you kissing her on my own lips, and I saw your face in my mind’s eye,” she said, and she clasped Kendra’s hand and placed it over her bosom between her breasts. “That’s how I knew. She and I are twins, after all.”

Kendra looked at the girl before her, feeling the drumbeat of her heart against her palm and said, “Mara, about what I did back at the Rancaster district.”

“What about it?”

“I didn’t mean to blow up like that,” Kendra said. “That’s not how I usually am. Not with Celia. Not with anyone. I promised your sister I’d help you, and I meant it. So if you need anything from me, I’m here for you.”

She remained silent for a spell, then raised her hand to Kendra's cheek and said, "You're a good girl, Kendra Tellerman. If I had you for a sister, I might not have turned out the way I am now," and she wrapped her arms around Kendra's neck and pulled Kendra over to her and planted a kiss on her lips. Then another. And then another.

Till Kendra pulled away, saying, “Mara, what are you saying? Nico made me promise—”

“I’m not talking about Nico,” she said, and she clipped her arms around Kendra’s waist and pressed herself up against her, pressing her boobs against hers. “Nico’s not here, but you are, and you’re the one I want right now,” and she grabbed Kendra’s wrists and turned her over onto her back, pinning her hands above her head against the pillow cushions, and smothered Kendra with lingering kisses on her mouth.

When she raised herself and let go of Kendra’s wrists, Kendra tried to move, but an unseen force kept her wrists pinned in place above her head.

“What are you doing?” Kendra said, struggling against the unseen hold, squirming as she began planning hickeys on her jaw and throat and collar bone and the parting between her breasts, eliciting moans Kendra couldn’t suppress. “Mara, stop! Don’t do this, please!”

So she raised herself to Kendra’s face and cupped her cheeks in her hands and said, “Where I come from, there is no right and wrong, for there is no morality. There is only the will to power, the will to gain, and the will to have, and right now I have you, Kendra Tellerman, under my power to do with however I please. And if you’re wondering who’s holding you down,” she added, “look and you’ll see for yourself.”

So Kendra looked up towards the headboard and saw a naked Mara Cairns holding down her wrists and cradling her head between her thighs and said, “Mara, is that you?”

But Mara’s face was expressionless, and she remained mute.

So the imposter spoke for her, saying, “That’s her.”

“What is this?” Kendra said, turning back to the girl before her. “Nico, if this is your way of getting your kicks, you’re fucking sick!”

“Nico’s not here, love,” she said. “Mara’s here, you’re here, and I’m here, and that’s all that matters. And if you’re still wondering who I am, just call me Alice Liddell.”

That’s when Kendra finally realized the truth as she saw the roving predatory eyes of a she-wolf, who wore Mara’s face but was not her. And in those eyes, as Alice smothered her with kisses and hickeys and fondled her breasts and rubbed the lips of her pussy with her fingers, eliciting more moans from her, Kendra saw her own forbidden desires coming to the surface like hellfire from unfathomable depths. For in those eyes, Kendra saw herself making love to her guardian Roy Dolan and to her highschool crush Randal Larking in a threesome, while her mother Ramona Tellerman watched her daughter in horror by the open door and ran away, screaming her head off, and her father Edmund Tellerman watched her doing it by the doorside and began jerking himself off to her daughter getting laid.

Alice paused, her slasher's smile stretching across her Mara-like face, and said, “Ooooh, you naughty girl!”

And before Kendra’s eyes, before she could suppress the nightmarish visions from her spell-induced thoughts, she bore witness to a horrific transformation. Before her the Mara-impersonating Alice turned into Roy Dolan, and the real Mara holding down her wrists turned into Randal Larking, both men in the nude with erections, both getting ready as Kendra heard her mother running away, screaming, and her father grunting as he masturbated to the madness of it all.

So Kendra squinted her eyes shut and screamed, till Roy clamped a hand clamped over her mouth and prevented her, so she was screaming in her head, screaming for this nightmare to end, screaming till all was naught but night and slow-wave comatose.

9

In the next replay of her dream sequence, the whole sequence had glitched, and Nico found herself deviating from the pattern of motions and experiences as if she were dreaming it anew with hints of déjà vu fluttering in the back of her mind. For this time, it wasn’t Celia leading her down the stairs: it was Akami the Red Queen guiding Nico by the hand and telling her that she was a crucial link in the chain of events that was to follow in both the phantom realm and the human realm.

When Nico asked what she meant, Akami stopped at the foot of the stairs on the bottom landing and said, “You are the beginning and the ending of this sequence. You started it when you exacted a promise from your friends and gave up what was left of yourself to save someone they loved. You will do it again in just the same way.”

“How do you know this?” Nico asked.

Akami turned to her and said, “The dead know many things hidden from the living.”

“Then do you know how it’s gonna end?” Nico said.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t divine the destiny of another soul. Only God can do that.”

“Then how will I know?”

“You won’t know, until it happens,” Akami said.

“Until what happens?” Nico said.

“Until you decide to act,” Akami said and let go of Nico’s hand. “God may know all the outcomes and consequences of your actions, but He can’t decide them for you.”

“Free will,” Nico said.

Akami nodded and walked towards the doorway of the Katherine’s library, then stopped at the threshold and looked back at Nico and said, “I was just a fictional character in some book before I met Auna. I kept playing the same role over and over in the minds of everyone who reads my part in that book, till Auna gave me the freedom to be myself—to be what you see now.”

“How did she do that?” Nico said.

“Auna gave me my name,” she said. “Because of her, I was not just the ‘Red Queen,’ just some character with a title and nothing else: I am Akami, Auna’s friend and loyal servant. I do her bidding, not because she compels me to do as she says, but because it’s my decision to serve her of my own free will.”

“But why?” Nico said.

“Because I love her,” she said. “We all have our decisions to make for whatever reasons we make them, whether for good or ill. Aren’t you coming? Shiromi just woke up,” and she entered the library, and Nico followed.

10

At the top of the seven o’clock hour, Madison and Celia finished moving the furniture back into place in the family room (with Roy pushing the sofa on which Kendra lay). Then both girls took Leslie aside and walked out of the family room into the entrance hall, where they asked Leslie whether or not she knew if their mother had met Rancaster before.

At their inquiry, Leslie gasped and stared at the two girls without noticing her own gaping mouth and said, “Did Kathy tell you this?”

“It was Rancaster,” Celia said. “He said our mother killed—”

“Not now, please,” Leslie said, and went to the family room, but Madison grabbed her hand.

“We need to know,” Madison said. “What Rancaster said about our mother, was it true?”

“Did our mom really kill our grandmother?” Celia said. “Please, we need to know.”

Leslie faced her inquirers, looking from Madison to Celia, taking her time to think things through before answering, and realized that they needed closure more than anything else and said, “Didn’t Kathy tell you already?”

“No, she didn’t,” Madison said.

“She’s been really cagey about it,” Celia added.

“I’ll talk to her, first, okay?” Leslie said.

“But—”

“This is Kathy’s mom, too, you know,” Leslie said, looking into the eyes of the two girl, and saw pain there. “The only reason Kathy didn’t tell you was because I asked her not to.”

Celia and Madison traded quizzical looks and said, “Why?”

“Because I didn’t want Kathy to drive a wedge between your parents,” Leslie said. “I only asked her to let your mother sit with it till she was ready to tell her, and so she waited for your mother, till Kathy came to me after your mother told her about it. Kathy explained the situation to me and asked me for advice, and I asked her if she told you two about it, and she said she didn’t, because she didn’t want to make things more complicated than they already were between your parents. I advised her to keep it a secret if she thought that was better for your parents and for you, but I also told her that if she needed to talk to me, I’d be there for her.”

Both sisters were silent for a spell.

Then Madison said, “And were you?”

“Yeah,” Leslie said and placed her hands over their shoulders and hugged them close to her as if she were their surrogate mother. “There’s a lot you don’t know, and there’s a good reason for it, trust me. Colbie and Kendra don’t need to know, but since Lima’s your mother, you two deserve to know, but I must warn you. It’s not easy to take.”

“Was it that bad?” Celia said.

Leslie nodded and said, “Kathy was crying when she told me about it,” and she breathed to steady her nerves. “We were there when it happened—me, your mom, and Kendra’s mom. We saw everything Rancaster did to your mom, including what he made her do to your grandmother. Just lay off of it for now, okay? If you’re going to know about this, I need Kathy’s say in it, first. Do you understand?”

Celia and Madison said that they did, and with that, the trio went back into the family room. Roy was leaning on the sofa’s armrest next to the sleeping Kendra, Katherine was sitting on the other sofa next to one of the armrests, Connie was sitting on one of the recliners, and Colbie was sitting on one of the divans beside the coffee table. So Celia and Madison joined Katherine on the sofa, with Celia sitting in between her elder sisters, and Leslie sat on the other divan next to Colbie.

Katherine asked her sisters why they took Leslie aside, but they said it had to wait for later. When she asked them why, they just said they’ll let her know later.

Looking on at the Hearn sisters, though, Leslie knew.

“Mom, what’s wrong?” Colbie said.

“Nothing,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” Leslie said, all the while feeling less and less sure about it when she looked at an oblivious Katherine, then turned back to Colbie. “Really, I’m fine.”

11

When Nico took her seat by the cafe table, she was introduced to the White Queen named Shiromi, who proved to be another example of free will in Nico’s observations. In many ways, Shiromi was on the opposite side of the coin to her red counterpart in Akami. While Akami sat up straight in her seat, pouring cups for herself and Shiromi and Nico, Shiromi was either leaning against the back of her chair or slumping forward in her chair, leaning with her elbow bent over the table and resting her chin in her palm. And while Akami set her cup on the table, never touching it till she drank from it, Shiromi was brandishing her empty cup in her other hand like it was a knife. And while Akami spoke in measured tones, Shiromi was bombastic and cursed and filled her words with naughty instances.

For instance, Shiromi was the one who helped initiate the ten-year-old Auna in the art of masturbation after her father introduced her to it.

“Ewwww!” Nico said. “Why are you even telling me this? Are you trying to gross me out or something?”

“Shiromi, mind your manners, please,” Akami said.

“What? I’m just being honest with her,” Shiromi said, then turned back to Nico with a devious smile. “Besides, even if Auna wouldn’t admit it that time, I bet she liked it, especially when I did it for her.”

“Shiromi!” Akami yelled.

“What’s wrong with talking about it?” she said, chuckling to herself at Akami’s expense. “I was just saying the truth, Ms. Period-Puss.”

“There’s a difference between telling the truth and being indecent,” Akame said, “especially in front of our guest!”

“All right, all right,” she said. “Didn’t mean to get your tits up, though your tits are always up.”

“Shut up, I say!” Akami yelled.

“Or else what?”

“Or else you won’t get any more tea!”

“To hell with your stinking tea, then,” Shiromi said, and spat into her empty cup and slammed it on the table and slid it over to a fuming Akami. “I get more flavor drinking my own piss, anyway.”

“God, you’re disgusting!” Akami said, then turned to Nico: “If she’s being too much of a bother for you, I can dismiss her from the table.”

“I’ll dismiss myself, thank you,” Shiromi said, and got up from the table and walked towards the solan sofa, where she flopped herself into its cushions and felt something hard against her butt cheeks. So she turned over and sat herself up and put her hand on the Lewis Carroll book that Auna had flung onto the sofa just an hour ago, but just as she touched it, the image of Auna Wenger flashed through her mind, and she raised her hand to her cheek and felt anomalous tears that she herself had not shed.

At that same moment, the image of Auna Wenger flashed through Akami’s mind, and she raised a hand to her own cheek and found anomalous tears there along with the residual tingle of a human caress.

That’s when they said, “Auna,” at the same time.

And that’s when they faced each other and met each other’s gazes, both knowing what was on the other’s mind, while Nico was left in the dark, observing from her outsider’s perspective, looking from Akami to Shiromi and back to Akami.

“What’s going on?” Nico said.

“We know where she is,” Akami said, and stood up from the table and headed towards Shiromi on the solan sofa.

“Who?”

“Auna,” Akami said, and turned back to her guest. “Come with us, Nico Cairns. You can help us find her.” She met Shiromi halfway towards the sofa and said, “We all have to find her.”

“And how do you expect us to do that, huh?” Shiromi said. “If you haven’t noticed, Auna’s not here, so even if we could use this book,” and she brandished the Lewis Carroll book in front of Akami’s face, “we can’t!”

“But we do have Nico Cairns,” Akami said, and both the Red and White Queens looked at Nico.

All the while, Nico loitered in the background like a wallflower, looking at them as though she had been called up to the front of the class to talk about a book she hasn’t even read. She found herself wondering how she could even help them when she could barely recall where she was the last time she saw Auna Wenger in Katherine’s mansion, let alone how they expected her to find her in the first place.

“Come on,” Akami said to Nico, gesturing to her to join them.

“Don’t be such a pussy-foot,” Shiromi added with her arms akimbo. “Get your ass over here!”

So Nico joined them, but she stayed silent under the combined stares of the Red and White Queens and said, “I don’t know if I can do this.”

“Seriously?” Shiromi said. “You’ve come this far only to get cold feet?”

“But I . . .” Nico struggled to find her own words, replaying in her mind her first encounter with her (then dubbed the ‘bambina girl’) in Richet Square of the old Rancaster district and then replaying her second encounter with her in the mirrored hallways of Katherine’s dream mansion, her thoughts filled with contradicting impressions of this girl.

“What is it?” Akami said.

“What exactly do you expect me to do?” she said.

“What kind of question is that?” Shiromi said. “If you’re getting cold feet, then I suggest you—”

“Shiromi, that’s enough!” Akami said, then back to Nico: “What’s on your mind, dear?”

“She said it was Rancaster’s idea, not hers,” Nico said as tears began trailing her cheeks at the dual impressions of Auna in Richet Square and Katherine’s mansion: once as a caring human being; and once as a heartless monster. “She said she didn’t intend for my family to get involved in this, whatever ‘this’ is. She said she was sorry, but why did she still pull the trigger on me? Why is she even doing this? It’s like there’s . . . two sides of her or something!”

At this, Akami and Shiromi traded glances, and Akami said, “Before we send you, you must know this.”

“Know what?” Nico said.

Here, both queens traded glances, as if they were trying to get something off of their chests, with Akami saying to her white counterpart, “Shiromi, don’t be such a bitch for once.”

So Shiromi sighed and said to Nico, “Auna told us that she saw your death on stage and couldn’t stop the show in time.”

“She told us that it was her fault,” Akami continued, looking down in sorrow. “And she told us to tell you that she was sorry for what happened to your parents.”

Nico put her hands to her mouth as more tears began trailing her cheeks at the thought of Auna telling that to them, which was totally at odds with her impressions of Auna in both of her encounters with the girl.

“And she wanted us to tell your sister,” Shiromi added, “that she was sorry for what happened to you.”

Akami said, “We know you have every reason not to trust us, but please hear us out,” and here she took Nico’s hand and put it to her chest, where she felt her heartbeats against her palms. Shiromi did this as well, taking up Nico’s other hand and putting it to her chest and letting her feel her heartbeats thumping against her palm. “Do you feel that?”

Nico nodded.

“Auna’s alive,” Akami said, “and as long as she’s alive, she’s not yet under Rancaster’s full control.”

“What do you mean?” Nico said.

“We don’t know what Rancaster did to her,” Shiromi added, “but we know that Auna has always been a vulnerable child—”

“—vulnerable to older men, that is,” Akami said, “and not just to any kind, either. She’s vulnerable to older male authorities and especially to manipulative father figures. Out of respect for Auna’s privacy, I won’t reveal to you the name of Auna’s father, but what I can say about him is this: everything her father did to her as a child, Rancaster has used to influence Auna’s actions up to now. Under such conditions, Akami and I have observed Auna suppressing all the shame that her father and Rancaster have forced out of her into a place deep inside herself, where it has festered into another personality entirely.”

And in her words, Nico remembered back to what Auna had said to her in the hallways of Katherine’s mansion before Kendra’s intervention and said, “Auna talked about a debut the last time I saw her. Does this other ‘personality’ have anything to do with this debut?”

Here, Akami and Shiromi traded glances, and both girls nodded their heads.

Shiromi said, “There’s a phrase for it, but I’m not sure what it’s called. I think it’s called ‘dissociation disorder’ or something like that.”

“You mean,” Nico said, “dissociative identity disorder?”

“Yeah, that’s the one!” she said.

“How do you know this?” Akami added.

“I know this,” Nico said, “because my sister and I both have this condition.”

At this, Akami smiled at her and said, “Then you’ll know that there’s more to Auna Wenger than what you’ve seen so far. Whatever impressions she gave off at the time, that’s not the Auna that Akami and I know. The Auna we know is a sweet and imaginative girl brought low by circumstances outside of her control, circumstances that have forced her to become what you’ve seen. Please, try to understand her.”

And understand she did, for Nico knew exactly what it feels like to keep up appearances, to keep to the pattern set before you, to live up to someone else’s expectations and keep secret that which would disgrace you, to deny who you really are for the sake of someone else’s illusions of you. Everything she did with Mara on the bed, she did in secret like a clandestine lover to another man’s wife, hugging Mara close to her till her breasts squeezed into hers, pressing Mara’s face to her bosom and rubbing circles between her shoulder blades, asking Mara into doing things to her and whispering pretty reassurances that everything would be okay, even when they weren't. All of this Nico and Mara had kept hidden under false impressions, till the very end when their mother had begged for them to be sisters and not lovers and their father had accepted them as they were just before Rancaster had pulled the rug from under their feet and upended their lives.

So Nico cried, and Akami and Shiromi hugged her in a shared embrace as if they were her own sisters, both of them kissing Nico’s lips and eyes.

Then Akami said, “Your eyes are now our eyes. When you find Auna Wenger, we’ll know, and we’ll help you.”

“And after that, after all of this is over,” Shiromi added, smiling another of her devious smiles, “I’ll make love to you like you won’t believe.”

“Get your mind out of the gutter!” Akami yelled.

“I was just joking, geez!”

Nico smiled and licked her lips, then stole a kiss from Shiromi and said, “I’ll hold you to that.”

Akami gaped, while Shiromi stared at her.

“She’s corrupting you,” Akami said.

“I know,” Nico said, smiling. “And I think like it.”

Now Shiromi blushed, till she regained herself and said, “You’re on.”

Akami ignored their tomfoolery and said, “Here’s what we’ll do, Nico Cairns. While we do the chanting, all you have to do to stay still and close your eyes, but most of all, empty your mind of all thoughts. Do you understand?”

Nico nodded her head and closed her eyes.

“Good,” she said.

With that, Shiromi and Akami joined hands around Nico and began turning counter-clockwise around her as if she were an idol and said, “Widdershins, widdershins, look at this soul. Widdershins, widdershins, take her away. Widdershins, widdershins, take her to Hell. Widdershins, widdershins, where Auna dwells. Widdershins, widdershins, find them today. Widdershins, widdershins, so they’ll be whole. Widdershins, widdershins, help her to find. Widdershins, widdershins, our peace of mind. Widdershins, widdershins . . .”

12

With everyone settled, Katherine outlined everything she and her sisters had witnessed in Amelia Hearn’s mirror, but took pains not to mention the use of said mirror, which drew Leslie’s attention to the expression of her face for any sign of disquiet. Yet even in Katherine’s observations, pointing out Colbie’s involvement in four visits to the ballroom, her second observation of Colbie fighting Alice in the ballroom drew a long stare from Leslie.

Leslie then looked from Katherine to Colbie, then back to Katherine, repressing the urge to yell at Katherine for leading her daughter into that kind of danger, and said, “Are you telling me you weren’t aware of this beforehand?”

“Not the particulars, no,” Katherine said, “but I did have the foresight to—”

“Kathy, I’m starting to wonder if you dragged my Colbie into this to save your own ass, or—”

“Mom!” Colbie said.

“I’m serious, Colbie,” Leslie said, then back to Katherine: “Kathy, for your information, I woke up thinking Colbie was about to die. Twice! Once late last night, and again just before dawn this morning. And you know the worst part?”

Katherine gulped and said, “What is it?”

“I made the same damn mistake you did and made it even worse,” she said. “So the way I see it, we’re both at fault for what happened to Mara and Kendra and—”

“It’s my fault,” Celia said.

“What?” Leslie said. “How’s it your fault?”

“I started it, Mrs. Amame,” Celia said, averting her gaze from Leslie’s. “If I didn’t steal Dad’s keys and enter the dream world the way I did, then Kathy and Maddy wouldn’t have come after me, and—“

“Celia, wait,” Madison said.

“That’s not your fault,” Katherine said.

“Yes, it is!” Celia yelled. “And on top of that, I got somebody killed.”

“No! Don’t think that way,” Katherine said, grabbing a hold on her forearm. “I’m sure it was an accident.”

“Were you there, Kathy?” Celia yelled. “I saw her die in front of me, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could—”

“Celia, stop!” Madison said, grabbing her other forearm. “I saw what happened, and I know it’s not your fault! If you still don’t believe me, ask Cooley and Blaze, and they’ll—”

“Neither of you pulled the trigger, but I did!” she said, glaring at her two elder sisters on either side of her, and everyone in the family room just sat and stared at her in shock. “I wasn’t strong enough,” she added as tears welled up in her eyes. “I couldn’t resist Rancaster’s hold on me, and so I shot her and watched her die in front of me! I was there, and I saw it all, and I . . . I . . .”

Her words trailed off, and Katherine and Madison put their arms across Celia’s shoulders, both girls saying that it wasn’t her fault, that she’d been coerced against her will, so that even when she pulled the trigger, it wasn’t her fault. Yet all their consoling only made Celia cry all the more.

So Leslie said, “Celia, how did this happen?”

“Mom!” Colbie said. “Can’t you see she’s crying?”

Leslie said, “Look, I’m just—”

“Don’t!” Katherine said, glaring at Leslie while still holding onto Celia. “Look, I’m sorry for fucking things up for you, but don’t you ever make Celia cry like that, got it?”

“She didn’t mean to, Kathy!” Colbie said, getting up. “And don’t talk to my mom that way!”

“Colbie, sit down,” Leslie said, grabbing her wrist and pulling her back onto the divan. “Look, Kathy, I was just—”

“Just lay off! My sister’s not a murderer!” Katherine said.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, ladies,” Roy Dolan said, raising her hands in a placating gesture, looking at Katherine, in particular. “Nobody’s accusing anyone of anything, okay? And, Kathy, I don’t think Leslie meant it the way you think.”

“But she just said—”

“Kathy, please,” Colbie said and got up and stalked over towards the sofa on which the Hearn sisters sat and wrapped her arms around Celia’s shoulders, saying to Celia, “Hey, we’re gonna get through this, okay?” Then to Katherine: “Celia’s my friend, too, you know. And my mom didn’t mean it, no matter what you think she meant. Just . . . calm down, okay? I’ve never seen you like this before.”

Leslie paused at Colbie’s last statement, and her thoughts drew her back to her talk with Celia and Madison in the entrance hall, so she said, “Colbie, it’s okay.” Then to Katherine: “And, Kathy, I’m really sorry for upsetting Celia, and . . . dredging up bad memories.”

Leslie’s last few words drew the attention of Madison and Celia, who both stared at Leslie on her divan.

Colbie noticed their reactions, so she looked back at her mother and said, “Mom, what’s going on?”

At her words, Roy Dolan and Connie Davis (who had been a silent observer throughout the proceedings) looked towards Leslie sitting on the divan.

Roy eyed Leslie from his armrest and said, “Is there something we should know?”

Then Connie leaned forward on her recliner and said, “Leslie, is there anything you haven’t told us yet?”

At all of their reactions and questions, Katherine paused and looked at Leslie, trying to piece together the meaning behind their questions, and said, “What do you mean by ‘dredging up bad memories’?”

With everyone looking her way, Leslie shrank from all the attention and kept her eyes between her feet and squeezed her hands over the edges of her divan. Out of everyone staring at her, though, she felt Katherine’s gaze boring through her the most and said, “Kathy, I didn’t mean to get anyone upset, especially you, but . . .” And her words drifted off.

“But what?” Katherine said, boring bullet holes into Leslie.

“You see,” she said, “your sisters wanted to know what happened, but I didn’t want to tell them, till—”

That’s when Katherine finally connected the dots and stood up from the couch, saying, “You told them? You told my sisters about it?”

“Yeah,” she said, squirming in her seat, “but they snuck it up on me, and I—”

“You told them,” Katherine continued, “when I specifically asked you not to tell them behind my back?”

“Kathy, it wasn’t like—”

“Fuck you!” And Katherine stormed out of the family room and down the entrance hall, and Leslie followed after her, stomping up the stairs and saying that it was okay, but Katherine wouldn’t have any of it. She just said, “I trusted you, and you fucking . . . Agh! Get away from me!”

“But, Kathy, I . . .”

Their argument continued up the stairs and into the upper hallway, obscuring their words from the shell-shocked listeners in the family one floor below. Roy Dolan and Connie Davis and Colbie and Celia and Madison just sat there in silence, wide-eyed, and unable to comprehend what had just happened.

Colbie sat on Katherine’s spot on the sofa and looked at Celia and Madison, saying, “What did my mom tell you?”

Both sisters were tongue-tied for a spell.

“It’s complicated,” Madison said and looked down between her feet, avoiding Colbie’s gaze. “I’m really sorry, Colbie.”

“We just up and made everything worse,” Celia said and buried her face in her hands. “God, I’m so stupid!”

“Seriously?” Colbie said. “How much worse could it be?”

13

Upon reaching her destination, Nico opened her eyes and found herself on the edge of a yellow-brick road, whereon she spotted a wizened Chinese man asleep under the shade of a tree by the road. He had a scraggly beard and wore the long and loose garments of Hanfu clothing like that of a philosopher’s in ancient China and was talking in Chinese in his sleep, but Nico thought she understood what he was saying.

She came to him under the tree and reached out to touch him, saying in Chinese, “Excuse me, I’m looking for someone in these parts. Can you tell me where she is?”

“I do not know who you are talking about,” this man said in his sleep, “for I had dreamt myself as a butterfly before you interrupted me, and I still believe that I am so even when you do. Perhaps you are another figment of my dream?”

Nico had no idea how to respond to this question, so she ignored it and said, “No, really. I’m trying to find a girl named Auna Wenger in these parts. Do you have any idea where she went? Do you even know who Auna Wenger is?”

Nevertheless, the the old sleeping philosopher went on with his dream:

“Ah, once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering here and there and enjoying myself to the fullest without knowing that I was Chuang Chou,” he said, and then he began to stir from his sleep, opening his eyes and looking up at Nico, and smiled. “When I awoke and came to myself, though, I again knew myself to be Chuang Chou,” and he picked himself up and shook his long garments of dust and commenced his salutation with a bow. “Now I do not know whether I am a man dreaming that I was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming that I am a man. Between me and the butterfly there must be a difference.”

“What difference is that?” Nico said.

Chuang Chou just smiled at her and said, “The difference is in one’s perceptions, and that very difference is just a false dichotomy of one’s perceptions imposed by the limits of one’s imagination.”

Nico blinked, dumbfounded, and said, “I don’t understand.”

“Then may I demonstrate such a transformation,” he said, “that you may better understand?”

“Okay, sure,” she said.

“Good!” Chuang Chou said. “For example, this is an instance of transformation.” And he transformed into a fidgety man wearing an old tuxedo and the mask of a grinning Cheshire Cat as if he had just returned from a masquerade ball.

“Who are you?” Nico said.

“The name’s Ronald Hamilton, a.k.a. Edward Foster, Chuang Chou, Cheshire Cat, the Crow—”

“Do you know who Auna Wenger is?” Nico asked.

“Not really, no,” he said.

Nico pouted, knowing that she wasn’t getting anywhere with direct questions, so she decided to be abstract and action-based in her inquiry and said, “Did you see anyone resembling a girl in your dreams?”

“Oh, you’ve got to be more specific than that,” he said, grinning like he knew all about many girls in many of his dreams. “For instance, I’m dreaming of you.”

“Let me think about it,” and Nico paused for a spell, thinking of how she should phrase her question between Auna’s name and complete abstraction, then: “In your previous dream in this place, did you dream of a wayward girl going somewhere in these parts?”

“Hmmmm . . . Now that you put it that way,” he said, “I do remember my previous dream. Before I was Chuang Chou dreaming I was a butterfly, I was a sleeping Oyster by the beach dreaming I was a Crow. I was flying through the air looking for someone to tell me who I was, and during one of my flights, I happened to spy a girl (a different girl, mind you) walking down this very yellow-brick road, so I swooped down to see her better, but she skittered off.”

“Where?” Nico said.

“Down there,” Ronald said, pointing into the woods where the sunlight streamed through the trees, as if there was a clearing up ahead. “Down there through the woods she went, walking backwards and eyeing me through the old iron sights of her gun. I guess she didn’t know how to speak the crow-language, but still . . . she was a mighty queer girl, walking backwards like that. I’ve never seen anything like it! I was . . .”

Nico left the chatterbox of a man to his philosophical monologue about being a Crow, waxing nigh poetic on the language of crows, and then going off on a tangent about the folklore of crows from the Crow Clans of the Chippewa and the Hopi and the Pueblo. Just before Nico reached the clearing, she happened to look back on the man, and lo and behold!

The man was now a Chippewa elder arguing with a Hopi elder under the same tree, arguing about something or other about crows that flew over her head (literally). Their words flew over her head through the trees in a scattering flock of crows, so Nico crouched behind a tree, letting them pass her by and feeling the flapping of their wings fluttering her hair.

When she looked back on the two tribal elders, they had now transformed into the arguing Tweedle brothers . . .

For Tweedledum said Tweedledee

Had spoiled his nice new rattle.

Nico left them to their quarrel of words before it turned into a quarrel of saucepan helmets and silver platter shields and weapons of giant forks and spoons. She ventured towards the light behind a curtain of trees and found herself in a clearing, where she spotted Auna Wenger asleep under the shade of a tree.

She sprinted across the clearing towards the tree, then crouched over the sleeping Auna and touched her shoulder, but then she noticed the spread of blood over the shirt of her Shad-Row uniform. She reached out and touched the wound in the center of her chest, and the image rose up in her mind of her sister Mara stabbing the White Queen against the wall of the ballroom.

Nico then looked back over her shoulder and saw Shiromi standing over the spread of blood on the grass and said, “My sister did that to you?”

“Not to me, exactly,” she said and joined Nico under the tree beside Auna Wenger, “I was already dead at that point, because I had forgotten who I was.”

“What do you mean?” Nico said.

Instead of answering, Shiromi looked to Akami, who had appeared on the other side of Auna Wenger, and Nico looked up to the Red Queen for guidance.

“We were but puppets in that ballroom,” Akami said, “under the spell of Alice Liddell. We knew not who we were and only fought with a will that was not ours, but with one word Auna saved us.”

“Your names?” Nico said.

Both queens nodded, then dropped to their knees and reached out their hands to touch her face, but their hands passed through. Then both queens looked to Nico, and Akami said, “You know what to do.”

“What do you mean?” Nico said.

“Wake her up,” Akami said.

“But how?”

Akami deadpanned. “Haven’t you heard of Sleeping Beauty?”

“Just smooch her and wake her up already. We don’t have all day,” Shiromi said, then smiled another devious smile. “Although, if you want some alone time with her, we can let you have your way with her for a bit.”

“Shiromi, geez!” Akami said.

“I was just saying,” she said, then to Nico: “Smooch her, damn it! Just smooch her!”

Nico didn’t feel like kissing her, but she guessed a peck on her lips would do, so she lowered herself over Auna’s face and kissed her in a noncommittal way, then waited for her to wake up. And waited. And waited. And waited some more.

Nico peered up at Akami and Shiromi, saying, “It’s not working.”

“Are you fucking serious?” Shiromi said. “You’re just doing it wrong. Put some tongue in it, girl!”

“Eh, I don’t feel like it,” Nico said.

“But that always works when I—”

“Nico Cairns is not like you, Shiromi,” Akami said, “and if you haven’t noticed, we can’t even touch Auna, let alone kiss her ourselves. If Nico’s going to wake her up, she’ll have to do it her way.” She turned to Nico and said, “When you first touched Auna under this tree, what were you thinking?”

“I was thinking of my sister stabbing . . .” But Nico paused, looking at Shiromi. “Stabbing you.”

“Then go on from there,” Akami said, “and do what comes naturally to you.”

“And if you still have to think about it,” Shiromi said, “then try not to overthink it. Just go with it.”

So Nico just went with her first thought and imagined Mara’s kodachi stuck in Auna Wenger’s sternum, pinning her to the tree in front of her, then wrapped her hand around the handle and pulled it out as if she was pulling out Excalibur from a stone. Yet in her hand was not Mara’s kodachi, but a long broadsword with a cross guard.

She turned to Akami and Shiromi, but the wide-eyed look on their faces made her pause. “What is it?” She then noticed that they were eyeing the broadsword in her hand and said, “What’s going on?”

“That’s the Vorpal Sword,” Shiromi said.

“And you’re the Knight-Errant,” Akami said.

“The Knight-what?” Nico said.

“The Knight-Errant,” Akami said. “You know, the slayer of the Jabberwock? Do you even know what I’m saying?”

“No idea,” she said. “And what’s a Jabberwock?”

“Geez, girl! What the hell?” Shiromi said, grabbing Nico by the shoulders and shaking her. “You haven’t read Lewis Carroll?”

“Only the first book,” she said, pulling herself away from Shiromi’s grasp. “I haven’t read the second book, though, so I don’t know what a Jabberwock is.”

Shiromi and Akami traded quizzical looks, then crouched over a waking Auna Wenger stirring from her sleep, and Akami felt for the wound in Auna’s chest and found no cut there and said to her, “My Queen, are you all right?”

Auna sat up and felt for the wound in the center of her chest, but nothing hurt there. “I think so.”

Shiromi put her hand to Auna’s chest and felt the pulsing of her heart there and said, “It’s beating! You’re alive!”

At this, Akami and Shiromi looked back on Nico, and Auna followed their gazes and said to Nico, “I saw you in my dream. You killed the Jabberwock.”

“So do you know what the Jabberwock is?” Nico said.

“Death,” Auna said. “When you slew the Jabberwock in my dream, you conquered death itself.” As Akami and Shiromi pulled her up to her feet, she said to her, “Do you know someone named Kendra Tellerman?”

Nico shook her head and said, “No. I don’t recall that name, but I do know someone named Celia Hearn. Listen, Auna,” she added. “Akami and Shiromi told me everything about you.”

“Everything?” Auna said, looking at the Red and White Queens. “What did you two tell her?”

“Everything that matters,” Nico said. “I know what you tried to do on that stage, and I know that Rancaster stopped you and made you do all those things to me and my sister, but . . . I just want you to know that I don’t hold any grudge against you. It’s not your fault, okay? It’s not your fault.”

So Auna reached out her hand and touched Nico’s cheek, her own thoughts a-whirl with Nico’s words, and hugged Nico close to her and cried into her shirt. She said that she was sorry for pulling the trigger on Nico in Richet Square, sorry for playing Rancaster’s game of ‘cat and mouse’ with her in the hallways of Katherine’s mansion, sorry for failing to stop his game of Russian roulette, and sorry for being too late to make a difference back then and now.

Yet as Auna fell to pieces before her, berating herself full of tears, all Nico felt was compassion for her, for this pitiful specimen of humanity, this tormented soul bawling out for mercy, so Nico had the final say:

“Peace be with you.”

[End of Volume 2]

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