The Moth in the Mirror (2 page)

Soon he’d overturned every basket. Some were full of flower petals, some with lotion, others with grapes. By tumbling them over, he’d managed to preoccupy most of his captors. Only Gossamer and two others still fluttered around his head.

“Give me something to wear,” he repeated, “or I’ll start ripping the feathers from the pillows. There aren’t enough of you in here to clean up
that
mess.”

“He’s not responding to our allure,” one of the sprites muttered to Gossamer, her coppery bug-eyes turned in Jeb’s direction.

“Or our magic,” the other one added with a pout. “I conjured some girl from his memories, but his subconscious broke through.”

“Yes, this one is indeed a challenge,” Gossamer agreed in a voice that tinkled like chimes. After sending the other two sprites to pick up the contents of the latest basket, she offered Jeb a silk robe.

He turned his back and shrugged the covering on, taking in his surroundings.

Morpheus had put him in an opulent prison. The room was round with black marble floors that reflected orange candlelight. He was already intimately acquainted with the focal point: a swinging, circular mattress attached to the center of the domed ceiling with gold chains. Furs and pillows cushioned the bed, perfumed with rose petals.

For all its comforts, this room was missing one very important aspect. An exit. There was no door, window, or any other opening in sight.

Convex walls—painted dark lavender—had grapevines stretching around their circumference, winding in and out of the plaster and entwining lit candelabras. Fruit blossomed on the vines. At random intervals the grapes would spontaneously burst and drizzle their juice into stone basins set all along the walls to catch it. From there, rich purple liquid drained into fountains—a constant supply of sweet-smelling fairy wine.

He vaguely remembered tasting the wine when he’d first arrived. Suspicious of it, he’d tried to resist, but he had been so thirsty. No telling what kind of magic was inside the liquid.

He groaned and rubbed his face. How long had he been drunk and bewitched? He’d made himself useless to Alyssa, just like his old man would’ve done.

“Where is she?” he asked, ignoring the self-playing harp behind him, which picked up volume, trying to muffle his voice. “Tell me what Morpheus is doing to her.”

Minuscule, glittering, and confident, Gossamer settled on a satin pillow. She patted the mattress next to her and crossed her green ankles. “Perhaps you don’t realize what we sprites are capable of. We’ve had centuries of practice. We can show you rapture the likes of which you’ve only dreamed about.”

Jeb regarded her, head to toe, then tightened the satin belt at his waist. “Sorry. I don’t dream in green.”

He found Alyssa’s backpack under the bed and dragged it out. He’d noticed something in there earlier when he’d been digging through it: a wrought iron bangle bracelet she’d probably tucked inside at school and forgotten about. He’d done his share of research on fairies when he first started painting them, and he knew they didn’t like iron—if the lore was true.

He slammed the backpack onto the mattress. The fur blankets billowed like a huge wave and knocked Gossamer from her pillow. Kick-starting her wings, she landed lightly on Jeb’s shoulder.

“If it is Alyssa who inspires your passions, we can fulfill that fantasy.” Gossamer clapped her hands. The others left their cleaning posts and hovered in a circle around Jeb. A sick spasm knotted his gut as every sprite took on the likeness of Alyssa—miniature replicas complete with platinum hair and sexy skate-glam outfits. They released their pheromone seeds again, blinding him with Alyssa’s nectar-sweet scent.

Swinging a pillow, he shattered the illusion and scattered the seeds. The sprites screeched and hid in the vines on the walls, their glowing bodies like strands of white twinkle lights.

Gossamer fluttered overhead, scowling. “Enough! Report to our master that the mortal is loyal to the girl. We cannot seduce him to return to his world without her.”

Jeb cursed as the sprites wriggled through pea-sized holes in the wall where the grape vines wove in and out. If only he, too, could fit through those tiny exits. He gave a passing thought to using the shrinking drink in the backpack that he and Alyssa had found when they first arrived in Wonderland, but that would render him as small as his current captors, and he’d be powerless against Morpheus. Helplessness boiled in his gut, as deep as what he used to feel as a kid, hiding in a closet until his dad’s rampages passed.

He clenched his teeth. There had to be a doorway hidden somewhere behind the vines. They’d brought him in here; there had to be a way out.

He took a running leap toward the closest wall and ripped some vines free, slinging them everywhere. Gossamer’s tiny screech of surprise didn’t faze him.

Grapes burst in his hands, releasing their sticky, potent scent. The ropy plants cut into his fingers like wires. He embraced the pain. This was something he could control—unlike the torment of his old man’s glowing cigarettes boring into his skin, or the fists pounding his face and gut. The scent of nicotine, the taste of blood. Imagined or not, they fed the savage in his soul.

He plunged into a red tunnel of rage and trashed the room. When he at last came back to himself and leaned against the bed, he was shocked at the havoc he’d wrought.

Out of breath and sweating, he nursed the bleeding cuts at the bends of his fingers and searched the debris for Gossamer. Had he hurt her? If so, maybe he really was his father’s son.

Jeb clenched his hands, disgusted with himself. “Gossamer?” He flinched at the sound of his voice, gruff and raw with emotion.

A flicker of wings stirred on one of the chains suspending the bed from the ceiling. He exhaled, relieved to see the sprite. Though it seemed stupid to care, since he was about to try using Alyssa’s iron bracelet against her.

Gossamer settled on the floor next to the torn vines and the baskets he’d overturned yet again. Her shoulders were slumped in defeat. She probably didn’t know where to start counting all the spilled contents.

Jeb began digging through the backpack. The harp had stopped playing, and the silence taunted him like a clock’s ticking hands. Every second he spent away from Alyssa left her more vulnerable to Morpheus.

Cold metal finally met his fingers. He tossed the iron bracelet toward Gossamer but a few inches wide, hoping to weaken her without harming her.

She screamed and skittered into the air. “Please … put that away.”

“Not until I get some answers.” Jeb pinched one of her wings between his thumb and forefinger. He carried her to the bed and set her on a pillow, keeping the bracelet close enough to intimidate her. “Just cooperate, and I won’t hurt you.”

“It already hurts.” She groaned, her greenish skin tinged turquoise. “Mustn’t use my magic …” She slapped her palms to her face. “Will make me … hideous.
Abstain
.” Her voice softened, as if she were speaking to herself. “Abstain until the threat of pain and contamination are gone.” She gritted her teeth.

Jeb frowned. “So iron turns your power against you? The perfect weapon to use against your boss.”

“A piece that size … will only work on the smallest of our kind.”

Jeb bent over, holding the iron cuff closer to her. “Okay, then consider this a lie detector. Each time I sense you’re holding out, the iron gets closer. Where is Al, and what’s your creepy boss doing to her?”

The sprite’s color changed to robin’s egg blue. She rolled on the pillow, wings struggling to flutter. She pulled them over her shoulders and across her chest, as if to restrain her magic. “Your Alyssa is comfortable and cared for. Morpheus is watching over her as she sleeps …”

Jeb snarled. Last night,
he’d
been the one watching her sleep, in the rowboat. He’d rolled her to face him so he could make her a promise, even if she was too drowsy to hear it. He’d promised to watch over her, to get her home safely. He wasn’t about to break his word now.

He had to fight the urge to trash the room again. “How do I get out of here?”

“Only Morpheus has the means to open the doorway.”

Jeb leaned forward, his nose almost touching Gossamer’s face as he held the iron bracelet over her head like corrosive mistletoe. “You’re saying I’m stuck here until that winged cockroach decides to let me out? He’s going to make Al face Wonderland alone?”

She whimpered, laying a palm on her brow. “No. Since you’ve proved yourself so loyal, he will allow you to accompany her on her journey. You will attend his feast and make plans.”

“Feast?”

“Alyssa’s introduction. Morpheus wishes to put her on display to the others.”

“What others?”

Gossamer slumped in a purple heap and scooted off her perch. She dragged something from inside the pillowcase—a sketch of Al that Jeb didn’t remember making. Slowly, Gossamer drew up her knees and studied the lines. “You did this while you were under our spell. You have power within your artist’s heart—a light that can pierce any darkness. You’ve captured Alyssa’s inner self perfectly.”

“That sketch is pure fantasy,” Jeb grumbled. He laid the iron cuff on the paper next to Gossamer.

She rolled to the middle of the drawing, trying to escape the metal. “There is more truth to this likeness of Alyssa than anything you can force me to say.”

Jeb tugged at the picture, tumbling Gossamer and the iron bracelet onto the furs. He spread the sketch out on a pillow and traced the charcoal lines. This depiction was like all the
other fairy drawings he’d made of Al over the years, but it couldn’t be any more different from the girl he knew.

He’d drawn her with her hair pinned up. She never wore it that way. A black spaghetti-strapped gown flattered her curves. She wouldn’t be caught dead in such a conventional dress. The only thing that looked like her were the lacy black fingerless gloves covering the scars on her palms.

Other than that, the drawing was a complete fabrication. Al was seated on a park bench. She held a rose. Mascara and tears streamed in graceful curls down her face. Come to think of it, it was similar to the way her makeup had looked the last time he saw her.

He still couldn’t figure out why, after nearly drowning in an ocean of tears, her mascara hadn’t washed away. Squinting, he studied the set of translucent wings spread behind her. The thin membranes shimmered in a single ray of sunlight slicing through the clouds. The wings made him uneasy, though he couldn’t pinpoint why.

Maybe because they reminded him of Morpheus’s wings, though a completely different color. Jeb’s temples pounded. Nothing could be worse than her being alone with that bug man. The freak had some kind of hold on her, had gotten into her head when she was little. The subconscious could be very powerful, and if Morpheus still had access to Al’s dreams …

“How do I beat him?” Jeb asked over the knot in his throat.

Gossamer’s bulging eyes turned up to his. She was too weak to crawl away from the iron cuff, which now nudged her thigh. “He will not be defeated. He’s waited years for this day.”

Jeb grimaced. “Okay, so he’s Superman. But everyone has their kryptonite. Something they fear.”

“Confinement,” Gossamer blurted, darkening to the color of a bruise at the confession.

“What do you mean?”

Gossamer pressed the back of her hand to her forehead. “Please … you’re holding it too close … the iron … it’s draining my energy.”

Jeb fell back on the mattress and moved the cuff away from the sprite. Balancing it between his fingers, he studied the iron in the candlelight. It reminded him of his iron labret and the first time Al had seen it—her enthusiastic reaction. She’d begged to touch it, asking question after question about the process of getting a piercing. Her enthusiasm and naïveté. Her insecurities. Morpheus wouldn’t hesitate to use any or all of them to manipulate her.

Jeb had to convince Al to leave Wonderland, to forget this quest to break the curse on her family, whatever it took. Something dark waited just around the corner for her, like in his dream. He could sense it looming.

“So, you want her to fix the original Alice’s mistakes, right? What if
I
fix them instead?” Jeb tried reasoning. “You send Al home and let me take care of things.”

“Impossible,” Gossamer answered in a breathy whisper, her pale green color starting to return. Crawling toward the sketch, she ran a tiny palm along the rose. “She’s already passed tests and proved she’s the one.”

“Tests? You mean like finding the rabbit hole to Wonderland and drying up the ocean of tears?”

She nodded.

“But I helped with those.”

“She’s the one he’s waited for. Not you.”

Jeb held the iron bracelet over her one last time. “What does he really want from her?”

Before Gossamer could answer, the domed ceiling started to shake. Pieces of plaster tumbled down in thick white chunks. Jeb held a pillow over his head and a palm over Gossamer to protect them from falling debris. The ceiling ripped at the seams, swinging the bed and pulling the chains in opposite directions so the mattress lifted several feet.

After the tremors stopped, Jeb glanced up. Morpheus’s dark silhouette appeared in the jagged opening overhead.

Subtlety was low on this guy’s priority list. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a drama queen?” Jeb growled.

Morpheus leaned in low to glance at the messy room. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a deplorable houseguest?”

His captor’s grand entrance was partly responsible for the clutter, but Jeb bit his tongue, unwilling to risk his chance to see Al.

Morpheus eased back. “Alyssa awaits you in the mirrored hall. And, by all means, wash up and shave. You are to be introduced to our dinner guests as an Elfin Knight, so you need to look the part. Gossamer shall give you tips on proper behavior.” Morpheus dropped in some clothes and boots. They hit the floor with a clump. “Here is the uniform.” He paused and gestured to the chains. “Too bad you haven’t any wings or netherling magic. You will have to climb your way out. And I can assure you, it won’t be an easy trek.”

Jeb’s muscles tensed as Morpheus vanished from view; he knew the warning referred to so much more than his exit from this room.