I should be terrified. I should be committed. But something about the netherling is sensual and exhilarating, more evocative than anything in my world has ever been.
I reach toward one of the moth’s reflections, aiming for a crack where it’s severed in two. My finger meets the glass, only instead of sharpness, it feels like sculpted metal. Repositioning the flashlight, I realize it’s not a crack in the glass at all … it’s a keyhole, tiny and intricate.
I dig out the key from under my shirt, fingers shaking as I take aim.
“Tut,” my dark guide scolds, though I can’t see him anywhere. “I’ve taught you better. You’re forgetting a step.”
He’s right. I remember. “Envision where you wish to go,” I say, using his words from years before. The key is a wish granter, and will open the mirror to my desires. Letting the backpack fall to the floor, I dig out the sundial brochure and study it. When I look up again, it’s the picture from the brochure staring back at me from the cracked reflection. I insert the key into the hole and turn.
The glass becomes liquid and ripples, absorbing my hand. I jerk back, and the key falls against my chest, suspended on its chain. I hold my fingers up. They look the same as always … completely unaffected. They’re not even wet.
A crackling sound snaps my attention back to the mirror. The splintered glass begins to smooth, forming a watery window instead of a reflection. It’s a portal that opens into the garden bright with sunlight and flowers where the statue sundial waits.
“Want it with all your heart.” The command swims in my head, so quiet it’s an echo from my past. “Then step inside.”
I have a moment of lucidity. If I’m about to be magically sucked into London, I need a way home. I snag my pencil box of money and drop it into the backpack. I shove the flashlight in, too. Who knows how dark the rabbit hole might be?
I step forward and let both of my hands sink into the liquid glass up to my elbows. On the other side, a cool breeze meets my arms. Someone strokes my skin, from my elbow down to the wrist … fingertips so soft and knowing, they light a firestorm inside my veins.
It’s a touch I already know, yet so different now. No longer innocent and calming.
When I look into the portal, my gloved hands appear in the landscape beyond, casting shadows on the grass next to the guy’s winged silhouette.
Before I can see him clearly, he’s gone.
I hesitate and think of Jeb. It’s almost as if I hear his voice calling out for me from somewhere far away. I wish he was here, right now, stepping in with me.
But I can’t look back. As deranged as it seems, that guy in the mirror is the answer to everything in my past. This is my one chance to find Wonderland, to cleanse the Liddell bloodline of this curse, and to save Alison. If I can do this, I can finally be normal. Maybe normal enough to tell Jeb the way I really feel about things.
Taking a breath, I plunge inside.
I spin in a haze of greens, blues, and whites, my perceptions unraveling like a roll of gauze. A prickly sensation sweeps in—tiny needles weaving me together once more. I fall backward onto the ground and wait with eyes clenched shut, backpack pushing into my spine.
The wooziness passes, and the scent of moist soil and fresh air drifts over me. I blink at a bright sun and blue sky. Weird. If I’m in England, it should still be early morning here … way before dawn. Somehow, I arrived at the same time as the picture in the brochure—the time I envisioned. Blades of grass prickle through my gloves as I push my weight onto my palms to sit up. The sundial statue boy waits a few feet away.
Behind me is a fountain, the water flowing along mirrored panels as tall as I am. They must be the other side of the portal I stepped through, because my hair and clothes are damp. A spiked, wrought-iron fence casts shadows across the garden.
I stand, drop my backpack to the ground, and brush speckles of mud from my skirt and tights.
The birds chirping and white noise from the flowers and insects sound real. The breeze shaking the leaves overhead feels real. The fragrance of white roses from a bush on the other side of the statue smells real. All my senses tell me this isn’t a delusion.
My imagination couldn’t conjure hands like my guide’s—or the song he lit in my memory. A song for which the words escape me, but in some way define me. The melody brings back feelings of comfort and security—like an old lullaby.
I concentrate on the white noise. A distinct whisper spins through my ears.
Find the rabbit hole …
The breeze coaxes a soft fragrance my way. It’s the roses talking.
I drop to my knees and crawl toward the sundial statue, parting the grass as I go. There must be a hole or a metal lid—something that could hide a tunnel.