“No!” I throw myself across Jeb. I slash at them with my fists. On Gossamer’s command, they collide with my arms and ribs at full speed, stinging like hail. I refuse to move until Morpheus snatches my collar and forces me to my feet.
My writhing in his grasp only makes him more resolute. His arm winds around my waist, as hard and strong as a metal clamp. He holds my back pinned at his side with my feet dangling. Fifty or more sprites raise Jeb up by his clothes. His head lolls, and his shirt and pants pucker beneath their grips, as if he’s being hoisted on ropes.
“Jeb!” I shout. Tears blur my vision when he doesn’t respond. “Be careful with him.”
The tiny females are only able to carry him a few inches off the ground, and the long grasses bend under his weight as he’s dragged from the clearing. Some of the remaining sprites tug the backpack behind the procession. When the last stretch of grass pops up in their wake, I shove against Morpheus and break free, though it’s only because he lets me.
“If our time together ever meant anything to you, you won’t hurt him.” Hot tears pour down my cheeks.
Morpheus reaches out to catch a teardrop on his fingertip. He holds it up in the pale glow that radiates from the few remaining sprites above us. A curious frown curves his lips. “You cry for him yet bled for me. One must wonder which is more powerful. More binding. I suppose we shall one day know.”
My throat dries. “What are you talking about? Bled for you?”
He rubs my tear into his skin as if it were lotion. “All in good time. As to your toy soldier, spare no grief for him. He’s getting scads of attention. And once he’s oblivious in his ecstasy, he’ll forget where he is and who he came with. Though I imagine I’ll have to send him to some other part of Wonderland to keep him out of my hair.”
Terror grips me. Bad enough those pint-size nymphets are going to seduce Jeb, but if they make him forget who he is, he’ll be lost here forever. Jeb’s here because of me. He doesn’t deserve an ending like this. “Please, just send him back to our world.”
Morpheus shrugs. “Not possible. We’re having a bit of trouble with transportation here in the nether-realm.”
“That can’t be true.”
He steps closer. “Can’t it?”
I take two steps away. “You visited me at home, at work. Watched me. Almost choked Alison with the wind …”
He throws his head back and laughs, raising his arms as if he’s some grand performer. “Imagine that. Me, controlling the wind and weather. Why, I must be a god.”
I glare at him. “I know what I saw.”
He straightens his sleeve cuffs. “I used reflections to visit you. The gazing globe at the asylum, store mirrors … the mirrors in your home. Through them, I projected an illusion, but I couldn’t fully materialize because the portals are obstructed. Your mind was my stage. No one else could see or hear or feel me. Only you. And you did feel me, didn’t you, luv?”
Thinking of the way his phantom breath tickled my neck as he hummed—hot and teasing—leaves me rattled to the bone. I lift my chin, a lame attempt to hide his effect on me. “There was magic … with my mom’s braid. It moved, locked my fingers around her throat. That was you.”
He buffs his fingernails on his lapel. “It was magic, I’ll admit. Misguided magic. And not mine.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’re not yet ready for me to answer that.”
Tired of his manipulations, I shove him off balance and sprint for the opening in the trees where the sprites disappeared, nearly tripping over my heels in my desperation to find Jeb. There’s a harsh flapping overhead; then Morpheus drops into my path. I skid to a stop.
He crouches with wings spread parallel to the ground and stares up at me intently, like a giant bird of prey—dark and dangerous. I’m familiar with this side of him … his temperamental black moods. There will be no reasoning with him unless I can get the upper hand.
He stands and catches my shoulders before I can bolt again.
“Enough games,” he says. “It’s time you fulfill your destiny. I did not spend the first third of your life training you in vain. Alice has left ripples in our world that only you can smooth. I’ve waited over seventy-five years for this day to come … made too many sacrifices to watch it all fall to rot. You fix what she broke, and it will open the way for you to break the curse and get back home. Until then, I make the rules.”
Alice has left ripples in our world that only you can smooth. The zombie flowers said something like that, too. That only a descendant of Alice could fix this. And the octobenus insisted that the Wise One—Morpheus—was desperate for my help. Desperate.