A whisper greets me as I press the velvety ribbon to my ear. “Queen Red lives and seeks to destroy that which betrayed her.”
The fingerprint upon my heart, the one Red left as a warning last summer, flares—a sharp jolt that pushes the air from my lungs. I drop the ribbon and it flitters away. I meet Morpheus’s gaze. He lifts an eyebrow, making the scar on Finley’s temple curl.
“What does this have to do with you?” I ask Rabid, struggling to keep the quaver from my voice.
“Imprison me you will, Queen Grenadine said.” He lifts his hands toward me, bones grinding as he waits to be handcuffed. “Chains for you I’ll wear, Queen Alyssa. Contrite I’ll be.” He falls to his cadaverous knees.
I wince when he lands hard on the broken glass but check myself. Bones aren’t susceptible to superficial cuts.
Morpheus removes his hat and stands, towering over Rabid.
“What do you know about this?” I ask him.
A shadow of wings distorts the air behind him, like a wave of summer heat radiating off an asphalt road. “He helped Red find a body to inhabit. He’s the reason her spirit survived.”
I snap my attention back to my kneeling subject. “Why would you do that? You swore your allegiance to me.”
Rabid shudders, and his bones sound like tree branches clacking together. “Other obligations tainted good intentions …” Groaning, he keeps his head low. His antlers block his face.
“As you know, Red saved his life once,” Morpheus clarifies, dropping his hat onto his head. He runs a finger along the moths draping the brim. “Rabid had to repay his debt to her. Only she could set him free.”
“Free?” I ask.
“Free to be your faithful subject,” Morpheus explains. “He made a trade. Red’s life for his loyalty. In order to be true to you forever after, he had to betray you one last time.”
Logic wrapped within nonsense. Par for the course for Wonderland. “So is Red here?” I ask, fighting a clench of dread in my chest.
Rabid doesn’t answer. Everything that’s happened today—Taelor seeing me and Morpheus, the mosaics going missing, the near-death car ride, my mom’s betrayal—hangs over me, a noxious cloud of black emotion. The power inside me begs for free rein, promising to make him talk. To make him obey.
I surrender to it: envision the earbuds lifting and swaying like cobras. The song that’s playing grows loud and screeching. Rabid plugs his ears, howls, and backs up. The buds follow and strike. Though they have no fangs or venom, they’re vicious in their pursuit.
Wearing an amused expression, Morpheus steps back to allow Rabid to scramble onto the mattress. The black cords slither up the edge behind him.
“The insects, listen you should!” Rabid yelps as the cords strike and wrap around his antlers, yanking him to his stomach atop my quilt. “Please, Majesty!”
I hold up my hand, and the earbuds go limp.
“I said, Is Red here?” The power behind my voice surprises even me.
Rabid shakes his head no as Morpheus helps untangle his antlers. “A flower she chose to be. Lead the forest in a revolt. Amplifying pastries for all. Thorns the size of dragon talons. First, they wake the dead. Shake the foundations, free the consecrated.” Frothy white saliva drizzles from the corners of his lips. “Then divide and conquer the living. Enslave them all.”
Terror, as dark as a raven’s wing, casts a shadow across my thoughts. So that’s what the bugs were trying to tell me. They weren’t referring to the flowers here in the human realm but to the ones in Wonderland. Queen Red has gathered a giant flower army.
“It won’t work, will it?” I ask Morpheus as he adjusts the volume on the earbuds and coaxes Rabid to listen to the music once more. “The cemetery is hallowed ground. Right? No full-blooded netherling can step inside the cemetery gates. That’s what you told me.”
Morpheus sweeps the towel off the bed and crosses to my aquarium, blotting up the puddles. “That’s true for those of us who live,” he answers without turning, “but Red is a dead inhabitant in a living body. She’s no longer held to the natural laws of our world.”
His flippant use of the term natural in reference to Wonderland almost makes me snort.
“Red can cross the boundaries of the cemetery gates because part of her belongs there already,” he continues. “If she made it inside, she could free the dead, for she knows the secrets of the maze. But she would have to get through the Twid Sisters. That wouldn’t be easy.”
“I remember.” My feet jitter as I picture both the twins’ spidery bottom halves beneath their gowns. Sister One has her charms, but Sister Two …