Down the Rabbit Hole

The quick excitability spoke of something in addition to the funk.

“He needs to commune with us.” Eve nudged the door wider still and saw the brightly colored painting of a hookah-smoking caterpillar curled on a toadstool.

“Nobody invited you! Go away!”

“Look Mouse—or is that Dormouse?”

His pink-rimmed eyes filled with rage. His nose twitched manically. “You can’t see my whiskers! They’re not for you to see.”

He kicked her, the move so unexpected his foot connected with her shin before she anticipated it. Then he ran, bolting up the steps.

“Shit. Call the e-team in for backup,” Eve ordered, and pulled her weapon as she gave chase.

He bounded up, with her and her aching shin in pursuit, and Peabody coming up behind her shouting for the e-team to move in.

He made a fast turn on the second-floor landing and vanished. But not before Eve caught the movement of a wall panel sliding shut.

She tugged at it, got nothing, then ran her fingers along the carved chair rail. When the panel slid open again, she grabbed a statue of a white rabbit with an oversized pocket watch and used it to prop the panel open.

Inside, in half light, she saw crooked steps leading up, and leading down. She closed her eyes for a moment, heard the sound of feet scrambling.

“Up,” she said. “Watch your step.”

She went up two at a time and caught sight of the shin-kicker darting down an oddly slanted corridor toward a closed door. Blue light leaked under it.

At a full run she hit the door seconds after he scurried through and went in low, weapon sweeping.

Mouse jumped up and down in the blue light, the blue fog, squealing about his whiskers. A woman with long, dark hair giggled and twirled just outside the fog. She stopped when she saw Eve, and her face filled with rage.

“Off with her head!”

To Eve’s bemusement, the woman hefted fisted hands over her head as if brandishing an axe, then charged.

Because there was yet another woman—older, sitting in a chair blanketed with that blue mist, her head cocked under a feathered hat, her eyes glazed and glassy, Eve took the quickest route.

Two short, hard left jabs put the charging woman down.

“Stay out of this blue stuff, Peabody.”

She caught a movement, saw through the blue curtain the tall, thin man in a purple top hat. Eyes wild, and yes, she supposed, mad with it.

She pivoted toward him as the world went as mad as his eyes.

Lights flashed, bright, multicolored lightning, while crazed laughter boomed. The floor seemed to tip right, then left, as she struggled to keep her balance. Images bloomed in the fog—a grinning cat, the caterpillar that puffed out more smoke, a fat white rabbit with a glinting pocket watch.

And the man in the top hat, who chortled gleefully while he poured tea into cups.

A pretty blue bottle sat on a table, a white light beaming on it. A large label dangled from it.

It said: Drink Me.

And it was tempting.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Peabody step forward, start to reach out. And snapping back, Eve grabbed her arm, yanked.

“Don’t.”

“But it says!”

She saw now they’d stepped too close, that the fog twined around them. Feeling light-headed, she shoved Peabody clear, stumbled back.

She thought she heard voices echoing, and running feet pounding. More coming to the party.

She barely swallowed down the giggle that rose to her throat and aimed her stunner at what she hoped was the man in the hat and not some illusion.

“Turn this shit off, now, or I’ll put you down.”

“No need,” Roarke said, and the flashing lights fell with a resounding crash—or so it seemed to Eve. The mist crawled back on tiny blue feet to be swallowed up by a gaping mouth in the floor.

“Shit. Shit. I inhaled.”

“You’ll be all right.” Roarke hauled the man in the hat away from some sort of computer. The computer became a fat cat that yawned and stretched, then curled up to sleep.

“Mind taking him?” Roarke passed the Mad Hatter to Callendar.