The Looking-Glass Curse: The Complete Series

by Eva Chase

  Even though I could have operated the elevator myself, Chess came up with me, his hand resting protectively on the small of my back. As if he couldn’t feel quite secure until he saw me deposited directly into the White Knight’s care.

  I couldn’t say I really minded his attentiveness.

  Theo stepped out of one of the office’s side rooms just as we came in. “Here you are,” he said, with a slow warm smile for me. His gaze slid to Chess. “There wasn’t any trouble?”

  “I believe I satisfactorily saved our Otherlander from herself,” Chess said, winking at me.

  “I’m sorry it’s so late,” I said. “I got distracted…”

  Theo waved off my concern. “Now is fine. You’re doing me a favor, not the other way around.”

  I ducked my head. “I was kind of hoping you could do me a favor too. I think it’d be better if I stayed here in the Tower tonight, like you said I could if I needed to. If that’s still all right.”

  “Of course,” he said, his tone softening. “It’s no problem at all. I’m not in the habit of extending offers I wouldn’t see through.”

  Chess gave my shoulder a light squeeze. “Good night then, lovely. Until tomorrow’s adventure.”

  “Is everything ready for tomorrow?” I asked Theo with a stutter of my pulse as Chess vanished into the elevator. I’d gotten so carried away I’d forgotten how much he and his people might need me for the preparations. The tangled bramble of my emotions dug its thorns in deeper.

  “There’s one thing I’d have you do now,” Theo said, “and you’ve come at the perfect time to see that through.” He motioned me over to one of his worktables, striding to meet me there with his unflappable air of assurance. Watching him, it was hard to imagine him ever doubting himself.

  I recognized the pocket-watch retriever sitting on the table from yesterday’s visit, although the current version had a few more wires running through it and other bits I didn’t think had been on it before. Theo set his hand on it with a fond smile. He liked making his contraptions for more than just being able to use them, I could tell.

  “This is finished,” he said. “With the best possible materials I’ve been able to track down. I’ve tested it, and I’m sure it’ll do what we need it to do—as long as we keep it with us in its current form when the day flips over tomorrow. Just picking it up like you did yesterday should be enough.”

  I eased my hands under it and lifted it. The retriever was awfully light for that much metal. I held it up for a few seconds, just in case the effect needed a little while to take hold, and then replaced it on the table with a questioning look toward Theo. He nodded, his brown eyes bright, as if he were picturing how that device with my magical Otherlander touch would bring him the victory his people needed.

  So much of his rebellion’s success rested on my supposed power.

  A wave of dizziness washed over me, knotting my stomach and rocking my balance. I braced my hand against the edge of the table.

  Theo’s smile disappeared in a blink. “Are you all right?” he asked, stepping closer.

  I shook off the dizziness and managed a smile. My stomach stayed clenched. “I—I actually haven’t eaten anything since this morning. I guess that wasn’t the wisest choice ever.”

  “Let me remedy that. I have a few things around that could serve as a late dinner. Here, you should sit down.”

  He ushered me into the lounge room where we’d talked about my grand-aunt the other day. I sank onto a peach-colored sofa, digging my feet into the shag rug. “Any requests?” Theo asked, half of his smile returning.

  “No mushrooms,” I said. “Otherwise whatever you have around is great.”

  He chuckled and vanished into another room. How big was this office-slash-apartment, anyway? The base of the Tower took up an entire city block, but it narrowed on the way up.

  Theo emerged with an individual-sized pie on a china plate. “Pheasant and blueberry tart,” he said, offering it to me along with a fork. “The most dinner-like option I had on hand. Absolutely no mushrooms, I promise.”

  The savory smell rising off the pie made my stomach gurgle impatiently. I grabbed the fork and dug in.

  The tart tasted just as good as it smelled, the crust thick and buttery, the bits of meat and berry mixing together in a rich sweet gravy. I plowed through half of it before the gnawing of hunger inside eased off enough to let me come up for air.

  “What is it with Wonderlanders and pastry?” I asked, forcing myself to take my next bite in a more restrained way. Hatter and his scones, Doria and those powdered donuts she’d shared with me this morning. “You all seem hooked on the stuff.”

  Theo chuckled. “Every society has its tastes. Is that a complaint or just an observation?”

  From the speed with which I’d devoured the tart, I was pretty sure he knew I wasn’t complaining. “Observation,” I said. “By all means continue feeding me sugary baked goods.” Then I dug back in.

  Theo got up again and returned with a tea set and a couple of cups. I hesitated over my last bite of tart as he poured the amber liquid from the pot.

  “To wash your dinner down,” he said. “I never used to enjoy tea, but I acquired a taste thanks to Hatter.”

  My gut twisted in a way that had nothing to do with hunger. Theo glanced up at my silence. He must have read something in my expression, because he slid my cup across the low table in front of the sofa and leaned back against the opposite arm with his gaze lingering on my face.

  “Do you want to talk about why you’re here and not at Hatter’s?” he asked, so gently I believed he’d accept “No” as my answer.

  I owed him more than that, though, didn’t I, showing up on his doorstep this late without warning? I bit my lip as I tried to decide what to say.

  “Hatter made it very clear that he doesn’t want me around.”

  “Did he?” Theo said in the same even voice, but there was no mistaking the edge in those two words.

  It was difficult to convey the depth of Hatter’s anger without feeling as if I were tattling on him like a schoolgirl. “There was yelling,” I said finally.

  “What exactly did he yell at you about?”

  “He…” I set down my plate and curled up my legs on the sofa as if they could shield me from the memory. “The Knave came by, and I went to hide with Doria, except she wanted to take off, and I figured I had to go with her, so… We came back way too late. He thought something had happened to her. He said he shouldn’t have left me alone with her, that he couldn’t trust me, that I—that if things get hard, I’m going to run back to the Otherland and abandon all of you.”

  I hadn’t noticed Theo’s stance had tensed, it’d been so subtle a shift, until now as his shoulders came down a smidgen. “Hatter is very… sensitive about his daughter’s safety,” he said. “I’ve been at the receiving end of his temper often enough to know that. I’m sure now that he’ll have cooled off, he knows you didn’t mean any harm and that he overreacted.”

  Remembering Hatter’s tone, the way he’d looked at me, brought a lump into my throat. “I don’t think it was just about Doria. There was more to it, I could tell. And…”

  “And?” Theo prompted quietly when I didn’t go on.

  I swallowed hard. I didn’t want to tell Wonderland’s White Knight this, but maybe he deserved to know what he was staking so many of his hopes on.

  “And he was right,” I said in a small voice. “I came back to Wonderland because I wanted to have somewhere no one expected or needed anything from me. I’ve spent almost my whole life trying to make everyone around me happy or at least okay, and I thought… I thought I’d found someplace where I didn’t have to worry about anything except what would make me happy. But then I found out what’s really going on, and how much is riding on me making the right choices, and it was feeling like too much. I did want to run home and leave behind the responsibility.”

  The shame prickled across my face and through my chest. I had to look a
way. Theo set down his tea and eased closer to me on the sofa. He took my hand where it was resting on my knee.

  “Lyssa,” he said, and waited until I met his eyes. His gaze held mine steadily, not judging or angry, but maybe a little… sad? “I understand that feeling,” he said. “More than I can tell you. You’ve been carrying heavy burdens for a long time—burdens that aren’t even your own. Why wouldn’t you want an escape from that? You should have an escape. I’m sorry Wonderland gave you false hope and then added to the weight you’re carrying. If I’d known…”

  “What?” I said. “You’d have switched off the Queen and her awful guards and all the rest while I was here? It’s not like you’re having this rebellion for fun. You don’t have a choice what you’re fighting against or when.”

  The corner of his mouth quirked, but he still looked sad. “I suppose not.”

  “I had a choice,” I said. “I decided to stay and find out what was happening.”

  “Yes,” Theo said. “Because you saw the need and your first instinct was to try to help. Because you’re a good person. Having doubts doesn’t change that.”

  He glanced away for a second with a slow exhalation and then returned his gaze to me. “I can promise you that all we need from you tomorrow night is for you to be there with my people when the day switches over. The larger risks won’t be on you at all. And you don’t even have to do that. You can still change your mind—we can get you home. If that’s what you want.”

  “No,” I said automatically. “Of course I’m staying. You’re not even asking for that much. I was just being selfish.”

  His hand rose to brush his thumb over my cheek. “You were briefly uncertain whether you wanted to continue being so selfless. That’s a very different thing from being selfish, and having known many selfish people in my life, I’m in a position to know. Nothing you’ve said tonight has diminished my admiration of your courage and generosity, Lyssa.”

  The conviction of his words soothed the lingering prickles of shame. If my throat was still choked up, it was more from relief than anything else. “Thank you,” I said.

  Theo shook his head at me. “I should be thanking you, a thousand times over.” A slow smile crossed his handsome face. “You know, I think I have the perfect way to make a start of that. Come with me?”

  Who was I to say no to this man?

  He led me down a narrow white hallway and nudged open a door partway down. “I use this space to experiment with possible inventions sometimes. It can be useful for working out all the possibilities.”

  We stepped into a room about the size of my apartment’s living room but with a ceiling twice as high. A layer of soft dove-gray cushioning covered the floor and walls—and as far as I could tell the ceiling too, light fixtures glowing softly through the fabric. Even the inside of the door was padded.

  I raised an eyebrow at Theo as he closed it. He grinned at me and flicked a second switch beside the door. And all at once my body turned weightless.

  A squeak of surprise slipped from my lips as I floated up off the floor, my hair fanning out around me. Theo started to drift up and caught a loop of fabric on the wall to hold himself in place. His eyes sparkled with amusement.

  "Did you—did you just switch off gravity?" I said, and swallowed a gasp as I tipped forward. I was hovering several feet off the ground now. The skirt of my borrowed dress swirled around my thighs, but it was hard to worry much about modesty when I was literally flying.

  "This room has been here longer than I have," Theo said, still grinning. "Wonderland is full of wondrous things, no matter what else we face." He let himself glide higher, keeping his hand against the wall. "You'll get the hang of it quickly. It's easier if you start with a jumping off point."

  He held out his hand to me and, when I clasped it, tugged me over to the wall next to him. I braced myself against the padded surface. My heart beat with a heady thump.

  When was I ever going to experience anything like this again?

  I pushed off and soared across the room to the opposite wall. With a twist of my waist, I managed to land with my feet against the padding. I sprang up toward the ceiling, exhilaration racing through me with the burst of speed.

  Theo had been right. Every leap I made, my confidence grew. I drifted along on my back, flipped onto my stomach to dive down, and then whipped into a somersault. Laughter tickled up my throat.

  Flying was a way more satisfying high than the one the pipe and the glittering drinks had given me. Weightless, I could do anything.

  Theo had stayed by the wall, watching me. The warmth in his expression sent a rush of affection through me. He had understood, enough to give me the perfect, if temporary, antidote to all those tangled emotions that had been dragging at me.

  He walked around carrying the weight of an entire rebellion on his shoulders. Shouldn't he get to let loose too?

  I swooped toward him, and he let go of the steadying loop to catch me if I needed it. Perfect. I veered at the last second, tucking my arm around his elbow and pulling him off into the air with me. Theo let out a hitch of breath that morphed into a laugh.

  We tumbled together, bounced lightly off the ceiling, and started to drift apart. Theo grasped my hand, and we spun in a slow circle in the middle of the room. "Decided I wasn't having enough fun, did you?" he said.

  "You definitely weren't," I informed him, and kicked off the wall at an angle that accidentally sent us spiraling head over heels.

  Theo wrapped his arm around my back and turned us so he took all of the impact when we bumped against the cushioned floor. I collided with the solid heat of his chest.

  My fingers curled into his crisp white shirt before the momentum could lift me away from him as we drifted back upward. My face tipped against his shoulder. He smelled even better than the pie had, like the raspberry rose jam I’d gotten at a farmer’s market once mingled with masculine musk.

  Theo’s hand slid up to brush over my hair. My pulse skipped, and it occurred to me that I could make this moment even better if I brought his mouth to mine.

  I’d already made that gamble once today, and I couldn’t say it’d turned out very well. But Theo seemed like the kind of guy who’d be used to women throwing themselves at him, the kind of guy who had practice at letting them down gracefully if he wasn’t interested. I didn’t think he was going to start yelling at me, anyway.

  This was still Wonderland. I could still go for what I wanted, even if there was a hell of a lot I didn’t.

  Before I could argue myself out of the impulse, I eased my head up and pressed my lips to his.

  The muscles in Theo’s chest tensed, but he kissed me back without hesitation, softly and intently. Then he pulled a few inches back, sliding his fingers up my jaw as he gazed into my eyes.

  “Lyssa?” he said, in a way that sounded like several questions balled into one.

  “I just—I wanted to kiss you,” I said. “Is that okay?”

  The corners of his mouth twitched up. “It’s completely okay. I only want to make sure— I don’t expect anything from you. You don’t owe me anything for letting you stay here. If this is out of any sense of obligation…”

  “No,” I said quickly. “Not at all. I know you wouldn’t think like that. And I know… I mean, it’s not like this can be anything serious, right? I’m not even from this world. I’d just like to enjoy tonight as much as I can. As much as you want to too.”

  “I can’t argue with that,” he murmured.

  My lips tingled with the desire to find his again, but maybe there was something else I should admit before we took this any farther. I hesitated and made myself say, “I kissed Hatter this morning.”

  I’d been a tad afraid of Theo’s reaction. He simply tipped his head back with a laugh. “Was that before or after the yelling?” he asked, sounding so relaxed about it that my hesitation seemed silly.

  “Before.” I grimaced. “Just so you know, I’m not normally like this. It’s something about
this place. I’ve never been bouncing between three guys at the same time before.”

  “Three?” Theo repeated with an arch of his eyebrows.

  Oh. Oops. I probably hadn’t needed to mention that. “I, er, might have kind of a crush on Chess,” I said, a blush spreading across my cheeks.

  Theo bumped his slightly crooked nose against mine with a fond grin. “And have you been kissing him too?”

  “No,” I muttered. “I’ve just wanted to.”

  “I could call him back, you know. We could all enjoy each other. I suspect he’d be all for the idea.”

  A thrill shot through me at the thought, even though I’d never done that before either. But after the tentative way Chess had handled me tonight, I wasn’t sure I agreed with Theo’s assessment of his enthusiasm. It’d be kind of pressuring, a request like that coming from the guy who was sort of his boss, wouldn’t it?

  No, if anything was going to spark between me and Chess, I wanted it to be because the moment was right. Besides, I was feeling a little overwhelmed with just Theo’s taste on my lips, his body aligned with mine.

  “Not tonight,” I said. “I’ve already got exactly the man I want to be with right now.”

  He leaned in. “Then let’s make sure you get a night to remember,” he murmured.

  Instead of kissing me right away, he grazed his thumb over my lips, the touch so teasing it sensitized every nerve. Longing trembled through me. By the time he captured my mouth, I was almost dying for it.

  I looped my arm around the back of his neck and kissed him harder. His fingers trailed down my neck and up again to tilt my head at just the perfect angle to deepen the kiss. He held me there, encouraging my lips to part and teasing out my tongue with the hot slide of his, commanding a pleased shiver out of me. Controlled power radiated from his every touch.

  If he wanted to rule over me tonight like he ruled over the underside of Wonderland, I was more than happy to let him. There wasn’t anyone I’d rather let take me over.