"Sorry. We'll buy this and leave." Quickly, she placed an arm around her trembling sister and ushered Cadence to the register.
When they were in the car, she thrusted the shopping bag containing the book into her sister's lap. "What is the matter with you?"
Cadence rubbed her eyes, red with previously shed tears, and put the bag down by her feet. "There has to be an answer somewhere. There has to. Rabbit hole, looking glass, vanishing isle: those are the other ways in. I have to find one of those things. But where? Where are they located?" She pulled at stringy, brown hair, which didn't appear to have been washed in days. She continued rambling, "Devrel took me the first time, but he hasn't been back, and he's the last of the Boojums. I have to find one of the other ways."
"Ssh. I don't know, but if you are meant to find one, you will." Melody couldn't meet her sister's gaze as she offered the reassurance, but eventually she mustered up the courage to glance over.
Cadence hugged her elbows and turned toward the window, tears glistening in the reflection on the glass. "I wasn't ready. Two days is not enough time to choose love over family. It's not enough time to fall in love. I didn't have time to make those decisions or feel those feelings. I hardly knew him." She pulled her knees into the seat in front of her and laid her forehead against them. "We could have fallen in love if we'd had the chance. There was something between us, Mel. I saw it in his eyes those last hours." Her voice cracked. "Now I'll never know."
"Well, no. I suppose it isn't enough time." She suppressed a groan and continued her thought aloud, "What if you were miserable there? Be thankful you weren't trapped in some strange land forever with no family or friends to be there for you."
"Perhaps."
The atmosphere during the ride back to the house could only be described as tense. Cadence stared out her window, cheek pressed against the glass, answering her questions with one word comments when she replied at all.
Melody gripped the steering wheel tight and exhaled. "Cadence, Mom and Dad are really worried. This obsession... It has taken over your life. They're considering asking for assistance. You know what that means, right?"
The statement caught her attention, and she gawked at Melody. "They want to lock me away? I'm not crazy. It really happened to me."
"I'm not saying I don't believe you." She wasn't saying she did either. "But you have to look at the facts. Your friends claim you passed out in the woods, and you were only out of their sight for maybe ten minutes. How do you spend two days away and return ten minutes later?"
Melody wished she could believe her, but Wonderland was a fictional world and the facts didn't add up. She'd taken enough psychology classes in high school and college to know traumatic experiences often led to mental breaks. If she could help her repair the damage, she would. Cadence needed to admit a crime had occurred and realize the fantasy she clung to would never allow her to return to her life. Until she did, Melody could do little more than console her as best she could, but it wasn't progressive treatment to the problem.
"Time moves differently there. Gareth said so on more than one occasion." Cadence crossed her arms. "I didn't imagine it. I barely remembered much of the Alice stories when it happened. How do you build an entire fantasy around material you aren't completely familiar with? You had the book growing up, but I'd never read it. I think I watched the cartoon once or twice, but I thought it was really weird and didn't even like it."
"Okay, okay." Melody switched on her blinker and pulled onto the long dirt driveway. Their parents living on the outskirts of the city provided them less neighbors and a huge property. The forest blocked their home from the main road. Her parents had hoped being secluded would help Cadence heal. It hadn't.
"Gareth was real. The doctors found the evidence of our time together."
Melody cringed every time this particular topic came up. It was a delicate situation, and the least she wanted to do was add to whatever trauma Cadence had experienced. "Hon, Cheshire cats and Jabberwocks, they're fictional. I wish you would have allowed the doctor do more extensive tests—"
After hearing Cadence's bizarre story, one of her friends had rushed her to the hospital thinking she'd hit her head. What they found had been much, much worse. There had been evidence that she'd had sexual intercourse not long before, but the DNA test on the semen had come back corrupted from the lab, but her blood samples were perfectly normal. They hadn't found traces of a date rape drug despite the police being convinced the "Wonderland hallucinations" were from drugs mixed with the alcohol in her system.
"Those tests were evasive and unnecessary because there wasn't even a crime," she bit out harshly.
Cadence denied that any of her friends had taken advantage of her, and had given her official statement: she'd been abducted by a talking cat and was supposed to marry a dragon slaying knight. Their parents had been promptly notified at that point, and she'd spent the night in the psych ward of the hospital.
It probably worked out for the best that she had left college and come home. Whoever had done this to her was still out there, but she was safe. They couldn't hurt her again. Unfortunately, Cadence believed the hallucination and wouldn't drop it. The therapist supposed she'd repressed the truth with fantasy because it was too horrible to come to terms with.
"I wasn't drugged or raped," Cadence said softly. "Trust me. I would not protect someone who did that to me by making up a story. The evidence came out looking corrupted because it wasn't DNA of our world. No matter how much they poked and prodded, the results would look inconclusive every time."
The car came to a halt and Melody shifted it into park. When she cut the ignition and removed the key, she put on her strict, older-sister-is-wiser expression. "I don't want to argue with you, but you need to realize you will never find entrances into another world because they don't exist. You're freaking everyone out, and I don't want to see you in an institution. Dad will commit you." She opened the car door and slammed it behind her, not waiting to see if Cadence followed. She couldn't handle the conversation anymore. If someone had hurt her sister, he would walk free and do it again because Cadence couldn't drop the delusion. It broke her heart.
***
"What would I do without you, Sunny?" Melody scratched the orange tabby behind her ears. Sunny purred with approval. The cat hadn't seemed to mind the long drive home too much, given the amount of attention and petting she received from the family.
Heavy, dark clouds filled the afternoon sky, and the forecast showed thunderstorms throughout the rest of the week. Lots of rain meant Cadence would be stuck at home for days since the area flooded, and there wouldn't be another repeat of the episode at the store earlier. The thought both relieved and saddened her.
No matter how much Melody attempted to concentrate on the crime thriller opened across her lap, she couldn't stop thinking about Cadence's statement on why the DNA would never show up as conclusive. Ludicrous. Sunny blinked up at her with wide, green eyes, and Melody snorted. "I am not buying it either. Nothing adds up."
Sunny's ears flattened and she ducked low behind Melody's outstretched legs on the steps of the wrap-around porch. They faced the back of the property where the forest grew thickest. They'd cleared out a bike trail through the heart of it years ago. At the opening of the trail, a white blob shifted through the dark green grass. A rabbit.
Before Melody could react, Sunny pounced over her legs, down the steps, and shot halfway across the yard. "Don't hurt the bunny!" She scrambled up, cursing when the book closed and swallowed the page as it thumped to the porch, and then chased after her cat.
Not waiting around to discover the source of the commotion, the rabbit hopped off down the trail with Sunny hot on its heels. Please don't kill the bunny. She would cry. She didn't mind when the cat caught bugs, but anything bigger made her feel terrible, even mice. Once she found a bird on her doorstep, courtesy of Sunny's outdoor expeditions, and she became so depressed she'd had stay home from classes.
B
oth animals were out of sight, and Melody's anxiety rose. She didn't know what she would find when she turned around the bend, but she mentally prepared herself for the worse. Instead, she found Sunny standing in the middle of the trail, tail swishing slowly as she studied a small hole in the ground and shifting around to peer inside from a new angle. Relieved she hadn't stumbled upon carnage, Melody laughed so hard she had to bend and brace her hands on her knees.
"Look at us chasing white rabbits into their rabbit holes and berating Cadence for such a concept." Then Melody snorted, realizing she'd worn a blue, knee-length dress and had left her long blonde hair flowing around her shoulders. She pitched into another fit of giggles. She had half a mind to drag her sister out the house and allow her to attempt diving into the hole. Then Cadence would see, once and for all, how irrational she sounded.
Melody scooped up the cat and hugged her tight. Such a ferocious little beastie for something so small. Sunny gripped her shoulder, claws biting into the flesh. "Yowch, what's wrong with..."
The ground shuddered. An earthquake? A loud snap, and then a whoosh, and the dirt around the rabbit hole collapsed inward for several feet. She turned to run, but it was too late. The packed earth beneath her dipped, crumpled, and sank, dragging her and Sunny into the darkness.
CHAPTER TWO
Hatter and Devrel stood on a cliff overlooking Shipwreck Cove and the Vanishing Sea. Blue waves crashed against the shore, the tide teasing glimpses of sunken ships lying broken and abandoned upon the rocks. A weathered, wooden mast stuck out of the water, displaying a sun-bleached skeleton dressed in tatters within the barrel-like structure of the crow's nest. The lost soul had tied himself there to keep from falling out during a storm, but he'd died regardless.
The White Rabbit tumbled out of the opening in a hollowed out tree trunk and hopped over to where they waited in the shade of the forest behind them. He sat up on his hind legs and panted loudly. "I was nearly assassinated by a murderous beast. And I lost my watch! You owe me, Hatter. When I come to collect, I expect payment in full."
Such rubbish. He'd not even wanted to ask the rabbit for any favors, yet he was the one forced to finance the effort. "Whatever it is you wish for, Rabbit."
"Good day to you, and please...try not to visit." He snatched his spectacles from Hatter's open palm—having left them for safe keeping—positioned them atop his pink nose, and then hopped away, grumbling all the while.
Devrel appeared to Hatter's right, practically bouncing upon his paws in his eagerness for the findling to appear. "I can't wait to see the look on her face when she realizes she's returned. She's going to be so surpr—" His mouth dropped open and he coughed as a rocking-horsefly teetered into it, barely escaping all the sharp teeth unscathed as it hightailed it the opposite way again.
A blonde woman dressed in a simplistic blue dress that didn't pass her knees, streaked with dirt, emerged from the tree. She clasped an orange, wide-eyed feline within her arms as she squinted against the sunshine. Crimson stains on one shoulder of her clothing revealed injury, though from the beast she carried or from the drop, Hatter wasn't sure. Smudges of dirt marred her skin, but she was still very pretty. She had the most symmetrical features he'd ever seen. In fact, he had a severe desire to design a hat for her to observe how it rested upon her head. His fingers twitched.
"Uh, Hatter," Devrel whispered, having regained some of his composure. "Mayhap we've been cheated. Don't pay that hopping pile of stew so much as a string."
"She's improved, methinks." Hatter remarked, rubbing his chin. Horrible dressing habits aside, but that could be fixed in short order. The style didn't suit her at all.
The Boojum flashed him a look of irritation before resuming his characteristic smile. "Are you mad? That's not her."
"Of course it is. The White Rabbit always finds that which he seeks."
"Something chased him back to his hole. He didn't wait around for the right girl. Can't you see she's different? She doesn't even have the same color hair!"
Hatter noticed, but he liked the changes. Same girl, different girl—it didn't matter. His fingers twitched again.
The moment she noticed them, she mimicked Devrel's former expression of shock.
"Oh, dear," he mumbled. "She's befuddled. Do you have borogove feathers on hand, Hatter?"
"Where am I?" The girl scrutinized Devrel's eerie, fanged grin. Hatter remembered seeing a Boojum for the first time, and he empathized with her alarm. While Devrel resembled the animal she held, his off-putting grin was the stuff of nightmares. Boojums were once a race of tricksters that vanished and appeared at will, sometimes removing people from one realm and abandoning them in the next for sport. The grin had been the last sight their victims beheld.
Devrel strolled toward her. "You're in Wonderland. However, we expected someone else. How adept are you at climbing up packed earth and the matter between realms? I'm sure there are roots to cling to. Hatter can give you a boost."
"Uh..." The girl gawked at him and her skin turned ashen.
Hatter rolled his eyes skyward. "She's not climbing up the hole, Devrel. It doesn't work that way. She cannot leave again unless Wonderland discards her." Which he should know, considering how he'd brought the last findling through himself.
The cat tilted his head back. "But I discard her. I wanted Cadence for Gareth. Not this blonde imposter."
"Wait... Cadence is my sister." Her eyes were wide, and she shook her head as in disbelief. "If you're...if I'm...oh, sweet mother of God, she wasn't hallucinating it was she?"
"No," Devrel said, stepping closer to her. "You will find if it is too wonderful to be true, most merely choose not to believe it. That's why everything is so dismal where you're from."
"And if she wasn't hallucinating, it means she really came here and had some torrid affair with this Gareth person?"
"Apparently," Hatter stated. "They seemed rather dull to me though."
She scrunched up her face and gave him a peculiar expression, and then shook her head. "I'm the worst sister ever."
Devrel circled her legs, flicking his tail at her knees. "I would imagine she told quite the tale upon her return. I even attempted to check in on her a few times after she went home, but since she couldn't see or hear me, I gave up. That's not what is important, however. I need your sister back here. Now." He paused and wrapped his tail around himself as he sat. "Oh well. I guess you will have to do even though he probably won't want to settle for a cast-off."
"I'm not a cast-off—"
"Were you invited?" he asked, raising a paw and flexing his claws, voice dripping impudence.
Hatter nudged Devrel with a booted toe. "Enough, cat. You're not giving her to Gareth."
If the wrong findling came through, there was no reason to thrust her at the slayer and expect him to do something about it. The idea was preposterous. The only issue was determining what they were to do with her if they didn't give her to Gareth.
***
Melody had two terrifying thoughts bombarding her at once. The first: her sister hadn't lied and would inevitably be locked away for it. The second: a cat sat grinning at her with sharp teeth and huge blue eyes. Sunny's front claws were embedded in her bicep, and Melody clung to her tightly, refusing to chance the creepy cat wouldn't harm her furbaby.
Moments before, she'd been standing on the bike trail behind her childhood home, and now she was on a cliff side overlooking an ocean, with...
Is that a skeleton?
"Regardless of what we do with her, she's definitely befuddled. See that glaze over her eyes, the stunned silence?" The cat's smooth, deep voice pulled her focus away from the legit dead guy on the sunken ship. It's a movie prop. Right? Has to be. No way the body would still be there long enough to become a skeleton that remained upright, in one piece, through the elements and crashing tides. Right?
Oh, God.
"She's not befuddled. Give her a moment," said someone else. The man with the cat.
His outfit was
a patchwork of styles and colors. Multiple gold pocket watches hung off his waistcoat, and he had a top hat made of a shiny navy blue material that caused his vibrant green irises to appear almost teal. With his black hair—not long but in need of a good cut—hanging around his eyes, the man was any woman's dream. When she met his gaze, her lips parted. Wow. She released her breath harshly and fidgeted.
The cat called him Hatter, was he the Hatter? Nostalgia of childhood wonderment caused that uncomfortable excitement one had in the presence of a celebrity or their favorite author. A giddiness from meeting someone they'd admired for years.
"Staring is considered impolite," he said softly.
"Sorry!" Her cheeks heated. "I'm just, uh, wasn't expecting to be standing here, and well, I wondered if you, erm..."
"If I erm?" He regarded the grinning cat. "How does one erm?"
The cat cocked his head. "No idea."
"That's not what I meant. Erm isn't even a word—" She floundered.
"Then why speak it?" The man asked.
"—it's a sound you make when you aren't sure of something, or struggling to find the phrase you mean."
"Naturally, one should not speak until the words are known ahead of time."
Okay, he was a bit of an asshole. The attractive ones always were, at least in her experience, but she couldn't help the twinge of disappointment that creeped in. She shifted to eye the skeleton again to avoid looking at him. "I only wanted to find a polite way of asking if you were the Mad Hatter without offending you, but sorry for trying."
As a child, the Mad Hatter had always been her favorite Wonderland character. He'd been eccentric, but somehow vulnerable, surrounding himself with so much craziness that it took the focus off him and left it on the scene around him.
Silence radiated from the man and the cat. Then the cat's smile wavered slightly, and he backed into a bush. Melody glanced at the man once more, and his face was blank. No emotion, no expression. A void.
The Unraveling (Wonderland Book 2) Page 2