It's a Charmed Life

by Selene Charles

  “Elle, I’m—” Hatter started, but I had suddenly found my ability to move again and stalked toward the door.

  “Don’t. Just don’t,” I said, too raw to listen to another word, so full of pain and sorrow and heartache that I felt I might burst from it if he so much as spoke another word to me.

  “As you wish,” I heard him mumble, but I couldn’t look back. I just couldn’t look back.

  Chapter 16

  Constable Maddox

  She wouldn’t talk to him.

  But they had a case to finish, and now wasn’t the time. Now wasn’t the time for any of it.

  After hastily dressing, he made his way to the office, where they awaited him. His cravat was askew and his buttons only half done, and he didn’t have any shoes on—those he carried in his hand. He sat in the only vacant chair as Harry rewound the tape and loudly proclaimed, “Ye’s gots ta focus, but there’s no denying them big bastards nor Alice.”

  Harry glanced quickly at them, his large buckteeth looking prodigiously prominent as he grinned with pride. Swallowing hard, Hatter nodded at Harry, giving his deputy whatever dregs of encouragement he still had left to give.

  Hatter slipped on his shoes and made himself presentable as he waited.

  Figures walked backward on the screen as the tape reset. Harry pressed Play again, and the tiny, grainy figures once more moved forward. Maddox scanned the dimly lit club. There was a strobing light pattern that made things difficult to see, but after half a second, he saw Alice, dressed in black silk and knee-high boots, holding a crop in her leather-clad hands and smiling broadly as two massively rotund men in dark suits nodded at her in greeting.

  Then there was nothing but snow on the screen. The tapes had been scrubbed clean. They’d tried to hide the truth, but whoever had done it hadn’t done a good enough job.

  Alice had been with the Deedles that night, and this was proof that she’d not lied. The question was how long had she been with them? Long enough to prevent her from committing Mary’s murder? Hatter’s gut said yes, but they needed a hells of a lot more evidence to go on than merely his gut.

  He looked at Elle to gage her reaction. She sat stiff as a board on the seat beside him, not looking at him. But he knew she was aware of him by the tense lines of her body and the way she clutched at the armrests with nails that looked more like claws. Her face was an unreadable, beautiful mask. He realized she wasn’t fully dressed. Her long, lean legs were naked and crossed, the top one bouncing rhythmically.

  Her nails dug into the leather armrests, leaving crescent-shaped markings behind.

  “Elle?” he asked.

  She whirled on him, sea-colored eyes flaring with fury, before she composed herself and said in a monotone, “Give me five minutes to dress. We have to speak with the Deedles.”

  Then she was gone, and he sat there, looking after her.

  “Don’t know what da hells ye did to that chit, but I’d wear ear plugs were I you, Constable. Just to be on the safe side.”

  Thinning his lips, he turned to his deputy and nodded. “I don’t suppose you have any on you?”

  “As a matter of course, I do,” he grinned.

  Detective Elle

  I COULD BARELY LOOK at him. In fact, I didn’t even want to be in the same sphere as him, breathing the same air. I wanted to leave, to return to Grimm and never see him again. Never again have to remember what it was that he’d shown me.

  He’d told me he couldn’t always control what came out of him, and I wished like hells I’d listened. I wished I’d not seen any of that.

  I had my hands balled into fists and shoved deep into my pants pockets. I said not a word as we traveled through the between.

  I’d not asked the constable where we were headed. I was loath to admit that he was still necessary for me to solve this case. I had to go on trusting that he’d do his job.

  But I wasn’t sure I could ever trust him again.

  I knew my reaction was over the top and ridiculous. I knew it. Up until a few days ago, he’d not known who I was. How could it possibly be his fault that he’d seen what he’d seen. I got that. But the shame of what he knew and had deliberately kept hidden from me made me want to hate him because he’d seen me at my very lowest, seen me on the brink of complete and total insanity.

  Just when I thought I couldn’t hate him anymore, I recalled what he’d seen—the body of a broken, shattered little beauty—and my eyes burned with tears I could not shed.

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out who she’d been. The agony on Alice’s face, the brokenness in Hatter’s own... That had been their daughter, Mariposa.

  I shuddered, wishing I could scrub that memory clean, wishing I’d never seen it.

  “At some point, you’ll have to talk with me,” Hatter said, voice low and full of grit.

  My nostrils flared. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying like the two hells to scrub that image from out of my head, trying to forget the smell of charred flesh and the wails of a shattered heart.

  I wanted to hate him.

  But all I felt was pity. And I wasn’t sure which was worse.

  “I’ll speak to you about the case, and only the case. We have less than—”

  “Elle.” He stepped forward, reaching out a hand toward me.

  But I hissed and jumped back as though scalded. “Don’t you bloody dare, you hear me! Don’t you touch me. Don’t you dare.”

  His face crumpled, his eyes tightened, and his jaw set into a hard line of emotions I refused to name. I would not feel bad for how I felt. I refused. He’d lied to me. This was on him, not me.

  My body trembled as I wrapped my arms around myself, staving off the panic as best I could. He’d seen me. Seen me as a monster. As a maniac. And I’d seen him. Hate and pity and pain—it was all there, and it hurt too much at the moment. Too damned much.

  “As you wish, Detective,” he said in that smooth urbane drawl of his, and I hated that my heart squeezed with regret. Hated that I cared so much. I didn’t know him. What I’d seen was proof of that. He’d held all the cards, and I’d held none. He’d had me at a disadvantage, and though rationally I understood what he’d seen wasn’t a topic of conversation easily broached between strangers, I hated him with an irrational passion that burned like ten thousand suns for knowing the depths of my pain.

  I clipped a hard nod at him. We turned, looking straight ahead as we waited for the tunnel to deposit us wherever the hells the Deedles called home.

  Blessedly, it did just a scant few seconds later. Stepping out of the between, I glanced around to get my bearings.

  We were surrounded by towering trees that reached up with their infinitely long branches to the heavens. Leaves of burning blue and gold surrounded us. These were fire oaks at the peak of their blooming.

  The roadways were dust-packed earthen trails with vendors pushing large, wooden carts as they rattled off the wares they were selling. The people were dressed in clothes that were riddled with holes, looking ten years out of season. They were all gaunt, cheeks hollowed out, bones poking out—women, men, and children.

  Even the animals looked sickly. Cows were grazing nearby, barely mooing as they desperately ate at the earth, looking for whatever lone blades of grass they could find. Ducks and chickens marched by, looking little better, honking and quacking angrily at anything that dared come too close.

  There was a small gaggle of children standing on a stone bridge, staring hungrily at a particularly fat green-and-black duck as it waddled past. Each of them held a small stone as they licked their little lips.

  The houses and buildings scattered about were built of dried mud and clay and listing dangerously, crumbling at their corners. This was a dying city, stripped of nearly all its resources save one—the glittering jewels that were the trees.

  “What is this place?” I asked. “Is this still Wonderland?”

  I glanced at Hatter, wondering if he’d bother to answer. But he glanced in my direction and nodded
quickly.

  “Aye. This is one of the outer realms, once a thriving lumber district, now a city in its death throes.”

  He started walking forward.

  I followed.

  One of the kids tossed their stone at the duck, clopping it on its head. The bird gave a loud, angry honk and turned beady red eyes on them. But soon, another child threw her stone, and then another one after that. A loud, hellacious cry of desperation rang out from each of them, and the bird no longer had the upper hand.

  I grimaced, turning away as the children pounced on the befuddled bird and feathers began flying. The sound of rending and screaming made me feel physically ill.

  “Do not judge them harshly, Detective. Most here starve. Desperation makes animals of us all.”

  I whipped my head around, staring at him with hard eyes and wondering just what in the hells he meant by that. I was certain that those words hadn’t just been about the children.

  But Hatter was turning down a narrow alleyway, and the dirt paths gave way to slick gold-plated stones.

  I frowned, noticing that even the buildings looked better tended here. The people walking down these roads were dressed in gaudy, silly clothing crafted of the finest silks, tulles, and laces. Men and women wore hats, and it seemed the sillier, the better. They gradually got bigger and bigger and more and more elaborate, progressing from standard hats toward fantastical works of art the farther we walked down the street—boats that seemed to sail upon oceanic waters; mountains brimming over with hidden oases filled with singing sirens bathing in their streams; airy, fantastical, whimsical clouds of wonder full of breathing, flying dragons.

  And those were only the hats.

  The gowns and dress clothes became even more luxurious, as did the homes. At the start of the street, the homes had been beautiful, but somewhat modest two-story Victorians. Farther in, they were sprawling estates with lawns full of the most bizarre looking creatures I’d ever seen. There was an elephant, dressed in jewels from head to toe and sporting grand golden wings, who preened in a placid pool. Giant cats with zebra-like markings in burning neon green and pinks hissed at us from inside massive golden cages. Little winged beasts with claws for legs and human-like eyes chittered as we walked past.

  The people, too, were changing the farther we walked. They had started off looking normal but transformed into walking monstrous amalgams of both man and beast. Men with tiger stripes on their faces and fanged silver teeth smiled back at me with a lascivious wink. Women with scales like a goldenrod adder stared eerily in our direction, their serpent mouths set in tight lines of displeasure.

  “One street over there is waste, filth, and starvation. Here there is—”

  “—waste, filth, and starvation of a different kind,” Hatter said.

  I closed my mouth as I stared around at the wasteful opulence of this little oasis of hubris and greed amid the terrible suffering of just one street over.

  Soon, we were marching up to a massive set of wrought-iron gates with twin Ds emblazoned upon them.

  “The Deedles?”

  He nodded. “Mmm. It behooves me to warn you, Detective, that the Deedles are quite out of their minds on hallucinogens, but do not mistake their silliness for stupidity. That would be a terrible folly. Stay on your guard and do not let them bait you.”

  A fissure of worry spread through my gut. Just who the bloody blazes were these Deedles?

  Theirs was the last home on the street and easily the largest and most stately of the bunch. The sheer opulent wealth on display was nauseating and would make even the Charmings’s castle seem like a peasant’s hut by comparison.

  There were flowers everywhere—cherry blossoms, bleeding hearts, birds of paradise, and dahlia blooms as big as my face. There were more, so many more, spreading out as far as my eyes could see. This was a sign of great wealth in Wonderland since to plant true flowers and not the killing kind cost more than an arm and a leg.

  Peacocks with scaly crimson tales and monkeys with faces like terrapins clung to massive tree branches, staring at me with beady black eyes. There was a whirring sound from above, and when I glanced up, I noticed a flower turning its blossomy head to look down at us. There was a face at its center with two large, dead eyes. The petals were an electric shade of deadly blue, and my heart squeezed with panic.

  I yelped, stepping backward as I covered my face and eyes. “Maddox, there’s a... a—”

  He whirled to look at me, looking tense and terrified. Then he looked up and blew out a steadying breath, shaking his head. His shoulders slumped in obvious relief. “It’s not a flower, Detective. It’s a monitoring system.”

  As if to punctuate his words, there was a click and a whirring sound, and then the gates swung open on silent, heavy hinges. The trail winding through the impressive garden was made of crushed diamond and glittering gold.

  Feeling stupid, I squeezed my eyes shut. Nearly all inhabited places in Wonderland had cleared out the killing flowers ages ago. I should have known better.

  “Are you coming, Detective?” Hatter’s rhythmic voice cut through my humiliation.

  Swallowing once, staring up at the blossom that had looked so eerily like an electric jeweled orchid, I shook my head and nodded.

  “Yeah, I’m bloody coming,” I gritted out, frowning heavily as I followed him down the jeweled path.

  The trail wound without rhyme or reason through the massive gardens. As I walked, staring at trees with bark that glittered like polished tiger’s eye and leaves of purest amethyst, I thought there really was such a thing as having far too much scratch and not knowing what in the two hells to do with it. The Deedles and my father would have gotten along just swimmingly.

  By the time we reached the entrance to the gothic-style castle of spires and turrets, I was grumpy. The façade was built of veined snow-white marble. There were gargoyles perched all over the place, cruel mouths open and elongated, their clawed hands curved and looking deadly. Their stone cages breathed, telling me they weren’t merely decorative but very, very real.

  I glanced over my shoulder at the hour or so of sunlight left to this realm and shivered.

  “I’d like to leave before the demons fly.” The stone bastards, and I had a long and not so pretty history.

  Hatter nodded. “Then let’s make this quick.”

  As we walked up the steps, we were greeted by two nude guards holding massive broadswords before them. Not with their tips resting on the ground, either, but literally holding the massive things out before them. Their arms bulged and flexed with the action. They had to be exhausted, but they didn’t move an inch.

  They wore feathered masks of such brilliant colors that it made them look surreal and alien. Their bodies were honed as though from granite, strong and implacable, like walls of thick steel.

  Standing at the entryway was a woman dressed in sheer pink silk that did nothing to hide the curves of her body. She was pale as milk in moonlight, with hair of raven’s wing that spilled long and full down her back. The tips of it brushed against the white marble floor as she moved.

  “Constable Hatter, the Deedles are expecting you,” she said with just the slightest trace of a Wonderlandian accent. Her nipples pointed out at us like little needles.

  I looked at Hatter, but he barely even spared her a glance. I frowned. Why did I care if he looked or not? He was free to do whatever he wished.

  “Thank you,” he said in that deep voice of his. Her smile was soft but encouraging. She was highly skilled because without even a word spoken, her body language had said it all. If he wished to, he could have her.

  He looked back at me, his face calm and expressionless, but even so, I sensed exactly what he’d just done. He was also highly skilled because he’d denied her, telling her without words he was here with me.

  Her spine stiffened, and her smile slipped. I swallowed, not sure how I felt about anything at the moment. All the pain and humiliation I was feeling was mixed in with other emotions I
wasn’t prepared to feel again for anyone. I hated it.

  The woman gestured for us to follow, and we did, neither of us speaking as we walked down a long hall dripping with the richest and very finest of everything, from the diamond chandeliers sparkling above us to the Turkinish rugs beneath our feet. As we walked, there wasn’t even an echo of our passage. Nothing but eerie, unnatural silence greeted my ears.

  At spaced intervals, there were large glass cases full of taxidermies—dragons resting upon their golden coins; witches posed with fingers extended and madness on their faces; sea monsters so rare as to be nearly extinct, with their long necks twisted into hunting poses; beasts of the land so large they were like giants, with skins of fur and scales and feathers. On and on and on it went until one case made me pause and made all the blood in my veins crystallize.

  Inside a rocky cavern full of placid water, with stalactites and stalagmites coming from above and beneath, sat a woman with a gleaming tail of ebony. Her skin was pale, her hands and neck long, her breasts high and perky. She was covered in the markings of a river siren. Her eyes were boldly black, and her lips were tinged blue. Her hair was a cascade of wild, crystalline curls. Her mouth was open as though she sang.

  I felt a tear slide down my cheek. They’d killed all these magnificent creatures for no other reason than because they could.

  I placed my palm upon the glass.

  “Oh no, you mustn’t tou—” the woman cried, rushing over to me.

  I hissed, raising my hand as a fury I’d rarely known crowded my bones. I felt the lure of my dark siren’s magick begin to make itself manifest.

  Hatter grabbed my hand and yanked it down hard, pressing his face in so close to mine that I felt the wash of his breath on my mouth.

  “Elle, don’t.”

  Just those two words was all he said, but it was the power behind them, the strength of his body, and the way that he looked at me that snapped me out of the killing haze and squelched the song in my throat that desperately wanted to break loose.

  His fingers curled just a little bit tighter around my waist, making me hiss with pain, but also giving me desperately needed clarity.