“We must all play our role,” he muttered.
“What are you?” I asked. “I’ve seen you in Doyle, in my dreams, but you’re not a ghost. You’re not a spirit animal.”
One corner of his mouth slid upward. “You already know me.”
“But aside from a man of few words, what are you?” He had to be an unseelie, like his queen, but I desperately needed him to deny it.
“A soldier.” His mouth pressed into a white line.
“My Queen crouches beside the spring.” I quoted. “Her hands fist. The babble of water drowns her muttering, ripples off her lank hair, raises the flesh on my scalp. She turns, her expression a diamond grotesque on a burning castle wall.”
He halted. His broad back straightened.
“I saw that in a dream,” I said. “My poems – they came from you, didn’t they?” I’d thought they’d been figments of my subconscious, but like Blake’s visions, my poems really had come from another place.
The muscles in his shoulders went taut as bridge cables.
“And you gave my poems to Mike,” I said. “Why?”
“It was the only way I could converse with him.”
“But why Mike?”
“Because he understood. I tried to reach you, but you wouldn’t listen.”
“The ghosts that kept coming through when I was trying to call Mike. You sent them.”
“Of course.”
“But what did Mike understand? How did you meet him in the first place?”
“Another tale. Come.” He strode down the hill toward the river.
“How is it possible?” I trotted after him.
“You ask me?” He whirled on me, his eyes burning with fury. “How is it possible that my White Lady reaches into my dreams and waits for me on the other side? You are meant.”
Karin raced up the steps to the attic, fumbled in the antique secretary for the grimoire.
Dizzy, I stopped short beside a cracked boulder, blackened as if burnt.
“What is wrong?” he asked sharply.
“My sisters...”
“Are playing their roles to finish our tale.”
“What roles?” Uselessly, I flapped my hands. “What tale?”
He shrugged, his muscles rippling beneath the tight t-shirt. “Whether it is comedy or tragedy, we cannot know until it is done.”
Jayce peered into a rough gap in the earth, purple thistles tearing at her bare legs.
“What is happening?” I whispered. If I stilled myself, I could feel my sisters’ hands gripping mine, the energy of their magic pumping through my veins. But I couldn’t still myself for long, my muscles clenching and unclenching in agitation.
“What is meant.” The Rose Rabbit pointed past the river. “The throne is there.”
An uneven structure of turrets and crenelated walls stood on the opposite side of the water. “A castle,” I murmured.
“The castle.” He extended his hand to me. “Come.”
I reached for him, then dropped my hand. If I took his, would I lose my connection to my sisters?
“As you wish,” he said. “Come.” He strode down the hill.
Leather-bound tome clutched to her chest, Karin clambered through the attic’s trap door.
I stumbled over ditches, hopped dried streams, tramped through tangles of tall, desiccated grasses. The land was blasted, the trees dead, the plants wilted. No small animals scrabbled in the dried brush. No birds or bats wheeled overhead. The world was silent except for the rush of the river, growing louder as we approached.
I made more abortive attempts to get my guide to explain who he was, what this place was, how I’d come here. His replies were cryptic, annoying.
I gave up, and we traveled without speaking.
He moved surefooted over the rough terrain.
My feet skidded on loose earth. My hands clutched at branches that snapped off when I clutched them for balance.
Finally, he found a thick, gnarled branch, about four feet long, and handed it to me. “Use this.” He continued on down the hill.
Head bowed, the FBI agent walked past Jayce, thistles scraping her trousers. Jayce stilled. But the agent didn’t notice her. Jayce was a ghost, a spirit, insubstantial, and terror rose in my sister’s throat.
A pulse of hot, fearful energy whipped through me, and I gripped my makeshift walking stick. It was rough and dusty, but it kept me from falling. I willed Jayce to feel my presence.
The Rose Rabbit and I reached the river. Tumbles of dried brush, white and curving, clumped along its banks.
Panting, I stumbled through the damp soil. I knelt beside the water and reached–
“No!” He swatted my hand away and yanked me to my feet. “It is poisoned.”
“But–”
“See.” He pointed toward some brush.
“That’s a...” I stared. Not sticks. Bones. An animal’s ribcage, bone cage, a cow’s I guessed by the size.
“The crossing is not far.”
We walked on and on. A fallen tree took us across the river. A winding path that only my guide could see led us through the broken landscape. A sulfuric smell rose around us, and I wrinkled my nose. And still we walked.
Karin hesitated outside the labyrinth of lavender bushes. Their scent rose around her. A breeze stirred their blossoms.
We walked. My tongue grew thick in my mouth. My walking stick grew heavy, and I dragged it behind me, dropped it. My eyelids drooped.
We walked. I wilted.
The Rose Rabbit’s step lengthened his back straightening. “There,” he said. “The castle.”
A crenelated silhouette loomed over the twisted landscape. The moon sank behind its fractured walls. The castle was crumbling like everything else in this dying land.
An echo of music, laughter. And then the sound was gone.
Pins and needles danced across my scalp.
I halted. “There’s someone inside the castle.”
“They will not bother us.” He kept walking.
I stumbled after him. “The people who’ve been taken – the hikers, the people from the Bell and Thistle – are they here?”
“Here. Not here.”
“We have to help them.” I clutched at his muscular arm.
He stopped and stared down at me. His eyes glittered. “You do not know them. They are strangers.”
“They’re prisoners.”
One blond eyebrow lifted. “And?”
“They’re innocent.”
Jayce steadied her breathing. No, she wasn’t dead. If she was dead, there were plenty of better places to haunt. Lenore had sent her to the site of the missing pub for a reason.
The Rose Rabbit said nothing for a long moment. “Yes.” He turned and walked down a cobblestone path.
I followed. “Then we can send them home?”
“Perhaps.”
Perhaps. I’d take perhaps. But I was so thirsty, and my legs trembled with fatigue.
An open drawbridge lay across a dried moat. We walked inside the stone fortress walls and into a garden of dead brambles. Four paths converged at the garden’s center. Inside it stood an empty, marble fountain crusted with muck. In its bowl, a stone woman poured nothing from an empty vase. Four crumbling halls rose around us, forming a square.
He pointed toward the hall beneath the setting moon. “This way.”
A ripple of laughter and music stirred the air and faded to nothing. I stopped short, swaying toward it.
The snippet of music had been unspeakably beautiful, my soul written in its chords. “Did you hear that?” I whispered.
“Lady of the labyrinth,” Karin whispered, “to she who can never be unveiled, I ask safe passage.” The lavender rippled in a wave of invitation or warning.
“Do not be lured by the music,” he said sharply. “You have little time. Come.”
He turned and strode down the garden path, through the high, arched entry to the stone hall.
An instrument twanged.
I glanced toward the sound.
“This way,” he urged.
And I followed, because he’d gotten me to the castle, and a throne should be in a castle. That proved he was helping, didn’t it? But doubt niggled inside me. Why was I so quick to follow, to believe?
Because I have no other choice, Jayce thought, and knelt beside the gash in the earth. Water echoed faintly beneath, and she tilted her head.
Tattered banners wafted like spider webs in the vaulted ceiling. Real spider webs decorated the corners of stained glass windows and draped suits of armor. The stone hallway widened.
The Rose Rabbit grasped the handles of a double door.
“Are you real?” A young woman in shorts and a blue hiking t-shirt touched my arm, and I jumped. She seemed to have appeared from nowhere. Athletic and tanned, with high cheekbones and gray-blue eyes, she reminded me of... Karin’s fiancé, Nick. A small raven tattoo adorned one side of her slim neck.
Karin stepped inside the low labyrinth, and her skin tingled as she passed through a wall of energy.
My skin tingled. “Emily?” I asked. “Emily Heathcoat?”
She blanched. “You know me? Who are you? Are you here to get us out?” She clutched my wrist. “You have to help us!”
“Get away from her!” The Rose Rabbit roared and made as if to swat her away.
She cringed.
“Stop it!” I shouted. “She needs help.”
“Help her by getting the name,” he said.
“No, don’t go through those doors.” Eyes wild, she grabbed my arm and tugged me away. “Don’t go in there. It’s dangerous. You can’t go in. If you go in, you won’t come out.”
The man’s jaw clenched. “She is ignorant and delaying us. Leave her.”
“He’s lying to you,” she said. “He belongs to her. It’s his fault the others are here. Don’t go in there.”
“What do you mean, it’s his fault?” I turned to him. “What does she mean?”
“She knows nothing,” he said, impatient.
“He didn’t tell you, did he?” she asked. “He belongs to her, loves her. He’s a traitor.”
He stiffened.
“No one trusts him,” she continued. “He brought twenty-two strangers. It isn’t supposed to be that way. He’s only supposed to take one!”
His expression hardened. “I had no choice.”
Horrified, I stared at him. “You took the Bell and Thistle?”
“It was the only way to end this. Finish this and all of them, including those She took, will be free.”
“He’s lying, he’s lying,” Emily insisted.
“But why…?” I hesitated. Whatever his game was, I needed Toeller’s true name. And I didn’t think we had much more time. “I have to find the throne.”
“No,” Emily shrieked. “You can’t go in there. For God’s sake, listen to me.”
I wrenched free and ran to the doors.
The Rose Rabbit flung them open, and I raced past. A long carpet the color of blood. High, narrow windows and beams of wavering moonlight. Flagstone floors and bone-like ceiling and a stone chair on a dias.
Emily sobbed outside the open, arched doors.
The Rose Rabbit came to stand beside me. “She thinks she speaks the truth,” he said. “But she is only half right and much confused.”
“Which half is right? You admit you kidnapped twenty-two people!”
“But only twenty-two. My Queen took many more before then.”
Water? But the spring beneath the Bell and Thistle was supposed to be dry. Kneeling, Jayce raised her hands over the crevice and felt for the energy.
“So what part is ‘half right?’” I repeated.
“I do love my queen, and I am a traitor. To her.” He pointed to the throne. “Go. Take the name.”
I glanced toward the open doors.
Emily shook her head and looked away.
I walked down the scarlet carpet to the throne. Climbed the three steps. Stared.
The stone was smooth.
Frantic, I ran my hands over the cold steps, the legs of the throne, beneath the seat. I tossed the cushions to the floor.
Nothing.
Karin walked the tanbark path. There was only one way into the labyrinth’s center and one way out, but her steps were jerky and uncertain.
“It’s not here.” I recited the poem: “The pow’r of the fairy queen,
Lay in life at her feet,
Her name inscribed in stone,
Beneath her royal throne.
It should be here, unless...” Unless he’d tricked me, and this was the wrong throne.
He reached behind him, lifting his shirt, and drew a short blade.
I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move.
“In life,” he said. “It is there. It requires life – human life – to be seen.”
I went cold. He’d brought me here to die. “You needed me to get the name,” I said, voice rising. “My life isn’t like the others in this place, is it? You lied–”
He grasped my wrist, his hands as unyielding and cold as manacles. His jaw hardened.
A muffled groan escaped my throat. I’d failed us all.
The energy of the fairy was there, dark and cold and powerful, and Jayce connected to it. It seized her, choking.
In a swift motion, he drew the blade across my palm.
I yelped in pain.
He held my hand over the steps, My blood dripped onto the stone.
“Apologies,” he said, “but we have little time and none for arguments.”
The steps shimmered pink, and letters appeared.
He released me. Sheathing the knife, he smiled. “It is a beautiful name and worthy of a queen.”
Karin reached the center of the labyrinth and opened the book to the binding spell.
I closed my eyes and felt my sisters’ hands, hot with my blood. Waves of their energy passed through me.
Jayce felt her sisters’ magic pour into her, but instead of wrenching free, she grasped the dark energy of the spring.
I could see the book in Karin’s hands, hear her speak the words. She, Jayce and I chanted in unison.
“Hear now the words of three sisters,” we said.
My scalp tingled.
“Of secrets we hid in the dark.”
Candles in the chandelier above burst into flame.
“The oldest of powers we invoke,” we said.
“Lenore, stop this,” the unseelie said.
Power whispered across my spine.
“Our great work of magic we three provoke,” we said.
The ground rumbled, splitting. Jayce staggered, but didn’t fall into the widening fissure.
“Remain here and rule in my place,” the queen whispered. “Both our worlds will be made right.”
The throne room spun, and I stood among the dying aspens.
The doctor leaned against a tree, her arms folded, and smiled. Steve Woodley lay at her feet. “I’m glad you’re here.” Her ice-blue tunic shimmered in the moonlight, her cap of gold and silver thread glimmering wetly.
“I don’t believe you.” I wanted to run, to hide. But there was no hiding in her kingdom.
She straightened off the tree trunk. “My knight thinks if he drags me back here, everything will return to normal.”
“And he’s wrong?”
“He’s probably right,” the unseelie said. “The Rose Rabbit usually is. He’s quite annoying that way. But there’s a better solution for us both. You can take my place.”
A dirt-covered hand burst from the crevice. Jayce reached for it, and her own hand passed through its flesh. Behind her, the FBI agent shouted.
“Why would I want to do that?” I asked.
“Let’s face it,” Toeller said, “you’ve never really fit into your world. I’ve never fit into mine. You’d be perfect here.”
I glanced at the ruined landscape and shuddered.
“Oh, you could fix that,” she said. �
�If you sat on my throne, this land would be yours to make as you wished. No more worries about what other people wanted or expected. No longer would you scrabble for work and money. You could read and write poetry to your heart’s content. You could make this land your poem. Imagine.”
And I did imagine. Verdant leaves whispered in the aspens. Birds soared above fields of rippling wildflowers. I smelled herbs and wild grasses, heard the rushing of many streams. The trees trembled, and green buds burst from their dried branches. Involuntarily, I stepped backwards, my heel twisting on a rock.
She laughed. “See how easy it is. All you need do is imagine, and you have plenty of imagination, Lenore.”
A world of my own. A world that I fit into because it was mine.
“You’ve never been at home there,” she said.
And she was right. The real world had never quite fit me. I’d spent my life escaping into books and the otherworld, half-living between in the world of spirits. “If it’s so wonderful, why did you leave?”
“I wanted to experience something else. Why settle for staying in one world when I can explore another?”
What would it be like to live in this place, to make it my own? I licked my lips. Connor might even like to come. And my sisters… Karin and Nick wouldn’t have to die. Maybe that was the solution, switching places and freeing us all.
“And would you leave me?” The Rose Rabbit emerged from the budding forest. The air around him shimmered, and he was no longer scarred and blond. He was Connor – tall and swarthy and in his deputy’s uniform.
“It’s a trick,” the unseelie said. “You can’t trust him.”
“She’s half-right,” he said. “It is a trick, a reminder. Your knight waits on the other side.”
“Is it true?” I asked him. “Could I fix this place?”
“Yes. But you do not belong here.”
“I’m not sure where I belong,” I said.
“Aren’t you?” he asked in Connor’s voice.
I touched my lips, remembering his kiss. Love in the messy real world was worth the risk – not just Connor’s, but my sisters, and the love I’d felt for Mike. I felt them all now, their energy glittering around me. Yes, I was willing. I’d take the world as it was, for all its challenges and its rewards.
And I was back in the throne room, the words dancing before me.
“On this night and on this hour,” our voices boomed together.
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