Unhinged by A. G. Howard

Jeb glares down at Morpheus, who’s faded out again.

  “Hey.” Jeb pats his face, oddly reminiscent of when Morpheus did the same to him at the studio.

  Morpheus’s eyes flutter open.

  “She wants to heal you,” Jeb says. “Is it safe?”

  Morpheus grunts. “The stinger … my stomach … take it out first.” Another cough. “Drown it.”

  I start to work the buttons open on Morpheus’s black shirt, but Jeb brushes me aside and takes over.

  Morpheus places his hand on Jeb’s busy fingers, eyes opened to slits. “Ah, my pretty pseudo elf.” He takes a labored breath. “Is it time at last to express our unrequited feelings?”

  Jeb’s ears flush red. He’s about to retort when Morpheus groans, doubling over again. Biceps bulging, Jeb holds him flat to the bed so I can finish opening his shirt.

  There’s a puncture wound the size of a quarter on Morpheus’s abdomen. The black, inky poison seems to stem from the site. His blue magic blinks once and grows dim, as if defeated.

  I shudder.

  “Careful with that thing,” Jeb mutters.

  I nod, using a Kleenex off my nightstand to protect my fingers as I work the stinger from the wound. It wriggles in my hand as if trying to escape. Shuddering again, I toss it into a glass of water next to the tissue box. The stinger fizzes and drifts to the bottom, disintegrating within seconds. The black veins under Morpheus’s skin writhe wilder, as if they’re fighting to survive without their source. Morpheus’s eyes slam shut, and he grinds his teeth in agony.

  Unable to bear his pain any longer, I press my ankle to his fore-arm. Heat surges between us. The black veins slow their movements and fade until all that’s left is the puncture mark. His blue static reappears and pulses through the wound, leaving behind a silvery scar.

  I ride a wave of euphoria as Morpheus’s natural coloring comes back. He opens his eyes—alert and stronger by the second. He holds my gaze as I feel his forehead. His fever’s gone. Jeb’s watchful eye burns into my back, and I withdraw my hand.

  Morpheus snags my ankle before I can slide off the bed, thumb running across my wing tattoo. The touch sends a prickly sensation through my wing buds.

  “Moth,” he whispers soundlessly. The Morpheus I know has returned, teasing and taunting, reminding me of my vow.

  Jeb comes up behind me and pries Morpheus’s fingers free. “Hands off, owl bait.”

  The guys exchange scowls as I climb off the mattress with Jeb’s arm securely around my waist. It’s nice to see some things never change.

  Morpheus sits up, his wings unfurling around him. He stretches—languid and graceful—then drops his feet to the floor. Jewels sparkling green, he watches me as he rolls down his sleeve and buttons his shirt. “Thank you, Alyssa. And, Jebediah, I suppose we’re even now.”

  “Not even close,” Jeb says. “You brought Red here. And you’re going to help send her back.”

  I put my hand on Jeb’s chest. “Wait. First, tell us what happened with Sister Two.”

  Morpheus sighs. “It was going so well. She fell for my ruse and captured the cardboard man in my place.”

  Something clicks in my mind. “The Brandon Lee silhouette from the Crow shrine … of course.” I smirk. “Impressive.”

  Morpheus shrugs, though he’s obviously pleased with himself. “While she was busy reeling ‘me’ in, I transformed into a moth and rematerialized behind her to get the upper hand. I wrapped her in her own web and dragged her through a mirror and into the rabbit hole. She broke loose inside, turned on me.” He looks down at the scar on his abdomen, then secures the last few buttons over it. “Left me for dead.”

  “Yet you made it all the way back here,” I say.

  “I had good incentive.” Morpheus stands and straightens his shirt. “I was missing my car.”

  I bark a laugh, and Morpheus grins. Jeb watches the two of us.

  My momentary lapse into giddiness is short-lived as I sort through the implications of this new development. “Does this mean Sister Two is back in Wonderland now? She’s at her post?”

  That could solve everything. Maybe Red didn’t get to the restless souls in time.

  “I would like to think so,” Morpheus answers. “But we should keep our guard up. Especially you, Jebediah.”

  The door handle wiggles and we all freeze. Mom appears at the opening and we breathe a collective sigh of relief.

  Tightening the belt on her robe, she looks Morpheus up and down and he returns her appraisal. It’s obvious there’s still no love lost between them.

  “Allie deciphered her first mosaic,” Mom says to him. “Red is on her way to the human realm to attack prom. We have a plan to stop her. I’ll fill you in after I get dressed.”

  Morpheus glances at me and Jeb. “How deliciously dangerous.”

  “This isn’t a game, Morpheus.” Mom gives him an annoyed glare and turns her attention to Jeb. “Could you help me carry Thomas to our bedroom? He’s not asleep all the way, but he’s groggy enough.”

  “Is he going to be okay?” I ask.

  Mom’s expression softens. “The pills are harmless. He’ll be safest this way.”

  I nod, though it’s hard to stomach treating him like a pawn.

  Jeb starts after her as she heads down the hall. He pauses at the door and gives Morpheus a meaningful glare. “Mind your manners, bug-eyes.”

  “Always.” Morpheus tips a nonexistent hat.

  Clenching his jaw, Jeb steps out.

  The minute he’s gone, I back up to the wall, limping unevenly with one boot on and one off.

  Morpheus watches me like a predator, smiling. “Trying to put some distance between you and your feelings, little plum?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Mmm. You lie with such finesse. Becoming more of a netherling every day.” He strides toward me, as stealthy and menacing as a black panther. He props his forearm against the wall over my head and, wings curled around me, cuts off my surroundings. “I looked inside your heart after our melding. I saw how worried you were.”

  I clamp my mouth shut, hoping that was all he saw.

  His gaze dips down to my necklaces. His features harden as he loops his pinky through the ring. “This will never do. You obviously haven’t told our pseudo elf about the vow you made to me.”

  Now more than ever, I can’t give Morpheus what he’s asking. My mind searches for a way to reach his sympathetic side. I know he has one. I’ve seen it. “I learned something about you today.”

  That wins his full attention. He draws me into the fathomless depths of his eyes. “What would that be?”

  “Every time you try to do the right thing, you get screwed.”

  My observation is met with silence. He scoops up my other necklace, closing the key, heart, and ring within his fist.

  I take a shallow breath, heartbeat stumbling as I try to read him. “So it’s a battle to make that choice, yeah?” I ask.

  Morpheus offers a smug smile. “A battle would mean I have to care. I’ve ceased caring.”

  “Your actions say otherwise. I know what you did at Butterfly Threads. Sister Two came into the storeroom while I was getting dressed in the bathroom. You lured her out to the main floor in moth form to keep Jeb safe.”

  Morpheus fidgets. “I was just having a bit of fun with the wretch.”

  “What about what you did for my mom? Even though she betrayed you, you never once told Sister Two that my dad was her stolen dream-boy.”

  “I made a life-magic vow.”

  “No. I asked my mom about that vow. The wording never specified protecting Dad’s identity.”

  He looks down, as if searching for some rebuttal.

  I lift his chin with my fingertip. “I’m trying to tell you that if you keep following the good impulses, no matter how insignificant they might seem, I won’t let you down like the others. I’ll come back to you.” I bite my tongue, careful not to show all of my hand. He can’t know I’ve witnesse
d our future, only that I’m keeping a tally of his past.

  Morpheus laughs. “Come back to me?”

  “Someday.”

  “Perhaps I won’t want you then. Perhaps I’ll tire of waiting.”

  I swallow my pride. “Then it will be my turn to win you. I’m up for the challenge.”

  His sneer is sardonic if not impressed. “Of course you are.” He pulls me closer with my necklace charms, tightening his fist around them. “But I’m not surrendering our day together after we defeat Red just because of a few pretty words and empty promises.”

  I bite my tongue, tempering my impulse to lash out. That would only feed his ego.

  “Then you’re not doing the right thing,” I say evenly.

  He pouts. “No? Because my good impulses are telling me that the right thing is to make you honor your vow. You’re just going to have to bite the bullet and tell your mortal toy about our accord.”

  I slap his wings in an attempt to get out. They don’t budge. “You make me crazy!”

  His eyes light up, glittering onyx against a backdrop of violet jewels. “And you inflame my soul.” He squeezes my necklaces, blue light pulsing from inside his fingers. “Ask yourself, Your Majesty. Are you truly angry at me, or at the fact that your little ruse to sweet-talk me backfired?”

  I blink away the burning sensation under my lids. “It wasn’t a ruse. Everything I said is true.”

  He huffs and attempts a glare. But underneath, I see the same doubt and vulnerability I heard in his voice when he sent me to the train without him. I also see something more: a damaged and enchanted fairy who pushed aside his selfishness and faced the bandersnatch for me, who looked a train dead-on, who put himself between Jeb and Sister Two, and who saved my dad from having his life sucked away.

  I’m overwhelmed with compassion and gratitude and another emotion I don’t dare put a name to. I have to convince him that there’s a place for him in my heart, too.

  Just not yet.

  I glance at the wings covering me, at his body, immovable in front of me, then rise up on tiptoe and take his smooth face in both my hands. He tenses for an instant—suspicious—but relaxes slowly, each muscle surrendering bit by bit as I stroke his jaw.

  “I’m just asking you to wait a little while,” I whisper. “Isn’t forever worth that?” Not giving him the chance to answer, I press my mouth to his cheek, a promise for someday. One pulse of my lips for my childhood friend, and one for the man I’m only starting to know.

  Morpheus gentles beneath me, for once letting me take the lead. His free hand rests in the hair at the nape of my neck, the other grows hot where he holds my pendants.

  It’s a peck on the cheek, innocent and heartfelt, until he turns his face without warning, catching my mouth under his. His lips are warm and silky, flavored with tobacco. He groans and sinks into me, sweeping me into the current of his passion.

  Before I start to drown, I push him away, my lips throbbing and speechless. His jewels are like fireworks, a prismatic array of emotions. He studies me with astonishment, so like the boy from my dreams those rare times I defeated him in a game or a challenge. His wings are lax, no longer a wall around us.

  A muffled curse comes from the doorway. I jerk my head to find Jeb there, blood drained from his face. His gaze is fierce yet dejected, a deep and gut-twisting wound I haven’t seen since his dad was alive and tormenting him.

  My stomach falls. “Jeb.”

  He doesn’t yell. He doesn’t even attack Morpheus. What he does is so much worse.

  He leaves.

  “Jeb, wait!” I feel as if my insides have been gored—a pain so powerful my legs give out.

  Morpheus’s fist at my sternum holds me pinned to the wall, keeps me from going after him.

  “There’s a pity.” Morpheus glides his free knuckles down my cheek. “I am sorry he had to be hurt, luv. But it’s better this way. It would’ve driven him mad to give you up to me for a day. Things would never have been the same between you after that. And he could’ve been killed tonight. You probably just saved his life.”

  My cheeks flame. “No. This isn’t how it’s supposed to end. This time was supposed to belong to us!”

  Morpheus releases me and steps back. “Time. You’ll have no such constraints in Wonderland. Let that be your silver lining. Now pull yourself together. We must prepare for Red.”

  On the way out, he stops and strokes the pearls on my prom dress where it hangs on the chair. He smiles tenderly, and I know he’s thinking of Ivory’s vision—of a wedding and a child with hair like his and eyes like mine, who will bring dreams to Wonderland and make stealing human children obsolete.

  With a final glance at me, Morpheus leaves.

  I slide to the floor. Warmth radiates between my collarbones where my necklaces glow, bright blue and hot from Morpheus’s magical grip. The key, heart, and ring are melded together—a scrap heap of metal as useless as any explanation I could offer Jeb.

  I never saw it coming. It was me all along. Me who would betray myself in the worst possible way.

  It’s not so easy to pull myself together.

  I make us late leaving the house, and by the time we stop off at my dad’s sporting goods store for some supplies Jeb wrote down—two sets of walkie-talkies, ten soccer-ball carrying nets, four pairs of night-vision hunting goggles, and two paintball guns, along with a couple of boxes of white and yellow paintballs—Mom and I pull up in Underland’s lot only thirty minutes before prom is scheduled to start. The student council and some chaperones have already arrived. There are at least a dozen cars here, and one of them is Taelor’s. This night just gets better and better.

  The activity center is a huge underground cave with a rock ceiling stretching as high as forty-eight feet in places. There’s a ground-level entrance outside: a small structure that looks like a dome with the letters U-N-D-E-R-L-A-N-D blinking in neon orange, red, and purple above the gym-style double doors. Once through the doors, a ramp curves down to the main floor where the glow-in-the-dark activities are laid out: a skateboard bowl, a miniature-golf area, an arcade, and a raised café. There’s also a place for dancing, about the size of the school gym, with wall-to-wall mirrors. It’s an improvement on the gym at school, since in lieu of traditional lighting, it uses black lights illuminating fluorescent murals. The perfect setting for fairy tales and masquerades.

  Underland’s rear doors open to a small locker room where employees store backpacks, jackets, and personal items while working. It also has a freight elevator used for carrying down weekly shipments of food and supplies.

  That’s where Jeb is waiting to let us in. We’re going to take the elevator so we can enter behind the café and blend in easier.

  Jeb’s still helping in spite of how I broke his heart. Not just because his sister could be in danger but because that’s what Jeb does. He protects the vulnerable.

  Just like I was supposed to protect him, and failed.

  I drive Morpheus’s Mercedes into the back parking lot with Mom riding shotgun and Morpheus fluttering in moth form outside my window. He’s attending tonight as the British exchange student. Taelor will be ecstatic. Not only has “M” returned, but Jeb and I are on the outs.

  Best prom ever.

  Under the black lights, Morpheus’s true appearance will look like part of a costume. In keeping with that, I’ve let my wings out again. Mom helped me wrap periwinkle netting around their base and pinned it in front with a sparkly brooch, like a shawl, to camouflage how they protrude from my skin. If I wasn’t so crushed over Jeb, I might actually get a kick out of showing off my wings and eye patches.

  We park next to Jeb’s motorcycle. The sight of it tears my heart a little more.

  He came early like we’d originally planned and had free run of the place before anyone arrived. He messaged me with: Nothing suspicious. Curt, concise, and emotionless. I deleted it. It had no place among the flirty, heartfelt, and romantic texts that make up the rest of his thread on
my phone.

  The wrist corsage stares up at me from atop my periwinkle glove, a taunting reminder of the ring he offered along with the rest of his life. The ring that’s now fused to the heart pendant and key. I clutch the metal jumble at my neck, then tuck it under my netted shawl.

  I would cry, but this is so beyond tears. My eye sockets feel hot and scratchy, as if I poured desert sand into them, then shoved my eyeballs back in.

  Suck it up, Alyssa. The voice in my head could easily be Morpheus’s, but it’s mine. I secure my air-brushed half mask with silver fringe in place, tying the band around my head.

  Mom and I step out of the car. The rear parking lot is abandoned except for us. With one press of the key remote, the doors glide down. A cool gust flaps my wings and my gown’s scalloped hem. I bend to adjust my blue-gray platform boots, working part of the hem free from a buckle.

  The storm from earlier has passed, leaving a peachy orange sunset. The gravel shimmers like neon sequins, but that’s only on the surface. There’s something dark, ancient, and menacing buried under this sleepy realm, and the humans can’t see it.

  The bugs are back—no longer tossing out warnings but offering support. Their white noise unites into one whisper:

  We’re here, Alyssa. Keep our world safe. If you need us … call.

  Mom comes over to my side of the car to center my tiara and webbed veil. She smooths the silver wig Jenara lent me so it falls to my hips in straight, glossy strands. My real hair is tucked under an itchy wig cap.

  Jeb told Jenara we were planning to attend prom incognito because he didn’t want me to miss it, pretending everything is okay with us. Jen was thrilled to go along with our charade and also brought over a backless cocktail dress for Mom, at my request.

  The tea-length hem flatters her, as do the feminine layers of blushed chiffon that match the wispy cap sleeves. Jen helped her braid strands of hair at her temples and clipped mauve rhinestone barrettes in place so her hair glistens like her skin. She looks stunning. I wish Dad could see her.

  Before we left the duplex, I put his truck in the garage next to Gizmo so it would look like no one was home. The thought of him being there alone makes me sad all over again.