Page 29 of Dark & Darker Still (Vane and Roc: Origin)

Twenty-Eight

Days Later

Roc

At the end of an alley, just off Wilcox Avenue on the northwest end of the Umbrage, sits a warehouse. Tucked in the back of the warehouse is a full-sized looking glass with an ornate gilded frame.

Vane and I stand in front of it now, our reflections looking back.

We were just children when we left Wonderland and came through this glass. Now we are broken men.

Vane lights a cigarette. I fall back into an old wooden chair and pull out a flask, taking a long swig.

“Do you think he’ll come?” Vane asks as he snaps his lighter closed with a flick of his wrist.

“Lainey was his favorite,” I say. “He’ll come.”

But we wait. We wait for hours.

Just before sunset, when the light is both sharp and dull, the door opens.

The warehouse is long and narrow, with several bookcases up front, and aisles and aisles of stacked crates and draped furniture.

We hear his steps first. There is a slow, lazy gait to him, as if he is never in a hurry to get where he’s going, as if he and time are disconnected.

When he comes around a shelf and into the fading light of day, he stops, takes a drag on a cigarette rolled in black paper.

He always did love his novicii cigarellos. The smoke smells sweet and spicy, like licorice and cloves.

A black velvet low-top hat sits on his head, dark hair sticking out from beneath the brim. Trapped behind the silk band circling the crown of the hat is a Wonderland wild card—the only one in existence.

“We weren’t sure you’d come,” Vane says.

Our uncle steps forward and comes to a stop in front of the looking glass. He says nothing and takes another pull on his cigarello. Smoke curls in the light spilling through the nearest window.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen Uncle Madd, better known as the Madd Hatter.

But nothing about him has changed. He still looks roughly the same age, mid-thirties now.

In truth, he’s probably several hundred years old.

He’s the older brother to our father and while dear old dad never told us his exact age, he implied on several occasions that he was older than the Age of Spades which took place two and a half centuries ago.

“We think she went through just a few days ago,” I say.

“She take the hat?” he asks.

For as long as I’ve known Alice, she’s kept the eight-piece hat close but always refused to wear it.

I had suspected our uncle had made it for her.

It wasn’t until Vane told me it had invisibility powers that my suspicions were confirmed.

All this time, she had a hat that gave her the power to eavesdrop whenever she liked.

It’s made me question everything I’ve ever said.

It doesn’t excuse what she did, but it certainly makes more sense now that I have more context.

I’m almost positive she was in the alley the night she and Vane had an altercation in the Joker’s Den.

She was always brash, reckless. She likely heard Vane dismissing her importance and decided to take it out on us.

Why she fucked with my watch and not his, I will never know.

But it doesn’t fucking matter now. What’s done is done.

“She left the palace with the hat in hand,” Vane answers.

“Rumor has it a palace guard now owns it,” I say.

“We think she bartered it for a card,” Vane adds. “So, it’s likely it’s on this side.”

Uncle Madd nods. He captures the cigarello between the bite of his teeth and then reaches out for the mirror. When his fingers touch the glass, it ripples like water.

He grabs the cigarello and exhales. When the smoke hits the mirror, it bounces back, the glass solid again.

“You really want her dead?” he asks.

“Lainey is gone because of Al,” I say, my voice catching. “She deserves whatever she gets.”

“Make her suffer,” Vane adds. “Make it hurt.”

Madd laughs, a low rumble in his chest. “When I catch her, she’ll beg for death.”

He drops the cigarello, exhales a breath of smoke and steps through the glass.