Page 3 of Dark & Darker Still (Vane and Roc: Origin)

Three

Alice

Once I’m alone, I collapse into the wingback chair. The crushed velvet smells faintly of Vane, like clove oil and burning tobacco and whisky.

I stretch over the arm, reaching for my cigarettes on the nearest end table, dropped near a stack of Vane’s books and one of Roc’s trinkets from their past life among the Darkland elite.

I light a cigarette, exhale. Smoke ribbons in the rays of moonlight spilling in through the five large windows at the front of the apartment I share with the Madd brothers.

I’ve been here nearly four years now. It’s as much my home as Wonderland was, but somehow I still feel like a guest. Vane and Roc owned the building long before I arrived, but if I were looking for apartments, this is the kind I would have immediately fallen in love with.

The building itself is a Noir Revival style, with three floors, each one stretching high with twelve-foot ceilings and tall, arched windows.

Decorative brackets hold up the roof, and while you’d have to be on the third floor to notice the detail, each bracket is hand-carved with skulls, the jaws yawning open as if they’re screaming.

The windows are my favorite. Iron muntins between each delicate pane of glass make a grid on the lower half, while the iron in the arched upper half forms a pattern much like the sun’s rays. It’s a contrast I love, the symbolism of it all, both light and dark.

The windows overlook Butcher’s Row, named as such because it was once the only place to buy meat on the southern end of Darkland.

As the city grew, and townhomes and merchant shops gobbled up cattle lands, the butchers moved further north along with the ranchers. But the name remains. And honestly, what better name than Butcher’s Row in a part of town known for making people bleed?

My first night in the Umbrage, I was robbed by a nine-year-old boy with a switchblade and hungry eyes. He left a cut on my arm, my pockets empty, and my ego bruised.

I never made that mistake again.

I take another hit, head lulled back, and close my eyes.

The spirits are loud tonight.

Like a dozen church bells all ringing a different tune.

It’s a full moon, the kind that in Wonderland would have been called a Heart Moon because of its red hue.

The dead are always louder on a full moon.

It might be part of the reason why I provoked Vane. Distraction is always better than the alternative.

“She wonders why I left…”

“He murdered me!”

“Tell him I love him.”

The different voices wend in and around each other like wind through a forest.

They always have unfinished business. But don’t we all?

Over the years, I’ve gotten much better at putting up boundaries between me and the dead, but in the Seven Isles, I can’t see them.

I can only hear them, unlike in Wonderland where spirits roam the city streets and the countryside hills endlessly searching for something they cannot touch and sometimes cannot name.

I didn’t realize how much of a distraction they were until I left Wonderland. The Seven Isles is like a vacation compared to my home world.

I don’t ever want to go back.

And yet, on a full moon, when the voices rise to a cacophony, I am reminded of the strain. My head pounds and my eyes feel swollen even though I haven’t cried in months.

Reaching over to the couch where I tossed my jacket, I grab it and yank it onto my lap. Tucked into the inner pocket is an eight-piece newsboy cap constructed of gray tweed.

It was custom-made for me by the Madd Hatter himself, and imbued with a unique power, a fact that I’ve told no one, not even Vane and Roc.

I slip the hat on, and immediately my body blips out of sight right along with the cigarette.

I don’t know why the Madd Hatter made me a hat that turns the wearer invisible. Did he know that some days I can’t bear the thought of being perceived? That some days I don’t want to exist?

I never asked him, and he never told me.

But it was the perfect gift.

Because when I disappear, even the spirits stop talking to me.

I can just be as I am, just thought and energy and silence.

With no one to hear them, the spirits soon fade away.

I may not see them haunting the Umbrage, but I can feel them, and so I know the moment I’m alone.

The air is still. The room softer. And the chill in my fingertips is finally gone.

I’m tired and cranky, but I promised my best friend, Jade, that I’d join her for a drink before the night was over.

I come down to the Den with my hair combed and my clothing smoothed over. I don’t think I look like I’ve just been fucked by a Madd brother, but Jade won’t care. She knows a lot of the details of my private life, Madd brothers included.

As I cross the main bar room, I purposefully don’t scan the crowd looking for Vane. I don’t want him getting the idea I care what he’s doing even though I do.

I find Jade at our table next to the half-circle booth of the Madd brothers. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the chairs are full, but the booth is only half occupied. Roc laughs at something someone says and the rest of the table joins him.

Vane isn’t there. I am always distantly aware of him in the room and I sense him nearby, but I’m not about to scan the Den looking for him like some lonely little puppy.

I join Jade, who is sitting with our friend, Salty, who we would consider one of our best if it wasn’t for his choice in work.

He’s a guard in the royal palace and is making his way up in rank.

He wants to either become captain someday or join the ranks of the Shadow Order, Darkland’s most elite faction of soldiers. Currently he’s a sergeant.

We’re all originally from Wonderland—Jade a Diamond, me a Spade, and Salty a Club. It automatically makes us kin, in some way. So, Jade and I love Salty, but we don’t necessarily trust him. At least not like we would a best friend.

I drop into the chair across from Jade and next to Salty. His long blond hair is left loose around his shoulders, with several strands hanging along his face. When I first met him years ago, his hair was buzzed. I think that might have been his last haircut.

He’s wearing a plain black t-shirt and black tactical pants. The shirt is loose around his chest, but tight on his biceps.

I didn’t know Salty when we were in Wonderland, and sometimes I wonder if I had, if my story would have turned out differently.

He’s easy to be around, easy to talk to, and extremely good-looking.

In Wonderland, Clubs and Spades were allies.

It wouldn’t have been out of the question for someone like me to find themselves betrothed to someone like Salty.

Not that he’s ever confirmed his rank or title in Wonderland.

I knew most of the nobles of the Club court and I don’t remember him, but he has a court card, which means he was either born to a powerful family or he stole it from one. Either option says something about him.

In Wonderland, only those with power, status, or wealth possess court cards—magical cards with unique powers that also act as keys to travel through the looking glass. Though you can only travel if you have a wild card, or a full court—a queen of diamonds, hearts, clubs, and spades.

Salty possessing a court card is about the only thing I know about his Wonderland history.

Most of us displaced by the Suit War don’t discuss our lives in Wonderland.

We don’t talk about what we left or what we had to do to get here.

But most know of the Spade family. It’s hard to escape what my parents did and what it got us.

Thankfully, Jade and Salty have judged me on my own and not on the actions and reputations of my family.

“Took you long enough,” Jade says and slides a glass to me. It’s one of the highball glasses rimmed in sugar, with a bright red drink inside and two slices of orange floating among the ice.

“A Joker Sunrise?” I ask.

“Of course,” she answers.

“You know me so well.”

I take a sip. The sugar hits me first, then the citrusy, sweet of the cocktail mix, then the heat of the rum.

Joker Sunrises make me instantly happier.

Jade is truly the best of best friends. From the moment I met her, I felt at ease.

There’s something practical and sturdy about her.

If you’re wrong, she will tell you so, but in a very straightforward way.

If you’re right, she’ll clap you on the back and if you’re down, she’ll find a way to bring you up.

Everything about her is honest. You always know where you stand with her.

As long as I’ve known her, she’s worked as the right-hand woman to Warren Ashmoth, the wealthy importer and exporter who owns South Sea Conveyance.

They’re secretly hooking up. Have been for over a year.

The only part about her life she’s not forthcoming about.

Warren wants to make it official. Jade is still unsure if it’s serious, even though he sends her a dozen roses every single Sunday morning, and every time he walks in the room, her eyes light up.

They are in love. The real kind of love that sinks into your belly and crackles like lightning.

Jade leans into me and several of her braids slide over her shoulder and swing behind her.

Two of the braids have wooden beads tied into them, the wood carved with Xs to ward off evil spirits.

Jade first settled in Summerland when she crossed over, specifically the southern tip where carvings, in beads or trinkets or doorframes, is a common practice to protect the spirit and the home.

I once asked her if she thought they worked and she told me it didn’t matter if they did, that the practice itself gave her comfort.

I’ve never seen or heard an evil spirit.

Most I’ve encountered are neutral, or as neutral as a mortal spirit can be with their trauma and their fears and their hopes and their worries.

So maybe there’s something to the extra protection.

Maybe Jade’s practice, and the practice of others in the Umbrage, are powerful enough to protect us all.

“Salty was just telling me some interesting info,” Jade says, lowering her voice. “Something you’ll most definitely want to know.”

I raise my brows at Salty across the table. “What kind of info?”

Salty leans in too. The three silver bracelets on his left wrist slide forward, chiming together. He’s got a good foot on both of us, so he dominates the space quickly, his black shirt bunching up around his broad shoulders. “Vane and Roc were at the palace today.”

I’ve known they’ve been working on a deal to take over Caligo and that the deal involved the royal family since the unfortunate, sudden passing of the entire Caligo family put control of the harbor into the hands of the palace.

Vane and Roc were not the royal family’s first choice. They were stripped of their titles, after all, and are now considered mob bosses—impossible to trust, hard to predict.

“Not necessarily clandestine info,” I say, slightly bored.

“No.” Salty gets a little closer. “But would you know…the Duke of Darkland was there as well.”

I pull back, frowning. “Why would the duke join in negotiations over the control of a harbor? He has no stake in imports and exports. None of his businesses sell goods and?—”

High-pitched laughter sounds from the billiards room. The kind that scratches against your eardrums and makes your molars clench.

I know that laughter.

It belongs to the daughter of the Duke, Lady Genevieve.

I twist in my chair and glance over my shoulder. I can just make out Vane’s silhouette through the murky glass of the billiards room…with Gen snuggled in close to his side.

My gaze snaps to Roc. He’s looking right at me, his mouth set in a grim line.

Jabberwockies have heightened senses, including hearing, and though the Joker’s Den is full of conversation, laughter, music and the clatter of glasses, I know he heard our conversation.

I know that he knows that I know what the duke’s attendance meant. What’s the best way to test loyalty? To intertwine your assets. And sometimes, there is no greater asset than a son or a daughter.

Blood rushes through my ears.

My chair scrapes over the hardwood floor as I shove it back.

Roc is on his feet in a second. “Al,” he says, a warning, a command.

But I’m not listening. I’m already racing for the door.