Page 4 of Dark & Darker Still (Vane and Roc: Origin)

Four

Alice

I don’t think about which direction I’m running when I burst out of the Joker’s Den and into the alley behind it, but I end up in Wolbridge Graveyard on the western edge of the Umbrage.

I can’t really be surprised.

Death has always been a comfort to me, and because I am quick to anger and quick to run away, I often find myself here looking for solace among the moss-covered granite headstones, the old oak trees, and the dead.

I did, however, forget it was a full moon.

When I come to a stop beside the Wolbridge Family Mausoleum, the voices catch up to me.

There are so many, my head immediately begins to pound.

“Fuck. Fuck off.”

There are several winding paths through the graveyard, with three of them leading to entrances.

I check my position and decide the nearest entrance is to my left and start heading that way at a brisk pace.

But I only manage to take a few steps before a hand, all bones and tattered cloth, is yanking me to the ground.

“Absolutely the fuck not,” I tell it and shake it off. “Go back to the Underland. I mean… fuck . Die , my friend. Tonight is not your night for resurrection.”

The hand, protruding from a lump of grass and dirt in front of a weathered headstone, goes limp, then sinks back into the earth.

The Seven Isles doesn’t have a collective term for the place the dead go.

Not like Wonderland. But the term Underland is seared into my brain and I’m not sure I could call it anything else.

It’s just that the dead here in the Seven Isles don’t always recognize the name, and so the commands go ignored.

I don’t really know where the dead of the Seven Isles go when they cross over, and when I’ve asked them, they’ve had no name for it. Those of us from Wonderland go to the Underland when we die, regardless of where we are when we stop breathing.

Back on my feet, I hurry along the path, careful not to tread near the graves.

“Al! Not the fucking graveyard!”

Roc’s voice filters above the din of the dead.

I stop. Sigh.

“Out of all the places,” he says with a grumble.

I turn to him. The shadows of the oak tree stretch across the path behind me.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I shout.

“He was supposed to tell you.”

Vane.

He had all the opportunity. We were alone, fucking in our apartment. He could have told me when he cornered me in the living room. He could have told me when he was balls deep inside of me. He could have told me after he made me come in his favorite wingback chair.

But he didn’t.

I can guess as to the reasons. There would be at least a dozen.

But none of them matter. He let me figure it out in front of my friends.

“Why?” I ask as Roc gets closer. He’s taking a drag on a cigarette, his head bowed forward, the smoke spinning behind him.

If you were to analyze my relationship with each of the Madd brothers, it would be obvious that my relationship with Roc is better.

We don’t fight, not like Vane and me. He tells me everything I want to know and sometimes the things I don’t just to make me laugh.

Sometimes he surprises me with flowers or jewelry or a trinket he found in some shop somewhere.

He smiles more than Vane. He loves to meander and will do so at midnight through graveyards or at noon through museums. If I drink too much and end up puking in the toilet, he’ll gladly hold my hair back and then fetch me aspirin and cold water to wash it down.

The only problem is, Roc will never commit to a relationship, which means I never get all of him. Not like I do with Vane.

When I get all of Vane, even as rare as it is, it’s like an ocean wave dragging me under. The way he overwhelms me makes me feel like I am living and dying at the same time.

It’s addictive. A high I’m always chasing.

All of that is about to change, though.

Roc comes to a stop a few feet from me. He curls his finger over the cigarette, finishing another drag. The glow of the burning ember highlights his otherworldly beauty in the middle of the graveyard beneath the glowing Heart Moon.

I should want Roc more. If I were a math person like Jade, the numbers would add up perfectly.

When he pulls the cigarette from his mouth, the smoke curls out, then gets sucked back in, down, down into his lungs.

“You should have told me. You know he wasn’t going to.”

Roc exhales and the smoke plumes into the night. “Maybe you’re right.”

“It’s almost like he wants to humiliate me.”

“Don’t be so dramatic.”

“My friends knew about it before I did! Do you know how horrible it is to find out that way?”

He shrugs. “I don’t have friends, so no.”

“Roc.”

“Al.”

“Now who’s being dramatic?”

He grins at me. “What if I told you?—”

A figure covered in clumps of dirt and draped in holey cotton slams into Roc, swiping him from my line of vision.

“Christ,” Roc mutters, now on the ground a good six feet from where he was a moment ago. There’s a corpse on top of him. Judging by the style of clothing and the desiccated flesh, the man’s been dead at least seventy-five years.

“This is why you don’t come to the graveyard when you’re in a mood,” Roc shouts, fighting off the corpse.

“It wasn’t planned.”

Roc tosses the man back and he lands in the pathway, legs folded at an odd angle, his head, maybe too heavy for what little muscle he has, hangs forward, bobbing like he’s drunk.

“Back to bed,” I tell him.

“Unnnngghhhh,” he mutters.

“I command you to return to your grave.”

He manages to get on his knees and crawls across the two-track, over the mossy grass, then wiggles his way back down the hole he crawled from.

“Come on, Al.” Roc dusts off his clothes. “How about we get you out of here. I’ll treat you to a chocolate croissant.”

“Take me for a walk,” I counter.

“Of course.”

“To Lainey’s?” I add.

I haven’t seen her in weeks. They forbade me from visiting her while they worked on the Caligo deal. She’s technically hidden away in a safe house and we try not to expose her if we can help it and the Caligo deal had a lot of eyes on us. Now, I realize, for more reasons than one.

“Fine,” Roc says.

“Yay!” I lunge at him and wrap my arms around his neck. “Oh gods, you smell like the dead.” I quickly back off, nose wrinkled.

“Thanks to you.”

I flutter my eyelashes innocently. “You know how my power is on a full moon. I’m just a wee little girl, too powerful for her own good.”

“Too bratty for her own good.” He straightens his jacket. “But in all seriousness, Alice, darling, keep fucking around, and someone will find out about your power and they’ll use you up until there’s nothing left just like the Queen of Hearts.”

This is the reason why no one knows I can command the dead.

Vane and Roc both decided it was in my best interest to keep that part a secret so no one in the Lorne Court would take advantage of me.

In Wonderland, Spades are known to have a connection to the Underland, but my power is unique.

Not even my parents could command the dead.

Though “command” is a bit of a stretch. I don’t use the power, so it tends to get away from me when the veil between the living and the dead stretches too thin.

But there are things even Vane and Roc don’t know. They think the Underland is an abstract idea, more myth than reality. They don’t know that when I was ten years old, I accidentally found myself wandering the Underland, and that it was as real as the earth I walk on now.