Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
Wonderland wasn’t anything like Sidney had imagined it would be. By the look on Sasha’s face, she would have imagined it to be some twisted nightmare realm, with death waiting for her around every corner.
Sure, it looked scary enough, with its wibbly-wobbly trees, and streams that stabbed their way through the dirt in sharp spirals.
At one point, Sidney was fairly certain she saw an insect that was actually a smaller-than-expected dragon chasing a larger-than-normal fly that was carved out of butter.
Dragonfly. Butterfly.
She had to laugh when she figured out the silliness.
That was after she had figured out how to get out of the room with the little door, of course. It’d been a while since she’d watched the cartoon—she’d never actually read the kid’s book—but the “Eat Me” cake and the “Drink Me” bottle weren’t easy to forget.
She’d had White Rabbit stuck in her head the entire time she’d been here. Which, now that she really thought about it? She wasn’t sure how long that really was.
Had she just arrived? Or been there for days?
There was a distinct possibility that she had no real memory of making her way through Wonderland. There way no way of really knowing if her memory of meeting the Cheshire Cat and the Caterpillar had actually happened or if it had just simply happened “off screen.”
She hated being in stories.
But there was one thing she was sure about.
Being Alice was a fucking blast.
Nothing made sense. Everything was a twisted word game, or pulled right out of a literal storybook—because that’s where she actually was—and that made everything so much fun.
If she could just talk circles around something, it just fucking worked.
And Sidney was in marketing.
Talking her way around things in circles without actually saying anything at all was her whole fucking livelihood.
“Really, a raven is like a writing desk, because in this day and age, if you found one in your home, you’re probably in bad need of upgrades to your house!
” She grinned, leaning back in her chair and holding up her teacup in the direction of the Mad Hatter.
“Seems to me like you need of new windows if you’ve got birds in your house. And who has writing desks anymore?”
His puzzled expression lasted a split second before he began to cackle wildly, applauding in glee. “Finally! An answer after all this time!” He paused. “I don’t know if it’s a good answer, but it’s an answer, so I’ll take it!”
The Mad Hatter was exactly what she would have expected.
Skinny, frazzled, and looked as though he had plugged himself into an electrical socket one too many times.
His eyes were two different colors—one green, one blue—and his hair was a tangled mess underneath a tall top hat that looked stitched together from several different hats of various felts and patterns.
As was his suit. Sidney couldn’t even identify what time period it was supposed to come from, as it had so many different pieces and patterns and colors, it was hard to figure out what it was originally intended to be.
So far today, she had been Big, she had been Small, she had talked to a grin without a cat and a cat without a grin, and now she was sitting across from a March Hare and Dormouse. She had talked to a White Rabbit wearing a waistcoat and who was Very Very Late.
And she was having the most fun she’d had in a very long time. Certainly since she’d been sucked into this terrible game with Vile, Virtue, and Sasha.
This was so much better than being stuck in Sherlock Holmes. And it felt so much safer than Peter Pan and Neverland had been.
Mostly because she knew that Virtue was the one controlling all of the characters around her—at least to some degree or another.
And also, because she wasn’t on some fucking quest. She didn’t have a mission. There wasn’t a plot.
At least, not one she was aware of.
She was just here, having a tea party, and eating cakes, with her new strange companions and laughing along with them.
The Dormouse was recanting some messed up poem about a Walrus and a Carpenter and the March Hare was busily trying to stack up all the mismatched teacups into one giant tower in the middle of the table.
But in the back of her mind, she couldn’t help but be worried about Sasha.
She hadn’t looked…okay, when she’d seen the portal to Wonderland open up. As if she’d seen something entirely different from what it had looked like to Sidney.
Or maybe she just knew what she was in for, being saddled with Vile. Who was probably, what, the Queen of Hearts? And that would make Sasha…who exactly…in this story?
She turned to the Mad Hatter. “Who serves the Queen of Hearts?”
“Oh! I know this one!” He slapped his leg. “Her servants! Not a terribly good riddle. Try harder, Alice!”
“Try harder! Try harder!” The Dormouse and the March Hare echoed.
“No, no, I mean—” Sidney laughed. “It wasn’t a riddle, it was a question. Who is her…assistant? Sidekick? Does she have a companion?”
“Well, there is the King of Hearts, and the Knave of Hearts, of course.” He tapped his chin. “Though I hear the Knave is going to be on trial soon! Ghastly business.” He shuddered dramatically.
The Hare and the Dormouse shuddered as well.
“Trial? For what?” Sidney frowned. If Sasha was the Knave of Hearts, that wasn’t going to go well. And it sounded like something Vile would do, if Vile was still angry at Sasha for the way things ended with the stupid Sherlock Holmes story.
“A scheme most terrible.” The Hatter leaned in, glancing left and right as if he was suddenly worried that others would hear him. Whispering loud enough that he was basically screaming, he added. “Theft!”
Sidney stared at him flatly and didn’t bother whispering. “Theft of what?”
“Tarts!” The Dormouse shouted. “The Queen’s tarts.”
“Shhh!” The Hatter waved his hands frantically. “Quiet! Lest you want to be brought in as a conspirator! Do you want to lose your head?”
The March Hare made a cutting gesture across his scrawny brown-and white, fur-covered throat with his fluffy thumb.
It really was odd, sitting around a table with talking animals.
Fun, but odd.
Rubbing the back of her neck, Sidney sighed. Great. Just great.
Sasha had just been cut to pieces in a Regency Romance of all things.
And now? Now she was going to be put on trial for tart theft and beheaded as the Knave of Hearts.
Which meant that it was up to Sidney to save her.
So much for there not being a fucking plot in this fucking story.
“Well, we can’t let that stand, can we?” She stood from the table. “We have to go put a stop to that and save the Knave of Hearts.” It seemed like something that would make sense to do in a story like this.
“W—what?” The Mad Hatter shrank in his chair. Quite literally, in fact, as Sidney was fairly certain that he was now at least ten percent smaller than he was a moment prior. “What do you mean, we can’t let that stand?”
“Think about it. How is the Knave meant to stand, if he doesn’t have a head?” She planted her hands on her hips. “We have to save him.” She paused. “Her.” She furrowed her brow. “Him.”
This was going to get confusing. Waving her hand, she dismissed the thought. “Whatever. We have to save the Knave.”
“The Queen of Hearts is quite awful, though…” the Mad Hatter picked at the cuff of his coat. “Quite awful and quite terrible and quite mean and quite quite.” He gestured wide with his hands, which were now back to their normal size.
The Queen of Hearts was typically depicted as being grossly unattractive in one way or another.
Poor Sasha.
She was definitely not having a good time of it at all. All Sidney could picture now was her locked up in some tower somewhere, being tortured by a bunch of sentient playing card guards while she awaited trial for a crime she may-or-may-not have committed before the story even began.
All because some psychopathic villain demigod had a grudge from two stories ago.
“I’m going.” She smiled. She didn’t want to. But she had to. That’s what sisters were for. “You can all come or not.”
The Hatter groaned, his shoulders slumping. “Fiiiine,” he whined loudly. “But you realize, this means we’re on an adventure. And adventures that come after tea usually mean trouble.”
“It’ll be fine. Besides, it’s before tea somewhere in the world, right?” She picked up the Dormouse and put the little thing on her shoulder. “And if an adventure after tea means trouble, than an adventure before tea is the opposite?”
“I. I suppose that’s true.” The Hatter cackled. “Then we should be absolutely fine, you’re right!”
She was the hero of the story, right? Vile might have strong-armed them all into this story, but it seemed she was in charge. And she, for once in her life, felt weirdly in her element.
Yeah. She was going to win.
The hero was going to win.
It was only Alice in Wonderland.
How bad could it get?
“Off with his head!”
Sasha stared numbly ahead at the throne room as Vile screamed for the fifth execution of the morning.
The Baker was dragged out by the guards, kicking and screaming, pleading for mercy. He was joining his friends the Candlestick Maker and the Butcher. Something about them all being in a tub.
“Funny story,” Vile, as the Queen of Hearts, propped his chin on his hand on the arm of his throne.
His throne was about ten times larger than Sasha’s as the Red King’s, but she really couldn’t have given a shit how big her stupid chair was.
She was too busy staring at the man getting dragged off screaming in horror and begging for his life.
And knowing precisely what kind of certain death at the end of the executioner’s axe awaited him.
“I said”—Vile poked her in the cheek—“Funny story.”
Sasha jolted. “Hm?” She glanced at him. “S—sorry. What?”
“That rhyme. Do you know how it goes?” He was wearing the same outfit that he wore the day before, save for the fact that he was now holding a walking stick that was also a scepter. The top of it was a large jewel in the shape of—yep—a heart.