The Hidden Library Page 15

  I hated that he put those things in print.

  I thought of all that time Jim and I spent together, when we both ran away from a society that persecuted the both of us. He was kind, and funny, and loyal, and his heart was too big for those assholes.

  Katrina won in the end. Eventually, I lost any kind of urge to go back to 1876/96TWA-TS. I wanted nothing more to do with it, even when Brom eventually came to believe it would do more good than harm to set this all behind me.

  And yet, here I am. In a jail cell, no less, having done exactly what my mother feared I would have done all those years before.

  I swear, Katrina, I did my best to forget 1876/96TWA-TS. I really did.

  I force myself to think about other things, lest everything turns red once more. I think about things that will most likely not matter to me soon. Things like finding Todd and extracting payment for what he’s done to my family. I think about who could be in charge, and why they are deleting Timelines. I hope my brother has found whatever miracle drugs I told him about, and that my father will be healed. That my brother might be healed. I think about how funny it is that, after years of searching for her, I actually found Alice—only to fall in love with her.

  “Son?”

  I tilt my head toward the bars, expecting to see the sheriff but find Judge Thatcher instead.

  I nearly laugh. Justice is a funny thing, especially here in the South. People are always complaining about justice in the modern-day world, but they don’t know how good they really have it. And now here is Becky’s father, Sawyer’s father-in-law, and he’s going to make sure I pay for what I did.

  I can beat the shit out of a man like Tom Sawyer, and the town goes crazy. Jim is horrifically murdered for no reason other than the color of his skin and nobody says a peep. What the hell kind of world is this?

  Purgatory, I think. Hell.

  “Son,” he says again, “I’ve had a talk with the sheriff.”

  I’m not your son, I want to tell him.

  “We’ve agreed it’s best if you are on your way and leave town immediately.”

  That gets my attention. I roll to my side and sit up.

  “Becky says it was all a big misunderstanding—”

  A big misunderstanding?!

  “And Tom has been beating himself up pretty bad all these years, knowing he done wrong by you.”

  By me?!

  “Neither of them want this to be a sore spot between you all anymore. I’m just gonna need you to promise me, son, that when you leave, you won’t be coming back. I know you’re probably worried about following through on the widow’s wishes, but be rest assured I’ll personally take care of it all for you.”

  A sore spot?!

  I stand up and make my way over to where he’s standing, just beyond the bars. Through the windows on the far side of town, I can see that the sun is rising. There’s no snow, but I can only imagine how cold it is.

  “A man died,” I say quietly. Angrily. “More than that, many men died—and are still dying.”

  “War is brutal. No doubt about that. We’ve got families who have been gutted, fighting on both sides. People are fighting right now and dying to set these things right. But this anger you have toward Tom—none of this is gonna bring Jim back, son. None of it. All it brings about is sadness and the past and a lifetime of regret.”

  He could be my fucking shrink. “You think I should just forget what he’s done?”

  The Judge looks tired. “Now, I never said that. Huck, one of the things I’ve always admired about you is that you always knew who you were, and you believed in what you believed and you came to those decisions on your own. Tom ain’t like that. You left, and it’s obvious you got yourself an education. From what I hear, you got yourself a good job and a good lady. You expanded your horizons, son. Tom hasn’t.” He sighs. “Tom is, in many ways, still that boy you once knew. His horizons have remained limited. He’s . . .” The Judge shakes his head. “Now, I love my daughter, and I love her husband, but even I can admit that he ain’t the most selfless creature out there. What he did was wrong. He knows what he did was wrong. Your fists ain’t gonna bring Jim back, Huck. All they’re gonna do is keep you angry and miserable. Moving on will, though. Moving forward and making damn sure things change.”

  Before I can say anything, he removes the sheriff’s keys and unlocks the cell.

  “I think a wind of change is coming,” he says quietly. “War changes everything.” Glancing down at my hands, he adds, “You’ll want to get that checked out whenever you go to where you’re goin’.”

  A coat is passed over to me, alongside my gun and a hat. “People are still angry. You’ll want to keep the hat on.” He extracts a golden pocket watch. “There’s a train leaving, heading north in a little over an hour. Make sure you and your lady friend are on it.”

  I shrug into the coat, wincing slightly as my knuckles brush against the wool. Just before I get to the door, he says, “Huck?”

  I turn around.

  “Keep expanding those horizons.”

  I tip my hat and make my way outside. This early, there aren’t many people milling about. Wagons trundle up and down the road, their drivers lethargic as they make their deliveries. I take the Judge’s advice and tilt the hat, keeping my head lowered as I make my way through town. The inn itself is fairly quiet, a man dozing behind the counter that I don’t recognize.

  I need to get the hell out of here already.

  Upstairs, though, our room is empty. The bed is still made, as if nobody slept in it. Bandages and a bowl of water rest near a dead fire, untouched from the night before.

  Alice is nowhere to be found.

  Would she have edited back to the Institute? Perhaps she did as I requested and reclaimed Sawyer’s equipment and then took it back. But . . . no. Alice isn’t the sort who would leave anyone behind, even if it were the smart thing to do. Alice doesn’t run away from fights.

  Alice pushes herself straight into the middle of them.

  I’m halfway down the hallway when I hear a voice coming from one of the rooms. “I think it’s time we had a chat, Huckleberry Finn Van Brunt, don’t you?”

  I WOKE UP IN a room I did not recognize to S. Todd’s face leering over me. When he whispered, his rancid breath left me literally gagging. “Good morning! Are you ready to play?”

  I attempted to shove him off, to retrieve my daggers, but I couldn’t move.

  He’d giggled when he saw my panicked understanding. And then he laid his body on top of mine, belly to belly, hips to hips, legs on legs until breathing became laborious.

  “Don’t try to move, gel.” And then he laughed and laughed, and I did my best to bite off his nose or ear, but I was unable to even move my mouth much.

  Dread I’d never felt before consumed me.

  He pressed his cracked and peeling lips against my cheek, and I gagged some more. This only served to amuse the fiend. He kissed the other cheek, and for a moment, I wanted to cry, I felt such utter and desolate frustration. In all my years, in all my battles and struggles, I had never been at such a disadvantage.

  Why couldn’t I move?

  But then a name came to me. One that left me astoundingly even more alarmed than before.

  Finn.

  I fought harder, willed myself to move, struggled under the weights Todd had somehow trapped me beneath, and yet still couldn’t shift a singular inch. Panic turned me wild—every last nerve ending in my body was on alert, every muscle was ordered to move, and all that resulted was more of Todd’s laughter and a shortness of breath that had me gasping beneath his weight.

  I could only pray Becky had followed through and convinced her father to free Finn. If something were to happen to him, whilst I was trapped in here with his mother’s murderer . . .

  The more I struggled, though, the greater he delighted in my plight. Eventually, the sharp, disgusting stab against my hip of arousal left me as emotionally paralyzed as I was physically.

 
The cad dropped his head, his nose digging into the base of my neck. “I can see why he favors you so.”

  This cannot be real. This cannot be real.

  Todd shifted his body so that it spooned the side of mine, leaving me gasping for air. A dirty hand drifted across my cheek and then across my still lips.

  Rage, beautiful, searing rage exploded within me.

  The rough hand took its time drifting lower and then lower still. I imagined in fervent detail the joy and painstaking time I’d take carving him into little pieces and then gutting him.

  My hoop skirt, I discovered, had already been removed, as had the voluminous amounts of clothing excepting my chemise.

  I imagined slicing his penis the way a mother would cut up sausages for her children.

  As he dragged the chemise higher and higher up my legs, Todd gleefully took his time informing me I’d been drugged, yet conveniently left out naming said drug. It was no use to fight the effects, he claimed. Each struggle would only hasten the inevitable—which, naturally, he did not see fit to elaborate upon, either.

  His fingers brushed the skin just above my knee. I thought about how I’d feed him the small slices of his penis shortly before I allowed him to die. “You’re not so dangerous now, are you, Miss Alice in Wonderland?”

  But then he’d sighed regretfully and rolled himself to his back. My eyelids I could move, thank God, and when he began pleasuring himself next to me, his grunts and groans only heightening the fury pulsing within me, I closed my eyes tight and visualized even more ways I would make him suffer. And suffer he would, for all of the heinousness he has inflicted upon so many.

  Once sated, he stood and pulled his pants up. “I have it on good authority your partner will be out of jail shortly.”

  I’d wanted to cry again—but this time from relief. What made him stop? Not that I was complaining—far from it—but a fiend such as this does not seem to have the best of impulse control.

  He buttoned his vest and slipped on a filthy coat. “We shall have a meeting with him.” Several switchblades were tucked into various pockets. “That was quite a show he put on yesterday, was it not? I rather enjoyed seeing the infamous Finn Van Brunt losing his temper like that.”

  Todd had been there, watching? And then: he knows Finn’s name?

  “I imagine he’ll lose his temper today, don’t you think? Should I tell him I took some peeks underneath that chemise while you slept?” Todd came over and lifted me up like I was a rag doll. Somewhere down the hall, a door slammed. “Ah. Perhaps he’s already been released! Are you ready for some fun, Alice?”

  My damn head lolled and fell upon his shoulder as he hoisted me next to him.

  Footsteps sounded in the hallway. Todd called out, “I think it’s time we had a chat, Huckleberry Finn Van Brunt, don’t you?”

  And now here I am, my breath shallow from more than the constant struggle to move as I wait for the door to open.

  No further footsteps sound. All I can hear is my heartbeat, loud and strong and fast.

  Todd slips out one of his switchblades, and in one of his grandiose yet pathetic shows, twirls it until it opens. The tip is pressed against my jugular. Thoughts of Van Brunt in the hospital fill my mind, and it only adds fuel to my bonfire of rage.

  Suddenly, the door explodes into the room in a hail of splinters and broken bits. Standing there, wearing a coat I do not recognize, is Finn.

  He appears fine. His right hand is scabbed and mangled, but other than that he is fine. I allow myself a small bit of relief at the welcome sight before transitioning to bloodthirsty wishes for retribution and violence.

  “Welcome, welcome!” Todd digs the switchblade’s tip just enough into my throat that I am assured blood drips down my neck. “We were wondering when you’d appear, weren’t we, luv?”

  Finn doesn’t look at him when he speaks, though. His focus is squarely on me. There’s surprise in his blue-gray eyes; rage, too. But what gets me the most is the fear, because he knows there is something wrong with me. If there weren’t, this revolting villain’s hands would no longer be attached to his arms.

  And yet here I am, molded to Todd’s side, my head resting on his despicable shoulder, standing in a thin chemise.

  “Looks like you found me,” is what Finn finally says. A muscle in his arm twitches, like he’s ready to go for his gun, but Todd is quick with his response.

  “Now, now. You wouldn’t want to do something that you can’t take back before you hear what I have to say, would you? Besides, our time here is limited. I cannot imagine that fellow patrons have not heard the ruckus you’ve caused.” His high, thin giggle shakes the both of our bodies.

  “You want to talk? Fine. Let her go first.”

  Finn’s harshly voiced order only leads to more giggling.

  I wish I could say something to him. Wish I could throw my head back and knock Todd out. Wish I could snap his arm and then take the blade he’s slowing digging into me and slide it across his neck, just like he’d done to Van Brunt. Like he’s trying to do to me. Only I would not be so clumsy to leave him alive.

  I wish so very many things.

  It’s comical, in a sad way, to ruminate on how many times I’ve faced assassination attempts over the years. I cannot even count the number, to be honest. And still, I managed to consistently turn the tide in my favor and emerge victorious. The Caterpillar berated me afterward, charging me with reckless luck that would sooner rather than later dissipate. No person is invincible, he would insist. No person is charmed. And I believed him. Frequent visions of my lifeless body on a Wonderlandian battlefield haunted my dreams. And yet, now he is dead at the hands of the Queen of Hearts and I am drugged and unable to control my muscles, clutched to the side of a man who I easily bested before.

  I will my arms to work. My mouth. My head. Even just my fingers. Move, I command my muscles. Move.

  “Are you sure this is what you want me to do?” Todd is saying to Finn.

  My partner’s silent questions are the worst. Why is she just standing there, I can practically hear him wonder. Why hasn’t she eviscerated this sonofabitch already? He directs several at me. Give me a clue, any clue as to what’s the matter with you.

  I wish I could say I can speak effectively with my eyes, but I am so livid I’m positive all that emanates from me is fury. This situation is entirely intolerable.

  “Let her go,” Finn says, in the most terrifying voice I’ve yet to hear from him, “and maybe, just maybe, when the time comes, I’ll show mercy when I kill you.”

  Todd slowly pulls the blade back and away from my neck. “If that is what you wish . . .” And then, quick as lightning, he jams it into my side and lets go of his hold on me.

  Naturally, I slump immediately to the ground. For crying out loud, will the indignities of the day ever cease?

  Apparently not, because I land at just the right angle that the blade digs deeper into my side. When a spontaneous cry escapes my lips, I have to struggle to get the pain under control.

  Finn is across the room, his bloody fist meeting Todd’s face and then stomach. The two men grapple for several minutes, fists flying and furniture giving way until the room is in ruins. “What the fuck did you do to her?” Finn shouts. “Did you drug her? Why is she like that? Alice! Are you okay?”

  For his part, Todd nonsensically chants threats and rhymes about pies and barbers and crows and rats, giggling the entire time. Crunching transitions to wet, soft sounds. Finn’s questions continue to go coherently unanswered until the barber’s ravings cease altogether and the fiend falls onto the ground next to me.

  If I wasn’t in so much pain, and if I could talk, I very well might tease Finn about how he feared he would beat the stuffing out of one person on this trip, only to come away with having done it twice.

  My love is on the floor with me, my head now in his lap. Relief leaves me exhausted. “Oh, Jesus . . . Alice. Are you okay?” When I don’t answer, his face lowers until it’s just above
mine. “Can you hear me?”

  I let out a tiny huff of annoyance. What a patently stupid question. Slowly, I blink once.

  Thankfully, he’s quick on the uptake, remembering how, when he’d been dosed with SleepMist in Wonderland, I’d asked him to blink once for yes, twice for no. He presses a kiss first upon my forehead and then one against my lips. There is a slight splatter of blood on his own forehead, one I sadistically yet gleefully attribute to Todd getting, as Mary would say, his ass handed to him.

  “Can you talk?”

  Two blinks.

  “Are you in pain?”

  I’m tempted to lie and he knows it, because he immediately qualifies, “The truth.”

  I blink once, hating that I’m unable to compartmentalize the pain as easily as normal.

  “I’m going to pull the knife out. I’m sorry, it’s going to—”

  I blink once, hoping he knows I want him to do this for me. When he does, blinding pain electrocutes me; another strangled cry escapes my lips. Finn has something pressed against my side, stemming the blood flow.

  “I’m so sorry, love. Can you move?”

  Two blinks. Black spots dance above me, ones that want to take me away from Finn. And still, there is warmth in my heart. He called me love.

  “Did he drug you?”

  One blink. At least, I hope I blink. The spots are growing larger and yet turning darker all at once.

  “Do you know what it was?”

  Two slow blinks.

  Finn lets out a shaky sigh and drags a phone out of his pocket. “Can you believe they didn’t confiscate this? Didn’t confiscate anything other than my gun. Not my books, not my pen, not my phone. Didn’t even ask me about them.”

  I think it’s been well established we’re surrounded by a bunch of idiots in Finn’s original Timeline. How he managed to rise above all of this and become the wonderful man he is is beyond me, but I am ever so grateful he has.

  With one hand, he punches in a message. “We’re going to get you back to the Institute, okay?”

  I wish I could just tell him to get a bloody move on things already. Son of a jabberwocky, I am tired. Tired and outraged and . . . and . . .