"Pillar?" I dare him. "You heard Jack. Is that true?"
"What did Jack say?" The Pillar purses his lips, but looks in the direction I am looking at.
"He says you're playing games with my mind."
"Please, Alice," the Pillar says. "Let's forget about Jack. I will tell you who he is when we catch the Muffin Man. You gave me your word."
"And what is that supposed to mean?" Jack protests.
"There is no Jack here, Alice." The Pillar holds me gently by the shoulders.
"He is standing right there!" My high-pitched voice catches the customers' attention. The Pillar looks like he doesn't want anyone to notice me.
"All right." The Pillar sighs. "Ask Jack to talk to one of the staff girls. Let's see if they can see him."
"Don't listen to him, Alice," Jack says.
"Do as he says, Jack," I beg him. "Please."
Jack slowly walks toward a girl in the staff and stretches out a hand. She smiles and shakes it back. No one can resist those dimples. They start chatting.
"See? He is real." I pout at the Pillar. "He is talking to the girl."
"No, he isn't," the Pillar says. "What girl?"
"I can't believe you." I push the Pillar away. I am about to pull my hair and scream. I feel like I want to hide back in my cell. Something isn't right. It's like a hidden truth that I feel but can't put my hands on. I return to the dressing room, away from the Pillar, and grab my clothes so I can leave. "I don't understand why you are doing this," I shout at the Pillar in public. The hell with people. I am a mad girl. I can do as I please. "I've had it with you!" I walk away with Jack.
It's time to end this.
Furious, I pull my clothes and accidentally catch on the dark veil covering the mirror. My heart almost explodes at the horror, realizing what I have done. I reach for the veil before it curls down to the ground.
But I am too late.
Once the mirror flashes like summer rays at my eyes, I see that scary rabbit inside it again. My fear of mirrors prickles every hair on my skin. This time, I am too furious and fragile to deal with it.
I faint and drop to the floor like an empty satin dress, devoid of its owner, swirling lonely to the ground.
Chapter 32
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, 1862
I am standing in front of Theatre Royal in Drury Lane on Brydges Street—renamed Catherine Street two centuries later. It's 1862 again. I am back in Lewis' vision, only we're in London this time.
There is a coach and a small crowd waiting outside the theatre's façade. All in all, a few people. Hiding at the edges of my vision I still see a lot of homeless people and beggars, scattered all around like invisible diseases. Those waiting by the theatre pretend they don't see the poor.
A man with a pipe tells his wife about the theatre's history. How it had been mysteriously burned down in 1809. How Richard Sheridan, Irish playwright and owner of the theatre, watched the fire from a coffee house with a bottle of wine. The man laughs and takes another drag from his pipe, which smells of the exact flavor the Pillar smokes.
With all the poverty, mud, and stinky smell of open sewers, these few aristocrats manage to wait outside the theatre, demanding entry to a famous play. Whenever a poor girl or boy in tattered clothes approaches them, they shoo them away like a annoying fly buzzing near their ears. They drink their wine, tell their stories, and talk about the dinner party they should attend after the play.
Not sure if I am invisible in this dream, I keep approaching the rich, wanting to listen to them. They argue whether last night's turkey wasn't cooked properly, whether they should fire their cook. The man's wife, wearing a lot of jewelry, wishes they could afford hiring Alexis Benoist Soyer, a French celebrity chef. Her husband can't agree more. He jokes that their cook, although they pay him decently in such filthy times, probably steals all his meals from a book called Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management.
My mind flickers when I hear the name. I think I have seen a copy of the book in Lewis' private studio when I entered it through the Tom Tower a week ago.
But all this interest in food, whether in this vision or the real world, confuses me. Am I supposed to read between the lines and learn something about food?
The world around me here is all filth and dirt, aggressively ignored by a few rich men and woman waiting to enter the Drury Lane Theatre.
Still vaguely listening to the man and woman speaking about food, I see the man interrupt his wife and raise his glass of wine at someone in the crowd.
Someone almost dressed like a priest.
Lewis.
The men and women greet him as he steps down from the theatre's entrance. They hail his name and seem to love him, but he looks absent and disinterested. He walks among them, nodding politely, and tries to step away from them. A big suitcase with clothes showing from its edges is tucked under his arm. The other arm is hiding a package wrapped in a newspaper.
"Excuse me," Lewis says, and vanishes into the filthy dark. London is so dirty that the moon refrained from shining through tonight.
I follow Lewis into the dark. I even call for him, but he doesn't return my call.
This must be it. This must be why I am here.
I trudge through the muddy dark. Smog is the only guiding light for me.
"Lewis!" I finally see him kneeling down to talk to homeless kids. They gather around him as if he were Santa Claus. He unwraps the newspaper and offers them loaves of bread.
The kids nibble on the bread with their dirty hands. If a loaf drops down in the mud they pick it up again and eat it right away. Some of them fight for it, but Lewis teaches them how to be as one, promising he will bring them more.
I stand in my place, watching. The kids are too skinny, even when wearing layers of tattered and holed clothes.
I step closer. No one seems to see me.
It baffles me to realize the kids are much older than I thought. Their faces suggest they are about fifteen years old, although their contracted bodies look no more than nine years old.
One of the kids asks Lewis what he keeps in the suitcase. Lewis' smile shines like a crescent moon absent in the sky, but I can't hear what he says.
"Lewis!" I call again.
He doesn't reply.
"Lewis." I feel dizzy.
Otherworldly voices are calling my name from the sky.
"Lewis!" I repeat before they wake me up in the real world.
But I am too late.
As I leave my vision, my eyes are fixed on Lewis' suitcase. Why are clothes tucked inside? They look like costumes.
Then the vision is gone.
A peculiar smoke invades my nostrils. I surrender to sneezing, opening my eyes. The Pillar stands over me in the ambulance, saying, "Wonderland hookah smoke never fails to wake up anyone. It's even better than onion."
Chapter 33
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, Catherine Street, London
Present day
The play we're attending in the Theatre Royal is Alice Adventure's Underground. It's a new play that has only been running from a week ago, when the killings started. I think the Pillar might be right. There is too much coincidence here. We should meet the mysterious Muffin Man tonight.