There is no Sign of Sure. Spider, in her web, in the dark heart of her brain, and what was left of this body’s rightful owner. Yet what and who that girl had been in this Now, Emma couldn’t tell. It’s only glass, Spider rasped. Those are strips of ordinary tin, only so much rubbish picked from a dustbin. You’re a mad girl in a ruined world. Look in the mirror, Little Alice, loooook.
Dead ahead, there was a girl rushing through the mirror, ready to break free and—
Wait. Heart pounding, she realized what else was wrong, what was different, as her face filled the glass and became the world—this Now—blotting out all else.
She saw eyes. They were cobalt, with that golden birthmark, but they were all she truly recognized. Oh, there was a girl, a wild thing with hair bright as corn and violent as a gorgon’s serpents, but she did not have Emma’s face.
The girl hurtling headlong to meet her—twin to her twin, image to her reflection, this Now’s version of all that she was—was little Lizzie, all grown up.
“NO, NO, NO!” she shrieked, and rocketed for the mirror with all she had left.
5
MAYBE A PIECE of her knew the truth or had listened to the seeds of doubt Spider planted, because, at the very last second, she’d thrown up her arms to shield her face.
It was an explosion. The impact was as much sound as it was something physical, a bright detonation of shock and pain that wiped away all thought in a stunning, violent burst. There came a glissando splash as the mirror shattered and rained razor-edged daggers. A second later, there was a heavier crash as the now-empty frame—and it was only blank, unblemished wood—toppled.
The world stuttered. Someone began to wail, the sound wordless and horrible and black. From the coppery taste at the back of her throat, she realized that this wailing someone was she. Staggering, she felt her knees wobble, then buckle, and then she was sinking into a warm, wet tangle of bloodied nightclothes and torn flesh as a Babel of voices swelled: She’s bleeding, she’s bleeding; quick, fetch bandages; I’ll need my bag … someone fetch the surgeon; hold her, hold her; she’s a spitfire, sir, an alley cat; hold her fast, don’t let her …
“Easy, Miss Elizabeth, easy.” There were rough, hard, strong hands on her now, wrapping her up, bracing her shoulders. But the voice was young, that of a boy not quite yet a man, and reached through the fog of her pain to stir memory. “I’ve got you, Miss … Here, here, what’s your name—Doyle? Take her hands; soon as we’ve got her into the strong dress, we’ll slip on those gloves.”
“No, no!” Gasping, she looked up and then let out a small cry that was half a scream, half a sob. If her mind had been glass, it would have ruptured as the mirror just had. My God, it’s … “Bode,” she rasped. “Bode, help me, please, let me go, please don’t do this, don’t!”
“Shhh, shhh, I’ve got you, you’re safe now.” His hair was longer but the same muddy brown, and looking into Bode’s eyes was like staring into a cloudless sky. “I knew you’d recognize me, Miss, yeah? Your old pal?” This Now’s Bode turned a grin that twitched a thin thread of scar stitching its way from the corner of his jaw down his neck and under his ear. “I won’t let them hurt you, Miss Elizabeth, but you got to stay still now.”
“Bode. Listen to me,” she moaned as Doyle, his face flushed and a splash of her blood on his jaw, wrapped his huge hands around her wrists. “Please, I don’t need the dress. I’ll be quiet, I won’t make trouble, but please …”
“Shhh. You know the rules.” Nodding at Doyle, who thrust her right arm into a sleeve of the strong dress, Bode tipped her a wink. “Not that I blame you,” he said, as Doyle shoved her left arm to. “Got a good one off. Wouldn’t mind taking Weber down a notch …” He grunted as she bucked, arching her back and thrashing. “Now, Miss Elizabeth,” he said, expertly rolling her onto one side before straddling and then holding her clamped between his legs as he secured the strong dress with leather straps. She heard the chink of metal chain and the snick of hasps. “None of that. You’ll make it worse for yourself.”
“All right, that’s enough.” It was Kramer, somewhere over her head, out of sight. “I’ll finish dressing her wounds. Bode, if you would, make sure the others stay back while I tend to her? And for God’s sake, someone find that surgeon.”
“N-no,” she said, and choked on thick blood. She tried to spit it out but was so weak her tongue only managed to shove a gob of foamy spit past her lips. She could feel it worm down her jaw like a slug. “Puh-please, Bode, d-don’t leave …”
“I can stay.” Bode sounded both sympathetic and, she thought, pretty freaked out. “I don’t mind. She knows me, sir. She’ll listen to me. Please, sir, I want to help her.”
“No. Thank you for your assistance, Bode, but if you and the constable would now withdraw?” There was a pause, followed by the fading clop of boots. Through a haze of pain and blood, she saw Kramer suddenly float into her field of vision like a bad dream.
“Well,” Kramer said, reaching into an inner pocket of his waistcoat and withdrawing a pair of brassy spectacles, “let’s take a look at the damage, shall we?”
Her breath thinned to a wheeze as he unfolded the earpieces. Yet only when she caught a flash of purple and saw him carefully unhinge the third and fourth lenses was she certain. I was right. He knows …
“Ah,” Kramer said, and used the tip of his pinky to push his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. As he did so, she heard an anomalous sound, something that didn’t belong: the faint tick of metal … against metal. “That’s better,” he said, sinking to the floor and gathering her onto his lap. “All the better to see you with, my dear.”
Balanced on Kramer’s nose was a pair of panops.
6
“YOU … you’re wearing …” Trussed and chained in the strong dress, she couldn’t fight him, and the pain was so intense, she could see it, raw and white and too bright. “You called me Emma. You know I’m telling the truth.”
The magenta lenses seemed to smolder. “I know what you are, yes. Here.” He pressed a bottle to her lips. “Drink this.”
“No, I don’t w-want …” A sickly, cloying scent curled into her nose, and she gagged, tried turning away, but Kramer clamped her aching head to his chest with one arm and pinched her nostrils shut until she couldn’t hold her breath any longer and opened her mouth. Gagging against the too-sweet syrup flooding her throat, she thrashed and spat out a rust-red spume of a tonic of laudanum and passionflower. “N-no!”
“Yes.” Kramer slapped her cheek, twice, hard enough to make her gasp, and then the drug was streaming down her choking throat. “Drink it.”
She had no choice. He was killing her. This was prison; this was poison. Emma felt the swoon beginning to overtake her as a remorseless, inexorable tide, and it would have her, it would carry her away, and she was lost, and Eric, the others—
“You … you know the truth. I’m n-not Elizabeth. Puh-please,” she moaned, and the higher, lighter register of her voice—this stranger’s—frightened her even more. “Let me go. You know I don’t belong here.”