It was enough to make a person question her sanity. Too many times to count, she’d opened her door, thinking any moment she’d see her living room and hear the thud of Auntie Hamaka’s ten house cats running amok in the apartment next to hers. But each time she’d swing the door open, she’d simply seen door after door after door. Brightly colored throw rugs, frames with no pictures on the wall. Not her house.
Her stomach rose with each breath. The fan turned. She didn’t blink.
“Hello, dear.”
Alice yelped. “Bloody freaking hell!” She grabbed her chest and then did a double take when she noticed who was in her room. Crazy Cupcake Lady, but smaller. Like ten times smaller. Fairy size and flitting through the air.
“You’re that woman!” She stabbed her finger at her. “Who the hell are you? Where the hell am I? What’s going on?” The last almost came out a wail, her words warbling, and she clamped her lips shut on the hysteria threatening to choke her.
The fairy stared at her with sympathetic blue eyes, a soft smile on her round little face. “I know how you must feel, dear...”
Alice snorted. “Oh, I seriously doubt that. What did you do to me? Who are you?”
Crazy Cupcake Lady held up pudgy little fingers, shaking loose a blond curl of hair. “I’ll answer all your questions, but first”—she pointed to the bed—“let’s do sit.”
Startled, Alice realized she’d stood to a defensive crouching position. How frightening she must look in her boy shirts and cami. She rolled her eyes at the absurd picture and plopped back down with a huff.
She eyed the little woman evilly.
“My name is Danika, fairy godmother extraordinaire, and this is very real.”
Alice lifted a brow. “I’ve pretty much accepted I’m here. How that is even remotely possible, I can’t fathom. But why am I here? Why can’t I go home?”
Crazy Lady didn’t bat a lash. “I told you.”
“Umm. No, you didn’t. You laid a card on my table and walked off. You told me nothing.”
The lady rolled her eyes. “You really must listen. I told you, you had a man—”
“I thought you were freaking kidding. Like yanno, loco.” She rolled her finger against her temple. “Am I here forever? What’s happened? I can’t stay here; you know that. I’ve got a family. They’re probably worried...”
Danika held up her hands. “Three days, Alice. That’s all. If in three days you two do not fall madly in love, you’re free to go home.” She said it as if it wasn’t a huge commitment she asked for.
Alice wanted to laugh. Was she nuts? “Oh, is that all? Well, thank you for this honor.”
Danika frowned. “You’re... welcome?”
Alice scoffed. “Sarcasm, fairy. Ever heard of it? No, I will not stay here three days. He’s a tyrant. Do you know what he made me do? Walk barefoot for miles.” Alice curled her toes. “My heels were bloody—”
Danika nodded. “Yes. Yes, he came and saw me. Total misunderstanding—he’ll be much nicer now.”
Alice pinched the bridge of her nose. “What? When? I was with him, we never saw you.”
“Yes, dear. In the woods.”
Alice’s eyes grew large. “You were the lightning bugs!” She chuckled, feeling stupid that she hadn’t put that together immediately. Lightning bugs couldn’t heal feet. Then again, it wasn’t everyday she discovered fairies really existed.
Danika bristled. “Lightning bug, indeed!” Her full face flushed a rosy red as she inhaled long and slow several times through her nose. “I am a fairy.”
Alice grinned. “Of course you are.” And suddenly she wasn’t mad, just tired. She wanted to go home, pretend none of this had happened. Pretend she hadn’t met the man of her dreams, the man she’d obsessed about as a child only to discover he wasn’t at all what she’d thought he’d be. “Why don’t we just cut the three days down to one? Chalk it up to a failed experiment and move on?” She laughed, a short, humorless sound.
Very small hands gripped the sides of Alice’s nose, forcing her to look back at worried blue eyes. “This is no joke. You must know he needs you.”
“Stop it.” Alice swatted the fairy off her.
Undeterred, Danika grabbed Alice’s cheek. Her fingers were cold, and it was ridiculous how Alice suddenly felt like she was ten again when her mother caught her reading instead of doing chores.
“Send me home. Now.”
“I cannot. You rubbed the card. You agreed...”
Alice crossed her arms. “I didn’t agree to a damn thing. I rubbed the card, yes...” She frowned—man, she’d been stupid to do it—trying to remember if there’d been any fine print. But the card had only showed a bunny with rub me on it. “I didn’t,” she asserted again.
Danika huffed. “Humans and your nonsense of science and disbelief...,” she grumbled. “This is a world of magic and mayhem, and rules do not apply here. You cannot control this chaos, my dear—you must let it be. You agreed by rubbing. Period. You must accept it for what it is.”
Alice jerked out of Danika’s hold. “And just what is that?”
“Truth.”
Truth? The fairy spoke of truth, and Alice wanted to hit something. She’d spoken truth once before—and that truth had nearly ruined her life.
Alice had seen Hatter when she was thirteen. She’d known the encounter had been real, and she’d told anyone who would listen.
Her parents had taken her to psychologists; her friends had given up on her, called her crazy, psycho, a nut job. Eventually her mother had threatened to commit her if she didn’t quit talking like that.
So she’d stopped talking. She’d stopped telling others about it, and as the years wore on, she’d come to the realization it was easier to say they were right. It hadn’t been real. She’d never seen him. It’d been a dream, a result of a disease-ravaged mind. Nothing more, nothing less.
Her parents slept easier, she’d made new friends who knew nothing about her temporary “episode,” and the love that’d burned brighter than the hottest flame had cooled to an ember. She’d moved on. She’d still loved the Hatter and all his maddening ways, but as a favorite story. Nothing more, nothing less.
“He doesn’t want me.” The words spilled from Alice’s lips before she could censor her thoughts.
Danika bit her lip. “And that is partly my doing, love.” She looked suddenly anxious, flitting around Alice’s head in a dizzying circle.
“I wish you’d be still,” Alice grumped. “You’re making my eyes cross. What exactly did you do?”
The crazy fairy toyed with her fingernail. “You are not his first Alice. In fact, you’re not even his tenth.”
The words brought Alice up short. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve tried for decades, maybe centuries now”—Danika pinched her nose, exhaustion heavily lacing her words—“to find his perfect match. The Alice to offset the madness leaking into him.” She threw her hands wide. “With no success. Some feared him, others tolerated him, and still others coveted the power of the land itself. But none ever loved him.”
Alice heard Danika like a buzz of white noise in the background. Other Alices? She wasn’t his first.
“Did he sleep with them?” she snapped and then clamped her mouth shut, wishing she hadn’t blurted that out, but desperate to know. Who was Hatter? Did he have a sick, kinky fetish to get it on with as many Alices as he could? Well, he was SOL. Alice wouldn’t be another notch in his belt. Hot or not.
Danika’s jaw dropped as if shocked. “No!” Her voice rose in pitch like a howl. “Dear me.” She grabbed her chest. “The man is not a pervert, dear.”
The furious pounding in Alice’s chest eased somewhat. “Then why bring so many Alices?”
“Because that’s the way of it here. Hatter and Alice, Big Bad Wolf and Red... The stories are written with a grain of truth to them. It must be an Alice.” She shrugged, and Alice licked her canine, refusing to analyze why she suddenly felt like a huge burden had li
fted.
She didn’t want to share Hatter with anybody else.
Shaking her head, Danika said, “But that is not all.”
Alice narrowed her eyes, wishing the fairy would stop dragging this out. “Yes?”
Danika blew out a breath. “You see, I may have dipped into a certain bloodline. Brought back a ghost, if you will.”
“What?” Alice was totally confused.
Danika sighed and dropped her hands to her sides. “Many years ago, I brought an Alice to the Hatter. She was a lovely thing. Doe-eyed and of gentle disposition.” She snorted. “At first anyway. I think he fell for her beauty more than anything.” She shook her head. “She was an awful woman. Wanted the power she could glean from the land. She did not want him at all.”
“I don’t understand what that has to do with me?”
Danika’s tiny hand traced Alice’s jaw, giving her goose bumps. “You two could be twins. He sees her when he looks at you.”
Alice sucked in a breath, finally understanding the bloodline reference and the cruelty of the woman. “My great-grandmother,” she whispered.
Danika nodded gravely.
And though she had no right to jealousy, a flinty spark of passionate hatred flared to life in Alice’s heart. No wonder Hatter hated her. Alice loved her great-grandmother now... because she was blood and it was the honorable thing to do.
But loving her didn’t mean Alice could forget being locked out of the house during the heat of the day because her comings and goings let in too many flies. Or being told not to eat the second piece of birthday cake because she’d get fat and ugly and no one would want her then.
The bitterness her grandmother had always thrown at her great-grandfather, calling him stupid and a hairy Okinawan who was no good for her and she’d almost had better. Should have had better...
In hindsight, the crazy mutterings made more sense. But anger solved nothing. Jealousy was useless. Obviously it hadn’t worked out between her and the Hatter, but that past was coming back to bite Alice in the ass now because she wasn’t her great-grandmother. She was nothing like the old shrew, and yet Hatter judged her based off that.
She looked at the little fairy. “My mother always told me it was uncanny. I’ve seen the pictures. We look exactly the same.” Deflated, she leaned her head against the wall. No wonder Hatter had been so cruel. She understood it. Didn’t mean she forgave him, but she understood it now. “Why in the hell would you bring me here? He’ll never be able to look beyond...” Alice traced a hand down her body.
Danika grabbed Alice’s numb fingers and gave them a gentle rub. “You must make him see you, Alice. You.” She shook her finger for emphasis. “The moment I saw your great-grandmother, my body shot with sparks of right. But I know now it wasn’t for her—it was the bloodline, the eventuality of you. He’s never responded to any of the Alices the way he did her. But how he responded to her is but a drop in the bucket to the way he feels for you. I know my Hatter, and I know you’ve completely disrupted his narrow worldview. I believe the only reason why he got swept up in that Alice was because he sensed as I did the tremblings of your coming.”
Alice snorted. “Oh yeah, cutting up my heels was his way of showing his undying devotion.”
“Does he not show any warmth toward you? Any sort of spark?”
Alice remembered his touch, his eyes... how they’d gazed at her, as if seeking to slip into her soul, and she shivered.
Danika smiled. “Aye, you call to him. You are his Alice. I know it. Now we must convince him.”
Alice crossed her ankles and shook her head. “What if I’m not ready? Huh? What if I don’t want to?” A part of her totally did, but another part, the rational side of her, was afraid. She had a life back home. She couldn’t be expected to stay here forever. Could he come back with her? Did she want him to?
Danika alighted on the end of her bed. “He’s dying, dear.” The fairy’s words echoed with anguish so thick Alice’s throat tightened.
“Dying?” she whispered.
The fairy looked around the room with a sad smile, and as she did, the walls literally seemed to vanish into mist, revealing the outside beauty of nature surrounding his home. “He is Wonderland. This beautiful madness? It’s all a product of his deliriously wicked mind. It’s lovely chaos, and it’s consuming him. Surely you’ve noticed his preoccupation with riddles and gibberish?”
Alice bit her bottom lip, rocking backward. Dying? The Hatter? The beautiful, sexy man who made her want to scream and throw herself on him? “You’re lying,” she hissed, her lungs heaving for oxygen as the images conjured made her want to weep.
Alice might be upset with him, might even want to hurl sticky buns at his head every once in a while, but she couldn’t imagine a world in which he didn’t exist.
“I wish that I were.” Danika’s lip quivered.
Alice swallowed hard. “But how can I save him?”
“Love.” Danika smiled. “True love. He must find his mate, his perfect match and equal. She is the only one who can pull him from the ever-increasing insanity of his mind.”
The enormity of that burden was daunting. How could she do that? He didn’t even like her. “What if I’m not the one? What if you’re wrong again?”
Even saying it hurt. Did she want to be? She’d never been so angry, or so aroused, by anyone else. For years Hatter had been her constant thought. What if he could never get past her looks? She couldn’t help who she was, and she’d never be content in a relationship if he wasn’t as wildly in love with her as she was with him. Especially if he only considered her a replacement for the one he’d really wanted.
“You are. I know it,” Danika said, cutting into her thoughts.
“Oh yeah, how? He thought he was in love before—you said that yourself.” She lifted a challenging brow. “He might still be in love with my great-grandmother.”
Danika pressed her lips together. “Wonderland did not accept her, and Wonderland is not just a place in a book, Alice. Wonderland is an extension of the man himself. Wonderland will open like a flower to the sun, the land will roll, and the wind will hum when the true Alice is found.”
Her heart sank like a rock. “Well there you go,” she muttered. “It hasn’t done that. Obviously, it’s not me.”
Danika shook her finger. “Your time is not yet up. You’ve only just met; it takes longer than a mere night for true love to bloom.”
Alice rolled her eyes. “Well, if that’s what you’re basing it off, it sure as hell takes longer than three days.”
“Not so, dear. True soul mates know. They always do.”
Alice couldn’t stop the nagging thought that she had known. Even at thirteen, she’d fallen in love. As much in love as a child could be. But he didn’t remember her. That much was clear, because he’d made no mention of that earlier meeting.
In all her years, she’d never once heard her great-grandmother speak of the Hatter. Alice would have guessed the woman hadn’t even known of his existence. And yet she did, and when Alice had spoken of Hatter in her hospital room, her great-grandmother had been there. It’d been her great-grandmother who’d insisted her mother take Alice to an asylum. That spiteful wench! Alice ground her molars as fire burned in her gut.
How could he ever see beyond that?
It hurt thinking he didn’t remember her. Didn’t see her. She saw him—all of him. It’d taken years to excise Hatter from her heart.
At twenty-four, she was okay with that and was ready to move on. To find real love and a real man. To get married and have kids.
To live in the real world and not in the book.
And now this evil little fairy came and told her, He needs you. He doesn’t know it yet, but he needs you, Alice, and she wanted to cry. Because a part of her had always needed him. Hatter was her white knight, he was the hero of her every fantasy. When she’d dated at home, she’d always sought some aspect of him with guys and had found every last one of them wanting, because
in the end, they weren’t him.
Only Hatter had those soulful eyes that made her melt, the full bottom lip that made her desperate for a taste. The shoulders, so strong, firm, offering reassurance when she’d fallen into total blackness. The Hatter she’d always pictured within the pages of her beloved book. Not the slapstick caricature of the cartoons, but a hero. A savior to a frightened little girl lying in a hospital bed.
How she’d tenderly rubbed her fingers over pages with any mention of him, her small heart swelling with an impossible feeling of love, tenderness, and a yearning for something she hadn’t been able to comprehend then.
In her way, she’d always loved Hatter. With a madness that had consumed her. A madness she wanted more than anything to embrace now.
But she knew if she took this plunge, if she chose to believe it was true again, that this was real, she’d never be able to forget. Never be able to pretend again. She’d be ruined for anyone else. She licked dry lips, pulse beating so hard she felt the echo of it in her head. But wasn’t she ruined already? She’d never been able to date a man for longer than two months before she found excuses to dump him.
The flood of emotions she’d bottled away for years burst forth. She loved him, and she could no longer pretend it wasn’t so.
She sighed, body warm and alive and filled with a desperate need to go to him—the arrogant, brutish jerk who didn’t remember her. But she’d make him remember. No matter what. And in the process, she’d make him forget her great-grandmother. Alice was not her, and she’d make him see that.
She flattened a hand on her nervous belly. Somewhere in this crazy house, he existed. “Three days to make him love me?” She glanced up and Danika nodded. “I want to break the curse.”
Danika’s smile was radiant.
“But I can’t stay, fairy. You have to understand. I can’t just bail out on my family. I have to go back. At least for a little while.”