“Off with your hat!” Mother raged, fists clenched skyward.
Alice set her book down and placed her hand on the banister. Mother’s cheeks flushed redder and redder until Alice feared her head might whistle like a tea kettle and pop off entirely.
“Alice Rose, you’re eighteen, and it’s high time you start acting like
“It’s for your own good.” Though Alice’s back was toward her, Edith Liddell could see her sister’s stormy expression in the mirror. She closed the door to Alice’s room and held it shut.
Edith bit her lower lip. Surely she was doing the right thing, trying to convince Alice to give up this Wonderland
A low whine drags me from sleep. I push off the cold floor—wait. Why am I on the floor? The forgotten command room—probably used for training—comes into focus, and images flash through my mind. The team getting ready to enter the forest. A glowing purple light encasing—
“Alice?” I jump up
“Deedee Takkenridge, where have you been?” Miriel stood, hands on her hips, as her granddaughter rode up on a dog that was more polar bear than man’s best friend. She couldn’t help but notice Deedee looked like a princess from an animated movie she made Miriel watch the other night.
Deedee shrugged, as if
“Good news, Josh.” Despite Mom’s tap on my back, I kept heading toward Olivia, one of my sister’s bridesmaids. Madeline said the blonde was single, and a wedding reception was the perfect chance to meet someone new after my breakup. “You won’t have to spend this evening alone.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
Ethel limped through the park and sat at her usual table, the chess pieces already arranged on the gray and black terrazzo squares. She handed a footlong drenched in mustard to her informant, with a crisp one hundred tucked against the tin foil, and moved pawn to e4.
“Grazie, la Piccolina,” Sam said,
The door falls shut behind me, an ominous sound sealing the fate of businessman Edward J. Wyles.
“Farewell, Miss Grieves,” his secretary chirps, unaware of what transpired in the office behind her.
Barely acknowledging her words, I stride from the room, my right hip dipping every step thanks to this cursed limp.
Of course, Ethel would have a lockpick in the heel of her shoe. And, of course, she would use it to pick the lock of the metallic box she had found under a panel in her parent’s closet. What would you expect from a Grieves?
People on the street only whispered “Grieves,” as if
Zai kicked his door shut behind him, tossing the latest stack of wanted posters onto his already overflowing table. A small package caught his eye, and he groaned, flicking aside a note bearing his father’s handwriting. But the box was void of the
Read it now
Transfiguration Church’s Pasta Night was the same every year: an all-you-can-eat Italian buffet, two hundred parishioners cramming the American Legion Hall, old folks doing “YMCA,” and the 50-50 raffle.
My sister Cecily and I always spent every minute in the bar.
Not for the booze.
I had no problem leaving Spark Spaulding stuck in Albanue’s prison sewers. He was responsible for this mess, so I figured Spark could rely on advice he’d given before: “The worst prison is the one in your head.”
I didn’t count on his
“Look! It’s Spark Spaulding!”
Lachlan looked instead at his little sister, since one of his life goals was to avoid a repeat of last year’s “look, a flying corgi” humiliation. Angelica’s face beamed “ga-ga fangirl,” so he scanned Marine’s crowded open-air market.
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