Modern Wicked Fairy Tales: Complete Collection (42 page)

She grinned. “What priorities?”

“Grow up, Alice!”

“I’m sorry,” she apologized, although now
she
was
thinking about Wade—about his big smile and big eyes
and big hands that turned her this way and that way, and his
big…

“Can I just finish this chapter?” Maddie
interrupted her thoughts again.

“Go on.” Alice assured her, “I’m
listening.”

And she tried, she really did, but
distraction came easily to Alice, always had. Once when she was
young and Maddie was babysitting, Alice had wandered off at the
beach chasing a lizard across the sand, panicking her older sister
to tears and, when she finally found Alice on her belly staring at
the rock the lizard had disappeared under, to a sub-zero sort of
anger as well. They hadn’t spoken for the rest of the day. Alice
hated when Maddie was angry and tried to do everything she could to
avoid it. If that included listening to the latest chapter in
Maddie’s dissertation, well, certain sacrifices had to be made.

But Alice couldn’t help it—her eyes were
already closing, her mind drifting. A faint mew from somewhere way
down there on the floor made her smile. Then Dinah jumped up onto
the bed, her motor running, rubbing her white head against the hand
Alice was using to hold the phone. Alice petted her with the other
hand, scratching behind the cat’s ears, tracing the line of her
spine, making her tail rise.
Wade says I do that when he pets
me.
The thought made her shiver.

Dinah mewed indignantly at Alice’s
distraction, nudging her phone hand again. Maddie was still
reading, something about oxytocin and g-protein coupled receptors.
Gah! How was she supposed to even feign interest? Dinah gave up on
being petted and curled into a white ball of fluff on the covers,
tucking her pink nose under a paw to sleep, and Alice gave up on
trying to listen, settling down and drifting naturally into
thoughts of Wade.

She had eight months of memories to flip
through in her head, but the reality of Wade made him so much more
of an immediate experience. Memory didn’t do the man justice. No
matter how much time she had with him, she craved more. They’d
spent plenty of time together—movie dates, the theater, a heavenly
weekend trip to Bermuda, and whenever he stayed over, he would make
her waffles or French toast while Dinah did figure-eights between
his feet in the kitchen—but that wasn’t the best thing about Wade
for Alice. She kept the best thing locked like a smooth, secret
heart tucked inside of her beating one.

She hadn’t even told Maddie. Not that Maddie
would understand with her belief that love was nothing more than
biological instinct and brain chemistry. Alice knew better. Love
went deeper than those things. It burned like a laser beam through
to her core and broke her heart wide open. Love made her do things
she never would have considered before. Love was silk and softness,
but love was also leather and the bite of a riding crop and Wade’s
commands. She hadn’t told anyone about the ropes and bindings, the
endless cycle of pain and pleasure that forced her to her knees at
Wade’s feet again and again.

Not that she had anyone to tell, besides
Dinah and Maddie. Dinah didn’t care, and Maddie would reduce it all
to hormones and endorphins before declaring her sister insane and
having her committed. Or calling the police. Or insisting Alice
move back in with the responsible Maddie and stop her work as a
freelance writer, a profession that barely kept Dinah in
Meow
Mix
and Alice in
Lean Cuisines
, but one that Alice
couldn’t give up. For her, imagination was everything. To Maddie,
it was practically the root of all evil. Even Maddie had wondered
aloud how two such different souls had managed to come from the
same DNA. For Alice, it proved that the world was bigger than
scientific explanation.

“So what do you think?”

Was she finally done? Alice stifled a yawn,
searching for a truth to tell her sister. “I think you’re awesome,
Maddie.” She couldn’t tell if the silence on the other end of the
phone was pleased-Maddie or mad-Maddie, but then her other line
rang and when she saw Wade’s name on the Caller ID and heard the
“Closer to God”
Nine-Inch-Nails
ringtone she’d assigned to
him, all thoughts of her sister fled her brain.

“My other line,” Alice said, already
breathless. It was almost midnight. If Wade was calling this late,
it could only mean one thing. “I have to go.”

She didn’t even wait for Maddie to protest
before switching over. “Hello?”

“Are you ready?” His voice was smooth, like
butter, and it melted her immediately.

She played coy. “I’m always ready for
you.”

“The blue one, backless. No panties.” He
wasn’t playing around tonight. She was fully awake and squirming
already.

“No stockings. No bra.”

“But—” The dress was impossible to keep on,
just a wisp of fabric really, and without anything underneath…

“No buts. Fifteen minutes. Out front.”

“Okay.” She didn’t hesitate, not really. She
was a good girl and rarely disobeyed—except when she had to. Or she
forgot.

“Pardon me?” The smoothness in his voice
turned gruff and Alice straightened up even further.

“I meant yes. Sir,” she corrected herself.
“Yes, sir.”

“Fifteen minutes,” he said again and the
line went dead.

“Fifteen minutes, Dinah,” she exclaimed,
dumping the cat to the floor along with the comforter as she
tumbled out of bed. “Goodness! Can we make ourselves presentable in
fifteen minutes?”

Dinah sat back on her haunches and began to
wash herself with the pink rasp of her tongue, safe in the
knowledge she was always ready for anything. Alice wasn’t so
fortunate, but she managed to get herself together, just barely,
with a five minute wash-down, scrubbed and shaved in the shower.
Not her hair though, that was clean already and she brushed it out
and left it long and straight over her shoulders like spun gold.
There weren’t many clothes to put on, just the midnight-blue dress,
more gauze than material, and her slip-on heels. She considered
leaving the light wrap she’d chosen. He hadn’t mentioned her
wearing one, but while it was spring, the air outside was chilly
and she would be standing on the porch for as long as it took.

“Don’t wait up for me, Dinah!” Alice called,
checking to make sure the cat had plenty of food and water before
shutting and locking the door behind her.

The day had been a lovely, bright blue thing
and the night that had followed was crisp and clean, no hint of
moisture in it. She breathed deeply, fending off the lightheaded
dizzy feeling that came with Wade’s late night calls and gazed at
the stars, wondering just what he had in store for her tonight. His
basement—he called it ‘The Sanctuary’ and for Alice, it most
definitely was—was crammed full of various implements of pleasure
and pain, not the least important of which was Wade himself.
Without him, the rest would have been a little absurd.

It could be anything, of course. Or none of
those. Some nights they spent upstairs in his big bed making plain
old vanilla love and that was good too for variety. But she had a
feeling tonight wasn’t a vanilla sort of night. He’d mentioned a
surprise last week, just a casual comment, and she hadn’t pressed
him. She’d learned to wait patiently for Wade to reveal what he
wanted, when he wanted. It was always better that way, less
punishment involved. Besides, the anticipation was delicious.

In the scheme of things, she never had to
wait too long. The black car pulling up in front of her little
bungalow was proof enough of that. But strangely, it wasn’t Wade’s
car—and Wade wasn’t in it. Instead, a driver appeared, a tall man
in a dark suit and hat with pristine white gloves, to open the door
in the back for her.

“Ms. Lydel?” he called, motioning her
forward. “Mr. Knight sent me.”

She rushed off the porch, jolted out of her
surprise by his words, her mind buzzing with possibilities. Her
body was already flushed and ready for whatever Wade might have in
store. She thanked the driver as she got into the car. It wasn’t a
limo, but it was a long, sleek black thing that prowled through the
streets with a low rumble and a secret sort of power in its
haunches, as if it might launch them into outer space or another
dimension with the slightest tap of the gas pedal.

She didn’t ask the driver where they were
going, she just sat back and waited, watching the world pass
breathlessly by. It seemed as if they drove forever, through city
streets, then onto a highway and off, the scenery changing to black
nothingness after a while, with only faint lights painted on the
darkness in the distance. And he drove very fast, making her clutch
her little purse in one hand and the edge of the seat in the
other.

“Are we in a hurry?” Alice gasped when he
took a sharp curve fast enough to tilt her torso nearly parallel to
the seat.

“Late,” he replied shortly, the car hurtling
through the darkness.

She didn’t know how they could possibly be
late. Wade had told her fifteen minutes and she’d been out there in
ten. When they finally stopped, Alice took the driver’s
white-gloved hand and let him help her out, feeling disoriented.
The driver was mumbling to himself about their tardiness as he shut
the door behind her.

“She won’t be pleased,” he remarked,
shutting the car door with a thump that made Alice jump. She looked
around, trying to see if Wade was waiting for her somewhere, but
there was nothing, nothing at all, just a long gravel drive leading
up to a building of some sort she couldn’t even really see. The
night was complete darkness, no streetlights, not even a moon to
light the way.

“Excuse me?” Alice called to the driver but
he was already striding toward the building, not much of him
visible except for the flash of his gloves. “Can you help me?”

“No time,” he called back and then he
disappeared.

She stood there shivering for a moment, from
anxiety or cold she wasn’t sure, wondering what to do next. She
half-expected Wade to appear out of thin air, but when he didn’t,
she decided to call him. Her iPhone had no signal though, no matter
which way she turned.

There wasn’t anything else to do but follow
the driver before he got too far ahead. She used the “flashlight”
function on her iPhone and with that little bit of light made it to
the side of the building where the driver had gone. It was solid
black brick as far as she could tell, no windows or doors. So how
had he disappeared?

Alice swept the light from her phone this
way and that. She walked down the wall, frowning, perplexed, her
heels unsteady on the gravel. Sighing, she ran her hand along the
wall like she had when she was a kid as she paced and was about to
turn and go the other way when the wall ended. Startled, she used
the light on that part of the wall and realized it had depth. There
was a section missing here, but the brick was so black, so
seamless, it all ran together.

She slipped through the opening and found
herself on a stairwell leading down. There was nothing else to do
but descend. And descend. And descend. There was a handrail on her
right, and the steps were wide stone, cold radiating from them the
deeper she went. She took her shoes off after a while and carried
them because her feet began to hurt, and because she could travel
faster that way. Thanks to her phone, she could at least see where
she was going, but the end still came so abruptly she nearly ran
into the door at the bottom.

She contemplated the door. It had no handle
or window and appeared nearly seamless. Remembering how she’d run
her hand along the wall, she reached out to touch the door. It was
metal, smooth, and when she pushed, it gave.

“Curiouser and curiouser.” She pushed harder
and it swung inward, letting out a bit of light and the scent of
something musky and a little wild, like an animal’s lair. She
didn’t have time to contemplate that though, because there was a
hallway, and Alice saw the driver in the dim light hurrying down
it, his white gloves flashing at his sides.

“Wait!” she called, hurrying after him. He
was her only connection to the outside, to Wade, to anything
familiar, so she followed him as fast as she could manage. The
floors and walls were stone down here too, the way lit with bare
bulbs strung far apart across the ceiling.

The driver took so many twists and turns she
knew she would be hopelessly lost if she stopped and tried to go
back. Her only hope was to catch up. She walked quickly and then
started to run, calling after the driver, but no matter how fast
she went, she couldn’t seem to catch him.

“Please!” She sounded desperate, and she
felt that way too, she realized. The driver seemed to have slowed
and that made her hurry even faster in spite of the stitch in her
side. She was closing the distance. “Please just tell me where we
are!”

He stopped and turned, the white outline of
his hand pushing open a door. She was only ten feet from him now
and the light coming from the room he’d opened was inviting.
Panting, she made it another five feet, calling out, “Please! Where
is Mr. Knight? Where are we?”

“Why, don’t you know?” The driver flashed a
distracted smile as she neared, pushing the door fully open and
waving her through. “This is Wonderland.”

She stepped through the doorway and found
herself in an oddly shaped room. The floors were black and white
parquet and the ceilings sloped upward to a point in the middle.
They were draped with fabric, red and white, like a circus tent.
There appeared to be no doors or windows, and when the driver
stepped into the room, the door behind them disappeared into the
obsidian wall.

Alice stood, stunned to silence, perplexed,
watching the driver cross the room. He pushed against the wall and
another door appeared.