Splintered

“So good to see you again, little luv. How I’ve missed you.”

Gasping, I fall to my knees. The Caterpillar and the moth and the winged guy. They are all one and the same. They have been all along …

“I’ve seen that bug,” Jeb says. “In your car. On the mirror.” He drops the backpack and grips my shoulders, trying to drag me to my feet. My legs won’t cooperate.

“Tut-tut. You are never to bow to me, lovely Alyssa.” The voice drifts from the moth’s proboscis on gray puffs of smoke. His attention shifts to Jeb. “You, on the other hand, will bow to her.”

Smoke streams toward Jeb and transforms into a net in midair, cloaking him. The weight brings him to his knees. A stick slices his kneecap where the hole gapes in his pants from the octobenus’s tusk. Blood drizzles out.

“Aha! He’s no elf. He’s a mere mortal.” The moth flaps his wings as if he’s made some great discovery.

“A mortal man!” the sprites screech in voices as dulcet as tinkling bells. They plummet from the trees like radiant snowflakes, swarming around Jeb as he slashes at his smoky restraints. The sprites knock the knife from his hand, then wriggle through the net, covering him like ants on a sugar cube.

I leap up to fend them off. “Get away!”

“Oh, don’t stop the fun,” the moth croons in my direction. “We won’t break your toy soldier.”

I grab the knife and try the scissor attachment on the net, but the ropes keep disappearing in my hands. I’m so preoccupied, I almost miss the transformation happening atop the mushroom. The moth laughs, and I look up just in time to see his wings fold over his body. The satiny appendages expand to the size of an angel’s wings, then swoop open to reveal the guy from my mirror’s broken reflection—the one from my memories—all grown up.

The knife slips from my hand. I’m mentally trapped between the past and present.

He’s close to Jeb’s height and age. He wears a black leather suit with utilitarian boots and lounges on the mushroom’s cap with the hookah’s hose perched elegantly between two fingers, ankles crossed. Weathered pants cover his toned legs. He’s lankier than Jeb but in great shape. His jacket, unzipped almost to his abdomen, reveals a smooth chest, milky white like his clean-shaved chin.

The sprites steal our knife and abandon us to rush to their master. They preen his hair and smooth his clothes, cooing and laughing.

No wonder Persephone’s movie poster always seemed so familiar. My netherling companion grew up to look just like the hero, except his shoulder-length hair is blue and glowing, and he wears a red satin half mask. Other than that, he’s the spitting image: porcelain-pale skin, eyes as black as the makeup lining them, lips full and dark.

With the gray smog swirling around his sooty wings, he also reminds me of Jenara’s window display: a dark angel.

Although he’s more of a devil.

I know, because my childhood memories return in a crashing wave—slamming me with the name I haven’t spoken in eleven years.

“Morpheus.” I say it more as an accusation than a revelation.

The winged devil flashes his white teeth in a stu

I’m so entranced by seeing him alive and real, I don’t even try to resist. “Morpheus.”

“Beautiful. Your mum should’ve known it would take more than a pair of pruning shears to snip me out of your life. Though it appears she managed to cut me from your memories for a bit.” He puffs out circles of smoke. “I’m wounded, Alyssa. It shouldn’t have taken this long for you to find me.” Catching the smoke rings on his finger, he tosses them into the air, where they burst into vaporous stars.

Jeb struggles under the net next to me. “This is the joker you’ve been looking for? The one from the website?” he asks.

“More than that,” I answer, not even sure the words I’m forming are coherent. “We grew up together, somehow. He was the one in my dreams when I was little. That’s right, isn’t it? You came to me in my dreams … brought me here. Told me things.”

“Taught you things, rather. Oh, but we made time for recreation as well. I shall have to see that we continue that tradition.” Morpheus hands off his hookah to some sprites with his pale, elegant fingers. I close my eyes, remembering glimpses of us as children, leaping across rocks as Morpheus took flight and lifted me under my arms—a gentle security. When my eyes open again, I blush, remembering how different his touch felt in my bedroom last night. He stands up on the mushroom, wings draped in a flowing arch behind him as he steeples his hands beneath his chin.

“Hospitality Hat!” he shouts, completely off topic.

Several of his attendants flutter over with a black velvet cowboy hat and place it on his head. He tilts it cockeyed. The velvet is accented with a band of decomposing white moths, making him appear both suave and savage.

“She had no right to interfere.” He runs a long forefinger across the hat’s brim. Lengthy wisps of blue hair touch his shoulders. “It wasn’t her place.”

It takes me a minute to realize he’s on the subject of Alison again. “You knew her?”

“Yes. Of all the other candidates, of all of your ancestors, her mind was the most receptive to me. We co

“Along with everything else she had stashed away.”

“And she thought her buried treasures would keep you from coming. Too bad the words in the margins were indecipherable, aye? Perhaps she should’ve kept her mouth shut and played with her carnations.”

Carnations? Indecipherable words? Understanding creeps over me. “It was you. You smeared her notes so I couldn’t read them. And at the asylum … you’re the one who almost killed her!”

“I admit to nothing. Other than that she was out of control. She needed to calm down for her own safety.”

“Of course she was out of control! You messed with her mind half her life!” I clench my jaw. “It’s your fault she’s in that place.”

Morpheus spreads his satiny wings—a move that blocks the glowing sprites from my view and casts me into shadow. “You have yourself to thank for that. She was handling things fine until you came along. Just ask your father. She never talked back to the bugs and plants before you were born. At least, not in front of anyone.”

“No,” I whisper.

“Don’t listen to him, Al.” Jeb tries to comfort me. “Your mom loves you.”

Morpheus raises his palms over his head and applauds. “Bravo, Gentleman Knight. Did you all see that?” The sprites join the false praise, bouncing around the mushroom, all except Gossamer, who sits on the hookah, observing in dignified silence.

“True nobility,” Morpheus continues, strutting atop the mushroom. “Bound and incapacitated, yet his only thought is for the maiden’s tender sensibilities. And I must admit, he’s right.” The sprites silence their mock accolades, confused. With one flap of his wings, Morpheus glides down and lands gracefully in front of me—looming and beautiful. “Your mum does love you. Very, very much.”

My legs quiver, but I lift my gaze to his, disdain burning behind my eyes.

“Stay away from her.” Jeb thrusts a fist through the net and grazes our host’s leg.

Morpheus sidesteps him. “Ah, ah, ah.” He coaxes the smoke to merge so the net disappears, leaving Jeb’s wrists, ankles, and neck in manacles attached to the mushroom’s base. “If you’re to behave like a trained monkey, you shall be treated as one.”