His certainty seeps into my brain, making a mockery of my own irresolution. “It’s more than that. It’s choosing which side of me to embrace, and which one to turn my back on. I will fix Wonderland. And I’ll be there each time the nether-realm needs me.” I’m almost woozy from the burn in my heart, as if it’s been scored down the middle with a hot knife. Red’s fingerprint is getting deeper by the hour. “But I can’t choose beyond that yet.” Not without falling to my knees from the pain.

“And that, my plum, is where your selfishness comes full circle, and it’s confirmed without a doubt that you are a malicious queen of the Red Court through and through.”

“Enough!” Control snapping, I chuck the rock into the hookah smoke. It sails straight through without stopping and clunks to the ground on the other side of the mushroom. Morpheus’s mocking laughter spurs me to toss another one, but two holes in the cloud offer little satisfaction. I want to launch every rock in my path as a missile until Morpheus is a piece of Swiss cheese.

My magic has proven useless against Jeb’s creations, but Red’s memories can affect them. Maybe I can coax out the power on the diary’s pages, pit it against my magic. Like the Gravitron ride, use two forces against one another to elicit a volatile reaction.

The harder I concentrate, the hotter the book gets against my skin. The red glow gushes through my sternum and into my veins. I breathe it in until it boils my blood and bubbles over, then redirect the force to lift the rocks from the ground. Overhead, the branches on the trees snap down and hit my makeshift ammunition with a satisfying thwack, sending it shuttling through the haze to leave ragged holes. The cloud begins to dissipate.

“At last,” Morpheus says in an overly exhausted tone. “Must it always take my goading for you to realize you have no limitations other than what you place on yourself?”

I can’t see him yet, but the sprites are there, bouncing in midair and snickering. They stick out their tongues, then flitter away between branches, wandering off in the direction Chessie and Nikki took.

The remainder of smoke dissolves like cotton shredding into the sky, fully exposing the mushroom. Balanced flat across the top is a large moth, dark wings flapping low and wide. Its proboscis sips from the hookah pipe and releases another chain of stars and hearts.

“Wait,” I say, anger melting away to confusion. “You can’t be in moth form. You can’t use your magic. It’s all illusions.”

“That it is, My Queen.” His voice tickles the cusp of my right ear, even though I’m still staring at him on the mushroom. “Just like you, using Red’s repudiated memories to give the illusion of power against our pseudo elf’s paintings. Well done, by the way.”

I twist but can’t find anyone around me. “This isn’t real.”

“It is as real as you want it to be.” His whisper teases the left side now, a flourish of tantalizing heat along my neck.

I turn, but he’s nowhere to be seen.

The moth flaps its wings, slow and lazy on its perch. At the same time, the feel of soft lips trails down the nape of my neck. Unwelcome pleasure blooms through me at his touch. “How are you in two places at once?”

“Optical delusion,” answers his voice from behind. He draws me close with invisible hands around my waist.

Invisible hands . . .

“The simulacrum.” I trail my fingers along his unseeable arms. “That’s why the suits weren’t in the duffel bag. You stole them.”

“And you made it all possible by stealing them first. You wise and wicked girl.”

As much as I try to fight it, the netherling in me glows at his praise. My skin sparkles like starlight, reflected in tiny prisms on the ground and trees.

Morpheus coaxes me to face him and slips the simulacrum hood off his head. His wild hair moves in the breeze, the jewels tipping his eye markings glimmer a passionate purple, and the smile that greets me is both savage and playful. The rest of him comes into view as reality bleeds through the simulacrum’s mirage—silver jacket over a T-shirt, black pants, blue tie, and magnificent wings folded against his back.

I rest my palm on his chest to ensure he’s not a hallucination. “You took the suits so we could sneak past the graffiti guards after Jeb left.”

He steps back, peels off the enchanted fabric, and bows with a flourish.

“It was a good plan,” I admit as he straightens his clothes and preens his wings. “But we don’t have a means for you to fly, or to find our way back.”

He smirks again. “Of course we do, silly truffle. Don’t you know I always think of everything?” Hands on my shoulders, he turns me to the giant moth at rest on the mushroom. “Look through your netherling lenses.”

I refocus and find it’s not one single moth. It’s a hundred or more, clasped together to mimic a larger one. These are the moths that escorted Morpheus here under Jeb’s direction. And the mushroom isn’t typical, either. Its top is hollowed out, with a small door in its side and a harness connected to the moth.

“That was going to be your ride?” I ask on a whisper.

“Our ride.” Morpheus claps his hands. Giant wings beat gusts all around us as the moth tugs the mushroom free from the ground. Together they rise, like a hot air balloon and its basket—graceful and majestic. The tree branches open to let the contraption escape far, far up into the sky.

I gawk at its ascent.

“And,” Morpheus says, “we have tea service planned for the trip. The spritelings have gone to fetch us some victuals.”

“But . . . how? The mushroom can’t exist outside of Jeb’s setting here. Right?”

Morpheus pulls slick blue gloves onto his hands. “It can now that I’ve reassigned it.”

“What?”

“Jebediah’s creations are one-half magic, the other half artistic vision. So although I cannot change his masterpieces to another form, they are convincible, if one but imagines them a new purpose. Granted, it works better on the paintings that have no specific command from him. The mushrooms here have no assignments other than to look pretty. And his instruction for the moths to keep me busy was too open-ended. They accepted whatever scenario I imagined, so long as I was in fact keeping busy.”

I shake my head. The master of word manipulation strikes again.