His countenance lit up. He was obviously eager to answer, but he kept his mouth closed tight.

“Come on,” I pressed. “Are you from Wonderland?”

He remained silent.

“Seriously?”

“You asked me to stop talking.”

I dug my fingers into my knees. “Ugh. Answer me!”

“Tut.” He peeled off his gloves, one at a time, leisurely and maddeningly calm. “No need to get peevish. Yes . . . I’m from Wonderland, as are my lovely little pets outside.”

“Which means,” I swallowed, “Wonderland really is real?”

“It is.”

“And the rabbit hole, too?” I asked around the knot in my throat.

Studying me in the dim light, Morpheus nodded. “I can provide you with a map. Just say the word.”

I gripped the collar of my shirt, trying to cover the rapid pulse at my neck. “What role do you play there? I’ve never seen you in the stories.”

A strand of blue magic leapt from his fingertip to my “Alison’s” Adventures in Wonderland book. The electrified currents flipped the pages, stopping when they arrived at the illustration of the Caterpillar speaking to Alice. “Much like our clever and curious heroine, I wasn’t quite myself in the earlier tales.”

My gaze fell to the text on the page and Alice’s answer to the Caterpillar’s question of her identity: I’m afraid I can’t explain myself, sir. Because I am not myself, you see?

I gulped, the realization hitting me like a slap in the face. “You’re the Caterpillar . . . hatched from a cocoon.”

Morpheus winced, as if offended. “Moths and butterflies do not hatch. They transform. Now, six questions to go. Don’t squander them, peaches.”

“Wait . . . I’ve only asked four so far.”

“I beg to differ.” He held up his hands in a strand of moonlight, wiggling his fingers and making shapes on the wall—startlingly real for shadows. Some looked like teacups, some like mushrooms, others like roses getting splashed with buckets of paint. “You’ve asked fourteen, albeit most of them were inane and wasteful. First, you asked me if I’d ever played Twenty Questions. Well, that in itself is a question. Then, when I gave the riddle, you said—and I quote—‘Huh?’ Another question. Next, after you told me not to call you ducky, you asked if you had feathers, and then if I ‘got it?’ Finally, you queried what I meant about you being more than merely a name. Honestly, can you even think of a reason any of those were necessary? Of course, when you asked about the sprites—what they were, and if they would be killing your half-witted zookeepers—that bordered on relevant.”

My ears grew hot. “I don’t live in a zoo!” I snarled.

Morpheus smirked and merged his shadow puppets into a rabbit hopping along the wall. “Add to that the four questions about me and my home—the only ones that actually bore some semblance of importance, mind—and you asked eleven. Unfortunately, you repeated one of them twice after first asking me to stop talking, and then you questioned my seriousness. Which was another three. So, only six remain. Choose your words wisely.”

Suppressing a growl, I squeezed the pen in my hand until it bit into my palm. “Okay,” I mumbled, preparing to ask the one question I was most afraid to have answered before he could trick me out of any more chances. “You reached out to my mom, didn’t you? When she was a teenager.”

The washers and dryers grew silent as his magic receded back into his body, just as the mischief drained from his features. He took off his hat and laid it in his lap. “I tried to, Alison. Her mind was . . . more fragile than I anticipated.”

I slammed my notebook down and scrambled to my feet. “You told me that abandon always merits a second chance at life. So why didn’t you catch her? You caught me! You couldn’t have done the same for her? Her fall was so much shorter! You could’ve stopped her with your wings!” Tears blazed down my cheeks. I was furious, maybe more at myself than him. I’d promised I’d never cry again.

He stared up at me from his seat on the floor. His jeweled markings blinked a fuzzy periwinkle shade, mirroring the softness of his expression. It was almost as if some small part of him sympathized. “Your mum chose to leap out in the open. There were too many spectators in the parking lot. She made it impossible to be rescued. If only she’d jumped from a little higher, her own wings could’ve saved her. Those two miscalculations cost her everything.”

“No. It was you that cost her everything. Why do you keep bugging my family?” I refused to think about the irony in my choice of words, and hoped he would do the same. If he cracked some stupid joke about it, or taunted that I’d squandered four more questions and was now down to two, I would lose every ounce of control I had left. I’d strangle him with my bare hands, electrical magic or not.

Mercifully, he only shook his head and said, “I am not responsible for, nor am I here to make amends for, all the wrongs you’ve been dealt throughout your life. Instead, I am offering a way for you to honor your mum’s death. To make peace with it.”

I slapped the hot wetness from my face. “I don’t want to make peace with it! All I’ve ever wanted was to know her. And the only things I have to remember her by are these stupid stories! The stories that killed her.” I kicked the books toward him. They slid along the floor a few inches but didn’t go far enough. I glared at them, wishing they would leap into the air, dive down on him like birds of prey . . . grow beaks and peck out those beautiful, endless black eyes so filled with cryptic riddles and even more cryptic answers.

As if hearing my thoughts, the two books lifted from the floor, pages flapping wildly, like wings. They swooped toward him to attack, but he was ready, safely behind a dome formed of blue lightning.

“Splendid show,” he said with something like pride in his voice as he straightened the cravat at his neck. “Do let me know when you’re finished with your tantrum.”

Wait. I’d spurred the books to action? I made them fly? My jaw dropped.

Not possible. The books fell to the floor with a clunk, as if my logical reasoning killed them.

“I did that.” It was an observation. Even in my state of disbelief, I was aware enough not to frame it as a question. I only had two left now . . . choose your words wisely.

I looked from the crashed books to Morpheus, who had reeled in his magic and was unprotected again, waiting in the moonlight, patient and somber.

“My mom, she had the same abilities, didn’t she?”

He returned his hat to his head. “Yes, though hers were dormant. I tried to awaken them, to show her in her dreams what she was capable of. Tried to encourage her to animate her paintings on the walls. But before she could . . .” He held up a palm. “Well, never mind that. You enlivened those books almost without trying. Think what you can accomplish with guidance and focus. You see, you do know your mum. Because that touch of magic was a part of her. What she left you via the blood you share. What you choose to do with it, that’s up to you. All she wanted was freedom and escape. Some might say she got that. But as for you, something tells me such an ending wouldn’t be satisfactory for one with your . . . drive and determination. So, what do you want, Alison?”