Read Online Seeing Redd by Frank Beddor - Free Book Online Page B

of another, plucked a dagger from her backpack, and speared a Glass Eye that was still facing the spot she’d occupied half a moment before.
    If she had truly been in London, these puddles would have served as return portals to Wonderland’s Pool of Tears, once thought to be a watery black hole for Wonderlanders unlucky enough to have fallen in, a vortex that carried them to another world. For generations, nobody who’d fallen into the pool had ever returned to report of this other world, and so their loved ones had been left to gather at an overhanging cliff, letting their tears fall into the water and thus giving the pool its name. Not until Hatter Madigan and Princess Alyss Heart had returned through it—thirteen years after jumping in, feared dead—was the truth discovered.
    But the universes created by the HATBOX had their limits. Puddle portals that would have carried Homburg Molly back to Wonderland in the real world here only connected to other portals. And she made the most of it—jumping into one, splashing out of another, using them to serially ambush the Glass Eyes until she emerged from an inkblot-shaped splotch of dirty water, on the verge of adding to her body count, flicking her homburg at whoever would be her next casualty, but—
    The unmoving bodies of her enemies littered the street. She had killed them all.
    â€œYou forgot this.”
    Shwink! Every weapon activated, Molly saw an ordinary-looking woman approach with something cupped in her palm. She retracted her weapons when she realized what it was: a luminous paperweight in the shape of a top hat. She touched it and the London scene dissolved into darkness, all black as pitch save a life-sized hologram of Hatter Madigan, who smiled approvingly at her.
    â€œToday you’ve shown the courage, skill, and intellect required to be a first-rate Milliner,” he said. “Let’s see how you fare tomorrow.”
    For two blinks of a spirit-dane’s eye she thought it was really Hatter, that he’d returned. But the image faded and the lights came on.
    â€œImpressive,” a voice echoed.
    Molly turned to see the Lady of Diamonds emerge from the control booth. No one but Milliners were allowed in the BOX. “You’re not supposed to be here,” she said. “How’d you get in?”
    â€œWhen will you learn, child, that as a member of a ranking family, I can find a means to do whatever I wish?”
    â€œWhen will people stop calling me a child?” Molly shouted.
    The Lady of Diamonds looked quizzically at the girl. “I didn’t realize you were so sensitive. Don’t you want to dry off? You could catch cold.”
    â€œI’m fine.”
    â€œYou should at least have those tended to.”
    What was the Lady of Diamonds talking about? Have those tended to? Have what —
    â€œYou’re bleeding.” The lady gestured at Molly’s torso, right shoulder, and left thigh.
    She had a few cuts, scrapes. Who cared? They were just superficial wounds. “I’m all right,” Molly said.
    The Lady of Diamonds sighed like one used to having her advice go unheeded. She held up the ornately carved chest King Arch had entrusted to her husband. “I came to give this to Queen Alyss. I’ve been told she’s here with you.”
    â€œShe’s not.”
    â€œNo?” Worried wrinkles crowded the Lady of Diamond’s brow. “That’s odd. I could’ve sworn…I guess I’ll have to leave it with Bibwit Harte or Dodge Anders then. It’s too important to leave with anyone else.” She turned to go.
    â€œI can take it,” Molly said.
    â€œYou?”
    Molly nodded. “I am the queen’s bodyguard.”
    The Lady of Diamonds pretended to consider it. “Well, I suppose if she trusts you with her life, I can trust you with this. Be sure to tell her that it was given to me by her mother, Queen Genevieve, just before her