“Let’s go home. I want to put the book somewhere safe,” I said, patting my bag just to reassure myself it was still there. “Other than the safe, I mean. Maybe I should keep it with me? What do you think?”
Duke started around the back of the car to the passenger side but stopped, staring at the trunk. He didn’t answer.
“Duke?”
“Medda said something would jump out at us, give us a brand-new idea,” Duke said, studying my license plate for some reason. “Rainy, what does that mean?”
My car was fifty years old, and with my vintage car came a vintage license plate. Back in the day, all Oregon cars were given dark blue license plates with yellow printing and the state motto.
And what is the state motto of Oregon?
Pacific Wonderland.
There it was, right in front of me.
“That’s it!” I said. “We’re in Wonderland already. That’s what people call the Pacific Northwest.”
“This entire state is Wonderland?” Duke asked, looking around.
“We were told the answer was staring us in the face, right? Well, here it is, staring us in the face, the state of Oregon.”
“It is, my love, but it’s quite a large area. A hare could be anywhere—”
“Get in the car,” I said. “Hurry!”
“Where are we going?”
“Pilcrow House. I need to check something.”
We raced—okay, no we didn’t race, but we definitelychuggedup the hill to my house.
Inside the library, I grabbed a photograph of me with my grandfather off his desk.
“Here,” I said, shoving it into Duke’s hands. “My grandma took this picture of me and Pops there when I was a kid.”
It was the picture of Pops and me standing in the wide-open mouth of a storybook wicked witch, pretending to scream in terror. Two real witches pretending to be afraid of a fictional witch.
“Aww,” Duke said, smiling. “Weren’t you a rather odd-looking small child…”
I grabbed the photo back from him. “Not my fault my head grew before the rest of my body. This,” I said, tapping the glass over the picture, “is a park somewhere east of here.”
“I assume,” Duke said, “were it west of here, it would be in the ocean.”
“I don’t remember the name, but I remember this park had tons of exhibits of different fairy tales and storybooks. I think I remember seeing the Mad Tea Party scene fromAlice in Wonderland.”
I put the photograph down and dug out my phone. Smartphones weren’t to be trusted with Book Witch business, as Dr. Fanshawe always stressed. Our enemies were numerous, and they were technologically savvy. Our main tools were analog—print books, landlines, magic, and the ability to concentrate on one thing for more than five minutes at a time. But all Book Witches had smartphones. Even magical beings need to google sometimes.
“Yes, yes, yes,” I said, my heart racing with excitement. “This is it. The Enchanted Forest Park. Right off I-5. Has an attraction called Storybook Lane with these life-size exhibits of famous children’s storybook characters. Little Red Riding Hood, the Three Little Pigs, Miss Muffet…”
I showed him the pictures on the park’s website. It seemed like every fairy tale, every famous kids’ story got an exhibit on Storybook Lane.
“The Mad Tea Party,” I said, spotting a photo of a brightly painted tableau. “That’s the March Hare.”
“Do you think this is it?” Duke asked.
“You meet informants all over Chicago. Fancy restaurants, dark alleys, speakeasies. Why not meet our informant at a park?”
“It’s definitely a lead worth following. Shall we go?”
