Free The Moth in the Mirror by A. G. Howard Page B

dragging the hair from her face. But Taelor’s eyes didn’t meet his. Alyssa’s icy blue ones did—staring in dreamy, innocent wonder. His fingers grew fat and clumsy at her temples.
    Al
was in his bed?
    No. This couldn’t happen. Alyssa hadn’t even kissed a guy yet. And Jeb had never been any girl’s first anything.
    Al was untouchable to him. She’d experienced enough turbulence in her life. And he wasn’t exactly the poster child for stability.
    Jerking his hands free, he rose to his knees.
    “Jeb, don’t you want me?” Al asked, rubbing a palm over his chest.
    He couldn’t answer. His fingers itched and felt stretchy, as if they were growing. He held them up in the moonlight, watching in horror as they fell off one by one and morphed into caterpillars. The caterpillars then inched toward Alyssa, and he couldn’t do a thing to stop them. He fell to the bed on his back, hands held above his face, staring in disbelief at the raw and bloody stumps where his fingers once were.
    Screaming, Alyssa tried to scramble off the mattress, but the caterpillars caught her, creeping over her skin and spinning webs until only her wriggling form inside a cocoon remained.
    “Let her go!” Jeb shouted. A light flashed across his eyes, and then he wasn’t at home in his bed anymore. He was somewhere in Morpheus’s mansion, and the sprites were rushing over his skin, hypnotizing him … using some kind of hallucinogenic pheromones.
    They’re holding me hostage so Morpheus can be alone with Al.
The instant that reality came crashing in, the spell broke.
    Jeb tumbled off the swinging mattress and out of his captors’ seductive mist. Snagging a pillow, he covered himself. “Give me something to wear!”
    The sprites floated in midair, their dragonfly eyes watching him.
    Several golden baskets sat on the floor at his feet. Jeb kicked one over. His tiny captors swooped around the room in mass hysterics.
    Gossamer, Morpheus’s prized sprite, appointed five of them to pick up the spilled strawberries. They counted the fruits one by one and placed them back in the container.
    Jeb knocked over another basket, this one filled with beads of scented oil. Five more sprites dropped to the floor for cleanup, stopping to count each bead before putting it away.
    Soon he’d overturned every basket. Some were full of flower petals, some with lotion, others with grapes. By tumbling them over, he’d managed to preoccupy most of his captors. Only Gossamer and two others still fluttered around his head.
    “Give me something to wear,” he repeated, “or I’ll start ripping the feathers from the pillows. There aren’t enough of you in here to clean up
that
mess.”
    “He’s not responding to our allure,” one of the sprites muttered to Gossamer, her coppery bug-eyes turned in Jeb’s direction.
    “Or our magic,” the other one added with a pout. “I conjured some girl from his memories, but his subconscious broke through.”
    “Yes, this one is indeed a challenge,” Gossamer agreed in a voice that tinkled like chimes. After sending the other two sprites to pick up the contents of the latest basket, she offered Jeb a silk robe.
    He turned his back and shrugged the covering on, taking in his surroundings.
    Morpheus had put him in an opulent prison. The room was round with black marble floors that reflected orange candlelight. He was already intimately acquainted with the focal point: a swinging, circular mattress attached to the center of the domed ceiling with gold chains. Furs and pillows cushioned the bed, perfumed with rose petals.
    For all its comforts, this room was missing one very important aspect. An exit. There was no door, window, or any other opening in sight.
    Convex walls—painted dark lavender—had grapevines stretching around their circumference, winding in and out of the plaster and entwining lit candelabras. Fruit blossomed on the vines. At random intervals the grapes would spontaneously burst and drizzle their