Page 9 of Locked in Wonderland

“What’s processing?” I asked again.

Lola grabbed my chin, her fingers digging in. She turned my head to the left and then to the right, leaning closer to study my face. Her breath smelled faintly of rose and sugar, as if she regularly indulged in Turkish Delight. “Processing is where we get you ready for Wonderland.”

“Ready?”

“We make you prettier,” Percy said.

“Definitely a shave and a haircut,” Lola said as she stepped back.

“More suitable clothes,” Percy added.

Lola narrowed her eyes and looked thoughtful. “I don’t like the eye color.”

“Well, that’s just fucking rude,” I snapped. “I don’t like your hair color or your dress, but do you see me mentioning it?”

She gave no sign of having heard me, her brow creased in concentration. “I don’t think we need plastic surgery.”

If it weren’t for the looming specter of the surgical table at my back, I might have thought I’d heard wrong. “Plastic surgery? Are you insane?”

Percy placed his hands on his hips and raked his gaze over me. “I need to see the body first. We don’t know how big his cock is.”

“And you’re not going to find out.” I mustered some calm by counting to ten. “Listen, I don’t know what’s going on here, but you’re not doing anything to me. I don’t need a haircut. My clothes are fine. And I’m not showing you my cock. You’ll have to get your cheap thrills some other way.”

They both stared at me, seconds ticking by in slow succession. Eventually, Lola nodded. “Percy will escort you out.”

Percy frowned. “Why do I have to do it? Why can’t you do it?”

Lola rolled her eyes. “It’s always the same if I ask you to do something. Arguments and more arguments.”

I cut across the beginnings of their domestic. I hadn’t yet decided whether they were a couple or brother and sister. A niggle at the back of my mind told me it was likely both. “I don’t care who escorts me. I don’t even care if nobody escorts me. Just wave me in the general direction of Wonderland and I’ll find my way.”

“Oh no, dear.” Lola’s sympathetic expression said she pitied my lack of cognitive ability. “When we say out, we don’t mean into Wonderland. Not without processing.”

“Not without processing,” Percy echoed. “No one goes into Wonderland without a ticket without going through processing.”

“No one,” Lola said.

“So I go back outside?”

Lola beamed at me, clearly proud that I’d managed to make the leap in logic. “There’ll be another boat tomorrow.”

I stared at her. “You’re telling me that my options are to spend twenty-four hours outside on an island—”

“Not twenty-four hours,” Percy said. He checked his watch, a dainty silver affair that hung loosely on his wrist. “The boat will be back in twenty-three hours and thirty-two minutes.”

“Wow!” I said, making zero effort to hide my sarcasm. “That twenty-eight minutes makes all the difference. But as I was saying, sleep on an island, or let you make me”—the word stuck in my throat—”prettier?”

Lola nodded enthusiastically.

This was some weird shit, but I needed to think about Warren. No one else was coming to save him. What was a haircut and a shave compared to that? People paid good money for pampering. I could think of it as a spa session. Not that I’d ever visited one, but there was a first time for everything.

“I tell you what,” Lola said, pulling a panel in the wall open and pressing a button. “Let’s have a nice, relaxing drink together, and then you can make your decision.”

The door opened within a minute to admit a man who looked pleasingly normal compared to Percy and Lola. He had short brown hair, a face devoid of makeup, and he wore a plain white shirt and black trousers. He held a silver tray on which there were three tall glasses containing a bright blue drink.

He stepped forward, Lola and Percy both taking a drink each and then looking expectantly at me. After a moment’s hesitation, I took the remaining glass.

The man immediately turned on his heel and left with the empty tray. “Thank you, Emmanuel,” Percy called after him. “Emmanuel’s such a sweetheart,” he added once he’d gone.