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“Well?” Cookie asked the second he took the phone from his ear.
“Says to put a call into the system.” Dice raised his brows.
Cookie tilted her head a bit as Connor bobbed his. I was getting the distinct impression that reservations didn’t happen very often.
Dice headed to the other side of the room, where a mustard-yellow phone was hanging on the wall. The thing was straight out of the sixties, with a spiral cord and rotary dial. The last time I’d seen anything like that was an estate sale down the street, when old man Harper passed and his kids tried to sell literally anything that wasn’t nailed down.
Dice dialed only four numbers before putting the phone to his head. “I need to check a reservation for a…” Dice looked at me.
“Wilhelmina Adelaide,” I said.
He repeated my name into the phone and then smiled a moment later, looking in my direction like a person who was about to say,I told you so. “No reservation? You’re sure?”
“Billie Adelaide. Everyone calls me Billie,” I said. Gram knew better than anyone how much I hated my given name.
He sighed, rolling his eyes. “What aboutBillieAdelaide?”
A couple of seconds later, his face scrunched, just like someone whoseI told you sowas about to get boomeranged right back at them.
“Yeah, thanks,” he said, not sounding thankful at all, then hung up the phone a bit forcefully. “It looks like she does indeed have a reservation.”
He walked over and stopped in between Cookie and Connor.
“It doesn’t make sense. She seems soflat,” Cookie said.
“Yeah, I know,” Dice said.
Connor nodded.
Flat? That wasn’t something I’d ever been called. He couldn’t mean my physical appearance. I’d been told I was born with more curves than a roller coaster.
So what did he mean by flat? Yeah, I was going to be an accountant, and sometimes they got a bum rap, but that didn’t mean I was humorless. I had a decent personality, or so I’d been told. No one should judge my personality based upon this situation. That wouldn’t be fair.
Cookie was twirling a platinum-blond lock. “Are you sure we have to keep her? She doesn’t look like much. Call the boss. Maybe we can throw her into the river anyway.”
Dice was already digging his phone back out. “I’ll ask, but if she’s got a reservation, he’s going to say we have to keep her.”
His two friends were staring at him as he waited for an answer. I was trying to remain calm as I assessed all the different exits in case I had to run. There was a door across the room, a door behind me, and a hallway to the left. The door behind me might be my best bet, since that was the direction I’d come from.
“Yeah, she’s got a reservation. Can we just—” His chest rose and fell. “Okay.”
Dice ended his call. His friends were all ears while my muscles tensed. I was ready to sprint, punch, kick, bite. I wasn’t taking anything off the table.
“He says we have to keep her,” Dice said.
“But she’s sohuman. This can’t be right. I don’t see why we get stuck with her,” Cookie said.
Were these peoplenothuman? Where the hell was I? Had I been abducted? The yellow phone and plaid couch didn’t scream cutting-edge technology, but maybe it was a decorating choice?
“Are you…aliens?” I asked.
Cookie threw back her head, laughing. “She thinks we’re aliens. This is absurd. Andwe’resupposed to keep her?”
Dice took a few steps toward the hall and then looked pointedly at me. “You need to follow me now,” he said, as if I were an idiot for not reading his mind.
The other two didn’t look like they were going to come, which meant wherever I was heading, the odds would improve. That was enough to get me following him down the hall.
“Where am—”
