Page 82 of Locked in Wonderland

More drugs. Fucking fantastic.

“No,” Nico said flatly. “I’m not. Where is he?”

The man struggled upright, fighting against the sofa’s intent of sucking him back in. “Victor?”

“Who else?”

“Who’s Victor?” I asked.

Nobody answered me.

The blue-haired man jerked his thumb toward a closed door. “Private party in the bedroom. You know what he’s like.”

Nico headed that way. I hurried after him, every single person watching us go, their curiosity unmistakable. Again, Nico didn’t bother to knock, opening the bedroom door and walking straight in. The monochrome theme continued inside, even down to the sheets on the bed being black. Not that I could see much of them for the two naked women tangled together on the bed, kissing and touching each other as if their lives depended on it. They carried on in our presence. Either they hadn’t noticed, or they didn’t care.

I’d been so fixated on them I didn’t immediately register the man sitting in an armchair with his back to us. He was watching the two women as if he were at a show.

“What?” he snapped without turning. “I’m busy.”

Nico rounded the chair to stand in front of him. “Come and meet Victor.”

I very much didn’t want to. We were intruding. This was awkward beyond words. Or at least, they were the excuses I told myself. In reality, I suspected that some part of me already knew. Maybe it had noticed the blond hair. Maybe it had recognized something my conscious mind refused to. Whatever the reason, it took a lot of willpower to get my feet moving to join Nico.

“This,” Nico said quietly once I stood at his side, ”is Victor Chronis.”

The world stopped.

Warren looked back at me. Or someone who looked enough like Warren to make my heart forget how to beat.

For a second, my brain rejected what I was seeing.

The hair was wrong. The stubble was wrong. The clothes were wrong.

Warren had always worn loose clothes. This man wore fitted ones, his muscular arms on display. Warren had been clean-shaven. This man hadn’t shaved for a few days. Warren had always carried himself with a kind of apologetic awkwardness. This man looked comfortable taking up space.

But none of those differences mattered.

Because it was him.

He wasn’t tied up or hurt, or frightened. And he certainly wasn’t waiting to be rescued. Instead, he was sitting in an armchair watching two women perform for him.

“This is Warren,” I heard myself say. My voice sounded hollow.

“He goes by a lot of names,” Nico said. “But Victor is his real one. Isn’t that right?”

“It is.” The man—Victor—tilted his head and studied me. “I’ll admit,” he said, “I didn’t think I’d be seeing you again, Lysander.”

Even his voice sounded unfamiliar.

He shifted his attention to Nico. “Why would you bring him here?” His gaze moved between us. “And you’ve dressed him up as your mini-me. That’s adorable.”

I ignored the gibe. Mostly because thinking was hard and there were bigger priorities. “I don’t understand.” The words felt pathetic. “Someone kidnapped you. I saw it with my own eyes. I came here to find you. I’ve been looking for you ever since.”

A memory surfaced: DC Thornton telling me there was no record of anyone named Warren White, and that they couldn’t find a man who didn’t exist. At the time, I blamed police incompetence. Now I didn’t know what to think, my brain attempting a series of mental gymnastics it couldn’t seem to complete.

Warren—I still couldn’t think of him as Victor—suddenly clapped his hands. The sound made me jump. “Enough,” he announced, his focus on the bed. “Leave us.”

The women immediately stopped kissing and untangled themselves. One threw him a dirty look before grabbing a robe and storming out. The other seemed less bothered. She paused in the doorway long enough to blow him a kiss.