Page 99 of Locked in Wonderland

It was his eyes. There was nothing behind them. Like he’d long since found a better place to escape to, and had no intention of ever coming back from there.

Kellan dropped onto a bench and gave the leash an unnecessarily sharp tug to yank the man down beside him. Smiling, he reached across and patted him on the head. “Good doggy.”

The man didn’t flinch or react at all—just kept staring into space. More disturbing than the display itself was everyone’s complete indifference to it.

No one stared. No one looked uncomfortable. As if it were something completely normal they’d seen a hundred times before.

The sound of the courtroom door clicking shut had me tearing my gaze away from Kellan and his ‘pet’ to face a huge realization. One that made my stomach drop.

Nobody else had entered.

Which meant no Nico.

Fuck.

I’d been relying on him.

Everything suddenly fit together. His insistence that he wasn’t working. The phone call that dragged him away. The attack on his apartment shortly afterward.

They had timed everything perfectly.

Whatever this was, they’d made damn sure he wouldn’t be here for it.

A man in a black suit stood, the chatter dying instantly. “Welcome to the trial of Lysander James Carroll.”

Them knowing my middle name turned my blood to ice. How the fuck did they know that?

If they knew that, what else did they know?

My address?

My parents’ address?

I was damn sure my and Warren’s conversations had never gotten as far as middle names, so he hadn’t been the source. The police? That seemed more likely. After all, Nico had warned me they were in cahoots with Wonderland. By that reasoning, their sharing of information was hardly surprising. Every new revelation made this place feel that little more rotten.

“Guilty!” someone shouted from the audience, to laughter.

“Execute him!” someone else shouted.

The laughter grew louder. That was a joke. It had to be, right? A cold kernel of something solidified in my chest. Because what if it wasn’t?

Panic had me surging to my feet. “I haven’t done anything. You need to let me go.”

The man in the black suit glanced my way. “That’s precisely what we’re here to determine. If you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ll leave here as a free man.” He angled his body toward Queenie. “Would you like to say anything, Your Ladyship?”

She rose gracefully, the chihuahua still tucked in the crook of her arm. She turned to face the audience. “As you all know, we take our rules seriously here in Wonderland. When someone enters our domain and repeatedly disregards those rules, we can’t simply ignore it. If we did, this oasis of fun, this island of opportunity, would soon descend into chaos.” She swept her gaze across the room. “Is that what we want?”

“No.” the audience chorused obediently.

While Henry nodded enthusiastically from his seat, Kellan looked close to falling asleep.

“What rules?” I demanded.

Queenie turned her head my way. Her expression remained carefully neutral, but there was no mistaking the coldness in her eyes. “We’ll get to that,” she said. “After you’ve sat down.”

I sat. No point in kicking the hornet’s nest before I even knew what I was dealing with. One step at a time.

The suited man cleared his throat. “Mr. Cartwright will now read the charges.”