I'll Be Your Surrogate...On One Condition

Lois took a deep breath. She wasn't comfortable with any of this—but a part of her knew she was here for a reason. If Circe needed something from her, that gave the reporter some leverage to bargain.

"One condition," Lois Lane told the sorceress...and explained about her investigation, the women that had gone missing that she had come to find.

Circe listened. Asked questions, which Lois answered to the best of her ability. The sorceress stood in front of Lois and looked into her eyes...and the reporter had the disconcerting sensation that Circe was staring at the back of her skull, as Lois might when estimating how much of her furniture could fit in an empty apartment.

"Very well, Lois. Submit yourself to me, and I will aid you in your investigation." Circe said. "Indeed, I feel the web of fate in this; for I am sure that the cause of their disappearance is no other than the proprietor of this establishment...and I must settle my debts with her."

The door back to the hallway swung open, and Circe led the way as they exited. The reporter watched, as Circe stepped across the threshold, as the nude woman became clad in a close-fitting costume of green, black, and lavender. A moment of nausea and vertigo struck the reporter as she passed the threshold, and her clothes...the clothes she had come into the club with tonight...covered her body once again.

Lois hobbled for a moment in her heels...and realized too that the tan, the tattoos, the piercings, were all still in place. The reporter looked at herself for a moment, glad that the clothes covered up most of the tattoos, at least.

I'll have to pay attention to what I wear in the future, Lois thought. At least...until I get more comfortable showing them off.

Not a thought that the reporter would have had, hours ago. Yet as she followed Circe, as if drawn along in the sorceress' wake, Lois didn't even think it strange. Obediently, she followed down the hallways of the brothel, past shut doors from behind which muffled moans could be heard, until they arrived at a door with a bronze marker that read simply: ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE.

Here, Circe hesitated...then she turned to Lois and smiled.

"Say nothing. Let me do the talking. I will assure the freedom of your missing women, one way or another...and then our bargain will be sealed. I will see what you see, taste what you taste, feel what you feel...and I will guide you to those pleasures which you have never known."

Circe's smile at these words was dreamy, and Lois was unable to repress a shiver down her spine...though whether from apprehension or excitement, the reporter could not have said.