Page 9 of A Merciless Bargain
Dane walked to the bubble couch and sat on the orange blanket. He pointed to the spot next to him, which I interpreted as his invitation to join him.
With deliberate slowness, wracking my brain for anything useful about my purchaser, I crossed the small room and perched beside the Foulan.
“We do not know what detail may be helpful. Everything you can remember about him during your time together could be useful,” Dane prompted.
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, hands clasped before me to control the urge to fidget. I spoke to the stone floor below my shoes. “Bowyer Haled introduced himself to me after he’d already purchased the right to offer me a contract.”
“What did he look like?”
An image of a tall, imposing man, slightly soft with the graying hair of middle age surfaced in my mind. “He was clearly humanoid,” I answered the question, then described Bowyer. “But he was more typical of your kind. Much furrier than you,”I added, rubbing my cheek in reference to Dane’s unexpectedly smooth face.
“Yes,” he agreed with a nod. “That is more typical.”
I remained silent, waiting for him to answer my unasked question.
He returned my stare in a similar silence.
Ugh, I thought. This was like pulling teeth. “Why don’t you have a full beard and mustache?” I finally asked.
“Surgical removal of my facial hair made it easier to blend across other worlds.”
“I thought you didn’t like Earth?”
“I never said I did not like Earth,” he corrected. “You also assume that Earth is unique.”
A flush crept up the back of my neck. “Yeah, you’re not wrong.”
“But this is not about me. What did Bowyer Haled tell you when he offered you a contract?”
I thought back to that first meeting. Bowyer had been genial enough, and truthful about why he wanted me to purchase me. “After he explained that he wanted to show me off, and how much he was willing to pay for the privilege, I signed on the dotted line.”
Dane frowned at the idiom.
“Made the genetic agreement,” I explained and he nodded. The Collector’s contracts were bound by a type of genetic bond, instead of a physical signature, or the blood oaths I’d later learned happened with other types of contracts.
“Continue. What happened when he brought you to Foula?”
“As I told you before, he said he was in the import-export business.”
“You did not ask what he trafficked.”
I stared at Dane, askance. “He was my purchaser. I had zero right to that knowledge. Maybe in time, he would have told me.”I shrugged. “But he died. All he told me was that the name of his company was Peregrine Curiosities.” My eyes rolled almost of their own volition when I translated the company name in light of what Dane had said about Bowyer procuring edible exotics. “The name definitely takes on a whole new meaning.”
Dane ignored my extraneous chatter. “Did he do any business in the house?”
Another shrug. “Probably in his office. I never saw anybody else in his office,” I added, anticipating his next question.
“You never went into his office.” A statement, not a question.
“No, I did not. He never forbade me to,” I rushed to add. “It seemed… impolite. None of my business.”
“How did the house burn?”
I swallowed past the sudden lump in my throat and coughed involuntarily at the intense memory of smoke filling my lungs, my screams all I could hear in my ears as I fumbled for the exit.
Dane listened intently to my tale of survival.
“We slept in separate rooms,” I began. “Three nights ago, I was reading in bed. At that time of night, I should have been asleep.” A brick formed in my stomach. “My reading addiction probably saved my life.” My simple appreciation of the existence of ebook-equivalents on Foula had grown to near-mythic proportion since that night. I rubbed my hands along the tops of my thighs, attempting to self-soothe.