Chapter 2
2
HIM
EARLIER
M y new owner’s name was Keith Wainwright-Phillips. I knew because I picked him out myself.
I didn’t know too much about him, though. He was the ex-CEO of a company that sold insurance to corporations that used slave labor, he lived in Phoenix, Arizona, and he knew where to find my sister. Beyond that, he could be a rapist, he could be a sadist, he could be a psychopath. Hell, I hoped he was all three because it would make it easier for me to kill him when and if the time came. But all that mattered to me right now was making sure he wouldn’t send me back. Because I couldn’t be sent back. I needed to be in Phoenix because Phoenix was where my sister was. And Keith Wainwright-Phillips, before I killed him, was going to help me find her—whether he liked it or not.
So for the past forty-eight hours, I’d tried to be good. I’d tried to be a helpful, polite, obedient little slave, the kind that when I was a kid, everyone thought—briefly—I would grow up to be. Yes, sir, no, sir, whatever pleases you, sir. Hell, I even spent a large portion of the flights from Berlin to New York to Phoenix trying to tell stories to a red-faced, sobbing little boy, mostly for the sake of the eardrums of the other slaves chained in the cargo hold with us, just so they wouldn’t riot out of sheer annoyance and force the handlers to come down and start whaling on all of us.
With a book, it would be easy, because, unlike most slaves, I could read. But we weren’t allowed any books on the flight, so to tell stories, I’d have to be like my sister and make them up. The problem was, I couldn’t. I was the logician of the family, the same way she was the storyteller. Which made sense, since our mother had been smart enough—in a different universe—to have been both. The ironic thing was, our mistress used to cane my sister all the time for lying, though she’d never lied in her life. She didn’t know how to lie. All she’d been doing, by claiming that she hadn’t swept the bedrooms because she’d followed a unicorn through a portal in search of the gnomes who had hidden her dustpan in a dragon’s cave, was making up her own truth, a truth that was so much sweeter and more beautiful than life had ever given her.
As for me? When I was twelve or so, I ripped a star chart out of one of our master’s kids’ textbooks. I couldn’t read the names, but I was trying to learn all the planets and constellations by color and shape because I wanted to be right . And she was the only one who’d sit out on the roof of our master’s Luxembourg City townhouse and stargaze with me, late at night when we were supposed to be in bed.
But she didn’t care about being right. She’d just make everything up to suit her. Everything was a fairy or a mermaid or a unicorn. And then to really get me going, she’d throw an elephant or a pig or something in there. Then she’d tell crazy stories about them that had no logic, except to her, I guess, and insist they were true. And I’d just get fed up and call her a stupid idiot who didn’t understand science, and go inside.
Needless to say, I regretted that a year later when my last glimpse of her tear-streaked, terrified face was from separate pens as we were sold apart, punished for something I alone had done. And then I didn’t see the stars for three years.
But I kept on hearing her voice—in the fields, on the whipping post, in the punishment cage. Who cares if they’re not right? She’d demand. What is “right,” anyway? No one owns the sky. In my stories, no one owns anything or anyone.
It was a nice thought. Really nice. Problem was, I wasn’t like her. I couldn’t tell stories, nor did I really believe in them. But I could lie. Holy shit, could I lie. The same muscle that made me logical helped me manipulate logic—which I did, often, to protect my sister at the price of my own skin.
And I could steal. Hell, it was how I’d gotten where I was right now—stealing and lying and scheming and bribing and calling in favors from everyone I knew, slave and free, to get myself sold to where I needed to be. And here I was, scheming and lying and stealing again because if I got beaten up, deemed trouble, and sent back because of this screeching little kid next to me, I’d fail.
And I’d already failed with my mother. I could not, would not , fail with my sister. I’d make up for what I’d done and make sure freedom, for her, would be more than just a story. And if the only freedom I ever found was dying doing that , well, it would still be a happier ending than most of us get.
So instead of making up stories for this kid, I stole them. From memory, out of the only comic book I’d ever been able to call my own, one my old master’s son had left out in the rain and then decided it had been rendered suitable only for a slave to have. I’d treasured it. Of course, I’d been illiterate, too, then, so as near as I could figure it, the bad guys were the ancient Romans trying to invade Gaul and boss everybody around, and the good guy, Asterix, fought back using his brains and his fists. And if my master’s son hadn’t been too stupid to realize how much a slave could relate to that, he never would have given me the comic.
“You know what Asterix told those Roman bullies when they tried to push him around?” I said to the boy in German because it was all he understood, putting on my best storytelling voice, like her . Curious, he sniffled and wriggled a bit closer, though, like all of us, the chains on his ankles bolted him to the bulkhead. Unlike me and a few others onboard who couldn’t be trusted, though, he didn’t have a muzzle fastened to his head with leather straps. Luckily, the wire cage over my mouth only prevented me from biting, not from talking. “He looked them right in the eye and said, ‘You might be bigger, but I’ve got friends and a whole lot of smarts. And that beats muscle any day of the week.’”
Yeah, Asterix never actually said that. But the kid didn’t know that. He was illiterate, same as I’d once been. Plus, it felt right. And it seemed to do the trick. The kid’s eyes got all wide, like for a second, he actually forgot he was helpless and chained in a dark cargo hold on his way to be sold to some possibly psychotic stranger who held his very life in their hands. I’d call that a win.
Actually, now that I could read, I wished I still had the comic. It was the only thing besides dense physics and chemistry texts I think I’d actually enjoy. Hell, maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe it would turn out that the story was completely different than I’d imagined. Maybe the Romans were actually the good guys. But at least I would finally be able to find out for myself.
After landing, we were loaded with cattle prods into a van to the distribution center for Cosgrove’s Human Assets, the private dealer who’d handled my sale. There, my cuffs and shackles and muzzle were finally removed. My old clothes were taken from me, and I was shoved into a cold shower, deloused, and given a pair of khaki scrubs to wear, identical to the eighteen male slaves standing around me and the dozen more female slaves in a separate pen. Every so often, the sales manager would appear outside the pen, calling out our numbers one by one as our owners arrived.
So this was Phoenix, a place I knew nothing about except that it was in the middle of a goddamn desert somewhere to the west of New North America, it was home to one of the largest mirror telescopes in the world, and that I wasn’t impressed.
We’d now been here for three hours. I hadn’t slept in almost eighteen, and since we’d arrived, nobody had offered me so much as a morsel of food, a gulp of water, or ice for the electrical burns still sizzling on my torso. Not that I’d expected it. But the little boy evidently had because he kept tugging at my arm as if he’d decided I must have a stash of lollipops somewhere that I just wasn’t telling him about for some reason.
From behind me, the chain-link pen clattered open as Weiss, a walking meat cube of a handler who’d come all the way with us from Germany, entered with a set of keys. Feeding time, I hoped, if only because it would get this kid off my case.
No such luck. From behind me came a wail.
I groaned. “Look, kid, I told you, I’m really sorry, but I?—”
But the kid wasn’t there. He had been yanked backward and onto the ground, cowering now behind the handler’s legs. “Back off, slave,” the handler said to me in German. “This one said he was hungry. So I’m gonna shove a gourmet meal down his throat.” Smiling like his birthday had come early, the handler prodded the kid up and started dragging him toward the gate again.
But the boy’s number hadn’t been called. The sales manager wasn’t waiting outside the pen. My heart dropped. By gourmet meal , did he mean?—
The boy’s eyes, when they met mine, were two petrified saucers, though he didn’t struggle or even, for once, start screaming. He’d been trained better than that. If it happened, he’d just … let it happen.
But I knew why he was looking at me. What he was pleading for. The same thing we were all pleading for, all the time. Even if we never said it out loud.
I glanced around in horror at the blank, emotionless faces of my fellow slaves. Seriously? Nobody was going to do anything about this?
I mean, I knew why—because it was suicide—but that didn’t make it right.
My sister, when I got myself killed saving this kid before I could save her , might feel otherwise. But knowing what we’d both been through, I think she’d also understand why I lunged for the guy anyway.
Luckily for me, he must have been on steroids or something because his muscles deflated like balloons when I grabbed him—my own muscles forged on the handles of hoes and pickaxes—and hurled him against the concrete wall, hard enough to crack his skull if I had only aimed him right. As it was, it only bent his nose at a forty-five-degree angle, blood gushing out of it like a broken hose.
I would have tried again, but a second later, thugs outnumbered me four to one. Two of them held me down while the third laid into me with one of their standard-issue cattle prods, all over my neck, jaw, and torso—prods that, strangely, never seemed to hurt any less, no matter how many times I’d been zapped with them. The fourth thug just stood by forebodingly until the end, when he clobbered me right in the eye as a parting gift.
Finally, they threw me down like a wet rag to slump against the wall, and I doubled over, trying to quell the pounding in my head, praying I wouldn’t pass out, vomit, or die. Not here, anyway. I still had things to do.
Actually, I was lucky for another reason: If I’d done what I’d just done to an owner, I’d be flayed alive, if not sold to the mines. But these assholes were just hired goons, here to help close the sale. They wouldn’t risk their paychecks by harming the merchandise. Much. Besides, they probably figured my body was already ripped to shreds enough—from the trip and just in general—that nobody would notice.
But I was pretty sure I was fucked.
Meanwhile, the little boy, forgotten by the handlers, was howling again, but the other slaves didn’t react. They barely looked at me or him, fearing guilt by association. I’d done everything I could do for him. Now, all I could do was strain through my blurred vision to try to see through the chain-link surrounding me and down the harsh, fluorescent-lit corridor, waiting for my number to be called, desperately trying to think up a clever explanation for my new owner that wouldn’t get me sent back. Because I couldn’t be sent back.
My sister was depending on me.
“773496S6.”
Called like a dog, I raised my head automatically. Lucky Sevens , they’d sometimes called me ironically at the factory farm in Romania, where I’d spent the three years after being sold away from my sister. It was a nickname I’d hated but couldn’t do much about. A bitter joke, really, though I was praying it would hold today. It was derived from the number that had been etched into my brain as deeply as it had been on the steel chain bracelet I, like all slaves, wore welded tight to my wrist. That number was the closest thing I’d ever had to a real name. Maybe the closest I ever would. Legally, we were supposed to be called either by our numbers or nothing, but many of us were called something , if only in private—a birth name if we were born free, a nickname if we weren’t.
But not me.
They tell me I’m not a person. I say, fine. I get away with more that way.
A different handler, also speaking German but with a New North American accent, clanged his unlit cattle prod on the chain-link, the same as he’d done for the others. The only difference was that he was carrying an armful of chains and another muzzle.
My turn, then.
My chest tightened—I couldn’t help it—at the clang of steel as the new handler, Barrett, unlocked the pen again with a ring of keys. Not that I was nervous, of course. I’d done this before, after all. Although granted, never when someone’s life was in the balance: my sister’s.
I stumbled to my feet more unsteadily than I would have liked, squared my shoulders, and made sure to neutralize my face. Behind me, the little boy, abandoned by his tormentors, increased his wails as he realized his protector was about to leave. Get used to it, kid. Everyone who cares leaves. Or dies. Or gets sold. I bent down and spoke low in German. Even if his new master spoke the language, he’d still have to pick up English on the fly—and he’d have to cut out the crying, ASAP.
“Remember Asterix?” I asked. The boy nodded.
“What’s the holdup? Move it, slave!”
I bent down to the boy, who was clearly about to start bawling again. “Quick. What does he say?” I whispered, recalling the one thing I’d told him that I knew Asterix had actually said.
The kid thought for a second, then twisted his face into a kind of crooked smile. “Them Romans be crazy,” he said in ungrammatical German.
“You know it, kid.” I offered him a fist-bump, which he returned half-heartedly.
Look, aside from the crying, he was a good-looking, well-trained boy, and chances were his owners would treat him right, at least for a while. If I had to guess, he’d go to a rich household much like the one I’d been born in, where they’d want a playmate for their children who could be trained as a valet as he grew. He’d still work twelve-hour days and be whipped or caned for the slightest infraction, but nobody spent thousands importing a foreign slave just to brutally rape, torture, and/or kill them.
Usually.
Turning away from the sniffling little boy like an asshole, I stepped out of the pen, wincing as the door crashed closed behind me.
The New North American sales manager, slick and gelled and different from the one on the plane, raised his manicured eyebrows when he saw the state of my face. “What happened to?—”
“I don’t know, Mr. Harrigan,” lied the handler, Barrett, in English, eyes flicking this way and that as if he were afraid I would be stupid enough to say something and get him and his buddies in trouble. “I wasn’t there, sir.” Meanwhile, he strapped on my muzzle, pulling the leather straps as tight as if it were a parachute and he was about to push me out of a plane. I’d never bitten, of course, but I was starting to think I should try it one of these days, as long as my mouth was going to be behind bars no matter what. He ordered me to kneel and hold out my hands. My wrists were already throbbing, rubbed red and raw from being restrained for the past eighteen hours. Fuck, I’d rather stick my hands in a piranha tank than be cuffed again. I was used to cuffs and shackles, of course, but they were like cattle prods—they never seemed to hurt any less. Still, there was nothing to be gained by not cooperating—not at this point, anyway. So I squeezed my eyes shut and did as I was told, hearing the familiar ratcheting as the cool metal again sank its teeth into my already brutalized wrists.
“Jesus, look at him,” exclaimed Harrigan in disgust when I opened them again. “Is this what you—”He groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. “We never should have outsourced the slave handling. Ah, but it’s too late now. We’re already backed up enough. Up, boy,” he ordered me. “And keep your mouth shut about this. If anybody asks, they loaded you on the plane like that.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, following their lead and switching to English. It was a language I’d learned half from British and North American streaming shows, half from Shakespeare and Dickens, all of which I’d been allowed to consume courtesy of my last master, the Heidelberg professor who’d bought me off the factory farm when I was fifteen. I was nearly twenty now, and in that time, he’d taught me everything I knew. Everything academic, anyway.
My shackles and cuffs rattling with a sick familiarity, I followed exactly three paces behind the two men, just like we were taught, down under the familiar harsh fluorescent lighting of the corridor with its cement floors and cinder block walls, the kind of hard, brutal institutional space that was practically home for me. The kind of space that—given what I’d done—I probably belonged in.
But Keith Wainwright-Phillips knew what I’d done, and he had bought me anyway. Why? I was about to find out—and also whether he was the kind of guy who, when he received a package full of defective merchandise, blamed the merchandise or the company who’d shipped it to him.
A door opened, and I stepped into the incandescent glow of the gallery. Out here, it was all soft lighting, upholstered furniture, plush carpeting, and mood music meant to lull rich buyers into forgetting they were trading in human flesh. Hell, it almost made me forget that I was human flesh.
Barrett—with the kind of viciousness I couldn’t explain, even in a handler, given he’d just met me—jerked me to a stop somewhere in the middle of the endlessly long room and pointed to the floor.
“Kneel, boy,” he said, swatting me with the unlit prod, which was totally unnecessary and from him, totally expected. I obeyed immediately, chains clinking, hands folded in my lap. A lock of my golden-blond hair came loose from behind my ear and swung into my face. I wondered whether trying to reach up and replace it would look like insolence and decided not to risk it. I was already fucked up enough from the fight. The littlest thing could cost me the time and resources I needed to find my sister.
From above, the first sound I heard out of my new owner was an annoyed sigh—and not at me. “Why is he muzzled when the others aren’t?” he asked.
“Protocol, sir,” said Harrigan.
Barrett caught my eye with a sneer. “And after what this particular slave did to Weiss?—”
Oh. I’d just broken his work husband’s nose. That explained it. Luckily, Harrigan shushed him before he could go into detail. It was his ass on the line, too.
“Take it off,” said my master.
What?
“But, Mr. Wainwright-Phillips, his history?—”
Shouldn’t the master be giving the orders? I thought.
“Shouldn’t the master be giving the orders?” he said.
Damn right.
“I’m well aware of his history,” Wainwright-Phillips’s voice continued, “but I decided to give him a chance anyway. I want him to trust me, and needless to say, chaining him up like a rabid animal won’t accomplish that. Now take that muzzle off. I want to see his face properly.”
Fuck. The prospect of actually not completely hating this guy had not been on my agenda. And it was going to ruin everything.
“Of course, sir.” The handler seethed. He jerked my face forward and violently unbuckled the muzzle, sending a cloud of his oniony breath radiating down onto my face as the device clattered to the floor. Some improvement. He yanked a thick lock of my hair, wrenching my head to the side. “Bite anybody and you leave here with one nut, mutt,” he muttered in my ear.
“Duly noted, sir,” I muttered back.
“Restraints, too,” said Wainwright-Phillips. Hell, compared to most masters, this guy was practically Spartacus.
“But he?—”
“ Restraints, too ,” my new master repeated. And all of a sudden, those, too, clattered to the ground again. And there I was with three free people—limbs unfettered, mouth uncaged, just like them. But still I stayed obediently kneeling, eyes on the floor because the chains that bound me were so much more than physical, and all four of us knew it.
All at once, someone wearing expensive leather boat shoes stepped into view. Despite myself, my breathing grew shallow. This was it, and it never got easier. Plan or no plan.
“You can look up, boy.”
I still didn’t move. It could be a trick.
“I mean it. I bought you. You might as well see what you’re dealing with. My name’s Keith Wainwright-Phillips, by the way.” I already knew that, of course, and besides, it wasn’t like we’d be on a first-name basis. That was impossible when one person didn’t have one.
“Yes, sir,” I said, and my master and the sales manager exchanged bemused smiles like I’d just said something cute.
Oh, the accent. Right.
All right, time to size up this weirdo. In his mid-fifties, fit and tall but not as tall as me, with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair and a slight growth of beard, Master Wainwright-Phillips carried with him the same musk of privilege all my masters had had. There was, however, something different about him, and I was kicking myself that I couldn’t yet figure out what. Unless I’d lost track of time, it was a workday, though he wasn’t dressed for work. Rather, with his polo shirt, beard growth, and tan, he looked like someone who enjoyed his leisure time. An avid sailor or golfer, maybe, like my old master.
Maybe that was it. Or maybe it was the fact that just by his critical gaze, I could tell right away that he noticed the burns and bruises. But he didn’t say anything.
Why?
Before I could brainstorm a reason, my new master grabbed my chin and tilted it up, and I knew the gaze. It could come from a male or a female. It didn’t really matter. Let’s face it: When it wasn’t contused black and blue, the face I’d inherited from my mother—perfect Euclidean bone structure, foxlike eyes somewhere between amber and gold, and thick waves of sun-bleached golden hair falling across it all just so—did the trick every time. I didn’t even pretend to be modest about it. As a slave, you couldn’t be. We were products, after all. I might have sparked Wainwright-Phillips’ initial interest with my education and skills—and my bargain price for a slave with those skills—but my pictures were what had closed the deal, and I knew it.
“He really is beautiful,” Wainwright-Phillips said idly to Harrigan, even though at the moment, I was a complete fucking mess. He tapped my mouth to get me to open it, to see if I had all my teeth, or something. Who the fuck knows why they did it? “The photos didn’t lie. I might have to start having dinner parties again; it would be a shame not to show him off. And look at those shoulders. He’s not one of those waifish little pets you see all the time. He’s strong.” He pinched my bicep below my uniform sleeve—still ripped, like the rest of me, from three years working in chains—then ran his hand down my flat torso like admiring a Thoroughbred.
There wasn’t anything overly suggestive about the touch; it was pretty par for the course. Still, I knew enough never to rule anything out. Even the most devoted hetero family men had been known to make exceptions for slaves because slaves didn’t count, and free men—unlike free women—could fuck whoever and whatever they wanted. Lucky bastards. But to men like my master, a valuable slave was more like a well-trained purebred hunting dog or horse. A creature attractive, functional, maybe even endearing, but decidedly not a person.
Meanwhile, the sales manager nodded obsequiously along, though he would have done that even if Wainwright-Phillips had just told him the clouds were literally cotton candy. Meanwhile, Barrett glared at me, practically salivating. Your balls are mine, mutt.
And as for me? I just waited, heart pounding in my ears. Waited for my new master to mention the bruise that still throbbed like an alarm bell near my eye. Waited for him to realize that bargain or no bargain, I was trouble—what kind of idiot slave gets in a fight mere minutes before meeting his new master?—and decide to send me back. I wondered if Barrett would say anything. Even though he clearly hated me, he probably wouldn’t. To risk killing a sale, he’d have to be dumber than he looked. And that was pretty damn dumb.
The sales manager cleared his throat. “He can be stripped, if you prefer to inspect him further.”
The handler nodded encouragingly, and I rolled my eyes inwardly. Oh, so you’re a perv, too. Figures.
“No. He’s already had a health examination over there, and I know he’s got scarring—the photos they sent were very thorough. No need to show it off here. There’s a thirty-day money-back guarantee, anyway. If there’s anything wrong with him, I expect I’ll find out sooner or later. I’d rather just get him home.”
“Of course, sir. Hold out your hands, boy,” Barrett ordered gleefully, whipping out the cuffs, clearly relishing the last chance he’d get to remind me that I was property. Dick.
I closed my eyes, stifled a groan, and did as I was told for the third time. I could only hope the ride to the Wainwright-Phillips home would be a short one and that they’d actually come off at the end of it.
“What are you doing?” Wainwright-Phillips demanded.
My eyes popped open. But the question was directed toward the staff.
“It’s policy, Mr. Wainwright-Phillips,” said the sales manager. “The restraints are included.”
“I don’t care. I told you I don’t want him chained. At all.” He grabbed one of my arms. “Look, his wrists are all sliced up already. I realize it’s for your own safety, but if you don’t want the merchandise damaged, how much would it cost you to take five minutes to train your staff to put these things on properly?”
Coincidentally, I had thought the same thing. I guess we both had heads for logic. And all of a sudden, the metal was gone.
Thank you, I thought because even saying that out of turn would have been inappropriate. My master beckoned me to get up, and I could see Harrigan and Barrett breathe audible sighs, probably relieved as I was that this bullshit was almost over. Then?—
“By the way, don’t think I don’t notice those fresh burns on his face and neck,” Wainwright-Phillips said, peering closer. “And bruises.”
Oh, shit. No, no, no. I thought I was?—
“And I want to know what your so-called ‘experienced slave handling professionals’ have been doing to the poor kid,” he demanded. “Who, considering the money’s cleared escrow, is my property, not yours.”
Wait, what ? Wainwright-Phillips was incensed, it seemed, but not at me. And for some reason, he’d held off mentioning it. Why? Just to fuck with the handlers? To fuck with me ? Or to put me at ease? But who the fuck cared whether a slave was at ease? Slaves didn’t have ease.
The sales manager sputtered, his slick, sophisticated facade toppling as these bastards’ facades always did when someone called them out on being the sick, violent fucks they really were. “We received him from his previous owner like that,” he stammered, glaring at Barrett. “We don’t take any responsibility for?—”
“The mutt was being aggressive,” broke in the handler, unable to hold back anymore, jabbing a finger at me. Harrigan shot him a death glare whose meaning was clear: Shut up, you idiot.
“Somehow I doubt that, considering he’s completely exhausted, and from what I’ve seen, your staff seem far too quick to punish, when other means of control are available.” My master gestured for me to rise, and I started to get to my feet with a sigh of relief. I was in the clear, for now. “This is completely unacceptable,” he said. “Who’s your supervisor?”
“He’s out to lunch, sir.”
“Well—” Wainwright-Phillips sputtered, looking around as if to see how much further his overinflated sense of entitlement would get him. Not very. “I’m not finished here. You can bet your supervisor will be hearing from me, and so will everyone I know in the market for a slave. And you won’t relish my responses on the customer satisfaction survey, I can tell you that. Come, boy.”
I walked toward him in a daze. Well, shit. If I hadn’t known what I knew about him, I’d say that Keith Wainwright-Phillips almost deserved a chance.
All that remained was for me to get scanned under the microchip machine so the data could be updated and Wainwright-Phillips would be officially registered as my owner. It took seconds only. As we turned to exit the gallery, I caught one last glimpse of the boy from the plane, who’d also been claimed. He kneeled before a well-dressed woman, looking more than a little stressed. She was speaking German to him while she clutched a baby in a sling and held a shrieking toddler by the hand. A teenage slave girl waited nearby, wrangling another child. Just as I’d suspected. The kid wouldn’t get a moment’s peace, but he’d probably be fine. For a while.
Another slave greeted us in the waiting room, a woman with a lined, rosy face, round glasses, and bunned gray hair with a little bit of its original black clinging stubbornly. She was thin and reserved but exuded competence, and more importantly, she didn’t look terrified of Wainwright-Phillips. That was huge.
“This is my housekeeper,” said my master with a slight smile. She actually smiled back . Masters could feel affection for their slaves, I’d heard. It was just that none of mine ever had. “She’s also my cook, so I’d advise you to get on her good side immediately if you want access to the treats.”
Treats? Now the woman turned her sympathetic smile on me, and it almost made me want to return it, even though it—and the mention of treats—made me feel about five years old. But then we directed our gazes to the ground and fell into lockstep behind our owner as we trailed him to his car. It could only help me to demonstrate to a valued fellow slave that I was well-trained and wouldn’t cause trouble. Yet.
I couldn’t help but blink as we emerged into the sunlight of a sprawling suburban parking lot, the sound of traffic zooming by on the frontage road drowning our footsteps. But I was most surprised to glimpse jagged, russet-colored mountains in the distance, entirely alien from anything in any part of New Europe I’d lived in. My only real frame of reference for them were cliché scenes from Western movies I’d glimpsed, although since then, stagecoaches, saloons, and horse corrals seemed to have been replaced with interstate highways, big-box stores, and fast-food outlets.
Any change in scenery was a relief, though. For the last few days, I’d been in chains, going from dark, mildewed holding pens to trucks to planes to more holding pens. At least now I could breathe fresh air, even if it was hot, dry, and strange. I turned my face to the sun, drinking it up without shame. Sure, my master could still be a sadist, but he probably wasn’t. And if he was, and if he was helping the man who had my sister, I’d kill him and save her.
It didn’t matter what happened to me after that.
The housekeeper dragged me back to reality as she opened the door of Wainwright-Phillips’s luxury sedan—a classic model of Mercedes-Benz, I instantly noted. (I’d never driven one, of course, but I’d washed a few). If he admired German engines as much as I did, there was yet another point in his favor. Goddamn.
“We’ll find you some clothes as soon as we get back,” murmured the housekeeper, indicating that I should slide in next to her in the back seat. Find , not buy. She herself was dressed neatly in a pink blouse, black skirt, and sandals, but they were probably secondhand from her mistress. I took that to mean there wouldn’t be any lavish shopping trips in my future. Was Wainwright-Phillips on a budget or something? If so, how and why had he bought me at all? I still hadn’t figured that out, and it bothered me. My background may have made me a bargain, but I sure as hell wasn’t cheap. “We’ve got a bunk in the slave quarters made up for you, and you’ve already been worked into the rotation. You’ll be on the night shift tonight—the low man on the totem pole always gets it. Don’t worry, though,” she said, touching my arm lightly, “it’s just light cleaning and waiting around in case something comes up. Hardly anything ever does.”
Her eyes shifted to my electrical burns, and I squirmed in the leather seat like a kid getting a booster shot.
“Poor boy. Look at those,” she said softly, flicking aside a longer lock of my hair to examine my neck. “How did—never mind.” I appreciated her discretion, given our master’s presence. “We’ll get you some ice, too.” She gave me another small smile. “It always takes a day or two to settle in, and this is not only a new household, but a new continent.”
I didn’t answer because I was suddenly, for some reason, thinking of my mother. The care in the housekeeper’s voice—care I’d long ago stopped expecting—must have reminded me of hers somehow. The difference was that my mother had been young and beautiful, all light and laughter and energy, barely more than a girl even when I was a teen. But thinking about her and what our world had done to her was a shortcut to wanting to break things, so I stopped. Instead, I sank into the seat, trying to enjoy the softness of the leather after twelve hours of hard steel.
“Your most recent master educated you, then, boy?” Master Wainwright-Phillips spoke up.
Shit, I guess we were chitchatting instead. I straightened up, careful to avert my eyes as he peered at me through the rearview mirror. “Yes, sir. Professor von Esch, in Heidelberg. He taught me to read and write and to speak English.” I left it there. I could be modest when I really tried. Or at least fool people into thinking I was.
“Your file said he taught you engineering, physics, and chemistry, too, and that you even helped him with his research,” he pushed. “That’s not exactly a common skillset for a slave. Is it useful?”
I paused, trying to read the car. “I’ll never make enough money to pay my student loans back, sir.”
It was a bold reply—maybe even stupid. But my master chuckled, and even the housekeeper hid a smile. Good, she was under my spell already—for me, it usually didn’t take long with women. Even no-nonsense, middle-aged housekeeping slaves. And it never hurt.
I breathed—really breathed—for the first time in over two days.
Then Wainwright-Phillips added, “My daughter, Louisa, is about your age. She’s pre-med at the university here.”
A daughter. I filed that away. It might be helpful. I was bound to come across her soon, and knowing something about her might help win her support. Knowing what turned her on might help win even more of it. I’d learned young that charming (read: manipulating) my way into eating chocolate truffles out of the hand of a hot, lonely girl was a hell of a lot more fun than scrubbing baseboards and that I had all the tools to make it happen. Of course slave boys weren’t allowed to even touch free women unless they were their mistresses, and even that usually had to be hidden away like a filthy secret. In the back of my head, always, was the all-powerful weapon free women had against me. Rejecting a come-on from the wrong girl could be as dangerous as accepting it because a slave was always guilty until proven innocent. On that charge, anyway.
So I’d have to be smart about it. But I wouldn’t have survived this long if I weren’t.
Meanwhile, the housekeeper was massaging my wrist in a motherly way. I raised my eyes and smiled, then lowered them again.
That was it, then. I’d get in good with the spoiled princess of the household; chances were she had her father wrapped around her finger.
And her father would lead me to Max Langer, and Max Langer would lead me to my sister.