Hunt You Down (A Dark Holiday #2)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Eden

The white dress they put me in feels like a shroud.

I stand in front of a full-length mirror in a room with no windows, watching a stranger stare back at me.

She has my honey-blonde hair—freshly washed, brushed until it shines, falling in waves past my waist.

She has my hazel eyes, though they look more gold than green under these harsh fluorescent lights.

She has the same small scar on her right palm from when I was ten and didn't know how to properly hold a kitchen knife.

But she's not me.

She can't be me.

Because I would never be here.

"Beautiful," the handler says behind me.

Her name is Margaret, and she's worn the same tight smile for the past three hours. "Absolutely stunning. The white was the right choice."

Virgin white.

I'm not stupid.

I know what the dress means, what the careful styling means, what every single decision they've made about my appearance tonight means.

I'm a product.

Premium grade.

Gold tier, according to the paperwork I wasn't supposed to see but did anyway when Margaret left the room.

My listing.

Like I'm a car being sold at auction.

Mileage: zero.

Condition: pristine.

Previous owners: none.

The thought makes bile rise in my throat.

"Turn around," she instructs, and I do, because what choice do I have?

The dress is simple.

Deceptively so.

High neck, long sleeves, floor-length skirt that pools around my bare feet.

Nothing revealing, nothing overtly sexual.

That would be crass.

This auction—The Companion Exchange, they call it, like we're books being traded at a library—maintains a veneer of sophistication.

Of class, as if you can put class on slavery.

The fabric is expensive.

I can tell by the weight of it, the way it drapes.

Silk, probably.

Real silk, not the synthetic kind.

At the Sanctuary, we wore cotton.

Plain, modest cotton in grays and browns.

Anything else was vanity, and vanity was sin.

But this?

This dress that costs more than most families spend on groceries in a year, worn specifically to make me appealing to men with enough money to buy human beings?

This isn't vanity. This is packaging.

"Perfect." Margaret circles me like I'm livestock at a county fair. Which, I suppose, I am. "The buyers will love you."

My stomach turns.

The buyers.

As in plural.

As in multiple men who will stand in a room tonight and shout numbers at each other, bidding on the right to own me for a year.

Maybe longer.

The contract they made me sign—the one I had to agree to or go back to the warehouse where Sarah's men would put me to work in ways that make this seem merciful—was vague about duration.

Employment contract, it said. Exclusive companion services. Room and board provided. Termination clause subject to financial penalty.

Legal terms for a transaction that shouldn't be legal at all.

The financial penalty, I learned when I actually read the fine print Margaret assumed I couldn't understand, was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

The cost of breaking the contract.

The cost of freedom.

I don't have two hundred and fifty dollars, let alone two hundred and fifty thousand.

"Come," Margaret says, gesturing toward the door. "It's almost time."

I don't move. I can't.

My feet have grown roots into the plush carpet of this windowless room in this mansion on an island I can't escape from.

Outside this door are seven other girls—women—who've been prepared just like me.

I met them briefly this morning.

Saw the fear in their eyes, the resignation, the desperate hope that maybe, just maybe, whoever buys them won't be as bad as what they're running from.

One girl, barely nineteen, told me she owed money to the wrong people.

Card sharks, she said.

They told her she could work off the debt or they'd kill her little brother.

She chose this.

Another said her family sold her to pay off gambling debts.

Said it so matter-of-factly, like families do this sort of thing all the time.

Maybe they do, in whatever world she comes from.

A third wouldn't speak at all, just stared at the wall with the hollow eyes of someone who'd already left their body behind.

I recognized that look.

I saw it on my mother's face in the months before she died.

The look of someone who's given up.

I told them I'd made a mistake.

That I'd trusted the wrong woman at a bus station in Little Rock.

I didn't tell them about the Sanctuary.

About Elder Jacob and the wedding that was supposed to happen two weeks after my twenty-third birthday.

About my mother dying in childbirth because the elders forbade hospitals, forbade doctors, forbade anything that might save her.

About the years of being told my only value was in my future obedience, my eventual children, my ability to submit.

About Father Thomas' sermons on the wickedness of independent thought.

About the punishments for asking questions.

About the way they married off girls at eighteen—sometimes younger—to men three times their age and called it God's will.

I didn't tell them that when Sarah approached me at that bus station, when she offered safety and shelter, I actually thought I'd been rescued.

That God had finally answered the prayers I wasn't supposed to say.

Prayers for escape. For freedom. For a life where I wasn't property.

Turns out God has a sick sense of humor.

"Eden." Margaret's voice sharpens. "We need to go. The reception has already started."

I can hear it now.

Music drifting from somewhere beyond these walls.

Classical. Elegant.

The kind of thing that plays at fundraising galas and museum openings.

Laughter too. Masculine voices raised in conversation and camaraderie.

The buyers, networking over champagne before the main event.

My hands are shaking.

I clasp them together, press them against my stomach beneath where the dress cinches at my waist.

At the Sanctuary, we were taught to be still.

To not fidget.

To present a calm exterior regardless of what churned inside.

A woman's body is a vessel for God's will, Father Thomas used to say. It must be pure. Clean. Controlled.

I wonder what he'd think if he could see me now.

Dressed in white like a bride, about to be sold to the highest bidder.

Actually, I know exactly what he'd think.

He'd say this was my punishment for running.

For rejecting Elder Jacob.

For choosing sin over salvation.

He'd be wrong, but he'd believe it with his whole heart.

"What if I refuse?" The words slip out before I can stop them.

Margaret doesn't even blink. "Then you go back to Sarah's warehouse. You made an agreement."

"Under duress."

"The law doesn't care about duress when you've signed a contract." She checks her watch—expensive, delicate, probably worth more than everything I've ever owned combined. "You have a choice, Eden. Walk out there with dignity, or be dragged out. Either way, you're going on that stage."

Dignity.

As if there's dignity in any of this.

But she's right about one thing: I'm going on that stage. The only question is whether I do it on my own two feet.

My hands curl into fists at my sides.

The white fabric pulls tight across my shoulders.

For a wild moment, I imagine tearing it off, ripping this dress to shreds, and running screaming through the halls of this mansion until someone with a conscience stops this.

But there are no consciences here.

Just money. Just power. Just men who've learned they can buy anything if they're willing to pay enough.

Including me.

"I'll walk," I say quietly.

"Smart girl." Margaret's smile returns, and I hate her for it.

Hate her for being a woman, for being part of this, for leading lambs to slaughter and calling it employment.

"Remember what I told you. Eyes down unless instructed otherwise.

Hands at your sides. No speaking. No crying. Smile if you can manage it."

I can't… or rather I won't.

But I follow her into the hallway where the other seven girls wait in a line like debutantes at some perverse cotillion.

We're all in white.

All variations on the same theme—young, pretty, terrified.

Some of the dresses are more revealing than mine.

Plunging necklines, bare shoulders, slits up the thigh.

Those girls aren't virgins.

Their value is calculated differently.

Number fourteen.

That's what the small tag pinned discreetly to my dress says.

Not my name.

Just a number.

The girl in front of me—number thirteen—is shaking so hard I can see it through her entire body.

She's the one who wouldn't speak this morning.

Still hasn't, as far as I know.

Just stands there trembling like a leaf in a storm.

I want to reach out, to touch her shoulder, to tell her we'll survive this.

But I don't know if we will.

Don't know if survival is even possible when you've been reduced to a catalog listing.

Gold Tier: Virgin, Age 23, No Family Ties, Compliant Temperament.

That last part is a lie.

I'm not compliant.

I ran from the Sanctuary.

I ran from everything I was supposed to be.

I stole money and escaped in the middle of the night and made it all the way to Little Rock before Sarah found me.

But I signed that contract, and now I'm here, and compliance is the only thing keeping me from something worse.

So, I'll comply— for now.

We're led down a long hallway lined with oil paintings of stern-faced men in old-fashioned clothing.

Dead eyes watch our procession.

The frames are gold-leafed, ornate.

Museum quality.

Everything here is museum quality.

The carpet beneath my feet is so thick it swallows sound.

The walls are papered in something that looks hand-painted.

Sconces hold actual candles, their flames flickering as we pass.

Everything here is designed to muffle, to soften, to make this grotesque thing seem refined.

Music drifts from somewhere ahead even louder than before.

I catch fragments of men's conversations as we get closer.

"—heard the market's been slow this quarter—"

"—Fiji in March, you should join us—"

"—the '82 Margaux, excellent choice—"

They're talking about wine and vacations and business.