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The music stops for a moment while Coco announces to the bidders to take their seats. “The auction will start momentarily.” The girls in the lineup ahead of me twitter with excitement. Tonight’s auction is held in a temporary location in the middle of nowhere, underneath a very large, luxurious tent. Out front is a pad for helicopters and a landing strip for private jets. Also, there’s lots of fancy cars. By tomorrow all of this will be gone though, as if it never existed. The next time this auction pops up again, it will be somewhere else, possibly on an entirely different continent.
Corks pop and champagne starts flowing backstage. I’m offered a flute, but I shake my head. I need to remain fully sober this evening. And then my mind drifts toward the one thing I care about most in this world, second only to my mother. “Baby Demon,” I murmur.My darling kitty.I dart out of the lineup and head back to where all of us have kept our belongings. I must check on her again before I go on stage. I get down on my knees and unzip a corner of the pink travel case and put out my fingers through to check on my baby. My senior cat purrs as soon as she sees me and leans into my hand.
Demon Spawn has been my closest friend since childhood, and I love her more than life itself. She gazes up at me with large blue eyes, and that orange and white fluff of hair not as thick as in the past. She’s still too thin and I can see the stitches of her recent surgery across a patch of shaved fur. It hurt me to have to move her in this pet carrying case, but she appears comfortable. Not even a long train ride could defeat her enthusiasm for life. She’s got her favorite plush blanket and all her meds. My baby is sixteen years old and delicate, taking three different daily medications and requiring a special diet. Her recent lifesaving, and highly expensive surgery was traumatic for the both of us.
Demon was given to me by my dad as a kitten only a month before he passed away, when I was eight years old. I feel sometimes like this cat is my link to the past. My best friend. She pauses to bite my hand and I smile indulgently. It’s always been Demon and me against the world.
I lean in and rub my nose against her fur and inhale her natural scent, which I’ve always loved. I can’t help it. I might despise most other people, but I fuckinglovemy cat. “Don’t worry,” I whisper with fierce determination. “I’ve got this under control. I’ll get us situated and keep you safe. Then I’ll burn that bastard down to the ground for causing you a moment of discomfort.”
My hope is to regroup and return home with Demon—strong and healed—at my side. My mother doesn’t understand Ezra’s true evil. I don’t get it. He maintained a friendship with her all these years after my dad died, but when I went away to college, he swooped in and turned their friendship into something more. Next thing I knew they’d ran off to Vegas and got married. Sometimes I wonder if he’s got her drugged or under mind control, because she’s changed over the last five years while I’ve been mostly away at college. We don’t talk as much anymore. At first, I was annoyed that this guy held so much sway over my mother, but then I broke into his office the last time I visited and found a file filled with photographic evidence and confessions of his treachery against my father. And now it all makes more sense. I need to get my mother away from him.
When my dad died fifteen years ago from “a car accident,” or so they say, it turns out Ezra had arranged the whole thing. That asshole murdered my father and has been working hard to take over everything my father had. I stole the evidence to take him down, which I’m certain is the reason he’s looking for me. I took off and left university because his minions were on my heels. Staying at college would just put my roommate at risk. I packed up Demon and got out of there. And now here I am.
I should give the file directly to the FBI, but I’m concerned their retribution won’t be swift and could be easily derailed, therefore I will seek justice on my own. Plus, I’ve got to find a way to get mom out of there asap.
“Girls, line up tight,” Coco St. James shouts. “The auction is starting.”
I return to my spot in line. I’m the last, so that’s good. I guess. Maybe it would have been better to get it all over with. I don’t know. But I’m able to watch and see what the other girls do. I’m impressed with a few of them.
The others clap with joy when the first girl onstage gets a two-million-dollar bid and there’s one with a five-million bid and another with an eight-million-dollar payout. They all do well. Most of them are also married on the spot. Champagne continues to flow freely and there’s lots of toasts.
I quietly watch the commotion until it’s my turn, tapping my foot to the beat of the music.
I’m not tall or curvy like the others, but I keep fit and train often. I have to be ready to fight because the only person who’s going to keep me safe in this world is me. I’m petite but with an athletic build. Tonight I wear lots of dark eye makeup. My nails are short and black. The corset is tight around my waist and pushes up my medium-sized boobs and barely covers my nipples.
“Posey Bamburgh,” Coco finally announces. “Our last virgin is five feet four inches tall and weighs one hundred and ten pounds.” She keeps going on with my stats.
I pause to reapply my deep red lipstick, then I stride out to the music with my chin held high and the spotlight on me. My long curtain bangs sweep down over my dark eyes and then move back when I tilt or lift my chin. I’m wearing the tight corset and a black pair of panties, along with jeweled fishnet stockings and my platform boots. The rest of my long black hair is divided into two tight braids that fall over my chest. I stop in the middle of the stage and strike a pose with one arm crooked over my head and the other across my corset.
Then the music starts with a deep bass, and I dance to the juicy beat.
My favorite song energizes me with movement. Going in deep is no hardship. I sway my hips and move in sharp angles across the dance floor. Shouts of encouragement and whistles emit from the crowd. Then the tempo changes and I change direction as well and strut down the middle of the stage, right to the edge. My palms are out in front of me, and then I place my hands slowly down my whole torso. I stop when the music stops and then swirl in circles, in time to the deep beat and wiggle my ass. The music reaches the crescendo and I sweep around and end up in the middle of the stage, directly under the spotlight, with my hands lifted and curved like claws, moving them side by side to the chorus.
The song ends, and I stop too, now with my back to the crowd. I turn my head over my shoulder and look at the audience and there are more whistles and catcalls.
I still don’t smile.
And then the bidding starts.
“Two million,” someone shouts, which is surprising because this is a silent auction.
I turn around and fully face the audience, trying to make out this man who shouted the first bid but he’s impossible to see in the dark.
Coco stands on the stage with a screen in her hands. Mysterious bidders in the shadowy audience press buttons on the arms of their chairs to up the bidding. But someone with a very deep raspy voice continues to defy the rules and shout out his bid. “Three million,” he yells again.
A new bid from the audience flashes across Coco’s screen. “Five million,” she shouts back.
“Seven million,” the same voice challenges.
I narrow my eyes, still trying to see the man boldly bidding for me, but he’s too far in the back.
Coco grins. “Eight million.”
There’s a hush in the crowd. Only one other girl got to eight million. Why would anyone want to pay that much money for me? I’m unsmiling. I’m not dressed like any of the others. I’m a well-known, aloof, “bad girl.”
And then suddenly, the man roars out from the back of the room, “Twenty million.”
Everyone’s freaking out. I’m freaking out too but trying not to show it.
