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Human and seer males walked around in more of those sheik outfits, the majority either blindingly white or pitch black. Their female counterparts trailed behind in dark burqas, or sometimes wrapped in more complex coverings of elaborate veils.

Right next to them, people of both sexes walked around in modern, Western-style clothes.

Some of those clothes were pretty danged revealing.

Palm trees lined the covered walkway where we strolled, along with stone and metal sculptures, rows of fountains, and a moving sidewalk that cruised past us going both directions. All the people I saw looked pretty relaxed?but maybe having a limitless pool of slave labor and daily manicures did a lot to really chill a person out, even in the midst of a global pandemic.

I was glad we were walking, not taking the moving sidewalks, even with the ridiculous clothes and even more ridiculous shoes I’d been forced to wear. I strode down the pristine white marble in what had to be six-inch heels that coiled around my ankles and up my calf, wearing a beaded dress that showed off more of my body than it hid.

Oh, and the collar, of course… can’t forget that.

I’d really been jonesing for a few more hours in one of those fucking things.

On the plus side, the collar’s organics didn’t touch any of the structures I used for telekinesis, so I was pretty sure I still had options. I couldn’t test that?not until I absolutely needed it, anyway?but knowing that kept me relatively calm, in part because it also meant they likely had no idea who I was.

The beaded thing I wore, my hairstyle, the fuck-me shoes, and my makeup were all given to me prior to my sale, in that underground room below the main auction hall.

I’d also been fitted with a collar?a different one than what I wore now.

Following my dressing and clean-up, I got lined up with all the other “higher-bid” merchandise for inspection by potential buyers. From where I stood, I could hear bids called out from the stage above for other, primarily mid-ranked seers, most of them male. I got the sense there were a lot of people up there, so the space had to be pretty big.

I wondered if Revik was up there.

I pictured him standing in that audience, looking for me, arms folded as he glared at everyone else on our team. I obviously couldn’t check with my light, but the image was disconcertingly clear.

We should have expected there might be something like this?a pre-sale, I mean. We didn’t discuss the possibility in a single one of our planning sessions, and all along we’d planned to look for Dontan at the slave auctions.

It was a fuck-up, but hopefully not an irreparable one.

I had to assume my team figured out what happened by now, and were in the process of tracing the buyer. That sheik trader would definitely remember me?not only because of the thing at the docks, but because I ended up being the first one sold.

I had to guess the Lao Hu thing was still a pretty big draw.

A tall male seer with bright orange eyes walked right up to me after skimming his hand-held for a list of product attributes. I watched him read another set of details off the wall display as he stood in front of me. He verified the Lao Hu structures with his light, talked to someone else over his headset, presumably whoever he worked for, then he took my picture with an illegal imaging device and sent that to the same person.

After another short conversation in Arabic, he made a bid.

He got hit out of the gate with a counter-bid by a Chinese human. After I got prodded and scanned a second time, this time by a different seer who was also clearly hired help, another human who looked and sounded European, maybe Swiss or Austrian, bid on me, too.

An Arabic-looking seer chimed in at the next round.

The orange-eyed seer went back and forth with each of them, along with a female seer who looked Japanese. Finally, the group settled on a price.

That price was put forth, again, by the orange-eyed seer.

Even with the collar on, I could tell the orange-eyed seer wasn’t too worried about being out-bid. I suspect the others thought he would win, too. Maybe they only bid against him to see how high he’d go, or to find out how serious he was. Or maybe they just wanted to make sure he didn’t get me too cheap.

Either way, no one seemed to question his right to me if he wanted me.

I assumed that meant his boss was wealthier than anyone else bidding.

Or maybe there was some other reason people didn’t deny him what he wanted,my mind whispered unhelpfully.Something besides money.

Either way, credits changed accounts, and the transaction ended.

I was the sheik trader’s. Then I wasn’t.

The collar the sheik put on me was removed and a new one put in its place.