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The orange-eyed seer activated that one personally.

Less than a minute later, I was being led off to the side by two other seers. Both looked like private security. Once I stood in the shadowed alcove of the room with them, they seemed to think I was fair game. Grinning when I hit, blocked, and elbowed off their hands, they only cut it out when the orange-eyed seer gave them a warning stare.

“Children,” he said, his odd-colored eyes shining colder.

The one gripping my ass in one hand while I fought off the other, released me at once.

Even so, I got stuck standing there in that ridiculous beaded outfit, forced to watch while the orange-eyed buyer looked over the rest of the “exotics.”

Most of those, he scarcely glanced at before declining, dismissing his right to bid with a few flicks of his long fingers. A few seers later, however, they brought out a blond female seer who caught his interest.

Looking at the blond’s face, I felt my heart slam sideways in my chest?right before I got angry enough to nearly blow my cover right there.

Holy fucking gods, what wasshedoing here?

She noticed my stare while she was still under the spotlight.

It seemed to irritate her, but from her eyes, she didn’t recognize me. Her expression remained blank, if somewhat aggressive, which was kind of her normal expression anyway, if my previous experiences with her were any indication. She looked more like she was trying to figure out what the hell my problem was.

That blankness confused me at first. Then it hit me.

My prosthetics. She really had absolutely no idea who I was.

The rising heat in my chest began to cool.

As long as I didn’t do anything stupid, she probably wouldn’t realize who I was. Remembering the long, straight, red-tinted and black hair on my head, the redrawn cheekbones, nose and chin, not to mention the highly-expensive contact lenses, I fought to make my expression indifferent, if somewhat catty, right before I looked away.

I hoped she would take my weird staring as female rivalry.

Of course, apart from issues around specific mates or boyfriends/girlfriends, that type of high school, catty, female thing tended to be rare among seers. I didn’t much care if she thought I was an immature weirdo, though?as long as she didn’t blow my cover.

From what Revik told me, the disguise I was wearing should be convincing.

He seemed to think my eyes, in particular, were so different, it was unlikely anyone would recognize me. They’d gone way darker with my irises this time?so dark, they nearly blended with the color of my pupils. According to Jon, they came closest to mimicking Wreg’s obsidian irises, except my green still peeked through enough to give them an iridescent shimmer.

Revik claimed they changed my face more than the prosthetics did, in terms of making me look like someone else.

The prosthetics were more for facial-rec software, anyway. The added organics should screw up any mapping or analysis of my bone structure?even my teeth?so there shouldn’t be any hits when my information got cross-mapped to security databases.

When the orange-eyed seer started bidding on the blond, I felt my disbelief worsen.

He bought her, a few minutes later.

The other bidders scarcely put up a fight that time, even for show.

By the time I snapped out of my stare a second time, orange-eyes was already putting the new collar on her. The same pervy seers who’d escorted me went to retrieve her, and the next thing I knew I was standing directly beside her, bare arm to bare arm where we leaned against the same segment of black-painted wall.

She wore an outfit that wasn’t all that different from mine, although hers was red while mine was mostly black with pale blue highlights.

“What’s your fucking problem… sister?” she muttered to me in Prexci, once we stood next to one another. “Do I know you?”

The bidding had started again, this time on a male seer with a high sight rank. Rather than answer, I read the projection on the wall of the male seer’s stats, as if I hadn’t heard her.

“What is your name?” she said, trying again.

“Ralla,” I said.

“I am Kat,” she said, almost like she had when I first met her, in the basement of a Seattle brothel. “Where are you from, sister?”