Chapter １５

"You didn't know?" I asked, the knife still at my throat. "I was on my way to meet him when your people took me. He'll have been looking for me all over by now. And I don't have to tell you that Sterling Bellegarde has the resources to find me."

Medea slowly lifts her hand and removes the mask. I'm half expecting to see someone I know behind it, but I've never seen her in my life. She's an average looking woman, perhaps in her late thirties. She's not wearing any makeup, and it makes her look older than she probably is. She's frowning, not looking at me. Thinking.

"Come with me," she says. I drop the knife and run after her down the hallway.

An hour later I'm in another room, though this one isn't used for sex as far as I can tell. It has proper wallpaper and a table with dishes for eating on, and a sofa. I've been sitting at the table since Medea brought me in, nibbling at the dish of chocolates next to the pitcher of orange juice.

Finally Medea comes back after leaving me there alone all this time, and she carries with her another platter of food. She sets it on the table and sits next to me, then goes about cutting up some bread and spreading butter.

"Well?" I ask her. "Did you...talk to someone, or…"

She chews on her bread and has a look on her face like someone who just discovered the grocery store has run out of their favorite brand of cereal.

"My boss insists on keeping you here."

"I thought you didn't have a boss."

"Everyone has a boss." She passes me the bread and I take one. I wonder how long it's been since I was at the French restaurant.

"What do you want from me?"

She leans back and licks her lips. "We're having an auction for your first night."

My face falls into my hands, propped up on my elbows on the table. "You can't…"

"You'd better eat," Medea says, standing from the table. "You've got a long night ahead of you."

She leaves me alone again. I don't know what to do. I still don't know if this is actually happening or if it's a dream. Maybe I ate some snails and now I'm hallucinating. I pour myself a glass of orange juice and drink it all down.

And then I wake up in another bed, my head pounding. It takes me several minutes to piece together that they must have drugged the orange juice. I groan, wondering if this is what Hell must be like, just an endless cycle of broken hope. Constantly waking up to new miseries.

I hear the click of a camera and open my eyes. It takes effort, as if my eyes were glued shut and the muscles aren't strong enough. The hazy shape of a woman stands over me. She's holding a camera, aiming it at me. She takes another picture.

Someone has changed my clothes. I look down, and the simple action of moving my head is like pulling teeth. All my muscles are stiff and weak. I'm wearing pink panties and a small pink bra. Those weren't my underwear when I last dressed myself.

A second figure stands over me. It's Medea. The photographer shows her the camera and Medea frowns as she scrolls through the pictures.

"She looks better from behind," Medea says, and I feel her hands grab me and turn me over on my belly, and there's nothing I can do. I hear her mumble, "Still not good enough," and then panic surges through me as she removes my bra and panties. I'm now totally naked and vulnerable on this bed, and now I'm face-down so I can't even see what's going on.

Medea pulls something down over my head, and I try to struggle as I think it's another sack like the one they used when they took me. But it's just lace, and I can see through it.

"Perfect," she says.

I hear the other woman snap more photos of me.

"That one is good," Medea says. "Let's make that one the poster."

"When do you need it?" asks the woman with the camera.

"The auction is at 8 o'clock tonight."

They leave me, still laying on my belly, naked except for the lace mask over my head.

I don't know how much time passes before someone enters the room and puts a vase with some flowers beside my bed.

"Please help me," I manage to say, though my words are slurred and it takes more effort than I had thought to say them.

The young girl looks at me with horror on her face, and I can see in her eyes that there's nothing left behind them, no personality or echo of what she once was before she came here. She's been here too long to care about me or anyone else in my position, and the fact that she's still young enough to be in high school depresses me even more.

"Bellegarde," I say. "I'm...Sterling's wife…" I don't know if she can understand my muddled words. "Go to...police...tell them...Victoria...Bellegarde… Please."

She ignores me and leaves.

Later—I'm not sure how long—someone else enters the room. More than one. Someone comes over to me and turns me over, and my naked self is on display for a room filled with at least five or six people.

Someone puts a thermometer in my mouth, check my pulse, and does a physical examination of the rest of my body that I can only guess at, since I can't look down and I can barely feel anything.

A woman lifts me to a sitting position and rubs me down with a wet sponge and puts dry shampoo in my hair before brushing it and coming it out.

Someone else opens a makeup case and applies color to my eyes and lips and cheeks.

After I'm dolled up, they dress me in a different outfit, just as revealing as the last one. But at least I'm no longer naked.

Medea enters the room and looks at me.

"Perfect," she says. "Take her to the guildhall."