by N. R. Larry
“Yes, we were!” someone from the bottom floor called out.
I glanced sidelong at Douglass. His expression was that of calm ease. He looked like he belonged here.
“Witches were dancing with the devil in our backyards, in our schools, with our children.” She said all of this in a whisper, and yet her words roared in my ears. “Our streets were dirty with drug dealers and sexual criminals, and people that turned into animals and got away with murder.”
By now my clapping was robotic. I wanted nothing more for her to get on with this shit show, so I could get back to where I belonged.
“The Party said, no more. And the people said, no more!” She smiled, and her eyes even got a little watery at this point. “Eight years later, the witches serve our values. Our streets are clean. And our people are safe.”
The applause grew thunderous. The longer I sat there, the more stifling the air became.
On and on this went until my skin began to crawl with the hatred spouting from this woman’s mouth. I tapped my foot impatiently against the floor. The roar of the crowd grew louder with each passing second.
I shot up from my chair and threw my arms into the air. “Enough!” I shouted before the rational part of my brain could take stock of what I was doing. “Just bring on the merchandise!”
The room went so quiet that up until then, no one had ever experienced the true meaning of uncomfortable silence. Every eye in the place homed in on me. I stood there, slightly shocked, as Gloria lifted her brilliant blue gaze up to me. A brief rage expression colored her pleasant features.
Beside me, Douglass cleared his throat. With my heart hammering so hard against my ribs I thought they might break, I turned to him. His expression was neutral, but I could almost feel him screaming at me inside his thoughts.
Movement from the corners of the room drew my attention. I was still searching my idiot thoughts for a way to make my outburst okay, when several sets of purity officers started charging up the steps.
I had well and truly fucked us.
Gloria lifted a hand in the air and the officers paused. “Hold on now,” she said in a calm, polite voice. She nodded her head at me. “You, citizen. What is your name?”
I opened my mouth and nothing came out. Douglass cleared his throat again. I could feel every eye on me. Whispers slithered through the brewery. Finally, I gathered myself and stood taller, hoping that if I faked enough confidence I could get us out of this.
“My name is Helen Brentwood.” The words came from my lips with ease. Another part of the glamour was that it had a built-in identity. The name Lawrence Kincaid wouldn’t get me very far on the surface.
She smiled. “Brentwood. A strong, pure name.”
I squared my shoulders. “The strongest,” I said with an edge to my tone. “Not a name that’s accustomed to waiting. Platitudes are for the poor.”
The whispering stopped and the room was once again gripped by that awful silence. Beside me, I knew that Douglass was losing his effortless cool. Finally, when I thought I might faint on the spot, Gloria began laughing.
I blinked.
Then the rest of the crowd joined in. I glanced around to make sure I wasn’t losing my mind. Gloria lifted her hand in a wave. “Fair enough, Helen Brentwood, fair enough.” As soon as her gaze left me, my entire body almost collapsed with relief. She pumped her hand in the air. “Let’s say we bring on the merchandise?”
There was another round of furious applause, and with my heart pumping with dizzying speed, I plopped back into my chair. The purity officers took their place back by the platform and Gloria began to introduce the first witch that was for sale.
Douglass bent in toward me. “What the fuck was that?”
My eyes never left the platform. Gloria was stepping away, while the black veil that had been covering a large, box-shaped structure was slowly lifted into the air. “I don’t know,” I whispered. “It won’t happen again.”
He huffed. “It damn well better not.”
“Be cool,” I said out of the side of my mouth.
“Shouldn’t that be my line?”
I smiled and placed my buzzer in front of me. “Be on the lookout. We can’t let anyone outbid us.”
“Fine.”
In the center of the podium was a large, iron cage. In the middle of that cage was a beautiful, mocha skinned woman who was probably not much older than I was. As soon as I peered into her face, my heart tightened in my chest, and I started to shake visibly.
Douglass reached for my hand right away. “Keep it together.”
I swallowed down the excess saliva in my mouth and nodded.
Tears streamed down the woman’s face as Gloria listed her magical and physical attributes. “Sylvia has a 32 percent purity rating. She specializes in fertility magic.” Gloria snapped her fingers, and the shaking figure in the cage turned around, trying to cover her naked body with her hands. When her back was visible to the crowd, I winced. “Sylvia does have some scarring from her conversion therapy, but they are mostly superficial.”
I swallowed bile. Across the girl’s back, long, raised scars crisscrossed like a sadistic spider web. I had to place the buzzer back down on the table to resist the urge to bid on her and take her away from all of this.
Gloria snapped her fingers again, and Sylvia once again faced the crowd. “Because of her ability to ensure higher purity ratings in pregnant women, only patrons with a golden buzzer may bid on her. The opening figure is 100,000 currency points.”
The crowd went crazy. Above the cage, a blinking sign lit up with bright, white figures. Within a matter of seconds, the figure on the board was well over 500,000 currency points.
“What does a golden buzzer get you?”
Without removing my gaze from the podium, I leaned over and said, “Only patrons with a purity rating of ninety-five percent and above are allowed to bid on certain witches.”
“Why?” he asked below the crazed buzz of people arguing and bidding.
I shrugged. “Their goal is to have a world full of blonde hair and blue eyes. A race that can control all the magic in the world. A witch that can guarantee more blonde hair and blue eyes can only be sold to someone who is genetically superior. Members of the church. High ranking members of the Party. People who control currency.”
Even though I wasn’t looking at him, I could picture the look of distaste in his expression. “This is sick,” he said to me in a cracked voice.
I nodded. The light on the billboard began to flash 900,000 currency points. The iron bars to the cage lowered to the ground, and the witch was clothed and passed on to her new owners.
From then on, I stared at that damned podium for Gaia knows how long, watching witches and wizards being sold like melons at a produce swap. By the time the velvet drape lifted and revealed Katie Thompson, a mixed race, earth powered witch, the inside of my palm was dotted in drops of blood from digging my nails into them.
“Katie Thompson, 18 years of age. Purity level, 27.8 percent. Her magical specialties are abundance and healing. The bidding will start at 40 currency points.” Gloria pointed at the crowd. “Who will get us started.”
The bidding for Katie wasn’t as furious, but it was still pretty enthusiastic. I straightened up, my gaze homed in on her and waited until the bidding was well over 100 currency points before placing my own.
Almost as soon as my finger hit the buzzer, Katie’s gaze lifted to me. The expression on her face twisted my stomach into knots. She didn’t look like herself. While her shoulders were squared and she wasn’t trying to cover her nakedness like the witches that had stood on the auction block before her, there was something in her eyes that felt empty.
Like something inside of her had broken.
I won the bidding at 1,500 currency points and breathed my relief. Katie was then clothed and taken to the back, where the witches waited for their new owners that were still hoping to bid on more witche
s.
The rest of the spectacle was the longest event I’d ever attended in my life. Zed was the last wizard to be sold off. Gloria barked out his purity rating and his magical ability, which was in stealth, and therefore not very valuable to anyone else, and the bidding started at fifty currency points.
In the end, I won him quite easily. Maybe even a little too easily. I glanced briefly at Douglass and started to stand up when Gloria’s voice stopped me.
“Alright ladies and gentlemen, that is the last of our witch lot, and now, I want to ask you to keep an open mind and imagine the possibilities of this next opportunity.”
I glanced sidelong at Douglass and leaned back into my seat, trying not to fidget. The hair was standing up on my arms. I didn’t like the unexplained feeling of anxiousness swelling in my belly. I needed to get out of there, and soon.
“The danger to any powerful civilization is complacency,” she began, her tone was that of a teacher telling a parable to her students. “Sure, our crime rates are down, but should we allow ourselves to assume that we are secure? Or should we remain ever vigilant?”
I had to stop myself from snorting. I knew I couldn’t afford another outburst.
“I present to you, a race that has grown nearly extinct. The remaining specimens should be treated as what they are. Special. Unique. This is indeed, a rare opportunity.” At her words, the black veil was for the last time lifted from the cage.
The entire brewery went quiet.
“With a purity rating of 80.5 percent. I present to you one of Alabama’s first, domesticated shifters.”
* * *
The crowd exploded in a roar of inquiry.
Gloria, with the enthusiasm of a wild animal trainer, answered all the questions to the best of her ability. As for me, I was once again on my feet, my body making plans that my brain hadn’t agreed on, leaning over the balcony, staring into his face.
There was something about him.
It wasn’t only the tight, tan skin covered in the kind of ink I hadn’t seen in ages. It wasn’t the contempt in those green eyes, or the roughness the shadow of his beard gave to his face.
It was the fact that I knew him.
My brain sped through a lifetime of memories, trying to get to the one connected to him, and I couldn’t get there. I stomped my foot in frustration. Within seconds, Douglass was beside me, trying to lead me back to the table.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
I snatched my arm away from him. “I know him,” I muttered in a voice so low that he asked me to repeat myself, but at that point, the bidding had begun.
Before I could think about stopping myself, I was bidding. Furiously. The number on the blinking sign increased each second with alarming speed. Soon, whispering broke out and people were shooting looks in my direction.
“Lawrence, get a hold of yourself,” Douglass whispered into my ear when the bidding went past 900,000 currency points.
Ignoring, I mashed in that buzzer like something had possessed me. I bided on that shifter with more passion than the people I knew.
At last, Douglass snatched the buzzer away from me. I turned to him, a snarl on my lips. “What do you think you’re doing?”
His false, blue eyes widened at me. The room roared with applause. Everything else happened so fast I didn’t have time to get a grip on it. Everyone was starting to spill out of the brewery and into the high, Birmingham sun. Gloria was headed up the steps with two purity officers flanking her, and they were heading for our table.
I snapped back to reality. “Come on,” I muttered, grabbing my buzzer. Douglass took my arm and we headed for the stairs, where I was hoping Gloria and her goons would simply pass us by.
No such luck.
They stopped right in front of us. “Mrs. Brentwood.” Gloria’s blue eyes smiled at me. “Will you come with me please?”
My heart was pounding so loud that I could barely make out her words. “Why?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm.
She merely smiled, and then nodded at the two purity officers. One of them stepped forward and took our buzzers.
“This way, please,” Gloria said without answering my question. She turned and started back down the stairs, but I was rooted in place. She turned when she was halfway down and stared at me.
There was nothing threatening in her expression, but I’d never been so scared in my life. The purity officers, who hadn’t moved an inch, stared at me.
“Do we have a problem?” Gloria asked.
I squared my shoulders and forced myself not to betray anything I was feeling. “Well, yes there is,” I said it with the privilege of someone unaccustomed to being ordered around. “I’ve spent a lot of money at your little establishment. I’d like to take my merchandise and leave.”
By now, the place had emptied out apart from a few stragglers. Gloria continued to stare at me with that serene look on her face. Neither one of us moved. I felt like I was in the middle of the world’s most dangerous staring contest, and if I blinked, I could wind up dead, or worse.
Finally, she sauntered back toward me.
I tried to keep my breath even, but I was growing dizzy and had to tighten my grip on Douglass to keep myself upright.
“Mrs. Brentwood.” She smiled, even though her eyes were narrowed. Dangerous. “May I call you Helen?”
I tried to match her easy smile and nodded.
“We have a few questions about your purchases. As well as a few warnings.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Warnings?”
“Yes.”
I glanced at Douglass, then back at Gloria, trying my best to ignore the purity officers. I had no fond memories of those people. “And if I refuse?”
The smile left her face. All that was left was danger.
“I’m afraid, Helen, that it isn’t an option.”
Chapter 3
My brain tossed every insult in the world at me as I followed behind Gloria and her two purity officers. I was an idiot for coming here, and an even bigger idiot for bidding on a shifter with fake, magical currency. Then it started going through my options.
The crystal around my neck had never been heavier than when I was following them down the stairs, past all the spilled beer and peanuts on the first floor, and toward the back offices of the brewery.
I wanted to rip that crystal off and release all of it. All the dangerous, dark magic that my mother worked so hard while she was still living to help me control. I knew that if I did that, I would probably take out everyone in the city, including myself, but when I considered the alternatives…
There was another purity checkpoint blocking off the entrance to the back offices. I kept my gaze on my feet as Gloria went through, faster than I’d ever seen anyone go through, then Douglass, and then myself.
The glamour held.
I owed Danica a sloppy wet kiss when I got back. If I got back.
The mayor’s wife led us past a few storage closets, a bathroom, and finally, through a set of double doors at the end of the hall. I started to follow her in, Douglass at my side, when she held her hand up.
“Only you,” she said, staring me down like I was a challenge. Her expression relaxed before she looked to Douglass. “You may go retrieve the property you’ve come into today. These gentlemen will take you to where they are being stored.”
I almost cringed at the word, “stored.”
I glanced at Douglass, and then back, keeping the smile plastered on my face. Without a word, he nodded at Gloria, and then followed the purity officers down the hall. The air around me seemed to tighten. I didn’t like being separated from him. There was something wrong here. Something so very, very wrong.
“Please, come in,” Gloria said, leading the way inside her office.
After a second of hesitation, I followed. The first thing I noticed was that damned purity map framed on the wall above her desk. Her bookshelves were lined with books about
purity genetics and various framed pictures with her and leaders from around the country.
She sat in the seat behind her desk and gestured toward a chair in front of the desk. I sat down, crossed my legs, and squared my shoulders. “What is this about?” I asked, hoping to keep the meeting as brief as possible.
She smiled at me, and then pressed a button on the rotary phone on top of her desk. There was a crackle, some static, and then, “Yes, ma’am?”
“Bring him in,” Gloria said into a speaker.
“Yes, ma’am.” Another crackle, and then silence.
“I got this phone at an auction house in California,” she said, wiggling out of her jacket and draping it over her lap. “They’re really into the old ways out there. Rotary phones. Paperback novels.” Her smile widened. “In some places, they even still use printed money, can you imagine?”
I stared at her. “It sounds charming,” I said, my voice flat as cardboard.
“Tell me, where are you from?” She folded her hands together and placed them on her desk.
“Around.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Must have traveled some distance.”
“Not really.”
She smiled again, leaning back in her chair, studying me with an intensity that made me want to vomit all over her desk. “See, that surprises me.”
I sighed. “And why is that?”
“Well, the first hint was that you requested a buzzer.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “And thanks to that buzzer, you made quite a bit of currency today.”
She grinned. “Yes, yes we did. The strange thing was that you requested a buzzer.”
I blinked dumbly at her. “I don’t understand.”
The smile dropped from her face so abruptly it was almost like being slapped in the face. “It’s not customary, Mrs. Brentwood, for a woman to bid on anything when she is accompanied by a man.”
My mind tunneled around every action I’d taken in the recent past. Passing the purity checkpoints. Addressing waiters before Douglass had a chance to do so. And bidding in his company.
Once again, my brain started to scream at me. Curse words, this time. The best glamour in the world couldn’t make up for the fact that I was a fucking idiot.