Returning to Earth wasn’t an option. Nicky might find her, and he probably wouldn’t be so generous as to auction her off again. With no friends or family to tie her down, she had little reason to return to the same city. Returning to familiar territory would be a mistake. She’d have to start over somewhere new, with no marketable skills and no cash.
So, to summarize, everything sucked.
Well, not everything. The Mahdfel implanted a translation ship in her head and gave her new clothes and enough credits to sit at a bar and drink while feeling sorry for herself. They took Thalia and the five other women rescued from the slavers to the local authorities.
The local police—space police? —were nice enough, but when Thalia couldn’t tell them anything useful about the auction or her purchaser, they bought her a ticket back to Earth and considered it a job well done.
Okay, there were positives to the situation. Thalia idly shredded a paper napkin, making a list in her head.
Pro: the Sangrin space police didn’t care where she went. She could go anywhere if she could afford a ticket. Or even stay at the station. Money opened a lot of possibilities.
Con: she was broke with limited options to not be broke.
Pro: she wasn’t the property of the shadowy alien who bought her. Huge pro. Double plus good.
Con: the shadowy alien might come looking for her. Not good. So not good.
Pro: she was a human in an alien bar, but no one was looking at her like she was that unusual, which meant she could blend in.
She would also have to get over calling all the purple-skinned, horned people “aliens” because this was their turf, and she was the alien here.
Pro: That afternoon, she picked up a bottle of hair dye. Twisting the dial on the container changed the color. She could finally get rid of the terrible green and go for something more ordinary.
Pro: at least she had her health.
Thalia snickered at another nugget of her mother’s wisdom, not that her mother had been particularly healthy. She enjoyed cigarettes too much for that. But the point remained. Thalia did not have brain damage from her extended time in the freezer, and all the scans the Mahdfel did proved that she did not have a parasite living inside her. There were so many bright sides to her situation that Thalia felt like a fucking ray of sunshine.
The mangled remains of the napkin fell to the counter and she smirked. There was nothing wrong with her sense of sarcasm.
“You gonna finish that or you are happy making eyes at it?” the bartender said.
“I might be more enthusiastic if the glass wasn’t dirty,” she replied. The glass was clean enough, but it was the principle of the thing. Never take unnecessary sass.
He huffed, amused. The light caught the silver caps he wore on the tips of his horns. “Clean costs extra.”
“Or you could hire someone to wash the dishes who doesn’t mind working under the table.” Or for a surly dick, she thought but kept to herself.
“You got a work permit?”
“That’s not what ‘under the table’ means.” Of course she didn’t have a permit. Finding a temporary job would go a long way to her money issue, but it wasn’t happening there.
Giving the bartender her best side-eye, she drained the mug and left.
Havik
He noticed the female as she moved through the crowd, her fingers reaching into pockets and pilfering unguarded credits. She was small, even for a Terran, and her hair looked diseased, as if it had been dipped in toxic sludge. It reminded him of the fetid sludge found at the bottom of a tainted well. Her pinkish-beige complexion looked sallow and unhealthy, likely from lack of sun, and her figure of lean lines held little interest to him.
Still, he could not take his eyes off the ridiculous female. She had a way of moving, of pulling her shoulders in, that made her seem insignificant, forgettable, but the grace and purpose of motion could not be overlooked. She bumped into a target, stammering an apology, distracting with one hand while the other reached into an unguarded pocket. Then it was done, over before the target knew they had been robbed.
No movement was wasted. Each gesture had intention. The female was a tiny, drab-looking predator stalking through her hunting grounds.
Intrigued, he was thankful that Ren did not accompany him. Havik did not need to hear his friend’s mocking humor when he caught Havik watching the Terran female. He was done with females, especially Terran females.
If Ren caught him staring after this drab-colored female…
She dipped into a shop and emerged wearing nondescript black clothing. Outside the shop’s entrance, she paused, scanned the crowd, and her eyes rested on him for ten full seconds.
The corners of her lips twitched into a nearly unnoticeable smile.
Chapter 6
Thalia
Universal credit was fantastic, a true sign that Earth had moved into the future and was a player on the galactic stage. Just swipe your palm, press your thumb to a scanner, and have access to your money anywhere in the galaxy. Amazing.
The same system also had access to your credit history, identity, qualifications and certifications, social media history, and potential criminal records. No privacy, basically. Just buying a simple cup of coffee opened a person’s entire life to a retailer and anyone else willing to buy that information.
All those factors meant the market for anonymous credits thrived, either in card, stick, or coin form. And it didn’t have to be shady, thank you very much. A person could have a legitimate reason for keeping their spending habits secret, like buying gifts for a loved one. Can’t have the bank snitching on the trip to the florist and ruining the surprise, after all. It didn’t always have to
