Bonnie tried to think of the fairy tales that she had experienced.
Of course. The one about the kitsune treasure.
Chapter 16
"Once upon a time,"began Bonnie, "there were a young girl and boy..."
She was immediately interrupted. "What were their names?""Were they slaves?""Where did they live?""Were they vampires?"
Bonnie almost forgot her misery and laughed. "Their names were...Jack and...Jil . They were kitsune, and they lived way up north in the kitsune sector around the Great Crossings..."And she proceeded, albeit with many excited interruptions, to tel the story she had gotten from the star bal .
"So,"Bonnie concluded nervously, as she opened her eyes and realized that she'd attracted quite a crowd with her story,
"that's the tale of the Seven Treasures, and - and I suppose the moral is - don't be too greedy, or you won't end up with anything."
There was a lot of laughter, the nervous giggling of the girls and the "Haw! Haw haw!"kind of laughter from the crowd behind them. Which Bonnie now noticed was entirely male.
One part of her mind started unconsciously to go into flirt mode. Another part immediately squashed it. These weren't boys looking for a dance; these were ogres and vampires and kitsune and even men with mustaches - and they wanted to buy her in her little black bubble dress, and as nice as the dress might be for some things, it wasn't like the long, jeweled gowns that Lady Ulma had made for them. Then they had been princesses, wearing a fortune's worth of jewels at their throats and wrists and hair - and besides, they had had fierce protection with them at al times.
But now, she was wearing something that felt a lot like a baby-dol nightgown and delicate little shoes with silvery bows. And she wasn't protected because this society said you had to have men to be protected, and, worst of al ...she was a slave.
"I wonder,"said a golden-haired man, moving through the girls around her, al of whom hurried out of his way except Mouse and Eren, "I wonder if you would go upstairs with me and perhaps tel me a story - in private."
Bonnie tried to swal ow her gasp. Now she was the one hanging on to Mouse and Eren.
"Al such requests must go through me. No one is to take a girl out of the room unless I approve,"announced a woman in a ful -length dress, with a sympathetic, almost Madonna-like face. "That wil be treated as theft of my mistress's property.
And I'm sure we don't al want to be arrested as if we'd been caught carrying off the silverware,"she said and laughed lightly.
There was equal y light laughter among the guests as Well, and movement toward the woman - at a sort of mannerly run.
"You tel real y good stories,"Mouse said in her soft voice.
"It's more fun than using a star bal ."
"Mouse, here, is right,"Eren said, grinning. "You do tel good stories. I wonder if that place real y exists."
"Well, I got it out of a star bal ,"Bonnie said. "One that the girl - um, Jil , put her memories in, I think - but then how did it get out of that tower? How did she know what happened to Jack? And I read a story about a giant dragon and that felt real too. How do they do it?"
"Oh, they trick you,"Eren said, waving a dismissive hand.
"They have somebody go someplace cold for the scenery -
an ogre probably, because of the weather."
Bonnie nodded. She'd met mauve-skinned ogres before.
They only differed from demons in their level of stupidity. At this level, they tended to be stupid in society, and she'd heard Damon say with a curled lip that the ones that were out of society were hired muscle. Thugs.
"And the rest they just fake somehow - I don't know. Never real y thought about it."Eren looked up at Bonnie. "You're an odd one, aren't you, Bonny?"
"Am I?"Bonnie asked. She and the two other girls had revolved, without letting go of hands. This meant that there was some space behind Bonnie. She didn't like that. But, then, she didn't like anything about being a slave. She was starting to hyperventilate. She wanted Meredith. She wanted Elena. She wanted out of here.
"Um, you guys probably don't want to associate with me anymore,"she said uncomfortably.
"Huh?"said Eren.
"Why?"asked Mouse.
"Because I'm running through that door. I have to get out. I have to."
"Kid, calm down,"Eren said. "Just keep breathing."
"No, you don't understand."Bonnie put her head down, to shade out some of the world. "I can't belong to somebody.
I'm going crazy."
"Sh, Bonny, they're - "
"I can't stay here,"Bonnie burst out.
"Well, that's probably al to the good,"a terrible voice, right in front of her, said.
No! Oh, God. No, no, no, no, no!
"When we're in a new business we work hard,"the Madonna-like woman's voice said. "We look up at prospective customers. We don't misbehave or we are punished."And even though her voice was sweet as pecan pie, Bonnie somehow knew that the harsh voice in the night shouting at them to find a pal et and stay on it, had been this same woman.
And now there was a strong hand under her chin and Bonnie couldn't keep it from forcing her head up, or from covering her mouth when she screamed.
In front of her, with the delicate pointed ears of a fox, and the long sweeping black tail of a fox but otherwise looking human, looking like a regular guy wearing jeans and a sweater, was Shinichi. And in his golden eyes she could see, twisting and turning, a little scarlet flame that just matched the red on the tip of his tail and the hair that fel across his forehead.