Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 101280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
Still, the memory made me uneasy—as uneasy as I had been on that day I had been looking around for my missing cousin. The tinny music got louder and this time I was certain of where it was coming from—the mirror. Okay, just because the Commercians only worked on Earth was no reason to hang around, I thought. This was getting really freaky—I didn’t like it.
I tried to step off the stool…and found I couldn’t. I was stuck in place, right where I was. I tried to call for help, but my mouth was frozen. I couldn’t even shout for Vik’tor—though I wasn’t sure what he could do for me even if I had been able to.
My heart and mind both started racing.
Oh my God, what’s happening? Why am I frozen? Why can’t I yell? What—?
And then I noticed that the mirror was getting closer even though I wasn’t consciously moving towards it. It was getting bigger and bigger in my field of view and then, suddenly, I was getting sucked into it, just as I had six months ago in Rylee’s apartment! Only it was going so slowly this time I had time to see every detail as I disappeared into the shiny, silver surface of the mirror.
I tried to scream again and again found that my throat and vocal chords were frozen.
And then the mirror sucked me in completely and everything was darkness.
FORTY-THREE
NATALIE
I blinked and opened my eyes to find that I was lying naked on a hard metal floor.
“Oh, no! Not again,” I groaned, rubbing my aching head. I knew what must have happened—the Commercians had sucked me through the mirror for their own reasons. Only for some reason the transportation process had given me a splitting headache this time.
But there were no little blue worms with multiple arms and eyes on stalks this time. Instead, I saw only a pair of feet in front of me. The feet were thrust into a pair of leather sandals which showed extremely gnarly toes—they had long, pointed yellow toenails and unfortunately, they were very familiar.
“Well, well—I see you’re well and whole, despite your dire predictions about me leaving you,” a self-satisfied voice declared. A voice I knew well, though I hadn’t seen its owner in six months.
“You!” I exclaimed, looking up into the pudgy face and yellow eyes of Gumpas, the merchant who had bought me from the Commercians in the first place.
“Yes, me, my dear,” he said smugly. “For the second time I have captured you but this time I’m certain you’re exactly what I need.”
“What? What are you talking about? And where are the Commercians?” I demanded, looking around. His ship was pretty much as I remembered it—a bare metal interior filled with metal boxes of various sizes, all of them crammed with goods from many different planets.
“The Commercians are no longer needed,” Gumpas informed me. “I have acquired a facsimile of the technology they use to harvest females from Earth and it works every bit as well as the original.”
“No it doesn’t!” I groaned, rubbing my aching temples. “My head is killing me!”
Gumpas brushed off my complaint with a wave of one chubby, be-ringed hand.
“Don’t be foolish—it’s a mere side-effect of the transfer. You’ll be feeling just fine by the time I present you to the Emperor.”
“The Emperor? What Emperor?” I demanded. “And how did you know where I was in the first place?”
“Ah, as to the second question, I was given a tip from an unlikely source—a Naggian gentleman contacted me and told me you were with a certain Baron Vik’tor,” Gumpas told me.
“A ‘Naggian gentleman’?” A suspicion began to grow in my aching mind. “Was his name Ass-licks? I mean Azz’lx?”
Gumpas frowned.
“As a matter of fact, it was. He contacted me and informed me that during your stay on O’nagga Nine, your La-ti-zal powers had developed. He also told me that the Baron had taken you off-planet but he was kind enough to give me the Baron’s ship signature so that I could track the two of you.”
For a moment, I wondered how in the hell Azz’lx could know that I was a La-ti-zal after all. Either Vik’tor had told him (which I doubted) when he told Azz’lx how Gumpas had bought me from the Commercians in the first place, or else Azz’lx was just making up whatever he thought would get Gumpas to come after me.
“Yes, the Naggian gentleman called and told me that another male had made off with my property,” Gumpas went on, clicking his long toenails on the metal flooring of his ship, much the way a woman with long fingernails might click them on a tabletop while she talks. “At first I wasn’t interested, but when he told me your powers had finally manifested, well—then I realized I had to get my property back!”