Page 73 of The Baron's Bride

At last, with an exasperated sigh, I slid out of the big pink bed. I was trying to be quiet, so as not to wake Vik’tor, but he was snoring softly and didn’t even stir, so that was good.

I felt my way through the unfamiliar room in the dark, looking for the door that led to the bathroom. I nearly tripped and fell into the empty bathing pool in one corner of the room but finally I found my way to the small door and pushed it open.

Lights blazed on immediately from some source near the high ceiling. Feeling halfway blinded, I shut the door behind me quickly. Well, so much for relieving myself and getting back to sleep. My eyeballs felt like they had been stabbed with spears of brilliance—I wasdefinitelywide awake now.

Surprisingly, the Tangellan version of a toilet didn’t look that different from the facilities on Earth except it was pale purple and about twice as large as a regular toilet back home. Luckily, there was a matching stepstool I used to climb up and perch on it.

After doing my business, I got down again—the toilet flushed automatically—and washed my hands in the pale blue water that flowed from a golden faucet in the sink. The sink was pretty tall too, but again I used the stepstool to get up to it.

As I washed my hands, I looked at myself in the shiny, gold-framed mirror hanging just above the sink.

“You look likeHell, girl,” I muttered to myself and it was true. There were bags under my eyes and unhappy lines around my mouth. What was wrong with me, anyway?

I knew the answer to that—I didn’t want to leave Vik’tor. Yes, I wanted my home and my family and my PhD, but leaving him felt like leaving the only chance I would ever have at true love. I know that sounds dramatic, but considering that my body had never responded sexually to any man but him, it didn’t feel untrue.

But what could I do about it? I couldn’t just…

Suddenly, high, tinny music started coming from somewhere. Frowning, I leaned forward. What was going on? It almost reminded me of when I was searching Riley’s apartment, six months ago when I had gotten sucked through her bathroom mirror by the Commercians. But that couldn’t be it, could it? The Commercians didn’t operate on Tangella Alpha-Prime—they only snatched girls from Earth—right?

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

Iblinked and opened my eyes to find that I was lying naked on a hard metal floor.

“Oh, no! Notagain,” 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’reexactlywhat I need.”

“What? What are youtalkingabout? 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 iskillingme!”

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.”

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