I shifted from one foot to another. "What do you mean?"

"Your Contract says you will love, honor, and obey, not that I expect compliance with regard to love. But I demand you treat me with respect. Especially in front of the staff."

My heart crawled up my throat, hearing the hard tone in his voice.

"I mean it, Aveline. No sulking, no outbursts. No smart talk."

I was supposed to heel like a G.o.dd.a.m.n dog? I wasn't even allowed to express myself? "Oh yeah?" I cried. "What about respecting my feelings?"

"Your feelings? I gave you what you wanted. I used my connections, my influence to get your precious boyfriend out of prison!"

"You didn't give me that. That wasn't a gift. We made a deal."

Hawkins gulped the last of his water and crushed the plastic bottle with one hand. "What do you want? Clothes? A trip to Hawaii? Europe?"

"Clothes! You think I want clothes?"

Hawkins went to pitch the bottle into the brush, but caught himself. "Then what?"

Let me go.

My heart was racing. There was no point in asking for my freedom. Of all the things I could ask for, he'd never give me that. "I want you to listen to me. To my opinions."

"About what specifically?"

"Politics."

Hawkins began to laugh. "Seriously?"

"Auctions need to end," I snapped.

"This is about last night."

"You said yourself you'd never let your sister be auctioned."

"Yes, I did."

"But you support them."

"Of course I do. I'm campaigning as a Paternalist."

"Last night you kept talking about how it was time to rethink the party. Can't you start with auctions?"

"No! You don't understand: auctions are an industry. They throw off millions in taxes and licensing fees, not to mention import duties, at a time when legislatures are hungry for revenue. I'd be crucified if I took that on."

Coward. I didn't need to say it aloud. Hawkins read my face.

"I'm not taking on that fight. That idea is going nowhere, so don't bring it up again."

I spun around and started marching back to the car. Hawkins was right behind me. "This is why I don't listen to you: because you're a teenage girl who doesn't know the simplest things about how the world works."

I spun back around. "But you'd listen to Livia, wouldn't you?"

Hawkins held a finger up in warning. "Don't."

"I bet Livia wouldn't be a big fan of the Paternalists."

He swung his hand back, and I straightened my shoulders and looked him in the eyes. Go ahead.

A moment pa.s.sed and he dropped his hand. "Go get in the car."

I stood there just long enough to make it clear I wasn't rushing to obey. I'd gone a few steps when his phone buzzed.

The car was in sight when Hawkins trotted up behind me. "We need to go. There's a situation."

41.

We turned onto PCH, and started pa.s.sing news vans, headed in the same direction. As we drove up to the compound, Deeps was painting over PIMP, the first in a long line of equally ugly words sprayed in six-foot-high letters on the wall along the highway.

Deeps moved aside the handful of reporters who'd gathered in front of the gate. He jogged after us into the garage and walked us inside to the big cement table, where Sig and Ho were streaming the news on their tablets.

Ho, who never broke a sweat, had big stains under his arms. "We have an issue. One of the girls from last evening's auction was arrested for murdering her father."

My stomach lurched. "Tell me it's not Zara."

Ho ignored me. "We're trying to contain the fallout," he told Hawkins.

Sig guided me into the chair next to where he was sitting. "Do you feel faint? Do you need a gla.s.s of water?"

"Answer me, Sig. Is it Zara?"

Sig nodded and moved his tablet so I could see the video. The headline read "Girl Murders Father," and there was the two-story house with the red tile roof and pink bougainvillea over the front door I'd gone through dozens of times for birthday parties and sleepovers.

The police brought Zara out. She stared straight ahead and walked to the squad car, arms cuffed behind her back, her cami and pajama pants splattered with blood. Then her brother ran out of the house, screaming, "You b.i.t.c.h, you used my bat! My championship bat. I hope they lock you up forever!"

I rocked in my seat, shaking my head at how I'd had a hand in this disaster. Zara had looked right at me last night, and I hadn't done a thing. Not a single, freaking thing.

"This is a public-relations nightmare," Ho muttered. "Reporters are asking for a comment regarding Aveline's former cla.s.smate."

Sig held my hand under the table.

"Avie has no comment," Hawkins said.

"The press is asking for a comment from you, too, Jessop."

"No comment."

Ho's phone buzzed. "Senator Fletcher's office." Ho turned away to take the call, but we could still hear him. "Mr. Hawkins is in the air. I expect to hear from him in about-ninety minutes. Yes, he will call the senator when he lands."

Hawkins leaned on the window, clenching and unclenching one fist.

A reporter standing on Zara's lawn addressed the camera. "The victim was found facedown on the carpet in his bedroom alongside a bloodied aluminum baseball bat which police believe to be the murder weapon. Police suspect that the motive for the attack was the girl's opposition to her auction the night before."

"Your school seems to be a breeding ground for violent young women," Hawkins muttered.

"Zara wasn't violent," I said. "She was the kind of person who'd stand up for you if someone was picking on you. She would never have done this if her father hadn't put her up for auction."

"That's no excuse," Hawkins snapped. "Plenty of girls are auctioned and none of them has ever murdered their father."

"Zara was in love."

"Again, no excuse."

I wanted to rage. He thought this was simple-like me and Yates. "She was in love with another girl!" I yelled.

Hawkins' neck was turning crimson. "Take. The volume. Down. Avie."

"You said you would never have auctioned Marielle. How come it's okay for everyone else and not her?"

His mouth twitched and Sig's hand crushed mine.

"We were there," I said. "You and I stood up on that stage and showed the whole world that we support auctions. So now we can't say 'no comment' and pretend we're not partly to blame for her father's death!"

A voice burst in. "Reporting live from St. Mark's Church, we're here with activist Yates Sandell." Ho rushed to mute his tablet, while Sig fumbled with the controls on his. "We need to send a message to politicians like Jessop Hawkins that we oppose Signings, especially nonconsensual Signings. Candidate Hawkins and his fiancee, Aveline Reveare, took part in the auction last night, supporting the monster who sold his gay daughter against her will."

"Turn that off!" Hawkins roared.

I didn't care if he yelled, didn't care if he hit me. My legs were shaking, but I got to my feet. "I am going to comment. I am going to walk out there and tell the reporters exactly what I think."

"NO, YOU ARE NOT!" Sig shoved away from the table, and if it hadn't weighed as much as a boulder, it would have fallen to the floor.

"Sig?"

"Obviously, you feel guilty about your friend, but she killed her father, not you! And you are not going to endanger this campaign and everyone else's efforts by spilling your adolescent guts to the media."

"Screw you, Sigmund." How could he have turned on me, too?

"The safest place for her right now might be in her room," Sig said to Hawkins, who nodded.

Deeps reached for my arm and I whirled out of reach. "Don't you touch me! I'll go, but you keep your hands off me." Deeps escorted me up the stairs and held the door to my room open.

"I hate you," I said as he let it close. The magnetic lock clicked and I grabbed hold of the handle and shook it with all my strength. "I won't be silent! I won't. You can lock me up in here, but you can't silence me forever!"

I flung myself at the bed and ripped off the sheets. Then I launched myself against the windows, pounding them with my fists. "We are monsters!" I screamed. "Monsters!"

Hawkins came out on the terrace below, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. He turned and looked up at me as I hammered the windows. "Do you hear me? We are monsters!"

Hawkins continued to watch as flat steel security shutters slowly rolled down outside the windows. I slid down the gla.s.s, screaming, "You think this is going to stop me? You think you can shut me up?" I was on my hands and knees when the room went completely dark, and the shutters locked in place.

I collapsed in the corner. I could feel the floor, but not see it. The only sound was my ragged breathing. I had stood on that stage, Hawkins' obedient little trophy, and I did nothing. Nothing!

In the dark, images flashed before me. Zara standing over her dad. The bat swinging down. His skull exploding across the pillow.

Andrew, her brother, screaming at her, "You b.i.t.c.h, you used my bat. My championship bat! I hope they f.u.c.king lock you up forever!"

Oh G.o.d, the baseball bat.

I buried my face in my knees and began to sob, remembering our last slumber party: Zara braiding Portia's long, blond hair into an elaborate crown as she told us, "My dad used my college money for a professional pitching coach for Andrew. He told me to go get a scholarship."

Of course Zara used his baseball bat.

Hours later, Sig unlocked the door. By then, I'd cried myself out. He turned on the light and sat down next to me.

I glared at him through the hair hanging in my face. "Get away from me. You're on their side."

Sig raised an eyebrow so high I thought his face might split. "Do you not know why I did what I did down there?"

"You wanted to protect Luke."

"Not just Luke. There are other lives at stake here, including yours." We sat in silence for a moment then Sig said gently, "They took your friend Portia to Cedars-Sinai. Suicide attempt."

"What? No!"

"She left a note. Apparently, she and Zara had made a pact. They had originally intended to do it together."

"Is she still alive?"

"They pumped her stomach, and she's in serious condition, but they think she'll live."

I wrapped my arms over my head and pictured Portia in her silky pj's dotted with lipstick kisses, tossing back pills, and washing them down with Gran Patrn. Portia must have felt so desperate.

"I'm sorry, I can't do this," I told Sig. "I can't be silent."

"You don't have to be silent, but you can't speak out."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I snapped.

"Right now, you're ashamed. But your feelings do not matter. They will not save lives and they will not alter the world."

"So I'm not supposed to say anything?"

"You will have only one chance, one, to deliver a message before the Hawkins campaign machine shuts you down, so it better be big-an apocalyptic, despot-toppling revelation that will the change the world as we know it."