Chapter 16. Author's note - I have only the excuse of being hellishly busy at work for not updating. Forgive me, please. You are all so lovely and so encouraging and I really appreciate all the nice comments and votes. Keep on being awesome! Thanks for reading!

Nightingale did not even know she had fallen asleep until she woke some time later with the sun shining through the cockpit's windshield. She stretched and rolled her head, trying to work out the kink that had temporarily immobilized her neck.

She was still sitting in the copilot's chair, but someone had covered her with a blanket. She blinked slowly as her eyes adjusted to the brightness. As she stared out the window, she could see that the hovercraft was parked inside a cavernous hangar, and that the hangar doors were open to let the sun stream in.

It must have been the early hours of morning, since the sunlight that illuminated the shadows of the space hung low on the horizon, deep orange and not very warm.

Nightingale shrugged the blanket off her shoulders and then shivered. She was cold. She got up and left the cockpit. Finding the other compartment empty of either her team or the Britannic team, she went out the open doors and into the hangar.

She found both teams assembled in the hangar. Tables had been assembled next to the hovercraft and most were sitting around them, drinking coffee and eating what Nightingale assumed was breakfast.

It was very quiet - conversation was muted and barely made a sound. Nightingale, rubbing her eyes, made for a mostly-empty table, steering clear of the table packed with Britannic agents.

"Good morning, Gale," said Pierce. He was rubbing his eyes and looking exhausted. Nicholas, looking very much the same, shuffled over so she could sit next to him. She perched next to him, her upper arm touching his, glad of his warmth.

"Morning, boys," she said. She watched as David and Caroline, who were standing a little further off by the entrance of the hangar, turned to silhouettes by the orange sunlight. "What time is it?"

"Six am local time," Pierce responded. Nicholas grunted, apparently too tired to form even a single coherent word, let alone a sentence. "We landed about an hour ago."

Nightingale nodded. She was still cold, and drew her arms tightly around her body.

Pierce, who was watching her shudder, uncapped a thermos and poured her a cup of coffee. He pushed it her way and Nightingale took it in both hands, greedy for the warmth of the metal cup.

"Amartya wanted to wake you up, but David said to let you sleep," said Pierce.

"Nearly took his fucking head off, too," said Nicholas, finally managing to speak. Then he lapsed back into silence with a grunt. Nightingale, without speaking, handed Nicholas the thermos of coffee, and he took it with another grunt. Both Pierce and Nightingale watched as he unscrewed the lid, lifted it to his mouth, and chugged the boiling contents in one go.

"Tired, Nick?" said Nightingale, lightly sarcastic.

"Fuck off, Gale," said Nicholas, and smiled.

"Hey, she got less sleep than you, Nick. You kept all of us awake with your snoring," muttered Pierce.

Nightingale closed her eyes and listened with pleasure to their gentle, low-voiced bickering. She wondered if she could drift off to sleep again, but her thoughts of Victor Trevor, and of becoming an Inamorata, circled her mind like vultures.

"You know when we're going to get going?" asked Nightingale, opening her eyes.

Pierce nodded. "In about an hour. You and Amartya will go after us. We'll head out in the main hovercraft and set up a good command position. Then you and Amartya will go directly to the triumvirate's position."

"It's going to be a bit cramped, isn't it?" muttered Nicholas. "Two teams in one hovercraft?"

"Didn't you pay attention to the briefing, Nick? We're also setting up a command post here," David cut in. He had managed to approach them silently, which surprised Nightingale. She could usually notice him before the rest of team. "We need a permanent place to run the op out of."

"Huh," grunted Nicholas. "Leaves us a place to put Erica and Rory, I guess."

"You're going to be there too, you know," said David.

"What?" said Nicholas.

"The people in the command post are you, Rory, and Erica. Daniel, Pierce, Caroline, and myself are the only ones in the command hovercraft," David countered, crossing his arms and daring Nicholas to argue with him.

Nicholas did. "Fuck you," he said in disbelief.

"No thanks," David retorted.

Pierce paused for a moment and then howled with laughter. Caroline, who had appeared at David's shoulder, smiled. Nightingale had not seen Caroline smile in a very long time.

She had something to say, however. "One hour until hour zero," she said, referring to the time at which the operation would officially begin. "Time to get everything set up."

Pierce nodded and got up. Nicholas grumbled his way to his feet, muttering all the while about how he didn't like sitting in the fucking hangar doing nothing while Pierce got in on the action.

"You want some fucking action? We'll dress you up as Nightingale and see how much you like that instead," Caroline snapped eventually.

Nicholas grumbled much more quietly after that.

Most of the team drew up around a long table, pulling from organized piles bulletproof vests - though the chance of them seeing a firefight was small, everyone had learned lessons from Clarence's death - synchronized comms, and spare sidearms.

Nightingale, who had left her sidearm in a locker back in the Western Union, and who would not be wearing a vest or a comm, hung back. Pierce, who was plugging a comm into his ear, caught her eye.

"I've got your ankl- device," he said, avoiding using the word. "Want it now?"

"Guess so," said Nightingale, trying to sound tough.

Pierce nodded and reached for a small, hard plastic briefcase. Pressing his thumb to the handle, it popped open to reveal what was inside.

As Nightingale drew closer, she noted how very similar it looked to the anklet she had worn so long ago. A bit slimmer, a bit slighter, and exactly the same colour of pitch, Nightingale had to remind herself that this one would not deliver a shock. It was designed instead to scramble the signals that would shock and kill other Inamoratas. This anklet had the opposite purpose of any other.

Nightingale's hand, when she reached out for the device, was shaking. She flinched back when Pierce spoke to her, fearing a biting electrical current.

"Need a hand with it?" he asked.

"No," she said, and to prove her bravery, snatched it up. It was brittle in her hands. Nightingale could crush it, she was sure of that. "No."

Pierce nodded and then pretended to ignore her as she, bending smoothly and lithely, clipped the anklet around her leg. It fell into place with a nearly breathless rasp.

Immediately, Nightingale wanted it off. She would have cut off her own foot to rid herself of the anklet.

"It looks very realistic," Pierce supplied. "But it won't hurt you, you know."

"Of course I know that," snapped Nightingale. She sighed as she went on, not intending to have hurt Pierce's gentle feelings. "Now, I think there's something else I need?"

Pierce nodded and pulled a small suitcase from amongst a pile of bulletproof vests and opened it.

As the rest of the team was being fitted out in armour, Nightingale was being given something far less protective. She took in the sheer black dress, the garters and tights, and the slender case of makeup.

Pierce was blushing very hard as she lifted one of the tights and assessed it critically. It was soft in her hand, much softer than anything she had worn in the bordello. She lifted it to her lips to feel its texture.

"Wh- what are you doing?" asked Pierce.

"I want to know how it feels," she said.

"Why like that?" he asked, looking nervous. Nightingale suddenly realized that his redness and his anxiety were not embarrassment over seeing a woman's underwear. He was anxious for her, for what she would have to do.

She loved him very much in that moment, but that did not stop her from replying bluntly.

"Because I need to know how it feels bunched up in someone's mouth," she replied. "Victor Trevor likes that sort of thing. I once tied him up and gagged him with a fishnet. It was nice to fuck a man who couldn't touch me with his hands, actually."

Not that "nice" was ever a word Nightingale would ever use to describe Victor fucking Trevor ever again.

Pierce flinched, blinked, and looked very much like Michael. "Oh," he said, and backed away.

Nightingale took her clothing and her makeup and went back into the hovercraft. She had no modesty to protect and would have stripped and dressed before both teams had she not assumed it would make them uncomfortable. Besides, had she found Daniel's eyes on her naked body, she would have gouged them from his skull with her nails.

She caught her reflection as she dressed and tidied herself up. She blinked in surprise, for she looked neither like the Agent Brightley of the past twelve years, nor like the whore Nightingale of the five before that. She was some amphibious creature of two worlds. Not water and land, however - whore and lady. Slave and free person.

She spat at her reflection, hating not the woman she saw, but those who had shaped such a creature for their pleasure.

Nightingale turned her back on herself and went out of the hovercraft. Carefully descending the steps, she found Daniel beside her.

"Need a hand?" he asked, extending his toward her.

"I can take care of myself, thank you," Nightingale informed him. He must surely have known she was able to take care of herself - she had beaten him soundly enough times sparring for him to understand that. But given that he seemed to be trying to be nice, she wondered whether it was purely courtesy.

"It's true," supplied Pierce. He'd just come around the corner of the hovercraft with Nicholas. Both were grinning. Nicholas seemed to have recovered from his exhaustion and his moodiness, likely due to the unnecessarily large gun he was holding. "For someone who's fond of non-violence she throws quite a punch."

Nicholas nodded solemnly and Nightingale smiled, momentarily comforted by the gesture. She doubted that Nicholas would ever forget the time she punched him in the face at the bordello. It was, of course, the last time she had done it in earnest to him. Violence of any kind sickened her, and she would have preferred nearly anything than to hurt any member of her team.

"Not to mention that she's an Inamorata," Pierce added. "They're so familiar with male anatomy that they know exactly what feels great and what really, really, doesn't."

"Thanks, Pierce," she said, lightly sarcastic. It was true. Nightingale knew how to give pleasure and pain to any man with maximum effect and efficiency.

"Not at all. I hope I didn't offend you," he said. He looked a little worried he had done that, and continued to look a little nervous as he went on. "I'm sort of afraid of you. In a good way. You're kind of terrifying."

"Nothing like Magenta, though," said Nicholas. Nightingale conceded that fact with a nod. "Nightingale is deadly but she's not cruel. Magenta, though. She once soccer kicked me in the groin. I don't think I'll ever be able to have children."

"That's probably a good thing, Nick," Pierce supplied. Nicholas shot him a look halfway between a grin and a withering grimace.

"Did you deserve it?" asked Daniel. He was laughing.

"No," laughed Nicholas. He sobered up as he went on. "But she thought I was someone else. He definitely deserved it."

"Who was it?" asked Daniel.

"Bobby Pherson." Nicholas said the name quietly, and with hatred.

Nightingale's lips drew back over her teeth in an animal growl. 

"Nick! Pierce!" they all heard Amartya call. "The boss says it's time to get ready! Nearly time for the first hovercraft to move out."

"All right. See you round, Nick," said Pierce, and he punched Nicholas in the shoulder.

"Take care, man. You too, Daniel," said Nicholas.

Daniel began to saunter off but Nicholas and Pierce paused, watching Nightingale.

"Good luck, Nightingale," said Pierce. Nicholas nodded gravely. "You've got a tough job to do today."

"Really?" said Nightingale, her voice positively dripping with sarcasm. "I didn't know that. Thanks for letting me know."

Pierce twitched a little smile but looked serious once again. "Really, though, Gale. You've been to hell and back and now you're off there again. You're the bravest person I know. It's an honour to work with you and to call myself your friend."

Nightingale was blinking back tears when Nicholas, sniffing back his own, coughed out:

"Yeah. You're fucking inspirational."

It broke the tension and the three of them laughed. Nightingale patted Nicholas's arm and Pierce's shoulder, and then the two of them were off. Nightingale went off her own way, climbing into the smaller hovercraft.

She sat there for a few minutes, then stood, then paced about. She was impatient to be in the air not because she wanted to go anywhere near the triumvirate but because Amartya being there would be a distraction from the thoughts and memories of clients, of Victor Trevor himself, of their hands, of his tongue, of his-

The door opened and Nightingale turned, already speaking.

"Fucking hell, Amartya, what's taking so - oh," she began. It was not Amartya behind her, but David. He was silent, watching her with a frank stare.

"Nightingale," he said.

"That is my name, yes."

His expression did not change. He took two steps forward and Nightingale feared the look on his face not for any violence, but for the heated candour of the stare. His eyes glowed, hot, sparking with what could have been anger, but was something else entirely. Something gentler and more dangerous.

"Be safe, Nightingale," he said.

Nightingale considered a snarky reply but decided against it. She nodded solemnly and David approached her. When they were standing toe-to-toe he stared down at her. His right hand twitched towards hers. She did not take it. His long grey-brown lashes batted as he bowed his head.

Then David sank to his knees before her. Nightingale said nothing, merely watching as he put his hands around the anklet about her right leg.

He spoke as he ran his fingers, feather-light, over the black plastic. Nightingale could not feel the touch but it was almost as though she could sense it. "Good luck today, Gale," he said. "You won't be alone, you know. This device has a bug and I will listen to anything that comes out of it. It will be as though I am there with you."

Nightingale said nothing and so David went on.

"We will not let you be endangered," he said, with all the gravity of a vow. He was staring down at the plastic as he slipped his fingers between it and Nightingale's skin. "At any sign of danger, any threat to you, and I'll - we'll - pull you out. The device will vibrate three times if that happens - your signal to flee."

"And what about Amartya?" asked Nightingale.

"Fuck Amartya," said David, his voice low and guttural. He looked up at her again. "Fuck Amartya. Fuck the case. Fuck them all. I will keep you safe."

David's hands had encircled Nightingale's calf, above the anklet. He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her knee. He looked up at her. Nightingale stretched out her hand and let it card through his hair. He kissed her knee again.

Amartya entered at that moment. Nightingale saw him pause, saw him stare hard at David.

"I think I'm intruding. Forgive me," he said.

David rose to his feet, said nothing, and pushed past Amartya. A moment later, Nightingale heard the other hovercraft take off. Her last thread of comfort snapped off and she felt very alone. Without her son, without her team, without David, without her sisters, and without Robin, her own dear, sweet Robin, she was alone. Nothing but Nightingale.

"Not intruding," Nightingale said as she settled into her seat. Amartya took the other one, fiddling with controls. The hovercraft hummed to life under them. "He was showing me a few features of the anklet."

Amartya nodded as if he didn't believe her.

They were up in the air soon enough, speeding over a city Nightingale did not recognize. She leaned her head against the glass and tried to focus, tried to be the whore again. 

"Fuck this," she said, when she felt unconvincing. She unbuckled herself from the seat and went into the back of the hovercraft. Posing before the mirror, she stared hard at her reflection and then she could do it. Like pulling on a familiar set of clothes, she slipped back into her Inamorata's guise. She did not feel comfortable, but she felt at home.

"Are you okay back there, Nightingale?" Amartya called. "We're nearly there and I want to make sure - oh, holy mother of God," he broke off, catching her reflection in the rearview mirror.

Nightingale sauntered up to him. She swayed as she walked, throwing out her hips. The stride was familiar to her. She was the Queen of the Bordello - she was the most beautiful of the Inamoratas, and the greatest seductress.

"Okay, Mr. Tijare?" she purred, using his pseudonym. "I think I'm more than okay, don't you?"

"Fuck me, that's distracting as all hell," he muttered. Nightingale allowed herself a throaty laugh at how hard he was blushing. "And I thought I could - that I wasn't - that I was different from all the fucking scumbags you used to have to deal with like this."

"Oh, don't worry," said Nightingale, both bitter with anger and humming with all the raw sexuality she could muster. She threw herself down in the seat. "You would hardly be a heterosexual man if you didn't react like this. Well, then, will I do?"

"Of course you will," said Amartya. He glanced over at her and flinched. "No wonder they wanted copies of you."

Nightingale wanted to slap him for the offhandedness of that cruelty. She let it slide, however, since they were coming in for a landing. With her nails dug firmly into the chair, she felt the hovercraft alight on a landing pad of a tall building. As she watched, a man came running out to meet them.

"Ready, Nightingale?" said Amartya.

Nightingale wanted to answer that she wasn't. That she wanted nothing more than to turn around, to go home, to rip off her whore's clothing and climb into the loving arms of her husband and -

"If you are, Mr. Tijare," she replied.

"Come on, then," he said. She followed him out of the hovercraft, keeping as much distance between herself and him as she had done with Bobby. For a moment, when she blinked, his form shifted to her former pimp's, and she was transported back to a trip out to the Corporation, to extract one of Bobby's new acquisitions. 

A man greeted them and spoke only to Amartya, ignoring Nightingale except to admire her figure. She was relieved he did not speak to her, since she was convinced she might have shrieked her anger at him if prompted.

He led them inside the building, through a hall, into a turbolift and, finally, down a mahogany-panelled hallway and to a sumptuous set of double doors.

"They will see you now," was all he said before he scurried away.

Amartya fixed a smile on his face and entered. Nightingale trailed after him, staying as far out of sight as she could. As she entered, as the doors shut behind her with not so much as a rasp, she took in the forms of four guards placed about the room. More importantly, her eyes alighted on the figures of three men seated at a long table before them.

At one end of the table sat Hikaru Ito. He was a tall, whip-thin man with the blackest hair and eyes Nightingale had ever seen. His skin, a stark shade of porcelain, very nearly glowed in the dim light of the parlour. He was appraising her with his dark eyes. When she met them, she had to prevent herself from flinching back at their flat emptiness.

On his right was seated Peter Ongawe. His dark skin stood in contrast to Ito's paleness. He, too, was appraising her, but his brown eyes were of a lighter shade and flicked over her form with alert vivacity. He had a healthy, glowing pallor, quite the opposite of Ito's drained complexion, and he seemed full of life. Nightingale hated him even more than Ito, for rather than flat, economic appraisal, she saw lust.

On Ongawe's right sat the last of the three men - Victor Trevor. Nightingale's memory had preserved him as perfectly as she had any other clients. He had been younger, of course, the last time she had seen him, but he had retained every inch of the personality she had remembered.

He still had the incisive, pale eyes that never fully lost their shrewd brightness even when he smiled, and he still had the air of well-bred lecherousness that had repulsed her. He had aged, of course, but that did not diminish his lively bearing. His figure, which was slightly rounder than it had been, and his hair, which had been drained of its colour more than it had gone grey, still grew thickly. All in all, his bearing conveyed a high-spirited demeanour that made him appear much taller than his five-foot-eight.

Nightingale had not hated him as much as she had hated some of her clients. But she still hated him, hated him more than either Ongawe or Ito. Perhaps it was the gold band on his left hand that he had not deigned to remove even when fucking Nightingale - she still remembered how cold the metal had been against the shell of her ear as he had fisted her hair in his hand - or perhaps it was the was the fact that he thought he was terribly charming or that he had enjoyed stroking her neck.

That particular gesture had always repulsed her, for he used to let his fingers glide from the nape of her neck until one hand encircled her neck, feigning gentility but reminding her that he could strangle her at any second.

"Good morning, Mr. Tijare," said Ito. His voice was low, measured, and utterly calm.

"Good morning," Amartya replied, with a smile. "How pleasant to see all of you. You know why I'm here today, I think. Gentlemen - I present to you the most convincing Nightingale copy ever made. And for sale to you today."

Amartya waved her forward and Nightingale obeyed. She watched carefully as the triumvirate appraised her. She weathered Ongawe's stare - the standard leer of a client - trembled before Ito's - the shrewd calculation of a businessman - and avoided Trevor's.

They did not speak, not right away, though Trevor grinned and Ongawe whistled through his teeth. It was not the wolf-whistle of a man trying to get her attention, but the sound of someone who was both disbelieving and impressed.

"How did you manage to make one so close to the original?" asked Ito. He was the first to speak and Nightingale wondered if he was the closest thing the triumvirate had to a leader.

Amartya smiled. "She's cloned directly from the real Nightingale. We haven't been fucking around with re-engineering her. We figured it would work a lot better if we just cloned her directly. No changes at all."

Trevor smiled broadly. His eyes lit up again as their gaze settled between her legs. "So she's got no modifications? She's exactly like Nightingale?"

"Exactly," Amartya affirmed.

"Not exactly, I'd think. You might have found your way to a few of Agent Brightley's somatic cells," said Ito, and Nightingale noted the respect in his voice as he pronounced her title. "But I find it difficult to believe that you acquired an oocyte from her."

"Ah," said Amartya, and then he smiled guiltily. "You're right. We used the oocyte of a different woman. But all of Nightingale's enhanced traits come from-"

"The Corporation modifications were done entirely in nuclear DNA. It shouldn't be an issue," Ongawe cut in. He gestured to Nightingale. "I take it you sequenced the mitochondrial DNA of the donor?"

"We did. No diseases or deleterious mutations," said Amartya. "And we looked for a donor of similar ethnic background to the original Nightingale."

"That is all that matters to me, then," said Ito. He waved his hand and fell silent.

"How did you get your hands on Nightingale's DNA, anyway?" asked Ongawe. "Any samples taken from her for scientific research are more tightly controlled than smallpox or spanish flu."

"It was very easy. Agent Brightley appears often enough in public that it was a simple thing to have someone stumble into her and 'accidentally' rip a few hairs from her scalp," said Amartya. He then convincingly feigned a sly air as he smiled.

"So you had no affiliation with Mr. Castleman?" asked Ito.

Nightingale could tell it took Amartya by surprise. He flinched back and shook his head instantly. "No. Not at all - Michael Castleman, you mean?"

"Yes," supplied Ongawe. "Everyone knows he conducts research on the genetics of Inamoratas. It's the worst-kept secret in the scientific community. You did not acquire Nightingale's cells from him?"

"No," said Amartya.

"Nightingale was more than her biology, Mr. Tijare. Surely you knew that. The training of Mr. Pherson had an influence," said Trevor. Nightingale found herself in the curious state of half-agreeing with a man she despised.

"Then how about a demonstration?" said Amartya. He waved Nightingale forward and she obeyed.

"Do you remember me, Nightingale?" asked Trevor. He was grinning at her but his eyes were cold, as they always were.

Nightingale did, of course, and assumed that her copy-Nightingale persona ought to pretend to. And so, with a long, languorous bat of her lashes, she eyed him as if appraising him.

"Of course, Mr. Trevor," she hummed. Then, she, without any further ado, slammed one hand on the table, grabbed Trevor by the collar, and kissed him hard on the mouth. It was what he had always liked in her bordello days. Some clients had preferred her to be more modest than that, but Trevor had always valued forwardness.

Nightingale had always been able to tell which man would want what, and that had not left her. Trevor wanted outright passion and roughness. He was not a sadist, nor a masochist, but he liked scratches and bites and slaps. He would neither dispense nor receive any blow more vicious than that.

When his tongue slid into her mouth she wanted to bite it off, but settled instead for a little growl that could be interpreted as violent pleasure. She would not imagine he was Robin in any attempt to soothe the hideous violation of that feeling of his hot mouth on hers. She would not sully any memory of Robin in that way.

She drew back and saw Trevor look first dazed, then satisfied, then hungry. Ongawe, beside him, wore an expression that was a mixture of exasperation and amusement, Ito nothing more than cold detachment.

"Well?" said Amartya. "What do you think of that?"

"Oh, yes," said Trevor. Nightingale had not moved out of his reach and so he rose, pulled her around the table, and onto his lap. "She'll do very nicely."

Amartya managed an expression of smugness that convinced even Nightingale. "She's perfect, isn't she?"

"Yes," said Trevor. He brushed Nightingale's hair back and placed a kiss on her neck. Nightingale wanted to vomit. She only realized at that moment how blunted she must have been to the horror before - then, she could have weathered it, disgusted, terrified, and furious as she was, but now the violation of Trevor's hands was so horrifying she bit down on her cheek to keep the bile from rising in her throat.

"And you just want to sell her?" asked Ito. Nightingale's eyes flickered to him for a moment before she brought her attention back to Trevor. He was pulling at her dress, leaving a trail of kisses from the corner of her ear to her collarbone. She gave him little sounds of pleasure, low in her throat, to keep him satisfied, and regarded him with hooded eyes.

"Precisely," said Amartya.

"Why not keep her yourself, and run a bordello with her?" asked Ongawe. His eyes were narrowed, he and Ito shrewd. Trevor took no interest in business. He was far more occupied with her. His hand curled about her throat - gently, but with that implied threat of violence. He kissed her neck again, and nipped at the corner of her jaw. She wanted to break every one of his fingers.

"I don't have the resources. Besides, for what I'm asking for this Nightingale copy, I won't need to work a day in my life. I'd rather live off the profit than have the fucking bother of managing her," said Amartya. He shrugged. That was a lie he had thought out in detail, Nightingale knew.

"You're confident you'll get that much for her?" said Ito.

Amartya gestured to Trevor and Nightingale. "Yes, I am."

Trevor still paid them no mind. Nightingale, who was trying desperately to listen to the business conversation going on behind her, found her attention divided. She was listening intently to Ito and Ongawe negotiating with Amartya - asking for more details about her, her age, her experience, whether she was guaranteed to last at least ten years with no ill health, all questions that made Nightingale nearly sick with anger - and at the same time managing Trevor.

He had one hand on her knee, and let it slide further and further up her thigh. Nightingale's dress was very tight, and so Trevor's hand had to slip between her thighs to rise any higher than the hem. Nightingale was growling wordlessly, somewhere between a threat of violence and a moan of pleasure - Trevor's favourite sound, she remembered - and trying not to murder him.

His fingers had crept very high and were tracing a pattern very delicately against where her thigh met the softer flesh above, when the tip of one finger slipped inside her.

She slapped him hard across the face and sprang off his lap. "You pay for that, Mr. Trevor. It's not free," she said.

Amartya, pausing in the middle of describing Nightingale's guaranteed sterility, looked horrified. The other two men fell silent and merely watched.

Trevor laughed. "You really are Nightingale, aren't you?" he said. "That is exactly what she would do." His eyes glowed, though lost none of their coolness. He appraised her, up and down, and then beckoned for her to come sit again.

Nightingale was very worried that if Trevor touched her again she would kill him. She blinked and, in a moment that seemed like an eternity, prodded a smile onto her face.

"Only if you behave, Mr. Trevor," she said, settling back onto his lap. She stroked one hand through his hair and he titled back his head to meet her eyes.

"I can't ever behave in your company, sweet girl," he told her.

Nightingale clenched her hand in his hair and dragged it back. The sharp intake of breath that hissed through his teeth told her she was hurting him. Good - it was what he liked. Better - she wanted to hurt him.

"What will I do with you?" she asked, stroking one finger across his cheek.

"I've got a few ideas," he supplied.

Nightingale arched one eyebrow.

"So," said Amartya, reaching out his hand to Nightingale. It was a signal that she was to come back to his side. She slipped off Trevor's lap and slunk over to him, unspeakably glad to be away from Trevor. "What do you think? Interested in buying her?"

Ongawe looked at Ito. Both looked at Trevor, who was grinning stupidly and who, Nightingale could see, was doing a terrible job of concealing the fact that he was fully hard.

"Oh, yes," said Trevor. Nightingale wondered what it would be like to rip out his throat with her teeth. She imagined the taste of his blood in her mouth. She had tasted blood many times before, of course, but it had always been her own - a split lip or a bitten tongue or a bloodied cheek from the backhand of a displeased client. She had never tasted anyone else's.

She thought of Robin all of a sudden - her sweet, gentle Robin, whose kindness was infinite, who had never lifted a hand to anyone in anger. He would love her if she killed Trevor, she knew, he would love her no matter what she was, but he would surely be disappointed.

"Give us some time to deliberate," said Ito. "And then you will hear from us."

"Of course. Come on, Nightingale," said Amartya, and he gave her a rough push. "Let's leave the gentlemen to their business."

Nightingale turned away and, trying to keep herself from quivering, followed Amartya out of the room and away from the triumvirate. She could feel Trevor's eyes on her back all the while.