Dammit, I had to go back towork. But now? What would I say to Steph? I had to talk to her. Buthow? Cherie would know we were talking. Know what I was ...saying. AndEllen? I wanted to talk to her too. Really, I wanted to talk to herfirst. But I couldn't face it. I had to get out of there. Collect mythoughts. Try to make sense of it.Steph and Dad were still in the kitchen. I could hear them talking,laughing, oblivious. I walked quickly to the study and picked up thephone there. I dialled Ellen's. I would always be unfinished, it seemed to me, and incomplete. Angela had taken that away from me too.She enjoyed me that way, it was a selfish pleasure and so I understood it. I'd always been selfish myself and I didn't resent her for Turning me when she had, if I'd been Angela I might have done the same thing. It was the law, as I understood it, as vampires lived it, the law that said might makes right. The strong must dominate the weak.I was the weaker, and much more so when I'd been a human. ”The bid was at twelve hundred Continental so when I said, “Twenty, silver,” things got right quiet. The fat man looked around and then brought down his mallet. “You done bought ‘er,” he said, “but you’re too damn big to horse ‘er.” The few people left laughed and shuffled out. I paid for my two purchases. The girl I had bought for no particular reason was not much bigger than the slave who was, I suppose, twice her age.“You got any other clothes?” I asked the shivering girl who had her arms. She felt a quick panic at the thought that she was in her night clothes, but had to laugh to herself at how silly that was, given the time that she had spent naked with him."Are you going to keep at this all night?" she asked kindly.He threw his shoulders back and circled his head around trying to get the kinks out of his neck. "I don't know, Molly. Some of these kids don't want to stop talking. I'm really worried about a few of them." I don't know if I'd be good at it, but I could try and chat.