Page 97 of Born for Starlight

"You tell me." Her voice was hoarse and thin, and it was hers. Not the star’s. "What happened?"

"You were talking to Julian. He said something about the girl. The tall one. How you looked alike. Then he said.” I paused. “He said that could be you, right there, if it weren't for the Drakos family.”

She sucked in a fast, deep breath, just shy of a gasp.

“Then your face went flat, and you weren’t you. You weren’t there. You went somewhere. I've never seen you go anywhere. I couldn't get you back." I made myself stop. "That's all I know. That douchebag said one thing and you went."

"Angel." Jase, in her ear and mine, careful now, picking his way. "It's not just what he said. There were other things, in that place, things that could have-"

"Stop."

"Angel, you need to know there's⁠—"

"Stop!" She put a hand flat against her own chest. "Enough. It doesn't matter. Not right now. I don't know what happened and I think I know what happened, and we don't have time for either one." She looked at me. "I still need that tour. We still need to find Luzia."

"It's almost seven,” I said.

"So?"

"So, the visit's over. The press is gone. Costa's out there sweating through his shirt. There is no tour. There is no way in hell you're walking corridors in this building today. We're getting you back to the hotel and I'll take it from here."

"Who's on this?" She touched her ear. "Who am I talking to?"

"Everyone," Simon said. "Welcome to the net, Miss Drakos."

"Simon. When does the auction start?"

A beat.

"If it hasn’t started yet, then it will any time now," Simon said. “They've been arriving at the rear since three thirty. Town cars, sedans and SUVs.”

“They stopped arriving,” Bruno said. “About twenty minutes ago.”

"Then I can't be moved."

"Angelica," Jase and I said together.

"No. Listen. Listen to me." She pushed herself up straighter on the sofa and I watched the woman from the press steps come back into her face, piece by piece, over the top of whatever had just happened to her. "If I go back to the hotel, all of you go. Matthew goes. The car goes. The detail goes. You're outside the fence when it starts. But if I'm here, if I'm sick and I can't be moved, then my security is here and my driver is here. You're inside the walls when the auction starts. How is that not the best thing that could have happened to this operation?"

"No," I said.

"No," Jase said.

"Good idea," Simon said.

"Great idea," Bruno said.

"Are you out of your fucking minds?" Jase yelled. "That's my sister, you fucking traitor! That’s Angelica on a couch in a building full of⁠—"

"That's our sister with the whole net in her ear and her security at the door," Bruno said, mild as anything. "Which is safer than a hotel room across town with everybody gone. Think it through, Jase."

"Bruno's right," Simon said. "It's a gift. We didn't plan it. We'd be fools not to take it."

I stayed on my knees and looked at her, and she looked at me, and I knew what was coming before she said it.

She said it quietly. Not for the net. For me.

"You don't decide what I can handle. You don't manage me. You promised."