My Pet Sold Me novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: A Witnessed Floor

Lara walks into a closed boxing gym full of beasts, refuses to sign, and the fox Elder offers eight thousand dollars for her.

Hennessy's Boxing had been closed since spring, and there were still twenty people inside it.

I knew they weren't all people the moment I stepped through the side door.

The smell was the first thing, wet fur and cedar and something like smoke.

Then I saw eyes catch the light from the ring lamp at the wrong height and the wrong color.

Penny waited in my car with the engine running and her phone in her hand.

I had told her the short version on the drive over.

She had said, "Okay," and then, "Okay," again, and then she had asked whether I wanted her to hit anyone.

Now I walked down the center aisle with a manila folder under my arm and my back very straight.

Tobin sat on the bottom ring rope in his leather jacket, swinging one foot.

He saw me and his whole face went slack.

"Lara? What are you doing here?"

"You listed me," I said. "I came to see who answers."

"You weren't supposed to see it."

"I know. That was the part you got wrong."

A few of the beasts laughed.

One of them, a heavy man in a hunting vest, called out, "She's got a mouth on her."

"She's got a mouth on her and she bites," said a woman by the door. "That's what the picture said. Look at her."

I looked at none of them.

I looked at the man standing alone at the far corner of the ring with his arms folded.

He was taller than anyone else in the room and he did not move at all.

He wore a black work coat, and he had a scar through his left eyebrow.

"Miss Aldrin," he said.

His voice was low and unhurried.

"Dane Urquhart?"

"Yes."

"You answered a post that said I was a terrible owner."

"I answered a post that said you were a good-looking human," Dane said. "I wanted to know what the owner looked like when Tobin said the other thing."

Tobin sat up. "Look, Lara, it's nothing personal."

"You put my face on a trading site."

"It's the only place they take bonds."

"You told four hundred strangers I make you wear a tag."

"Okay, that was a joke."

"Do you wear a tag, Tobin?"

He didn't answer.

I turned to the room and spoke to it the way I would speak to a waiting room full of nervous dogs.

"My name is Lara Aldrin. I took this man in when he was a hungry eighteen-year-old on my kitchen floor. I fed him for seven years. He has never once paid me a cent of rent."

"It isn't rent," Tobin said. "It's a bond."

"Then he can tell you what the bond cost him."

Nobody said anything.

Tobin looked at his shoes.

"I'll pay four thousand," he said finally, to Dane. "Just to take her. It's all I've got."

"Four thousand dollars," Dane said slowly. "To sell her."

"To sell the bond, yeah."

"You're paying me to hold your keeper's contract."

"Right. And release me on paper. It's a standard transfer."

Dane looked at me.

It was not the hungry look I had expected from the comments.

It was a steady, measuring look, and it lingered on my left wrist where my sleeve had ridden up.

I tugged the cuff down over the pale scar.

"I'm not signing anything," I said.

"The bond moves on a signature," Dane said. "Or on a bid, if three witnesses stand for it. This is a witnessed floor."

"Whose rule is that?"

"The Concord's."

"I don't remember agreeing to a Concord."

"You did," he said. "At nineteen. In an office. Where you signed for him."

My mouth went dry.

I had never said the word Concord out loud in my life.

Tobin frowned. "What's he talking about, Lara?"

"Nothing. Your paperwork. A stamp."

"You told me it was a stamp."

"It is a stamp."

"Then why does he know about it?"

Dane's gaze moved to him for the first time, and it was not kind.

"Sit down," he said.

Tobin sat.

I hadn't seen that happen before, and my chest tightened.

"Here are my terms," I said. "I'm not signing, nobody carries a pen out of here, and I'm going to ask you one question, Mr. Urquhart."

"Go on."

"What do you want with a human you've never met?"

For a moment he said nothing.

The ring lamp swung a little on its chain.

Then he said, "I want to see the papers."

"No."

"Then I'll take my chances with the bid."

"There is no bid," Tobin said quickly.

The door at the back of the gym opened with a creak.

Everyone turned.

An old woman came in on a cane, with a younger man holding her elbow, and every fox in the room rose to its feet.

She stopped halfway down the aisle and tapped the cane once on the concrete.

"Eight thousand," she said.

"For what?" I said.

"For the keeper," said the Elder of the fox clan. "I'll take her myself."

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