Amy sat slumped in the passenger seat as Andrew drove her home from the lawyer's office, late Monday afternoon. It had taken all her energy to act eager and willing as she signed Andrew's slave contract, mindful of Andrew's warning that if she looked as if there were any duress, and if the lawyer exhibited any visible suspicion that Amy didn't want to sign, Andrew would just take her to another lawyer. The signing, Amy knew, had to be done to Andrew's satisfaction. The alternative of being whisked away to spend the rest of her life as a stranger's mistreated puppygirl, losing forever her chance at the Academy, made Amy take her own role in surrendering her freedom very seriously.

The worst part had been when the lawyer's assistant had come in to sign as the second witness. The woman had looked over the contract, and on seeing the names asked Amy, "Oh, are you married already?"

Amy had forced a smile. "He's my brother."

The assistant had beamed at Amy. "Oh, that's really special. I was just thinking how often we work with people having divorces, with all the anger and loss. It's so nice to be part of a happy event for once. Did you always want to be your brother's slave?"

"Uhh, no," Amy had replied. "It's kind of a recent thing."

"Well, I'm glad you two can be close. One of my friends has a brother, and they can hardly stand each other." To Amy's relief, the woman had finally signed the contract and gone back to her office, waving a cheery goodbye to both of them.

In the car now, Amy reminded herself that the contract would never go into effect anyway.

It still upset her.

In her hand, she clutched an envelope containing her copy of the contract. It would do no good, she knew, to find Andrew's copy somehow, wherever he might hide it, and rip it to shreds. The lawyer had one in her files.

Slaves, of course, were often taken with no contract at all, and sometimes with little or no consent on the part of the slave. There were other ways to prove ownership, in accordance with various local customs, and it was rarely questioned in any case. This contract, unassailable as a fake for the good reason that it wasn't one, was mainly for Dad's benefit. It wasn't enough that Andrew could satisfy the authorities that he owned Amy. It would take more than mere possession to prove his ownership of her to Dad.

After a long silence, Amy muttered to Andrew, "I'd tell you this makes me even more determined to get into the Academy, but it doesn't. I couldn't possibly want it any more than I already did."

Andrew snorted and shook his head, his eyes on the road. "Wow, that hanging bitch really wrapped you around her little finger, didn't she?"

Every muscle in Amy's body suddenly was seized in a cramp as she whirled her head to look at Andrew, her mouth a wide O of shock. He could never have heard Miranda say that phrase! Amy looked at his face as closely as she had ever looked at anyone's. There was no sign of irony written on it. He had only used a commonplace way of expressing his perceptions, and gave no evidence that he knew what that particular metaphor meant to Amy.

What it meant to Amy.

Her entire day with Miranda passed through her mind in a flash, every word, every event, every gesture. The way Miranda had made the most significant men in Amy's life behave in exactly the way Miranda had wanted them to. The way she had brought them under her control. The way she had wra-- ... Amy suddenly didn't want to hear that phrase again, not even in her head.

And the way Miranda had somehow steered Amy, who before that day had barely even known what the Hanging Academy was, into a passion for attending the Academy that overwhelmed every other possible future ahead of her. Do I really want to go, she suddenly found herself asking. Or did Miranda... put that into me somehow?

Silent the rest of the way home, Amy threw herself through the front door of the house and bounded up the stairs. Flinging her bedroom door closed behind her, she bounced onto the bed on her knees, facing Miranda's head.

"Miranda! Is it me or is it you?? Were you helping me or controlling me? Did you see something inside me, or did you put the Academy in there yourself? Tell me! Tell me!!!"

Miranda's head was silent.

I can't do it, Amy told herself. I can't go to the interview. It's less than two days away, it's in the morning day after tomorrow, and I can't do it. Dean Porter will read me like a book. He'll know how confused I am. He'll know I don't understand where this need came from, the need to be an Academy girl. Miranda! What did you do to me?? Did you work your magic on me? Was it just because I was the last girl you'd be able to talk to in your life? I wasn't really special to you, was I? Was I just somebody available you could mold in your image?

Amy hugged herself on her knees on the bed, her face rubbing the sheets, crouched in a fetal position, her body wracked with sobs. Miranda, help me, help me!!

I'll just cancel the interview, Amy told herself. There's no point. I can't go in there like this. I can't pass the interview, not messed up like I am.

She suddenly realized she would be Andrew's slave as soon as she cancelled. She couldn't get in the Academy, and that meant the contract was in force. Her whole life was in ruins. Just days from now her brother would own her, he would have her body as he'd been wanting to. He would use her, force her to service him, would impregnate her, probably over and over for years to come.

She fell over on her side and, fully clothed, still in a fetal ball, she sobbed until she exhausted herself and fell asleep.

Her head pounding, her eyes feeling rough and red, Amy awoke. For a moment she thought it was still the same afternoon, but she saw that the sun was slanting through her bedroom window at a morning angle. I slept through the whole evening and night, she realized, not particularly interested in the revelation. Not particularly interested in anything. Her eyes wandered vaguely around the room, the only part of her body that wanted to be awake. She didn't move any other muscle. She couldn't summon up the will.

Tuesday morning, she informed herself just to summarize the state of the world. Interview tomorrow. For what it's worth. Something associated with the girl she had thought she wanted to be. It didn't relate to her now.

She didn't move at the sound of the knock on the door. James's voice came through the wooden panels. "Miss Cameron? Is everything all right? You've usually had breakfast by now. I don't believe you went to dinner either."

She sighed, trying to decide whether to answer. I guess I'd better, she thought. He'll just get more alarmed. Maybe food would be more inviting once I'm looking at it, she reasoned. In a croaking voice that added credibility to what she was saying, she called out, "I'm not feeling very well, James. Could you maybe bring something up here?"

"Certainly, Miss Cameron." She heard his footsteps recede down the hall and the stairs.

A few minutes later she was looking at a tray laden with a bowl of cereal, a fruit salad, and a glass of orange juice. No, she concluded, I was wrong. It doesn't look any better than it sounded. I have to eat something, though. She picked listlessly at a bit of sliced fruit sticking out of the salad.

"Should I call a doctor, Miss Cameron?" James was still standing there.

She shook her head, and winced at the ache across her forehead. "Probably just a little bug going around. I'll be okay later. It's okay, you can go." She hoped that wasn't too brusque. She didn't like to be rude to the only person in the house who seemed really to care about her.

"Yes, Miss Cameron." He nodded and left, leaving her as alone as she wanted to be.

She made herself finish most of the breakfast, since it seemed to be making her head feel better. The next fifteen minutes were spent in internal discussion over whether a shower would help. She finally shrugged and managed to creep into her bathroom.

The shower did seem to raise her energy level, though when she came out, she found it was still too depleted for her to put on clothes. She locked her bedroom door to keep Undesirables out, and lay back on the bed, trying to avoid looking at Miranda.

The thought came to her at last: if I can't have the Academy, maybe that doesn't necessarily mean I'm stuck with Andrew.

After a few minutes she sat up, as creakily as if she were an eighty-year-old man, and made herself go to her desk and turn her computer on.

She began searching online for all the information she could find on the laws of slavery. There were some details of law that applied differently to voluntary or involuntary slaves, though the bulk of the laws applied equally to both. She went from one reference source to another, trying to find something that might get her out of her contract with Andrew.

Several times she shoved herself away from the desk in frustration, only to come immediately back and continue the search. There had to be something.

She pulled her mind away angrily every time it tried to wander to the Academy.

But if I never wanted the Academy, a tiny voice within her argued, why do I feel this gigantic hole inside me? Why do I feel like the emptiness inside is exploding out to consume me?

Stop it, she told herself, we're not thinking about that. We've got a job we're doing here. Concentrate on that.

Tears streamed down her cheeks. She had to lean back so they wouldn't splatter on the keyboard. Absently she wiped the snot from her nose.

Miranda would know what to do. She always knew what to do.

Stop talking about Miranda!! She did something to me! I don't know what it was! She... magicked me somehow.

Amy gritted her teeth and thrust the Academy out of her mind again.

Everything she found in her computer search seemed to weigh against her. She had voluntarily signed the contract. Claiming she had changed her mind later carried no weight. She couldn't show she'd somehow been tricked into signing -- the fact was, she knew exactly what she'd been doing and why. She could claim duress, tell about the threats Andrew had made if she didn't sign, but she had no proof of that either: her claim that Andrew had said there were vague "people" who would kidnap her and sell her as a puppygirl would sound paranoid, and would go up against Andrew's word that he didn't even know there were people like that.

Morning wore away into afternoon, and frustration decayed into hopelessness as the hours passed.

I'm going to be Andrew's slave, she told herself over and over. There's no way out. In fact, in a sense I already am, if I'm not going to the inter... Stop thinking about the Academy!!!

She buried her face in her hands. Miranda, help me! No! I've got to help myself. There has to be something I can do!

The thought sprang into her mind: the law is one thing, and Dad is another. If the law can't help, maybe he can.

He doesn't even know yet that Andrew wants me as a slave instead of a wife. Sure, Andrew was probably right, Dad would be fine with that once he saw the contract. And the contract itself was binding in any case, whether Dad liked it or not. But it wasn't in effect yet. Andrew, Amy told herself, will be expecting me to wait until I get a rejection from the Acad... from that place, before either of us tells Dad anything, and by then I'll definitely belong to Andrew. But right now I don't, yet. Andrew won't imagine I'd spill everything to Dad right now, and blow off... that place. But that place doesn't matter now, does it? Does it?

Does it? She kept asking herself.

Dad might be really mad at me. For not telling him I'd applied to... that place, for signing a contract and then trying to get out of it. A contract is a contract, in Dad's world. She could hear his voice. I thought you were more mature than that, Amy. She could already hear him saying it. Maybe you need to be a slave, if you don't have a good mind of your own.

But maybe he'd be mad at Andrew. Andrew had, after all, not been 100% straightforward with Dad either.

There had to be a chance of that. It was the only chance she had.

Her stomach grumbled, reminding her she had eaten only a bit of breakfast in the last twenty-seven hours. Her head was pounding again. She got dressed, and went down to the kitchen to throw a girlmeat salad together.

She went back up to her room after eating, to plan what she'd say to Dad. She'd show him the contract, of course. Maybe the picture of herself to which Andrew had added the slave collar, though that didn't really reveal anything but Andrew's interest in her as a slave, which the contract proved anyway. She'd have to explain the part in the contract about... that place, so she tried to decide what she'd say about it.

She sucked in a quick breath when she heard Dad come through the front door downstairs, and heard James greet him. Let him settle in, she thought. I still haven't figured this out completely. She decided to organize her thoughts by jotting down a set of notes.

Two hours later, she thought she had it. She did have to tell him about the puppygirl threat, as paranoid as it sounded. The burden of proof might be a little different with Dad from what the authorities would demand by law. She had a tentative order written down for the points she wanted to make.

Nervously, she took a deep breath, and headed down the stairs, with the envelope holding the contract.

Dad was in his recliner in his library, his dinner finished, taking out his one after-dinner cigar, a bottle of brandy within reach.

Amy cleared her throat. "Dad?"

He looked up at her, pulling a match out of the ornate box on the table beside the recliner and striking it into flame. "What is it, sweetheart?"

Amy's eyes were drawn to the match, still hissing as the powders were igniting on its head. Somehow, everything else in the world faded away, as if the theater lights had been turned down, leaving only the flaming match. Amy stared at it, fascinated.

The tiniest spark started that fire, thought Amy. All that energy, all that heat, has been waiting to burst forth since the day that match was made, set free now by that almost invisible spark.

The spark didn't have that energy in it. It just released what was stored in the match.

Amy's eyes widened, hypnotically intense.

Miranda was my spark.

Miranda didn't do anything to me. All of that energy, all of that fire, all of that consuming need to be part of the Academy. It was all inside me.

Stunned, she realized that Miranda had never once made anyone do anything. She hadn't made anyone want anything. She had only seen what they had really wanted, and by knowing it, by talking about it, had let the want come to the surface from within them.

Miranda hadn't tricked Andrew into "playing nice" with her. She had simply reminded him how much he wanted to impress his friends, and made him conscious of it. And that consciousness led him to act the way he did.

Miranda hadn't made Amy's dad slow down and take his time with her. She had found a reason why he would want to do that.

Long before Amy had known Miranda, before Amy had even known what the Academy was, she knew now that she had wanted it, needed it. It struck Amy, who remembered her one day with Miranda in exquisite detail, that almost the first thing out of Amy's mouth when she met Miranda was, "You're really going to let Andrew hang you?" Miranda could very easily have seen something in Amy's eyes at that moment, when Amy spoke that question. The fuel for the fire, for the passion Amy had never known was there, had been waiting inside Amy, like the powder on the match, from the moment she'd been born. Waiting for just a spark to set it burning.

And then she had met Miranda.

Now Amy felt the fire burning again.

She returned to the here and now suddenly, hearing her father, after a pause to light his cigar, asking again, looking a little puzzled now, "What it is, Amy?" She realized only a few seconds had gone by.

"Uhh, uhh... oh, sorry, nothing. I was going to ask you something, and then I realized I already knew the answer. Silly." She grinned.

Her dad snorted. "Glad I could help."

"Oh, you did. More than you can imagine." She turned and raced back up the stairs, leaving her dad looking more puzzled and then setting the puzzle aside, with a "who understands kids?" shrug.

Amy threw the envelope with the contract carelessly on her desk and jumped onto the bed on her knees. She picked up Miranda's head and cradled her friend tightly against her chest. Tears streaking her cheek, she said, "Thank you. Miranda, thank you so much. I understand now, I really do this time. I'll make you proud of me. I'll be the best hanging girl ever, and not because you want me to be, but because I want to be!"

She set Miranda's head back on the shelf, and lightly brushed Miranda's hair back in place. "I need to make sure I'm ready for my interview now." She quickly sat at her desk and started making notes for herself.