For her sixteenth birthday, Ashley gets what every teenager her age wants: not a car, but a Companion, a humanoid alien shipped from a faraway planet to be the perfect slave and friend. Unintelligent, docile, and strikingly beautiful, Companions have become the number one must-have thing on Earth and has made the company that owns the Companion-trading business, Dellacourt, extremely wealthy. Ashley's new Companion, Echo, isn't quite right, though--it's just a tad too intelligent to be safe...for the secrets he keeps are the kind that could turn the world on its knees...