Athena's Jewel: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Aya Harris Collection Book 2) by Lacy Andersen

Author:Lacy Andersen [Andersen, Lacy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-10-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Early the next morning, while we were all spread out on the dirty mattresses trying to catch a few minutes of sleep, the metal door slid open. Tala and I were the first to notice the dark woman with brilliant white teeth poking her head through the door. She took a look at the girls on the floor, picked up a bucket on the floor beside her, and entered the room.

The bucket she was carrying sloshed back and forth, dripping a few suds onto the cement floor. Depositing the bucket in the middle of the room, she clicked her tongue and waited for the rest of the girls to wake.

I stood with a start. This might be it, the moment they took us out of this room and I would see my mother for the first time in fourteen years. She had to be nearby. The very thought gave me goosebumps.

“Come on now… clean yourselves up.” The woman spoke with an affected accent, like from the southern portion of Africa. “Got to clean them faces, make them pretty. Hurry up, now.”

We scrambled toward the bucket filled with soapy rags. It felt amazing to run the rag over my grimy face, and on the bruise Bobby Caro had left along my jawline yesterday. The rag was smeared with remnants of mascara and eyeshadow by the time I returned it to the bucket now filled with dirty water.

As I swept the last droplets of moisture off my arm, I caught a look at Tala. Dark bags had formed under her eyes. It didn’t surprise me – we’d shared a mattress last night and Tala had spent most of it tossing and turning. The stubborn and solemn girl I’d met last night was fraying at the edges. Crazy had begun to enter her eyes.

“What are they going to do to us?” Tala cornered the woman, backing her into a corner. “What do you know?”

“I know nothing.” The woman cowered, nearly dropping to her knees. “Please, don’t. I is not supposed to say nothing.”

The fierceness only grew on Tala’s face. Several of the other girls joined her in surrounding the woman.

“Please, you’ve got to help us. You don’t know what it’s like in here.”

At that, the woman lifted her chin with a stubborn grimace. “I know what is like. I was here, just like you. This is what happened to me and I is lucky. You may be lucky, too.”

The girls exchanged glances. Tala swore and kicked over the bucket of dirty water, sending the rags tumbling in a tangled mess.

“This is lucky?” she shrieked. “I don’t want to be a slave for the rest of my life. You’ve got to do something. You’ve got to help us.”

The woman ignored Tala and shook her head at the empty bucket. With a flick of her wrist, the puddle of water on the floor began to pool together into a stream of water that lifted into the air and dropped back into the bucket. When

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