“No, they don’t,” a dark-skinned woman said. “But you’d have to define weird in totally different ways to cover some of Katie’s clients.” I was pretty sure her name was Najla.
“How do they smell?” I asked.
The other girls looked at Bliss. She said, “Like old leaves. Sometimes mold. If they haven’t bathed in a while they can smell like old blood. You know. Like a woman in her period. I have a really good sense of smell,” she insisted.
I’ll bet you do. I could tell this had been a sore point with the others. “Do any of them smell sick? Infected?”
“No.” Bliss glanced around the table. “I know you think I’m crazy, but they all smell.”
Before any of them could reply, I said, “Najla, right?” to the dark-skinned girl. She had an on-again, off-again accent that I couldn’t place, but then accents weren’t my strength. Like Bliss, I was better at scents. “Let’s talk weird. First, where are you from? Wait,” I said as the girls laughed and Najla narrowed her eyes at me. “That didn’t come out right. What I meant was, I want to hear about weird and vamps, but first, I’d like to know where you’re from.”
“None ’a your business,” she said.
“Katie says it is,” Miz A said as she shuffled back into the room. She was pushing a cart that smelled of spices, charcoal, and meat. Beast rumbled appreciatively. “Anything she wants to know, you tell her.”
Najla tossed her head. “My parents and I emigrated here from Mozambique when I was four.” I rotated my fingers, giving her a little tell-me-more gesture, and she said, “From a place called Namaponda. You might find it on a map. If the map was big enough.”
“And your parents?”
“Dead.” When I waited, she grudgingly said, “Car crash when I was fifteen. Katie took me in. Don’t look at me like that. I was turning tricks on the street to buy food. She brought me in, made me finish high school before she would let me work. Tried to send me to college. But I was good at making men happy.” Whatever she saw on my face made her bristle. “I want to retire before I’m forty. What other job can you name where a girl fresh out of high school can pull down two hundred K a year and retire in less than twenty years? Name me one.”
“Modeling. Acting. Music business.” Grudgingly I added, “If you’re lucky.”
Najla nodded emphatically. “I never had a lucky day in my life except the day Katie found me. I got close onto a mil in stocks and bonds and gold. I’ll have two mil, easy, in five more years, with compounding interest and dividends, assuming the market goes where I think it will.”
I was shocked. Two million for turning tricks? Najla laughed. “I can see it now. You think a girl should work hard and retire at sixty-five. That’s bullshit.”
Miz A slapped Najla on the shoulder as she set a plate in front of her. “Miss Katie don’ allow dirty talk at the table.”
Najla rubbed her shoulder. “Sorry,” she mumbled. Miz A put a plate in front of me. The steak hung off at ten o’clock and four o’clock and leaked bloody juices into the trough of the china and onto a larger plate beneath. The potato was stuffed with all sorts of goodies, including bacon and sour cream. I smiled, my mouth watering. “Thank you. This looks wonderful.”
“Nearly two pound of Black Angus, yeah. Tom say you like meat.”
“Tom is my hero. So are you. So is the cook.”
Miz A chuckled and finished serving the girls. I had enough etiquette training to know I had to wait until we were all served before I dug in. And enough self-restraint to resist Beast, who woke up at the scent and wanted me to eat the meat with my hands. “You may eat,” Miz A said. I watched and picked up the proper fork and the serrated knife. And cut into the steak.
When I put the first bite into my mouth I groaned. The girls all looked at me. “Sorry,” I said as I chewed. “This is the best piece of meat I ever put in my mouth.” Which made the girls break up and dig into their own meals, laughter reflecting off the walls like tinkling silver.
Inadvertently, I might have just made friends. Bordello humor. Who’d a thunk it?
CHAPTER 9
I really love rock and roll
I learned little that was useful over dinner, at least not about the rogue. If I ever needed to tie up a lover and whip him, however, I had plenty of info. I think the girls just liked to see me blush.
Katie hadn’t arrived by the time I finished my meal, so I left without seeing her. However, on the way out, I took a circuitous route, openly scoping out the place, and found Troll in her office. He was leaning over that ancient desk, bent over papers, his laptop turned so I couldn’t see the screen. That seemed significant, so I pulled on Beast’s stalking attributes and stepped into the room, silent as the predator Katie had called me.