The guards did return that night, not to bring us food but to examine the demon’s work in fixing us up, and to choose a new play toy for the evening.

“Your pick,” Pockmarks told Catcalls. “How about the Russian girl? She looks like fun.”

Tasha caught her breath. I moved to stand in front of Kitten and Pistol while Mess did the same to Sugar and Baa. Pillow and Lacy sat wide-eyed on their cots, frozen with fear.

“No, I want the bitch that hit me,” Catcalls said, glaring at Mess. The girl sucked in a sharp breath, but set her jaw and lifted her chin. I stayed where I was, feeling as if I were in a giant chess game. Protect the pawns. Advance when my opponent’s intent is clear.

Pockmarks gave the other guard a sharp look. “Think you might take it a bit far with that one. Screw that Mexican chick instead. She looks sturdy enough for what you like to do.”

I wasn’t sure which “Mexican” chick he was referring to. Baa stood rigid behind Mess, unable to follow the conversation. I shifted to the side, trying to block Pillow and hoping Pistol could protect Kitten if needed.

“She’ll just lay there and cry,” Catcalls complained. “I like one that’s got a little game, you know what I mean? There’s no fun in punching some unresponsive bag of meat. I like one that’s gonna give me some cause to land a few blows.”

“Well, I don’t,” Pockmarks told him. “I don’t want to have to fight some chick to get my rocks off. Nice and quiet. Please and thank you. That’s what I want.”

Would they take two of us tonight? A feisty girl like Pistol or Sugar or Mess for Catcalls to beat around and screw, and Lacy or Kitten or Tasha for Pockmarks? I hated the thought of any of my girls being subjected to these men, but with two out of this room, maybe there would be a better chance of one escaping. We just needed one to escape and bring help. Just one.

“How about I take the bitch that hit me and you take that one?” Catcalls jutted his chin at Kitten. I caught my breath, knowing that of everyone here she was the one most in need of protection. She wasn’t street-hardened as most of us were. She was an innocent and probably a virgin. And she was only thirteen. I wouldn’t let them take her. I’d fight to the death if I had to, but I wouldn’t let them take her.

“I’m no damned pedo.” Pockmarks sneered and I took a relieved breath. “Besides, the underage innocent ones bring the most money. I’m thinking the Russian over there, or the Chinese girl.”

Tasha’s eyes grew wide. Lacy must have gleaned something from the men’s gestures, because she scooted back on her cot, putting her rear against the wall.

“Thought you weren’t no pedo,” Catcalls laughed. “That Chinese girl looks younger than the other one.”

“They all look young. You go first, then when you’re done with your girl, I’ll take whichever one I like.”

Catcalls smiled and took a step toward Mess. She shrank back and I moved to stand in front of her.

“Take me instead. I’m the one who organized the whole thing. It was me.”

He hesitated, looking between me and Mess. “She’s the one who hit me.”

“No, it was me. I’m the one that brained your demon and planned the escape attempt. I’m the one who hit you.”

“Don’t you remember who knocked you upside the head?” Pockmarks asked.

He frowned. “Nah, she hit me from behind. Pretty sure Red was over with the other girls. She’s the only one that wasn’t there. Had to be the black chick.”

“It was me,” I insisted. He couldn’t have seen me. I’d had my face buried in my hands, the girls all around me, so I didn’t have to see a repeat of what I’d done in the bathroom.

His eyes narrowed. “I saw your red hair. Not like anybody could miss that from a mile away. You were over with the other girls. She was the one who wasn’t there. She was behind me. She was the one who hit me.”

Cursed bright red hair. “I’m the one who told her to hit you. I hit the demon. I plotted the escape. Take me instead.”

“That red-haired one’s prettier.” Pockmarks grinned. “She’s the best looking one of the bunch. Imagine the bruises on that pretty skin of hers.”

“She’s not the one that hit me, though.”

“I’ll fight,” I told him, desperate to keep the other girls safe. “You’ll need to drag me off, beat the crap out of me, tie me up, even gag me. I’ll give you plenty of reasons to hit me.”

I took a step forward and he reached out to grab my arm. Lightning fast he pulled out a pocket knife and cut a shallow line across my arm. It burned, pain radiating outward. Blood welled up, bright red in contrast to my pale, porcelain skin.

“Bruises don’t show as well on dark skin,” he muttered.

I seized on my chance to convince him. “None of it would have happened without me. Take me instead. Punish me instead. And you…” I took a deep breath. “You can do whatever you want. Anything. Anal. Anything. Force me at knifepoint to give you a blow job. You can be as rough with me as you want. Punish me as much as you want. The demon can always fix me afterward. And if not… Well, you do have an extra, don’t you?”

Kitten began to cry softly in the background. I saw Mess standing very still, hardly daring to breathe, her expression a mixture of fear and sorrow.

“She’s worth a lot of money,” Pockmarks warned. “Yeah, we got an extra, but if you kill her, it’s coming out of your share of the profits. Every last dime.”

The guard’s fingers tightened painfully on my arm. The blood had streaked across my skin and was falling to the floor in crimson drips.

I was afraid. I was so afraid. But better me than them. This guy was…he was going to be brutal. I couldn’t let that happen to any of my girls.

Catcalls looked over toward Pockmarks. The other man shrugged. “Your pick. I don’t care which one you take.”

“Last guy that fucked her ended up dead with his eyes all burned out of their sockets,” Catcalls said. “Not sure I want to take the chance of that happening to me. Sure is pretty though, with that skin. Even the weird red hair is kinda cool.”

“That had nothing to do with me,” I assured him. “I was tied to the bed.”

He hesitated, eyeing the streaks of blood on my arm. “Nah. Not gonna take the chance. I’ll fuck the other one instead.”

Mess let out a cry, and I tried to block Catcalls from her. “I’ll do anything you want. Anything.”

He shoved me out of the way. “Next time, Red.”

Something snapped. I jumped on his back and grabbed his head, trying to break his neck. All the strength I’d had when fighting the demon vanished and all I could do was pull his hair and scratch his face.

“Get her off me!”

Pockmarks hooted and laughed as Catcalls spun around, grabbing and trying to yank me off his back. “I’m thinking you should take this little firecracker instead. Or is this too much fight for you? You too much of a pussy to handle her?”

Catcalls launched himself backward, slamming me into the concrete wall. It knocked the breath out of me and loosened my grip on his hair enough that he was able to yank me off and throw me to the ground. A foot stomped down on my stomach, then another kicked me in the side. I grabbed at his leg, fighting to get my breath against the waves of pain.

Another kick launched me across the floor and into one of the cots.

Catcalls grabbed Mess by the arm and half dragged her out of the room while Pockmarks held the rest of the girls back with the threat of the broom handle. Then he backed out the door, locking it solidly behind him.

“Are you okay?” Pillow and Tasha bent over me, smoothing my hair away to check my face. I straightened on the floor, taking tiny breaths. My arm stung where he’d cut me. My stomach and back felt like someone had worked me over with an iron pipe. Carefully the girls helped me sit up as I eased my way into taking full breaths.

And then it was gone. The pain washed away and I inhaled deeply. Looking down, I saw my arm was unmarked aside from the streaks of blood.

“I’m fine.” I told the girls, hoping I didn’t have to somehow explain my miraculous recovery.

They helped me to my feet, fussing over me a bit. Then we all stood and stared at the door, miserable and not sure what to do. He’d taken Mess. He’d taken one of my girls. And I was terrified for her.

It should have been me. Why wasn’t it me? All I wanted was to keep my girls safe, and I’d failed. Mess was out there on her own with that monster, and I couldn’t help her. I could only pray that the guardian angel she’d teased me about was real, that he would swoop in and save her.

But I was pretty sure there was no guardian angel. None for me, and probably none for Mess either. Instead I closed my eyes tight and prayed for the demon to save her. Leethu, wherever you are, help my girl. Don’t let him hurt her. Don’t let him kill her.

“Is Mess going to be okay?” Kitten asked. “I’m scared. I’m scared for her. I don’t want them to hurt her.” I noticed Sugar didn’t have a smart-ass statement in reply. In fact, the sassy blonde was unusually silent, chewing her fingernail, her brow furrowed with worry.

Then Sugar reached out and put her arm around Kitten’s shoulder. “You can survive a lot when you have to. Just let yourself go to a secret place inside, away from your body. Hide there, and no one can harm you. They can rape you, they can bruise and cut you, but they’ll never hurt you. You’ll always be safe there.”

She was teaching the younger girl how to endure rape and torture. I was listening to a seventeen-year-old girl tell a thirteen-year-old girl how to emotionally deal with being sexually and physical assaulted. The idea that Sugar knew this from personal experience made me sick to my stomach.

“Mess has a secret place inside her just like that. She’ll be safe there, no matter what happens,” Sugar told the girl.

“I couldn’t save her,” I said, more to myself than the others. “I tried. I tried to take her place.”

“She’ll be okay,” Sugar repeated. “It’s not like we both haven’t had a john beat on us before, or have some guy fuck us in the ass, or shove crap up inside us. She’ll be fine.”

“They hurt Red,” Kitten reminded her. “They hurt Pistol and Tasha. What if she’s not fine?”

“He’s just going to punch her around a few times, have sex, then bring her back. We’re merchandise. He’s not going to do anything that might limit their profits. And she has her safe space to hide in so he can’t reach her, remember? She’ll be okay.”

I heard the worry and doubt in her reassurances. I was worried too. They had an extra. They’d been expecting eight and now they had nine. And Catcalls might be pissed off enough to think one less girl to make money off of was worth getting his revenge. He might think it was worth it to blow all his profits on killing one of us.

Tasha reached out to stroke Kitten’s hair. “She will be okay. The other man will not let him go too far. They want money, and dead means less money. And you hear? Other man say he make him pay for dead girl. He will not want to lose all his money just to kill.”

“But she’s already been through so much,” Kitten whispered, her eyes tearing up. “She told me about how the neighbor kids when she was little, how they used to rape her and how her mom just disappeared one day when they were living under a bridge. She hasn’t been safe once in her life, not once. And now this.”

“Her safe space,” Pillow echoed. “She’ll go to her safe space and survive this. We all will survive this.”

It was an unpleasant reminder of what our future held, where surviving would be our primary goal, where even a safe space deep inside might not be enough.

“Well we all better get used to it,” Sugar said, suddenly reverting to the crude pessimist we all knew and loved. “This is going to be our life from here on out—and the only blessing is it will probably be a short life. Those guys won’t be the most pleasant dudes I’ve ever banged, and they’ll probably beat the crap out of us or cut us, but they won’t be anything compared to whoever buys us. Better to die here, trying to escape, than suffer whatever the buyers have in mind for us.”

“Not now. We don’t need that kind of talk right now,” I told her firmly. She was right, and I’d been thinking the same thing, but we couldn’t dwell on a worst-case scenario. Such a line of thinking wouldn’t do us any good.

“We don’t know for sure what the buyers will do to us,” Pillow said. “Could be whoever buys us just want someone to clean his house and give him blow jobs. Maybe they’re really ugly, or old, or lonely, and need to pay for sex, but want something more than a town prostitute. Maybe it won’t be that bad. Nothing we haven’t done before.”

“I haven’t done that before,” Pistol protested, angrily wiping a tear from her cheek. “I was a college student, not a prostitute.”

“Well la-dee-da,” Sugar sneered. “Miss high and mighty here thinks she’s better than us. Well, let me tell you, college girl, you can survive a whole lot of shit when you need to. So get used to spreading your legs, sucking dick, and pretending you’re having the time of your life because it’s better than starving to death, and it’s a whole lot better than dying.”

“Cut it out, all of you. We’re a family. We need to support each other.” I stood and glared down at Sugar. “Guessing about what these buyers are like isn’t going to do us any good. We need to get out of here, and that needs to be our focus. Let’s get back to work on the door hinges and the drywall and hopefully by the time they bring Mess back, we’ll be in a position to escape.”

Hopefully. I was worried that Mess might not be in any condition to run for it when they brought her back. And what if they didn’t? Or what if when they brought Mess back, they took one of the other girls? Would we halt our escape plans if one of us wasn’t here to make a run for it with us? Would we leave one of our own behind?

I knew the answer to that. I couldn’t jeopardize the other girls’ chance at freedom waiting. If we broke through, or got the door open, we’d need to go, whether we left one behind or not. The good of the many outweighed the good of one.

If we could, we’d escape—no, they’d escape. I’d stay behind, because as scared as I was, there was no way I would ever leave until I was certain that every one of us was able to get away to freedom. And that meant Leethu as well.