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“You got it,” he replied, disappearing behind the door.
“Don’t be nervous,” I told her, watching her wring her hands. When she didn’t say anything, I added, “I sometimes forget you’re a witch. You’re not all crazy like the other ones I’ve met.”
Her head whipped up and she bit back a smile. “That’s not nice. I mean, it’s true, but still.”
I grinned. “Too bad you didn’t have anything of theirs, you could do, a… what did you call it? A locator spell?”
“Yeah, that would be nice. But I don’t have any of my equipment here anyway.”
“Do you need your equipment? There’s a store in the Quarter run by a real witch who sells all kinds of hoodoo shit,” I told her.
Just then, Chaos walked in with a large sketchpad and colored pencils. “You ready to do this?” He smiled wide at Nera.
Chapter 13
Trigger Rising
Nera
After giving my description of the bastards to Chaos, I was tired. I went to my room and sat on the bed, wondering if it would do any good. They were average-looking guys. Except they weren’t just guys, they were vampires—monsters.
I forced my mind to drift back to when I was being held in that house. Psycho had asked if any of them bit us. I’d told him no. I saw them drink from blood bags and of course they only came out at night. There were times when the main bastard—the one who took me—his eyes would turn black as he was violating me and he’d sniff my neck. In my drug-induced haze, I had no energy to fight him off, but still, I’d brace myself for the bite but it would never come. I could tell he was tempted. I even thought I heard him talking himself out of it.
“Just one little taste, nobody will know. She’ll heal.” And then he’d finish, slumping on top of me, sniffing me once more before dragging his pants up and leaving me in the room to clean myself up. Just a rag and a sink. Of course, the bastards didn’t let us shower.
In fact, when they did tell one of us to get in the shower, we knew it was bad news, because the next day, the girl would disappear, and I knew somebody had paid for her. The bastards had to make sure she was nice and clean before she got picked up.
I shuddered when I remembered the picture they took of me when I was first taken. I’d been on the bed, having just woken up from the drugs they’d give me. I’d been stripped to my panties and bra and they told me to smile before lifting a Polaroid camera at me. I put my middle finger up instead of smiling and was rewarded to a backhand across the face.
“Idiot,” the main bastard said to the one who’d hit me. “Now she’s gonna have a welt on her face.”
I glared at them both and refused to smile.
Then they’d thrown my clothes back at me and put me in the room with the other girls.
I worked hard to remember their names. Brittney and Leann were the ones who escaped with me. I wished I knew if they made it home to their families all right. I pulled up my phone and typed missing persons and their names. Nothing really came up, as their names were common, and sadly, there was quite a few missing girls with those names. I scoured the pictures to see if either of them had made it home. I didn’t even know if I spelled their first names right. Nothing stood out.
Then I racked my brain trying to remember the names of the other girls. The ones who’d been showered and then taken away, those I don’t remember. But the four who were left when I escaped?
“Think, Nera,” I murmured.
I closed my eyes. The girl with the brown hair and big, dark eyes. Anna! That was her name. The girl with the dirty blonde hair and green eyes. Sarah, that was it. The black girl with the long braids. Leticia, that’s her. And lastly, the redhead with every inch of her skin covered in freckles. Come on, think. What was her name? Why this one was evading me, I didn’t know. We’d spent hours talking, and I knew a little about her, but I do vividly remember the frightened look in her eyes.
I did a search with those names, but again, they were common names and I didn’t have last names. We should have been smarter, got each other’s contact information, or at least asked where they were from. I grew sad at all the missing persons’ fliers there were. Facebook pages dedicated to finding them. But none of the girls I’d been with came up.
Poppy! That was the redhead’s name. That name wasn’t that common.
I typed poppy+red hair+missing into Google and got a hit.
“Penelope ‘Poppy’ O’Shea, missing January third,” I read aloud.
Gosh, she was so pretty and vibrant. The girl in that house was pale, dirty, and thin, her red curls dull and greasy. I typed her name into Facebook and found a “missing” page for her, dedicated to finding her. She was only eighteen.
I sighed heavily, gazing at the banner photo with a phone number to call.
What good would that do? Sorry, I knew your Poppy briefly but I left her behind in a house of horrors to get trafficked because I was selfish and she was just too scared to leave.
I grew frustrated and tossed my phone down on my bed. I needed to make myself useful. I decided to check on the patient and see how Charlie was doing.
