The Wild Hunt (Downworlder Series, #1)

Chapter Five: Charlatans

Three Years Later...

I grabbed a shirt off of my floor and sniffed it. It smelled musty but everything in my attic smelled musty. The large one room mini-apartment had been my home for the past sixteen months. I lived almost rent free and had my meals comped as long as I stuck to the deal and helped the girls. I yanked on the shirt and shimmied out of my pants, looking around for another pair. I was late. I could hear the sound of pounding feet on the stairs and groaned.

"Sutton!" The door to my bedroom banged opened as I was pulling on the rough looking pair of jeans I had found. Quinta charged through, curls bouncing wildly with her rushed movements. I turned away with low growl of annoyance. No matter how many times I told the girls to knock before entering, it seemed to go in one ear and right out the other. They treated each other like sisters, no idea or care for privacy.

She rushed over and plopped down on my bed as I pulled my shirt on, "I don't understand this word right here." She held out a book I had swiped for her a couple weeks ago from an abandoned library. She tapped her finger impatiently on the word.

I peered over as I pulled my hair up into a ponytail, eyes skimming the page, "Charlatan." I recited the word aloud when I found it.

"Charlatan." She pursed her lips thoughtfully as she repeated the word, testing and tasting it in her mouth. She read the sentence over and over again, mumbling it under her breath as if searching the meaning of it.

I grabbed my sneakers from the foot of my bed, shoving my feet into them. I had fifteen minutes to get to the meetup spot. I could make it if I ran.

"What does it mean?" Quinta whined, giving up on trying to figure it out on her own.

I rolled my eyes, not feeling in the mood to explain things at the moment, "Someone who is a fraud, dishonest...you know? Like the men that come here." I pointed it out sarcastically, watching as her eyes sparked with understanding.

"Oh I see." She gave me a bright smile.

Quinta was a beautiful girl, only a year younger than me with a very curious mind. When we had first met had she seen me reading some cheap romance book I had found in a trash can. Her eyes had been filled with wonder as if she had never seen anything more magnificent than a girl sitting on a bench reading a book. When she told me later that she had never been allowed to learn to read I was shocked. Apparently it was a normal thing that happened to slummers--the less pure the blood, the less privileges you were afforded.

It was shortly after that I started teaching her to read and write. She paid me in candy she found, which I considered a fair trade. I missed the sweetness of the treats so every little thing that Quinta found for me was savoured or saved. A few months after that Quinta had noticed I was sleeping on benches, trying to lessen my debt to Octavia by not using her safe houses. She had drug me to her home, which turned out to be a brothel on the neutral territory. It was run by a small Korean woman by the name of Madame Lao.

She had taken one look at me before asking if I had been the one who taught Quinta to read. I had been honest and she let me know that if I taught her girls how to read and write, taught them the finer points of literature, art, and philosophy to impress their clients. I would be allowed the attic room for a few marks here and there. Nothing more than a hundred a month as long as I ate with the 'family' as Madame Lao referred to us. It made sense when one realized all the girls called her 'Mama'. Which was a privilege I was not allowed because I was not one of her girls. I was one of them but not one of them.

"You running today? I thought you went running yesterday." Quinta fell back onto my bed with a tired sigh. She probably hadn't been to bed yet, most of the girls worked late into the night and slept all day.