Love & Exorcisms | 18+ | COMPLETE |

- Chapter 2 -

Mary Jeffries had made her office in the corner tower room at the front of the house. In the inner wall she'd had windows installed, so that she could look out on the entry hall and see the girls' comings and goings, and those of her customers. Her door was always open, from which exuded a thick haze of tobacco smoke. She could be found there at most hours of the evening and night in her massive velveteen chair, sequestered behind a desk piled high with papers covered in her financial ledgers. She seemed to sustain herself solely off of crawfish and collard greens, which leant a very particular odor to her room.

Mary saw me coming before I even poked my head in the room. The hall was chilly, the front door left ajar to usher in the men whose attention was lured by the beautifully dressed women who lingered by the front step. Genevieve and Mary-Anne were out there that evening, wrapped in furs against the cold, smoking beneath their umbrellas. I did not envy them the task.

I leaned into Mary's open doorway, my nose immediately assaulted by a combination of stale tobacco smoke and old crawfish. "You were looking for me, Mary?" I said, my voice betraying no hint of the fear I had felt only moments ago.

Mary's nose was buried in the day's paper. The headline emblazoned across the front page read: STORYVILLE KILLER STRIKES AGAIN! The murder of prostitutes made for sensational headlines, but not much action from local authorities. That's why we were kept sequestered to Storyville, dear Sidney Story's district for whores and sin that he thought would save New Orleans from itself. The old alderman knew he couldn't get rid of us, so instead the City Council decided to tuck us away, just slightly out of sight and thoroughly out of mind. I tried not to stare too long at the gruesome photograph beneath the headline. It made my blood stir in ways I did not like.

"A gentleman has ordered a house visit," Mary said, without lowering her paper. "His manservant is in the drawing room."

Mary knew very well that I disliked house visits. They were rather uncommon: few men of the age to afford me had a house to themselves, or were comfortable enough to invite over a companion such as I with no care for who knew about it. Mary thought I disliked them because I feared being in a stranger's home, which was a valid enough reason, but my true anxiety stemmed from the unknown. What would I do when away from the close supervision of those within the House?

I had become my own greatest fear.

"Is he a regular client?" I said, thinking of the usual men who had requested house visits from a flagellation girl previously. There were only two that I knew of, and both were very elderly gentlemen whose wives were long ago passed and enjoyed the entertainment of a strict, demanding woman.

"A returning client," Mary muttered. "He used to book often, before you came here. Quite frankly, I thought he died." She turned a page, giving the paper a little rustle. "He's a true sadist if I ever met one. Rivals your contrary nature, no doubt."

I frowned. A "sadist" was not my usual clientele. It was the masochists I enjoyed. "I'm the one who does the whipping, Mary," I said peevishly.

As expected, Mary flicked down a corner of the paper to give me a glare through narrowed eyes. Her black hair, streaked with gray, was piled upon her head in a great curly hive of pins. "You mind your tongue, Miss Samara," she said, and smacked her red-painted lips reproachfully. "After all I've done for you. Room and board, food and drink, all the space you could wish for to carry out your own sadistic little tendencies, not breathing a word of your fiancé's fate to the authorities, and you can't even manage a little discomfort?"

I gasped in disgust. The word "fiancé" never failed to make me feel as if I had been punched in the gut. It was Mary's favorite weapon: the little things she learned about each of her girls that, if whispered in the right ears, could send their lives crumbling down. It was her leverage when we wavered, her whip when we hesitated. It was powerful, and it worked.