I didn't move. His face was peaceful and composed, revealing nothing. I stared at his arms and chest, lean and powerful. And even that didn't matter. Yisu's reed-like arms could probably have ripped a hole into the hull of the boat I was standing on. With his powerful frame, I didn't doubt for a moment he could do exactly as he threatened.

    After sighing quietly, resigned, I placed my hand in his. Tem stepped forward suddenly and took my upper arm, pulling me toward him.

    A group of men swirled and moved in front of me. They were all moving, crouched, and ready to close in on something in the center. One man close to me changed his weight, and I saw Tem standing in the middle. He had a cloth tied elaborately around his hips. Metal bands circled his biceps and wrists. He had the same long hair with beads and shells decorating the thick locks. I blinked and stepped closer as I saw his skin. Hundreds of thin scars covered his body from his shoulders to his pelvis in a complicated geometric design. It was chilling and beautiful at the same time. He spun and I saw the design continued onto his back.

    The men around him closed in. They wore similar elaborately arranged cloth around their hips and most had metal rings around their arms or ankles but some instinct I couldn't name told me Tem was more richly clothed. He turned slowly and bent his knees ready to spring.

    He dragged me gently across the deck and onto the dock. Then he directed me toward some aluminum steps that connected it to the street. He made me climb up in front of him, and I was acutely aware he could see all the way up my legs. I started to laugh. Despite the danger, I was still so self-conscious.

    His motorcycle was still parked across the street. A thick leather jacket was draped across the seat. He picked it up and handed it to me. I realized I was shivering slightly and took it. He never spoke. He just took my elbow and guided me down the street. I followed him blindly; I had no choice, the hair on the back of my neck trembling with each step. 

    Tem lead me toward a large door of the building I had just escaped. A few men nearby watched me— some with interest and others with disgust. My cheeks burned with embarrassment as I thought of my cotton nightgown again. I was not dressed appropriately. There was nothing I could do. I turned my back on them and straightened my spine as I followed Tem through the door.          

    A man with dark hair and a Metallica tour t-shirt met us at the entrance. He stepped back in surprise as Tem pulled me in behind him.

    "Kim o?" he asked, swiveling his eyes between Tem and me.   

    Tem glanced at him for a moment and stepped away. "Kiz Amerikalı."

    The man turned and smiled, somehow managing to make it look like a sneer. Tem didn't seem to notice and turned back toward me, "You won't need that anymore." I looked down at his jacket, still draped around my shoulders in surprise. I'd forgotten about it. I shrugged it off and handed it back, holding it out at arm's length and fixed a hard look on him. He locked eyes with me for a moment in interest and then took the jacket.

    The other man never took his eyes off me.

    "Özgür!" Tem barked at him. He snapped his head around and looked at Tem.

"Ona bir oda bul." I supposed Özgür was the man's name. He nodded once and grabbed my arm possessively. He pulled, and I followed him up a flight of stairs. For a moment, I turned and looked back at Tem. He watched me go, a strange expression on his face, and then walked away. We climb several flights of stairs and then turned down a dark hallway. There were five doors; only one of them was open. I craned my head and saw it was some kind of small office. We passed it, and he stopped at the third door across from it. He pulled out a set of keys, and while holding onto my arm with his left hand, he unlocked it.

      The first rays of daylight spilled into the hallway, and Özgür maneuvered me to walk in first. Two sofas were set up on the left facing a tv with some kind of music video playing. A coffee table was littered with food wrappers, cigarettes, and other junk. A long table lined the wall next to the door on my right with two large lamps and a collection of magazines, most in Turkish and Russian. On the far wall, there were two tall thin windows with shutters on the inside. Like the first room I awoke in, the ceiling must have been more than fourteen feet high, and the top of the windows soared far above my head, letting in a large amount of light.

    And there were girls— young girls, and one boy. Most looked to be in their teens. Four girls sprawled out on the sofas, one sat on the floor with her back to a wall next to the boy who looked about twelve or thirteen. Another girl leaned partially seated on the ledge against a window directly across from the door with one leg propped up on the sill. She had a cigarette dangling between her fingers, and smoke wafted through the air around her.

    Most were sleeping, or trying to sleep, curled up on the sofas or pillows strewn across the floor. The girls that were awake turned lazily and eyed me. They watched me casually but without much interest. One of them stared into the distance in a glazed stupor. The one by the window watched me critically.

    Özgür grunted and let me go. With a smooth hand, he turned me toward him and put his hand on my face. He pulled my chin up and ran his fingers across my cheek. Then he ran his thumb across my lips and jerked my chin down. He thrust his fingers between my jaws and pried my mouth open, examining my teeth. I gaped at him in shock.

    "Kaç yaşındasın?" he asked. I blinked back at him. "How old are you?" he asked again, switching to English. His accent was thick and languid. I was only mildly surprised he spoke English. In my travels, I had encountered more people who spoke English than those who didn't. I turned to look at the girls again, still confused. He pulled my face back toward him and waited.

    "Twenty-six," I answered. He frowned. Then he picked up a handful of my wet hair and sniffed it. Tendrils had started to pull free of the braid. His hands began moving my hair around, scouring through my scalp. I flinched away from him and glared. He smiled and laughed.

    "You are American?"

    I didn't answer but glowered, ready to snap. He smiled again, then grabbed my left arm and ran his hand along the inside of my elbow.

    I was standing on a dock in the sun. Özgür was sitting on the edge next to a small boy about three or four years old. Their feet dangled in the water, and the boy had a small fishing pole in his hands. Another pole rested on the dock next to Özgür. He cast out the line, and Özgür leaned toward him, wrapping his arm around the boy's back and guided his hands, demonstrating how to reel in the line. The boy smiled and pumped his feet excitedly.                    

     My heart was thumping in confusion and anger, and I had to use all my concentration to freeze the vision and pull out of it. I didn't want to know any more about this man. I jerked my arm out of his grip and stepped back.

    His smile was slow this time. "American," he said. "Makes you dangerous. They will like that. Older than usual. Some will like that too." I blinked back at him.

    I turned and looked at the girls. Young, pretty, empty. A deep, hollow chill of fear flooded my senses. I felt the room shudder. The long hallway, the locked doors... I was in a brothel. I had been dragged into the middle of the Turkish sex trade. Özgür slapped my hip in a familiar way and walked out the door, locking it behind him. I stared at the door in horror.

    "Faszszopó," I heard a voice behind me mumble. I turned toward the girl by the window. She looked at my expression and raised her eyebrows.

    "Aki Magyar," I asked, stunned at hearing Hungarian here. Her eyes widened in surprise, and then she nodded lightly.

    "Román Magyar," she answered. I nodded. Many ethnic Hungarians were living in Transylvania when a part of it was annexed by Romania nearly a century ago. I knew that many of the people there still identified themselves as Hungarian.

    "Hogy hívnak?" she asked.  

    "Kaja," I answered.

    She turned her head to the side, considering. "Kaja..." she echoed. "I am Agnes. You are American... he say?" she asked, switching to English.

    I nodded. "How long have you been here?" She shrugged in a noncommittal gesture. She didn't know, or she didn't want to say. I looked behind her at the window. One of the shutters was open, and I could see buildings outside. I stopped to think and realized the window must look out over the small river at the front of the building.

    Good.       

    I tried to push them open. They wouldn't budge. There was a small landing about a foot wide in front of the window.

    "No. They lock," Agnes said. "Nail shut," she said, pointing to nails in the wood spaced about a hand's width apart up the length of the window.

    "What about that one?" I asked, pointing to a long but small rectangular window at the top. It was at least two feet long but only about five inches high and swung open from the bottom. It had been propped open about an inch.

    She scowled at me and shrugged. "Too high, small."

    I ground my teeth in frustration. "Maybe you could drop a letter out, get some help."

    Her face wrinkled in complete disbelief. "Sure. They give us pen and paper to write letter. If we ask nice maybe they give crayon to color."

    Fine. I could see her point. I looked around the room for something, anything... some kind of inspiration... and then slid down to the ground, resting my back against the wall. I needed time to think. How many days had I missed? Ezra and the others would find me; I had no doubt. When and what happened when they did was an unimaginable matter altogether.

    Agnes smiled sadly to herself and took a long slow drag on her cigarette. "Some girls they come. Try escape like you. Some try escape like her," she said pointing to a slack-faced girl who had passed out with her head hanging awkwardly over the armrest of the sofa. "Nothing work. You are here now." She shrugged laconically, her face was hard, but there was hardly any passion in it. "Beside, they get out, where they go? What they do?" she added, nodding toward the group huddled together. "Family don't throw parties for whores." 

    I opened my mouth to argue, but nothing came out. Sadly, she was probably right. The lock on the door clicked, and half a dozen pairs of eyes drifted toward the sound, some with interest and the rest out of habit. I didn't move but sat with my back to the wall, and my knees bent in front of me.

    Özgür walked in first. Behind him came a man with pale skin and dark brown hair streaked with a few grey strands and a lean, strong face. Despite the sprinkling of grey, he looked not much more than mid-forties. It was him. He had changed little from my visions. He was thinner and perhaps a bit more grey. He walked into the room, smooth and purposeful. He was used to being in charge. I knew, without hesitation, this was the person we'd been hunting for.

    As he stepped around Özgür into full view, I froze for an instant in an imperceptible moment of surprise. I forced my body to relax and covered my face with a blank look of boredom.

    He watched me with every step he took, taking in my face, my body, my posture. The rest of the room watched in curiosity.

    "So you are the child," he said with a slow drawl. His accent was awkward as if he didn't speak English often and didn't like the feel of it in his mouth. "So much talk... buzz, buzz, buzz." He stood looking down at me, intrigued. "I don't know why," he continued, "but no one ever looks the way you expect."

    I didn't know what he had been expecting and didn't care enough to ask.

    "How old are you?" he demanded.

    I shrugged.

    He didn't repeat himself but raised an eyebrow in impatience.

    I sighed. "I made the change in March."

    He waited for me to continue. When I didn't, his eyes widened, just a sliver, but I saw it.

    "March of this year?" I didn't respond. "Not even a year. And still..." His eyes slowly moved over me. "And you killed Esther? You're the leech who sucked the life out of her."

    "Watch who you're calling black, Kettle." I looked toward the thin, and glazed girls huddled behind him.

    He turned and followed my gaze, then smirked. "There is no life here, just sacks of flesh. You blink once, and before you know it, they are all dead."

    "They are not dead."

    "You don't understand death," he answered, in a gentle tone. "You can't; you were born in this world. This world is full of children. You hide death away. You don't even kill your own food. You have it brought to you gutted, skinned, and wrapped in plastic so you can pretend it was never alive to begin with. How can you understand life if you never see death?"

    He squatted down slowly, keeping his head level with mine as he examined me. He balanced his weight on the balls of his feet, ready to spring up in an instant. "If I had known about you, I never would have let Esther go. An unnecessary distraction. But we all need to indulge our obsessions from time to time. Hers was harmless enough." He shook his head in what I could almost mistake for regret. "The moment she learned about you, she must have seen her chance and sacrificed herself to the vengeance gods." His hand reached out as if he was going to cup my chin, but he stopped.

    He spoke to me gently, almost seductively. "You are a puzzle, but are you valuable? The question is what to do with you. Should I keep you or kill you?" He smiled then, his eyes lingering along my neck. He straightened up with the slink of a cat and walked toward the door without any further discussion.

    "My husband is going to find you," I said, hardly raising my voice much more than I would in a casual conversation. "Just so you know."

    He turned to me and smiled again. "I'm not concerned with Azrael."

    I didn't respond but watched him stroll easily out of the room. He moved so comfortably and with such ease. He meant what he said; I could see that with absolute certainty. He didn't care about Ezra at all. I wasn't bait. I forced myself to breathe slowly, unsure whether to feel terrified or relieved. If he wasn't using me to get to Ezra, then what did he want? What game was he playing now?

    Özgür turned and eyed me with renewed interest before locking the door behind him. All the girls stared at me. I wasn't sure how many of them understood our exchange. Agnes was the only one I knew so far who spoke English. But they understood well enough that something new was happening.

    "You're not whore," Agnes said accusingly.

    "No, I'm not," I answered. "And neither are you."

    She rolled her eyes, angrily, "Don't make mean joke."

    "I'm not." She blinked back at me. Her hand shook slightly as she drew on her cigarette. "I need to get out of here," I continued.

    She shook her head. "Americans. Think you are superhero. You escape. Save yourself. Save me. Save everyone," she scoffed and snubbed out her cigarette. "No one cares."

      I grabbed both her hands and held on until she looked at me. "I'm getting out of here," I said. "Do you want out of this place?" She didn't answer. "Agnes, do you want to go home?" She nodded once. "Then, I will get you out."

    She didn't move. I think she was too afraid to acknowledge what I had said. To acknowledge it would give it life and then hope. She turned and lit another cigarette. "This woman, who you kill?" she asked as she exhaled slowly.

    I stood up and looked out the window again, quietly searching the meandering crowd below. I needed to get out of there, and I needed to do it soon. "A woman who worked for him on a special project."

    "Ah," Agnes said softly. "And now he want use you to replace her." I turned and gawked at her. She leaned back against the windowsill as she considered me. "You are not whore. We are business. You are personal."

    A replacement. I stopped and shivered. Agnes was chillingly astute. I thought about his casual, confident demeanor. I was afraid that was precisely what Petro was deciding. I growled quietly and watched the river drift lazily by. It all made sense. I should have guessed who he was earlier. 

    Petro.

What do you think Petro wants with Kaja as his replacement to Esther?

TEASER: He breathed slowly. "She was mine."