Chapter 8: The Girls

In the morning I found the six women in the Cairnfell kitchen, arguing over eggs.

"It's not burnt," one of them said. "It's crispy."

"It's charcoal. I can see through the smoke."

"Then don't eat it."

They all stopped when I came in. The tallest one, a red-haired woman about my age, wiped her hands on her jeans.

"You're the one who tore up Odette's paper," she said.

"Elders tore it. I just read it."

"That's what I said. She's the one who read it." She turned to the others. "Make room."

I sat down at a table with six women I had never met.

Somebody put a plate of the crispy eggs in front of me.

They were terrible.

I ate every bite.

"You know what he is, right?" said a small dark-haired woman at the end of the table.

She said it kindly.

"Costa. You've seen the book."

"I've seen the book."

"He's a buyer. We all know that." She shrugged.

"Before him I was a package on a loading dock in Ohio. The man who had me wanted to resell me in Montana."

"Costa got me off a dock too," the red-haired woman said.

"He paid, took me home and gave me a room and a job. Then he asked what I wanted to do."

"What did you say?"

"I said I wanted to leave, and he drove me to the bus station. I stayed anyway."

"Why?"

"Because it's the first place that ever asked."

I looked at my plate.

"Six of us," said a third. "And there were more before, in other packs."

"He can't reach all of them, and Odette picks the ones he can't."

"Odette's been at this for years," the small woman said.

"She's in every pack, with her little book and her cider. She knows who has a pureblood mother. She knows whose father owes money."

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