Dee holds up a slim leather case and dangles it like bait. “How about a bonus for ripping her shirt off?”

My hands fly to my pants pocket where my lock picking set should be. My pocket is flat and empty. “Hey, that’s mine!” I make a grab for it but it disappears from Dee’s hand. I hadn’t seen him move. “How’d you do that?”

“Now you see it,” says Dum, waving the case. How it got from Dee to Dum I have no idea. They’re standing next to each other but still, I should have seen something. Then it’s gone again. “Now you don’t.”

“Give it back, now, you thieving bastards. Or the whole thing’s off.”

Dum gives Dee a sad clown face. Dee arches his brow in a comic expression.

“Fine,” Dee sighs. He hands me back my lock picking set. This time, I was watching for it, but I still didn’t see it moving from Dum to Dee. “Tonight it is.”

Dee-Dum flash identical grins at me.

I shake my head and stomp off before they can steal any more of my things.

CHAPTER 20

My back snaps, crackles, and pops as I try to stand straight. It’s dusk, and my work day is almost over. I put my hand on the small of my back, my body craning slowly to straighten like an ancient crone.

My hands, after only one day of scrubbing clothes in the washtub, are swollen and red. I’ve heard of dry, cracked hands but never really knew what that meant until now. After only a few minutes of being out of the water, my palm has cracks that look like someone took a razor blade and sliced the skin. It’s freaky to see your hand all cut up, looking too dry to even bleed.

When the other laundry drudges offered me a pair of yellow rubber gloves this morning, I turned them down, thinking only prissy old people used those. They gave me such a know-it-all look when I turned them down that my pride wouldn’t let me ask for them at lunch.

Now, I’m beginning to consider getting up close and personal with the one humble bone in my body and asking for the gloves. Good thing I don’t plan on having to do this again tomorrow.

I look around, stretching my arms, wondering when this Anita person is going to attack me. I’ll be really pissed if she waits until my workday is over. What’s the point of getting into a cat fight if you can’t even weasel out of an hour of hard labor?

I take my time stretching. I stretch my arms above me and arch my back as far as it’ll go.