“Because you’d take up a seat that a real victim would occupy,” Cybil explained, not for the first time. “If it makes you feel any better, we don’t let Gideon’s mother attend, either, and she is just as eager as you are to help.”

Zelda sighed and assumed her most put-upon expression, which Cybil thought looked awfully cute but still left her unmoved. Too many of her loved ones were already involved in this. She wasn’t about to allow Zelda to be exposed.

Cybil had just risen to start clearing the kitchen table when they were both startled by a crashing sound on their back porch.

“What on earth—” Zelda said, jumping up.

They both ran to the back door and peered out to see a rather ragged-looking girl poking through the contents of their overturned garbage pail. Zelda threw open the door before Cybil could caution her.

“What are you doing there, child?” she asked in her sweetest voice. “If you’re hungry, all you have to do is ask.”

The girl scrambled backward, peering up at them apprehensively from where she crouched on the porch. “I ain’t hurting nothing.” She looked to be around thirteen, but appearances could be deceiving, as Cybil knew.

“Of course, you aren’t,” Zelda said gently, “but you don’t have to dig through garbage. Come inside and we’ll fix you something to eat.”

“Who are you? What kind of place is this?” the girl asked suspiciously. Her face was dirty, although Cybil noticed her neck didn’t seem to be, as if she’d smeared the dirt on her face for effect.

“It’s just a house,” Zelda said. “We live here. We’re teachers.”

“Teachers?” she scoffed. “Who do you teach?”

“Young women,” Zelda said with a smile.

“I knew it!” the girl cried triumphantly. “You run a brothel, don’t you? You’re trying to lure me in.”

Even Cybil was shocked by the accusation. “We are just offering you a meal,” she said.

“I’ve heard of that. You tell a starving girl you’ll feed her, and once she’s inside, you tell her she’s got to earn her keep. Well, you’re not tricking me.”

With that, she sprang up and darted away, slipping out the back gate, which she had left standing open into the alley beyond.

Zelda would have followed, but Cybil caught her arm. “Let her go.”

“But she’s just a child,” she protested.

“So it seems, but I don’t think we’ve heard the last of her.”

Zelda’s eyes widened. “What do you mean?”

But Cybil only smiled. “You’ll see.”

CHAPTER TEN