She hesitates for one beat more before she sighs again and starts to explain. “Astra Tyrannis. It’s an… organization, I guess you’d call it. Rumor is they started in Europe, then spread to the East Coast—New York, I think. Then here, sometime in the last ten or twenty years. They sell—or, I guess, trade, or whatever…” She pauses again. Then, in the tiniest, meekest voice I’ve ever heard from her, she finishes, “… people.”
I stare at her in shock. “They sell people,” I repeat numbly. “Human beings.”
Charity nods. “They abduct girls and women and sell them in the black markets. Auctions and the like.”
“To do what with?” I ask.
When she answers with nothing more than a raise of her eyebrows, I feel like a complete imbecile.
“Oh God,” I breathe. “Charity! The detective came to the shelter
