"You, you're hurting me!"  Lea cried out in the girl's voice at Spencer as she stopped dead in her tracks, her upper arms held out awkwardly as if gripped by invisible fingers.  She didn't let go of Spencer but her grip was not enough to hold him if he kept going.  "I'm not a whore!"  She cried in that same childish voice, genuine indignation dripping from every syllable.  Her bright eyes, big as saucers, were on Jamie as she protested but it was if she was in an entirely different conversation than the one in the decrepit basement of the rundown mansion.<br/><br/>She stood there stiff as wire then suddenly she relaxed, nearly falling to her knees but managing to keep her feet under her.  Her eyes focused and a sense of recognition and awareness filled her demeanor.  Her confidence was back, though shaken slightly, by the otherworldly experience.  She looked about, the trash and filth back instead of the gleaming polished floor.  "That was so strange."  She said as much to herself as to her companions.<br/><br/>***************<br/><br/>Leanna wasn't a whore, but she was a thief.  She hadn't started out as one, growing up at the orphanage there simply wasn't much of anything to steal.  But the Master, he lived in a house of plenty.  First it was just food, she had always been hungry before the Master had pulled her out of the squalor she become so accustomed.  It was perhaps her bright eyes and red hair that had helped her stand out from the others.  A blessing the nuns had told her, so happy for her to have been selected by such a wealthy and generous patron.<br/><br/>But then it became odd coins left about, then jewelry.  They had seemed almost discarded, or perhaps that was what she had told herself when she collected them.  It wouldn't be long before she could leave here with money of her own and strike out on some grand adventure once she turned 16.  Little had she known that she had been being groomed from the very beginning for what was about to happen.