“But how can it be a sign of female empowerment to show off my body this way?” Imani argued. She would rather crawl under a rock than appear in this get-up in public! “Showing your body means you’re displaying yourself for a man or men and I thought Yonnie Six was ruled exclusively by women.”
“It is,” Kat said patiently. “And on Yonnie Six, showing your body is a sign of empowerment. Essentially you’re saying, ‘look at me—I can show my body and not a single man here can touch me.” She shrugged. “Because they’re pretty much all slaves.”
“Like my client.” Imani frowned, her mind temporarily diverted from her current dress debacle. “He’s been locked up in the Yonnite jail for days now and he’s scheduled to be executed if I can’t get him off.”
“What are the details?” Kat asked curiously. “I’ve heard a little bit about this from Sylvan, but I don’t know the whole case.”
“There aren’t many,” Imani admitted. “I’m supposed to get more detailed information from a Kindred informant once I reach Yonnie Six. He’s working undercover there and he’s supposed to give me evidence to use in court. But essentially, my client has been accused of murdering his Mistress in cold blood.”
“Wow!” Kat’s lovely blue eyes widened. “That’s a tall order, isn’t it? Have you ever defended a murderer before?”
“I don’t believe he is a murderer,” Imani said, frowning. “Apparently there are some very fishy circumstances surrounding the crime. But the Yonnie Peace Keeper Squad didn’t even try to find any other suspects—they just slapped my client in jail and charged him with murder. It’s not unlike some cases I’ve seen on Earth, actually.”
“So you have defended people in his position before, then,” Kat said.
Imani nodded. “I haven’t been an attorney for very long, but my specialty is defending people who have been wrongly accused and imprisoned. You’d be surprised and appalled at how many people have been locked away for crimes they didn’t commit—just because those in authority wanted someone to blame and they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“You sound like it’s personal for you,” Kat remarked.
“It is.” Imani sighed. “It happened to my older brother, Rashaad.” Even now she couldn’t think about her big brother without a lump forming in her throat. What had happened to him was so unnecessary—so wrong. Every time she took a new case she thought of him—thought of the justice she would get for her client, which had been denied to her brother.
“What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?” Kat asked quietly.
Imani shook her head. It hurt too much to talk about the intimate details of her brother’s death. But she could give her new friend the quick and dirty version.
“A routine traffic stop which turned into a drug bust,” she said tightly. “Only Rashaad didn’t do drugs—he was a health freak, wouldn’t even put caffeine in his body, let alone cocaine—which was what the cops claimed they found. And they claimed they had found enough of it to throw him in jail without bail because they said he was a flight risk.”
“That’s horrible!” Kat exclaimed. “Couldn’t your family do anything about it?”
“We tried,” Imani said. “My parents are well connected—my dad’s a tax attorney and my mom is a doctor—a Pediatrician. They hired the best defense attorney they could find. But before the case could even get to court, my brother was…” She took a deep breath. “He was stabbed and killed. We only got word when my Mom and I went to visit him. My Mom was…” She shook her head, remembering the way her mother had broken down, sobbing, right there in the visitors’ area. “She was devastated. We all were.”
“Of course you were. How terrible!” Kat looked truly horrified. “And that’s what made you want to go into law?”
Imani nodded.
“The next day I changed my major from pre-med to pre-law.” She lifted her chin. “I wanted to fight for people like my brother—people who were unjustly accused and railroaded into prison.”
“I think that’s wonderful.” Kat gave her an admiring look. “The fact that you’re turning your personal tragedy into a crusade for justice.”
Imani sighed.
“It’s the best I can do, since there was nothing I could do for my brother. I’ll do anything to help my clients.” She looked down at herself and sighed. “Even, apparently, dress like a stripper.”
“Believe me, doll, you won’t be the only one there dressed like that,” Kat assured her. “And don’t worry, I’ll be packing you more of the same, so if the hearing goes on multiple days, you’ll have plenty of fashion choices.”
“All of them obscene, I suppose?” Imani raised an eyebrow at her. “At least this color looks good with my complexion,” she remarked. The dark pink did an excellent job of emphasizing her chocolaty brown skin tones—perhaps too good a job, she thought wryly, since so much skin was on display.
“They’re all pretty skimpy,” Kat admitted matter-of-factly. “But again, that’s Yonnie Six for you. You have to dress the part or they won’t have anything to do with you.” She shrugged. “But at least you don’t have to pretend to be one of them—if you were, we’d have to find a willing Kindred warrior to pretend to be your bodyslave.”
“Bodyslave?” Imani asked, horrified.
“Sure.” Kat nodded. “In Yonnite high society, you’re nothing if you don’t have a big hot guy on a leash and a pain collar trailing around after you. But since they already know you’re coming from the Kindred, you don’t have to pretend. Not that Sylvan won’t send a guard to protect you, if you want one,” she added.
Imani shook her head firmly.
“No thanks. I prefer to work alone. Besides, from what I’m reading about the Nightwalker Kindred, it’s much better for me to come
