Jo Dove

Jo Dove was born into the wrong shape. She’s known that as long as she’s known anything, and almost as soon as she understood that fundamental fact, she learned how to hide it. Boys weren’t interested in fabrics. Boys didn’t pay attention to fashion. Most of all, boys didn’t cry when they got their hair cut short or got their face shoved into the mud or got a whipping by their papa for all those sins combined. Boys kept their chin up and said Yes’m and Nossir and did their chores and ate their scraps and were grateful, dammit, for every word that didn’t come with a slap. Smart boys kept their mouths shut and their eyes open, until they could steal enough money to disappear.

If boys-who-were-girls couldn’t steal enough, sometimes they found a way to make a deal, and they disappeared anyway. Jo’s deal put her in debt to a demon, but it also opened a door out of Mississippi and straight into a new life. Never might fall short of paradise, but it’s miles better than where she came from, and it brought her to the first taste of home she’s ever known in the arms of the Silk Rose and Madame Dellaphina Jones. She still has a debt to pay. Someday, the devil’s going to collect. But until then, she’ll make the best of this life with her voice and her body and all the charm the good Lord gave her.