but Dorothy saw several Cirkus Freaks standing at the other end of the room. She felt the shift in the air as they caught site of her in the doorway. She heard the murmured rush of whispers as they leaned toward one another.
Did you see who just walked in?
Her lips curved into a practiced smile. This was a different smile than the one she’d cultivated with her mother. That had been demure and pretty, designed to attract. This smile was like the sharp edge of a knife. It would cut someone if they came too close.
Turning back to Roman, she instinctively lowered her voice, adding, “Besides, I think he’s bluffing. Mac doesn’t care about the money, he’s just using it as leverage to get something else.”
“Perhaps,” allowed Roman. He glanced at her and it looked like he was going to say something else. But he just shook his head and started across the hall, toward the others.
Dorothy watched him for a moment longer. She didn’t have to ask what he was holding back. She’d been thinking it, too. Whatever Mac Murphy wanted from them wouldn’t be easy, and it wouldn’t be something they’d want to give up.
The Freaks were in the middle of a conversation. Though she was still across the room, the acoustics were such that Dorothy could hear what they were saying as she walked toward them.
“Did you actually see him?” a Freak named Eliza was asking, skeptical. Eliza was beautiful, in a ferocious sort of way, with eyes like shards of ice beneath heavy, black brows, and skin so pale it read at a distance as pure white. “Or did someone tell you he’d been there?”
“I saw him,” said her companion, Donovan, his voice slow and thick. Dorothy had always thought Donovan had far too much in the way of shoulders and torso, and far too little head sitting on top of it. He adjusted the gun at his waistband with a grunt. “He wasn’t even doing nothing, just drinking his beer. And the way he was sitting there, it was like he owned the place. Asshole.”
The third Freak, Bennett, smiled, teeth white against his dark skin. He was smaller than Donovan and, though his head was normal-size, he’d never given Dorothy reason to believe that he had anything impressive going on inside of it. Still, he was a hard worker and loyal.
“I don’t believe it for a second, man,” he said to Donovan. “You got it wrong. They all drink at that grimy bar near the old campus—”
Bennett stopped talking, glancing up, nervously, as Dorothy joined their circle.
“You’re back,” he said, a little stiffly, Dorothy thought.
Donovan’s eyes looked anxious as they flicked to her, like he’d just swallowed something foul. “Evening, Quinn.”
“Evening,” Eliza echoed, cold but polite. She smiled but, paired with those icy eyes, the expression didn’t exactly come across as friendly.
In her first frightened days at the Black Cirkus, Dorothy had hoped Eliza might be a friend. But the girl had always kept her distance.
Like the others, Eliza tolerated the cannibal who hid her face. But that didn’t mean she liked her.
It used to bother Dorothy that Roman was her only true ally here, that every day she put her life in the hands of people who didn’t seem to care much whether she lived or died. Now, she took it in stride. It was just another irony that came with her life as Quinn Fox.
They loved Roman. Her, they feared. She’d long ago decided that was close enough.
“Who’s on duty tonight?” she asked, her voice chilly. The Fairmont was under armed guard at all hours.
“Quentin’s team,” said Bennett. “We all go on in an hour.”
“Good,” added Roman. “Pay particular attention to the basements. We can’t afford a robbery before tomorrow night.”
He and Dorothy turned to go, and Donovan picked up the conversation where he’d left off. “I’m telling you, it was one of them time travelers, the pilot, I think. Before the mega-quake, I’d see him walking across campus to meet that damn Professor, acting all superior because he got to sleep up in that fancy college while the rest of us were in the tents.” Donovan scratched the back of his neck, big lips twisting. “Only I don’t remember his name. Ashy? Or Ashes?”
“Asher?” Roman said, turning back to them. Dorothy felt everything inside of her go very still.
Ash? Here?
She wasn’t prepared for that. When she thought of him—and she tried not to think about him, not often, not anymore—she always pictured