it, and Unwin knew that his guess was right. Hoffmann would have needed the old man’s carnival to seize control of the city’s underworld. And he needed it more after striking his deal with the Agency: where else to find so dependable a supply of performers to act as the agents, goons, and spies who would be thwarted by Travis T. Sivart? Getting Caligari out of the way, and hiding his body in plain sight, must have been the first scheme on which the magician and the overseer colluded.
“I got out when I could,” Miss Greenwood said at last.
“But now you’re back in. Hoffmann needed you to make everyone sleep. Just as he did on November twelfth. Your song was on the radio that time. We all heard it, we all slept. But putting people to sleep wasn’t enough. He could get into their dreams, but that wasn’t enough either. He needed to plant a single suggestion in all their minds, all our minds: cross that one day off the calendar. That’s where your daughter came in.”
“It was Caligari who realized what she could do,” Miss Greenwood said. “He took an interest in her from the beginning. He said that she was a natural hypnotist, that it would be dangerous to allow her talents to develop unschooled. Once, when she was only six or seven, I caught her watching me in my own dreams—just standing there, staring. Those eyes of hers, Mr. Unwin. When I saw them, I knew that my daughter no longer belonged to me, would never belong to me again. I was frightened. So was Enoch.”
“Not too frightened to put her talents to use.”
A sound from outside: the Rooks’ steam truck had arrived. It spluttered to a halt, and the door opened and slammed closed.
Miss Greenwood heard it, too. She squeezed the handle of the gun. “I would have stopped him if I’d known how he intended to use her. It’s why I’m here now.”
“And why is Penelope here?” Unwin asked. “Why would she want to rebuild Caligari’s Carnival?”
The ancient pistol shook in her hand. Unwin could not tell if she was surprised by the question or by the fact that Unwin knew her daughter’s name. “To give it back to her father,” she said, “or to take it from him.” Miss Greenwood swayed slightly, struggling to stay awake even as she stood there. The front door opened, and heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs.
Unwin glanced down at Hoffmann, saw the magician’s eyes darting behind their lids. A fever rose up from him, and Unwin thought he detected the sickly burning odor of kettle corn. Sivart was still in there—trapped in that other carnival, the spectral one Hoffmann had built in the dream of the city. What would happen to Sivart if Miss Greenwood pulled the trigger?
“Cleo,” Unwin said. “Please.”
The door slammed open, and Jasper Rook burst in, his green eyes feverish under the brim of his immense hat. With every step he seemed to grow in size, until they were all gathered up in the great black heat of his shadow. Unwin opened his umbrella to shield himself, but Jasper flung it aside, and Unwin stumbled backward, landing hard on the floor.
Jasper reached for him with those enormous, suffocating hands. They filled Unwin’s vision, and he felt himself drowning in the monster’s shadow, which was bottomless and the color of headache.
Then Miss Greenwood was there, her arms around Jasper’s shoulders. She had her lips to his ear as she embraced him. Jasper’s eyelids fluttered, his body slackened, and he staggered back. Miss Greenwood eased him down, until finally he lay across the rug with his head in her lap. She took off his hat and smoothed his hair with her hand, still whispering sleep into his ear.
“He’s tired,” Miss Greenwood said to Unwin. “He’ll sleep for a very long time, I think.”
Unwin stood and found his umbrella, then leaned himself against the back of Hoffmann’s chair. The air in the room was cooling again. “I will too, when this is over.”
Miss Greenwood said nothing, but through her exhaustion Unwin saw something else, something she could not speak of, even now. She had loved those two men, and both had tried to destroy her—Hoffmann when he let her take the fall for November twelfth, Arthur when he began to besiege her dreams. A kind of order and a kind of disorder: Miss Greenwood had suffered in the tempest between the two.
In the refuge of her lap, Jasper