They crawled along the main drag, done up as an old whaling village, which it once might have been, then continued east to a marshy area that curved around the harbor. Jack followed him down a rutted road that ran toward the Sound. The utility poles lining the road were plastered with posters Jack could not read in the waning light and arrows pointing straight ahead.

Jack’s and Monnet’s weren’t the only cars on the road, and Jack was glad of that. Meant he wouldn’t stick out if Monnet was headed for a secret meeting. Finally they came to a small cluster of tents ablaze with lights. A banner stretched between two poles proclaimed: THE OZYMANDIAS PRATHER ODDITY EMPORIUM.

A circus? Jack thought. He’s going to a circus?

No, not a circus. The banner boasted pictures of a green Man from Mars, a Snake Man, a fortune-teller with three eyes, and other… oddities.

Oddities and Monroe… the combination set Jack’s alarm bells madly ringing. A couple of human oddities from Monroe had damn near sent him on a one-way trip into the Great Beyond on his last visit here.

He tried to shake off the uneasiness by telling himself that this would be different, how it was a traveling show, just passing through Monroe… but he didn’t quite succeed.

Jack watched as Monnet allowed himself to be waved into a spot in a grassy area roped off for parking; Jack parked three spaces away. But when Monnet got out of his car he didn’t follow the meager flow of people toward the brightly lit arch that led to the midway. Instead, he struck off to the right toward a cluster of RVs, trucks, and trailers.

Jack allowed him a long lead, then followed in a crouch through the taller grass. He watched Monnet knock on the door of a battered old Airstream. The door opened and a tall ungainly figure was silhouetted in the doorway before stepping aside to let Monnet in. When the door closed again, Jack saw that it was labeled:

OFFICE.

He crouched in the marsh grass, wondering what to do. Did this have anything to do with what Nadia had hired him for? Monnet had driven all the way out here for a sideshow—in a rented car, no less. He seemed to cab everywhere else; why hadn’t he cabbed out here? Couldn’t cost too much more than renting a car.

Unless of course he was trying to avoid any record of having made this little trip.

Time to do a little eavesdropping.

The moonless night was a bonus. He was about to rise and creep toward the trailer when he saw a couple of shadowy forms turn the corner of a nearby tent and move toward it. Something familiar about their shapes and the way they moved…

When one of them stopped and sniffed the air, Jack realized with a start that they were a couple of the Beagle Boys who’d chased him from the warehouse early this morning. The one guy kept sniffing, turning this way and that, and Jack wondered, He’s not smelling me, is he?