And what was she? Not a girl, not a boy. Beneath her shirt, the elastic truss dug painfully into her skin. She tugged at it, overwhelmed by a wave of yearning as she thought of girls she’d seen walking hand in hand around the Lagoon, laughing as they whispered to each other, their summer dresses blown against their legs. She’d never wear a dress again if she could help it. Yet she felt almost sick with a longing to see Glory in her teddy bare, the peach-colored silk against her tanned skin and her red mouth that tasted of sugar.

It hurt to think of Glory; her eyes burned, but she wouldn’t cry. Next time she’d use her shiv to kill Mugsy; she’d kill them all before letting them see her cry.

“He was a bad man.” She could barely hear Henry, whispering as though to himself. “I killed people before.”

She refused to look up, just stared at the ground with her hands clenched. Henry babbled on, now trying to get her attention.

“Pinhead. Pinprick. Pin Drop. Pin…”

He filled her with disgust, despite the fact that he’d just saved her from a beating, or worse. She’d seen the man at the Ten-in-One who bit the heads off chickens—not a gaffed freak but the real thing, they called him a geck or geek. He’d stare at the wriggling bloody creature in his hands, as though wondering how the headless thing got there. Henry reminded her of the geek. So what did that make her?

Ikie was right. She was just a dirty little punk. A real girl would have screamed upon seeing that body inside Hell Gate, and Clyde would have run to investigate, along with everybody else working the ride. Everyone would have known Clyde wasn’t the killer. It would be her fault if he went to the gallows.

“Pin!” Henry’s voice grew more urgent. “Pin, look.”

She looked up to see him clutching a paper sack stained with grease.

“Here,” he said. He set the sack beside her foot, along with an open bottle of sarsaparilla from the arcade. Pin hesitated, then grabbed the sack and opened it. She jammed a potato wedge into her mouth, barely chewed it before swallowing, took a gulp of sarsaparilla, and wolfed down the rest of the potatoes. Henry stared at her, his head cocked and brow furrowed.

“Armes einsames Kind, armes einsames Kind,” he murmured in German. “Es is so verloren…”

She couldn’t understand him, but the tenderness in his tone cut her like a whip. She turned so he couldn’t see her face. After a moment, she heard him move beside her.

“Do you want to see the Black Brothers Lodge?”

Her gaze remained fixed on the ground. “The what?”

“The Black Brothers Lodge. Where the Gemini have our Destiny Meetings.”