“He dead?” a woman’s voice asked. Eliza, Ash thought grimly, remembering her name. A couple of days ago, she’d helped torture him to within an inch of his life. He wasn’t her biggest fan.

“We didn’t need him,” Mac answered. His voice was gruff, but Ash could hear an undertone to his words.

“He knew how to fly the time machine,” Eliza pointed out.

“You read those pages, same as me. We don’t need a time machine anymore.” But Mac didn’t sound as certain as he had a moment ago. His voice was wavering, weak.

He was getting nervous, all right. The thought made Ash want to laugh out loud.

Good.

Eliza seemed to pick up on this as well. The dock beneath Ash’s cheek trembled as she stood and crossed over to the Fairmont stairs. “We needed that canister, though, didn’t we?” she said, and, in contrast to Mac, her voice filled with barely concealed anger. “That exotic matter or whatever it was . . . you can’t travel through time without it, can you?”

“We don’t know that for certain . . .”

“We do.”

Ash bit down on the inside of his cheek. Now that Mac had gone and screwed everything up, the Black Cirkus was turning on him, just as Dorothy and her mother had said they would.

Their plan was coming together beautifully.

He was dangerously close to smiling again.

Play dead, he reminded himself. You’re supposed to be dead.

The con started more than 150 years ago. Loretta had been the one who’d come up with it.

“According to my daughter, this . . . Mac Murphy has been causing some trouble in your city,” she’d said.

They were back at Avery’s house, in the stuffy sitting room, and Loretta had been handing out lukewarm tea sweetened with far too much sugar.

“He has,” Ash had admitted, taking the teacup Loretta had offered him. It felt too small in his hand, like a toy.

“Thank you,” Ash murmured, and took a sip, trying not to let his lips pucker.

Loretta placed the tea tray on a table and perched on the edge of a chair next to Ash, eyebrows lifting.

“A lonely man with too much money and power and not nearly enough allies.” Loretta had sniffed, unimpressed. “What we need is a good con.”

“I’m not sure that man can be conned,” Ash had said.

“Anyone can be conned,” Dorothy said. “The key is to make them believe they’re in control. Mac has too large a head to think he could be played.”

“We can use that, of course,” Loretta added. “Men with that much power have blind spots. They’ve spent far too much time grasping for money and respect. It makes them weak. Now, all we need is something he wants. Tell me, what does he want?”

“Time travel,” said Dorothy, frowning. “Exotic matter, the Professor’s notes . . .”