“The only arrangement I’m interested in is the one where you hand over whatever you have stashed up your sleeve and walk, calmly, down this hallway here, and I don’t have to—to shoot you.” The bartender motioned toward a back hallway with his gun, his cheeks slowly going pink. “Does that . . . does that sound okay to you?”

Dorothy’s fingers twitched. She could see no way out of this that didn’t involve a full-on brawl, which would alert everyone in the bar to the fact that she was here and likely lead to at least twenty other people joining to help the bartender take her down. Not odds she loved. It would be better to get this small, twitchy boy on his own and deal with him then.

She removed the dagger from her cloak and held it out to him.

Great. Now she was unarmed.

The bartender made her walk ahead of him, his gun half-concealed beneath his jacket so as not to alert the other patrons to the fact that there was something going on.

He probably doesn’t want to risk losing his precious reward, Dorothy thought, smirking. She wondered if her sleight of hand was as good as it used to be. While walking past a table, she carefully slid a butter knife up her sleeve, glancing back over her shoulder to see whether the bartender had noticed.

He had not. He appeared to have had his eyes glued to the back of her head and, when she turned to look at him, he startled and nearly dropped his gun.

Oh dear, Dorothy thought, turning back around. This was going to be laughably easy. She almost felt bad about it.

The metal was cool against her arm. A butter knife wasn’t much of a weapon, but she figured she might be able to jam it into the little bartender’s leg, perhaps make her getaway as he howled for his mommy. . . .

He led her through the crowded bar and down a narrow hall. Dorothy, frowning, felt a prickle of familiarity. Hadn’t she been down this way before?

She held her breath as the bartender stopped in front of a closed door and turned to her.

“Look,” he said, scratching the back of his head. “I got a business to run so . . . well it’d be great if we could keep this on the quiet side.”

Dorothy let the knife fall into her palm and wrapped her fingers around the cool metal. “That won’t be a problem,” she said.

The bartender gave a short nod and pushed the door open.