This was . . . also strange. It was nearly evening, the hotel was usually quiet at this time of day. Most of the Cirkus Freaks took to the boats as soon as the sun set to patrol the waters around the Fairmont, while those who were lucky enough to be off duty headed to the Dead Rabbit for a drink.

“Did you assign a job you didn’t tell me about?” Dorothy asked. Roman shook his head. His eyes had lost their glaze and now he looked just as anxious as she felt. Frowning, Dorothy eased the door open.

No one saw them, at first. The boys assembled were new recruits, and Dorothy didn’t recognize most of them. They were dressed in work clothes rather than standard Cirkus black, and they were moving the solar panels from the corner where they’d been stacked yesterday morning and onto a cart to go . . .

Where? Dorothy wondered, eyes narrowing beneath her hood. She hadn’t ordered anything to be done with the panels just yet. She glanced at Roman, and he shook his head. He hadn’t ordered this, either.

An older boy looked up then, wiping the sweat from his forehead. She saw his eyes go wide as he spotted her and Roman at the door.

“Quinn,” he said, and a lump rose and fell beneath the skin at his throat. “And Roman. You’re back.”

Dorothy lifted her chin. “Where are these being shipped?”

“H-he didn’t tell us,” the boy rushed to answer, clearly worried he was in some sort of trouble. “We’re only supposed to prepare them for delivery.”

“Delivery.” Dorothy pressed her lips together, allowing her eyes to travel over the stacks, looking for any sign of where they might be going.

There was a propped-open door at the far corner of the basement, and, though the hall beyond the door was dark, Dorothy knew that it led to an old service elevator. The workers were likely taking the panels up the elevator shaft and through the parking garage. If they had a boat waiting there, they could take the merchandise anywhere in the city.

“Who asked you to prepare them for delivery?” Roman asked.

“Mac Murphy,” the boy told them. And then quickly, “But he said the order came from you.”

“Did he?” said Roman, cool.

Mac, Dorothy thought, and anger beat at her chest like a second heart. What right did Mac have to give orders to her gang, inside her hotel?

And now the strange men standing guard at the entrance to her hotel took on a sinister new meaning. It felt less like a mistake, more like a message.

Was this still her hotel?

The anger in her chest hardened, becoming fear. Mac was giving orders to her Freaks; Mac was having her solar panels delivered God knew where. What else was Mac doing?

“Do you know where Mac is now?” she asked the boy, doing her best to keep her voice controlled.

“In his room, I think.”