“Do you know how much pressure it takes to rupture an eardrum?” Dorothy held the blade up to the light and a line of silver appeared along its edge. “I don’t know, myself, but I hear people used to do it by accident, with hairpins and cotton swabs. Imagine the damage this could do.”

Eliza stared at the blade and licked her lips. Dorothy imagined she was thinking of how the metal might scrape against the inner membrane of her ear, how it might pop, feeling hollow at first, and then wet as pus and blood trickled down her neck.

Dorothy smiled in a slow, practiced way that showed off all her small white teeth.

“Tell Mac I need to speak with him now,” she said.

Something flickered through Eliza’s eyes. Fear? Disgust? Dorothy couldn’t say for sure, but Eliza murmured, “Yes, ma’am,” and then pushed the door closed again, leaving Dorothy and Roman alone in the hall once more.

“Mac has become a problem,” Roman said under his breath.

“Do you have your gun?” Dorothy asked, slipping her dagger back up her sleeve.

A pause, and then Roman said, “Naturally.”

Dorothy pressed her lips together, her mind spinning. She’d never killed a man before, no matter what her reputation was, and she wasn’t sure she was capable of taking a life, even one as loathsome as Mac’s.

Surely there was still another way?

Another scream issued from the other side of the door. Dorothy felt as though the air had been sucked out of the hallway. She heard the muffled sound of voices and then footsteps.

She rolled her wrists, feeling the cold steel of her daggers beneath her sleeves.

The door opened, and Mac’s voice entered the hallway before he did. He was singing.

“Close your windows tight, little children, the Fox and Crow are scratching at the glass . . .”

Dorothy stiffened. It was the nursery rhyme the residents of New Seattle had made up about Quinn and Roman, and she’d always been morbidly proud of it. It had felt like proof that she’d made herself into a person to be reckoned with, even if it was in reputation only. Now, though, it felt like Mac was mocking her with it.

“I’m glad the two of you stopped by,” Mac said cheerfully, as though Dorothy hadn’t just threatened a member of her own gang to force him to speak with them. His leg was still bandaged and, though he limped a bit, he seemed to no longer need his crutches to walk. “I’ve been thinking it’s time we took another little trip.”

He held a cloth in his hands, and he was using it to wipe the blood from his skin. It wasn’t doing much good. There was simply too much blood, too little cloth.

Dorothy stared at him, momentarily taken aback.

Was he joking?

Roman was the one who spoke. “And why would we do that?”

“I’m afraid you aren’t in the position to be making such demands,” Dorothy said.