Turning back to Roman, she instinctively lowered her voice, adding, “Besides, I think he’s bluffing. Mac doesn’t care about the money, he’s just using it as leverage to get something else.”

“Perhaps,” allowed Roman. He glanced at her and it looked like he was going to say something else. But he just shook his head and started across the hall, toward the others.

Dorothy watched him for a moment longer. She didn’t have to ask what he was holding back. She’d been thinking it, too. Whatever Mac Murphy wanted from them wouldn’t be easy, and it wouldn’t be something they’d want to give up.

The Freaks were in the middle of a conversation. Though she was still across the room, the acoustics were such that Dorothy could hear what they were saying as she walked toward them.

“Did you actually see him?” a Freak named Eliza was asking, skeptical. Eliza was beautiful, in a ferocious sort of way, with eyes like shards of ice beneath heavy, black brows, and skin so pale it read at a distance as pure white. “Or did someone tell you he’d been there?”

“I saw him,” said her companion, Donovan, his voice slow and thick. Dorothy had always thought Donovan had far too much in the way of shoulders and torso, and far too little head sitting on top of it. He adjusted the gun at his waistband with a grunt. “He wasn’t even doing nothing, just drinking his beer. And the way he was sitting there, it was like he owned the place. Asshole.”

The third Freak, Bennett, smiled, teeth white against his dark skin. He was smaller than Donovan and, though his head was normal-size, he’d never given Dorothy reason to believe that he had anything impressive going on inside of it. Still, he was a hard worker and loyal.

“I don’t believe it for a second, man,” he said to Donovan. “You got it wrong. They all drink at that grimy bar near the old campus—”

Bennett stopped talking, glancing up, nervously, as Dorothy joined their circle.

“You’re back,” he said, a little stiffly, Dorothy thought.

Donovan’s eyes looked anxious as they flicked to her, like he’d just swallowed something foul. “Evening, Quinn.”

“Evening,” Eliza echoed, cold but polite. She smiled but, paired with those icy eyes, the expression didn’t exactly come across as friendly.

In her first frightened days at the Black Cirkus, Dorothy had hoped Eliza might be a friend. But the girl had always kept her distance.

Like the others, Eliza tolerated the cannibal who hid her face. But that didn’t mean she liked her.

It used to bother Dorothy that Roman was her only true ally here, that every day she put her life in the hands of people who didn’t seem to care much whether she lived or died. Now, she took it in stride. It was just another irony that came with her life as Quinn Fox.

They loved Roman. Her, they feared. She’d long ago decided that was close enough.