In your old life, you wouldn’t have given a mark time to think and second-guess. You’d have struck while his greed was fresh.

Which, Dorothy had to admit, was true. Back when she’d made her living as a con artist, she’d been careful never to leave a mark to his own devices for too long, lest he talk himself out of whatever it was that she was trying to get him to do.

But she could see no way out of seeing what Mac had brought them, and so it was with some reluctance that she and Roman followed him out of the basement and up the stairs, to the Fairmont’s main halls.

There, she spotted a group of Freaks gathered around the bay windows that served as the hotel’s main entrance, studying something that she couldn’t see and murmuring excitedly. Dorothy hesitated, uneasy. If Mac had presented this gift to her and Roman alone, she might still have found some way of refusing it. But, now, they had an audience.

A growing audience, she noticed, as more members of their gang emerged from hotel rooms and hallways to see what had caused the commotion. Mac had planned this intentionally.

Her eyes darted over to him, wary. “What is that?”

Mac, balanced on his crutches, twisted around to face her.

“Like I said, it’s a gift.” He smiled, thin and sharp.

It was a big gift.

A few of the Freaks fell silent as Dorothy approached, leaving her to wonder whether they’d been whispering about her, perhaps pointing out that she rarely brought them gifts. She felt her lip twitch and tried to keep her face impassive as they parted, revealing nearly a dozen wooden crates piled onto the damp carpet.

Eliza was kneeling before an open crate while Bennet hovered over her, one end of a crowbar wedged beneath the crate’s lid. The rest of the Freaks were huddled tightly around them, and it seemed to Dorothy that they were holding their breath, waiting to hear what she and Roman might say.

Roman turned to her, one eyebrow cocked, and Dorothy knew that he, too, wanted to see what Mac had brought them. If she were to take the gift back now they’d all hate her more than they did already.

“Well, go on then,” Dorothy said, and the tension seemed to leak out of the air. Ben popped the lid off the crate. Eliza reached inside.

“Holy . . . ,” she murmured, removing a tin can without a label. “Is this . . . food?”

An excited murmur went through the crowd of Freaks. Food was scarce in New Seattle. It was one of the reasons the fruit at their masquerade had gone over so well. Actual food like Dorothy remembered from her time period—fruit and bread and milk—was a luxury only the very rich could afford. It had taken her and Roman hours to gather enough from the past for their party guests and, once they’d brought it all back to the Fairmont, they’d needed to keep the room where it was being stored under armed guard to keep their own gang from looting, the rest of the Freaks muttering, annoyed, that they might’ve liked some fruit for themselves.