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“Elias,” I say, without turning my head.

“I saw,” he replies.

“And?”

I hear the click of his cane against the sawdust, then the long dragging quiet of a man swallowing his own opinion. When he speaks, he sounds like he’s chewing gravel.

“Get her a contract.”

I don’t hear him leave. I’m too busy watching Sloane Archer walk back down the length of the ring, collecting each dropped blade, one after another. She hands the last one to me, and her cool fingers brush my wrist.

Still no flush. Still no tremor.

I want to know what it would take.

I want to know it so badly that my hands, my steady, perfectly trained hands, can’t quite stay still.

2

SLOANE

Cole walks ahead of me across the gravel with a knife spinning over his knuckles, the blade catching the last orange light and tossing it around like loose change. He doesn’t look at it once. It’s like the knife knows where his hand is.

“Home sweet home.” He stops at a silver Airstream, tucked between a generator and a stack of crates stenciled with FRAGILE: DO NOT TILT. He raps the door with the flat of the blade. “It’s not much but give it a week. You’ll start leaving socks on the floor and calling it yours.”

“I don’t own socks I can’t fit in a duffel,” I reply.

“Tragic. And hot.” He pulls the door open and sweeps an arm out. “After you.”

I check the doorframe first. Sturdy. Deadbolt on the inside, not just a hook latch. Then the windows. Two, both with sliders, both big enough for a hip or a shoulder to fit through. I step in, and my eyes find the bed before anything else. It sits at the back, headboard against the wall, with a clear line to the door.

Good.

The rest of it takes longer to register. Somebody lived here, and she had taste. Dried flowers hang upside down from a cord strung along the ceiling, dark purple, rust, a bundle of something gray and feathery. Heavy black curtains. A shelf screwed into the paneling holds a row of pressed ferns under glass. On the inside of the door, a hook board is studded with empty pegs, as if a lot used to hang there.

And the lock. I crouch and run my thumb across the brass plate. Hairline scratches circle the keyhole, dozens of them, each one fine as an eyelash.

“She picked her own door,” I say.

“Doesn’t surprise me.” Cole leans a shoulder on the frame, watching me touch the scratches. “Nova’s the escape artist. Used to sleep here before she moved in with her guys.”

“Her guys,” I repeat with the mildest amount of curiosity.

“Silas and Teddy.” He flips the knife, catches it by the tip, and flips it again. “Silas is the illusionist and the brains of this whole circus. Teddy’s the fed.”

I stand. “The fed.”

“Long story. Ask me when you’ve got a bottle in your hand.” He grins slowly. “Point is, there’s two of them, one of her, and a baby the size of a watermelon due any day now. She waddles like a pirate. Don’t tell her I said that, she’ll lock me in a trunk.”

I turn the idea over. Three people. One bed, I assume. A very large one. “And they’re all fine with it?”

“With the baby?” He tips his head. “They draw straws for who gets to carry the bag. Nobody’s running a paternity test. The kid gets two dads. Equal shares, equal everything.”

Two dads.

The thought makes me feel something I thought wasn’t in me anymore. A longing for a loving father. The only father figure I had locked his study and then unlocked my door.

I put my duffel on the bed and unzip it so my hands have a job.