Thoughts of Phoebe and Hugo were soon to be driven straight out of Thomas’s head.

He was outside even before the sun broke free of the horizon, when the air was still the dark purple of the velvet curtains in the Odditorium, when New York was at its quietest. From a high window across the street, a bunch of green-eyed tabbies—just a few of the dozens owned by Miss Groenovelt, the neighborhood cat lady—peered down at him in silence.

He went west on Forty-Third Street, past Cupid’s Dance Hall, where the gutters were filled with lipstick-coated cigarette butts, stamped there by women who had stopped dancing only a few hours earlier; past Majestic Hardware, its vast display of tools glinting dully like metal teeth behind the dust-coated windows; past Sol’s candy store on the corner of Forty-Third and Ninth, shutters still rolled down tightly against the morning, its candy-striped awning rustling lightly in the wind. Garry, the night porter at the Hotel St. James, saluted solemnly, in the military fashion, as Thomas passed.

Beyond Ninth Avenue, the neighborhood got dingier, the buildings sadder, with the scrawny, desperate look of beggars. Thomas kept his head down, barely registering the Salvation Army soup kitchen, which in a few hours would be crowded with people jostling for a bowl of soup and some bread, or the old Union Carriage Factory, now closed, its windows boarded up, its doors glued shut with caulk.

His mind was turning over everything that had happened, from the death of the old woman to the theft of the head and Mr. Anderson’s staged suicide, discovered so soon by the police to be murder.

That bugged him. It was a smart idea to make Mr. Anderson look like he’d killed himself because of worries about money. But it had been executed stupidly, carelessly. So the killer wasn’t as clever as he thought he was. Or maybe—the idea struck Thomas so hard that it stopped him in his tracks—maybe two people were responsible. Two people who plotted together, had worked together to steal the head, then planted Anderson’s card on Mr. Potts.

Two people . . . like Hugo and Phoebe?

He had this last, unsettling thought just as he reached the Hudson River. The gray surface of the water was stiff with small white peaks drawn up by the wind, like a large surface of whipped cream. Across the river, he saw the lights of New Jersey come on one by one. Thomas let the wind chase out thoughts of Hugo and Phoebe and worries about the museum, and instead watched the seagulls wheeling in the air.

In moments like this—quiet moments—Thomas sometimes let himself think about his real parents: who they must have been and whether they were still alive. Sometimes he felt only a curious detachment when he thought of them; other times, a fierce, dull anger, like a rock burning at the bottom of his stomach; and occasionally, a kind of longing he had no name for, like the tug he felt hearing the last notes of a song he loved.

The sun had finally broken loose of the buildings behind him, and orange light spread across the sky like a broken egg yolk flowing over a plate. Thomas realized he was hungry, and decided to go home to see what Mrs. Cobble was cooking, before he remembered that Mrs. Cobble had quit.

He found a dime in the pocket of his stiff canvas jacket and decided to stop to buy eggs on his way back to the museum. The sun warmed his face and the knot in his stomach began to loosen. Maybe his premonition the night before, his sense that something terrible was coming, was wrong.

Maybe everything would be okay after all.

Sol was rolling up the metal shutters, revealing display cases filled with glistening rainbow-colored jawbreakers, thick slabs of taffy in every imaginable color, coiled ropes of licorice, and fudge wrapped in waxed paper. Thomas stopped to talk to him in the hopes of scoring a few free Peanut Chews, and so didn’t notice the dusty gold Buick sedan rolling slowly down the street, and the men within it, their battered hats pulled low over their eyes, their collars turned up as though against a hard wind.

By the time Thomas reached the museum, the Buick was parked directly in front of the entrance. It was too early for visitors. The museum wouldn’t open for another few hours. Thomas took the steps two at a time and pushed open the door, which was unlocked.

Then he froze.

There was a strange and unpleasant smell in the air. It smelled like cheap aftershave and tobacco and faintly, just faintly, like sour milk.

Thomas’s heart dove into his shoes. He knew that smell.

Monsieur Cabillaud was sitting behind the ticket desk, nose to page with one of the vast, overflowing ledgers in which Mr. Dumfrey kept track of the accounts due and overdue, and surrounded on all sides by towering stacks of papers.

“Where’s Mr. Dumfrey?” Thomas asked.

Monsieur Cabillaud looked up, blinking blearily above the frame of his glasses. His eyes were red, as though he had been at it all night, and his tiny head was as shiny as polished wood. The bow tie he always wore was tilting dangerously to the left.

“Dumfrey,” Thomas prompted.

“Zat is zee very same thing ze police have wanted to know,” Monsieur Cabillaud said, frowning. “Do I look like Monsieur Dumfrey’s garde d’enfant? Go upstairs, I tell zem, and look for him yourself. Sacre bleu! It is enough work to try and keep a roof above our noses. . . .”

Thomas didn’t bother to inform Monsieur Cabillaud that the correct expression was keep a roof above our heads. His heart, already in his shoes, had flattened through the soles of his feet when Cabillaud had mentioned the word police.

He skidded through the entrance hall, under the familiar, weathered banner advertising Pinheads! Bearded Ladies! Alligator Men! Dwarves! NOVEL AND ASTOUNDING EXHIBITIONS! MORE THAN ONE THOUSAND CURIOSITIES! and sprinted down the central hallway, past the Hall of Worldwide Wonders, and to the performers’ staircase. He passed Miss Fitch on the second floor. Her face was as tight and pinched as the puckered end of a lemon.

“Have you seen Mr. Potts?” she demanded, but Thomas didn’t even bother replying.

“Thomas Able!” she cried as he shoved past her.

“Sorry,” he panted out, even though he wasn’t.

Just before he reached the third floor, he stopped and drew back. Mr. Dumfrey’s door was closed, and Thomas could just make out the murmur of voices. Pacing the small landing was Lieutenant Webb, chewing on the end of an unlit cigar and occasionally spitting bits of tobacco onto the floor. Even inside, he wore his belted trench coat and hat, but Thomas could make out his eyes, glittering and hard, and the jutting angles of his forehead, like the skull of the Cro-Magnon Dumfrey had on display in the Hall of Worldwide Wonders.

Thomas’s foot squeaked on the stair. Webb pivoted in his direction and Thomas retreated quickly, around the bend in the staircase and out of sight.

He needed to hear what Hardaway—Thomas assumed it was Hardaway in the room with Dumfrey—was saying.

He returned to the second floor and moved into the Hall of Wax. Just between the life-size figure of Benjamin Franklin signing the Declaration of Independence and the model of Adam and Eve confronting the serpent (an old garden hose painted to resemble a boa constrictor) was a large air vent. Thomas dislodged its grate easily, as he had many times before, and crawled headfirst into the walls.

Thomas inched forward on his stomach, until he reached the air duct that fed directly into Mr. Dumfrey’s chambers. Using his hands and feet for purchase, he shimmied up the narrow metal tube, feeling, as always, a little bit like a chunk of food that was going the wrong way through someone’s throat. He could hear the rumble of voices through the metal and knew he was getting close.

The air duct flattened out again, and he eased forward, pressing his nose against a small metal grate that was situated directly above Mr. Dumfrey’s overflowing desk. Lying on his stomach, nose squashed against the grate, he could see the shiny dome of Mr. Dumfrey’s head and the wisps of hair combed across it; he could see, too, the battered top of Assistant Chief Inspector Hardaway’s hat, which passed in and out of view, as Hardaway paced back and forth.

“It looks bad for you, Dumfrey,” he was saying. “First your little group of freaks is sniffing around—”

“They’re not freaks,” Mr. Dumfrey said sharply. “They’re extraordinary. And they weren’t sniffing around. I sent them to Mr. Anderson’s to conduct some business for me.”

Thomas felt a surge of guilt. Mr. Dumfrey was covering for him—for all of them.

“Business,” Hardaway repeated disdainfully, as though it were a dirty word. Thomas saw Hardaway lean forward over Dumfrey’s desk. “What kind of business, Dumfrey? Were they cleaning up some of your mess? Finishing what you started? Pocketing the evidence?”

“Evidence?” Mr. Dumfrey jerked backward. “What— How dare you— What are you insinuating?”

Hardaway reached into the pocket of his trench coat. A second later, he slammed a leather-bound appointment book on Mr. Dumfrey’s desk.

“Mr. Anderson died on Tuesday, April twenty-third, between five and seven o’clock. The medical examiner can tell us these things, Dumfrey. It looks as though he wasn’t alone. He was expecting a visitor. See for yourself.”

Hardaway opened the book and flipped forward a few pages.

“‘Four thirty p.m., Tuesday, April twenty-third. Appointment with D.’ What do you have to say about that?”

“I have nothing to say,” Mr. Dumfrey said. “I haven’t seen Mr. Anderson in several weeks. An initial means nothing.”

“I can’t say as I agree with you, Mr. D.,” Hardaway said, putting a faint and unpleasant emphasis on the letter. “And the commissioner don’t agree with you neither.”

“Then he is mistaken,” Mr. Dumfrey said. “You both are. I can’t imagine it’s the first time.”

“Now listen up,” Hardaway said, practically growling. “I don’t know what kind of game you think you’re playing, in this—this—this . . .” Hardaway gestured helplessly around him, obviously at a loss for words.

“House of Wonders?” Mr. Dumfrey suggested. “Museum of Marvels?”

“This freak show!” Hardaway exploded. “This flophouse! This dump of depravity!”

“Dump of depravity,” Dumfrey murmured. “I like that.”

Hardaway jabbed a finger at Mr. Dumfrey’s chest. “I know what you types are like. You circus types. Weirdos, losers, and—and unnaturals! If it was up to me, you’d all be put in a cage—especially these so-called children. Little monsters, each and every one of them!”

Thomas realized he was shaking. There was a sick taste in his mouth. Of course he had always known he was different. In his darkest moments, he had even wondered whether that was why his parents had abandoned him.

But mostly he had never thought of different as a bad thing. He had thought of it as being special—like rolling snake eyes with a pair of dice, or finding four maraschino cherries in a dish of fruit cocktail.

But in that instant, he had a whole other vision. It was as though Hardaway’s words had lifted a veil, and he saw Hugo and Phoebe and Danny and the rest of them as Hardaway saw them: Disgusting. Deformed. Abnormal.

What did that make him? What did that make Max, Pippa, and Sam? They were the freakiest of all the freaks.

Anger rose in his throat, choking him.

Hardaway was still talking. “I pay my taxes, Dumfrey. I work for the state. I got a wife and kids. I’m normal.”

“Get to your point,” Mr. Dumfrey said, his voice quivering with anger.

“My point,” Hardaway said, “is I don’t like freaks, and I don’t like you.”

Mr. Dumfrey stood up. “Are you accusing me of anything?”

There was a short pause. Hardaway said grudgingly, “No. Not yet.”

“Then I suggest you leave. Immediately.” Dumfrey moved around his desk and out of Thomas’s view. Thomas heard the door creak open.

Hardaway rammed his hat even more firmly on his head. “I’m warning you, Dumfrey. If I get one whiff of something foul—one sprinkle of funny business from you or any of your collection of freaks—”

“They. Are. Not. Freaks. They are marvels.”

“I’ll haul you into the clink faster than you can say—”

But Thomas never heard Hardaway finish his sentence.

Because at that moment an ear-shattering scream came drilling through the walls, and Thomas, in his shock, tried to turn; and the grate gave way beneath him, and he went tumbling in a shower of dust directly onto Mr. Dumfrey’s desk.

“Hello, Thomas,” Mr. Dumfrey said, with barely a glance in his direction.

“Hello, Mr. Dumfrey,” Thomas said, sitting up with a little groan.

Hardaway had already vaulted into the hall. Dumfrey sprinted after him, his robe flapping behind him like two scarlet wings, and Thomas followed.

The screaming continued. It was like an ice pick aimed directly between the ears. As they rounded the second-floor landing, Thomas saw Sam emerge from the Hall of Wax, white-faced.

“What is that?” he said. When he reached out to grab the banister, a chunk of wood splintered off in his hand.

“Nice one,” Thomas said, as he raced down the stairs.

Doors slammed; footsteps pounded from all sides; a confusion of voices rose up together.

“What’s going on?”

“What is it? What’s happened?”

“Mercy! The old cow won’t stop!”

As though sucked downward by gravitational force, the residents of the museum spiraled down the performers’ staircase and made their way to the basement, where the screams continued, punctuated by brief gasping sobs and cries of “Help! Somebody! Oh, it’s awful!” By now, Thomas recognized Miss Fitch’s voice.

The hall outside Potts’s room was narrow and packed with people. Hugo was standing just outside Potts’s closed door, as though uncertain whether to go in. Inside the room, Miss Fitch continued to sob.

“Let me through.” Hardaway was elbowing his way through the crowd. “Police. Coming through.”

Everyone had gone quiet, with the exception of Miss Fitch, who was still blubbering and screeching behind the door. Thomas felt an awful sense of dread. He caught Sam’s eye and Sam shook his head. He, too, looked afraid. Thomas pressed forward, following Mr. Dumfrey, who was trying to push his way past Hardaway.

“This is my museum,” he was saying, and “You have no right.”

Hardaway reached the door first and shoved it open.

Thomas felt like the world had turned a somersault around him.

Miss Fitch was standing in the middle of the room, her cheeks coated with black tracks of mascara, her lipstick smudged nearly to her chin.

“I just came in to see why he hadn’t emptied the bins like usual,” she said, with another sob. She brought a handkerchief to her mouth. Her hands were shaking so much she could hardly wipe her nose. “He didn’t knock when I answered so I . . . so I . . . and I found him just lying there. Just like that.”

And she pointed to Mr. Potts, stretched out, fully clothed, on his mattress, mouth open, eyes open.

Dead.