Max wasted no time after Dumfrey’s announcement.

The museum was a sinking ship. And she, Max, was a rat.

“What are you doing?”

Max spun around, clutching her rucksack, and saw Pippa standing in their little makeshift room, hands on her hips, glaring. Despite the fact that Pippa was, in Max’s opinion, a miserable little squeak, she had a glare that was frightening.

It was her eyes, and the fact that she could see through things—into things. When she glared, Max felt like a hole was being burned straight through her forehead. At first, Max had thought it was only a trick—that Pippa was half a fraud, like Goldini and the almost-dwarf. But she knew better now.

“What’s it look like I’m doing?” she mumbled, turning around and continuing to stuff her belongings in her rucksack. Now the burning hole was in the back of her neck and was far more tolerable. “You heard what he said. We’re sunk. Finished. Kaput. Done for.”

Pippa ripped the rucksack out of Max’s hands with surprising force.

“Hey . . . ,” Max started to protest, but Pippa grabbed her arm so tightly she was startled into silence.

“We’re not sunk,” she said fiercely. She practically dragged Max out of the attic and into the hallway, then up a steep flight of dusty stairs that led, Max knew, to the unused loft.

Max tried to shake off Pippa’s grip and couldn’t. “Let go of me.”

“Stop your moaning,” Pippa said. At the top of the stairs, she opened the door and pushed Max roughly inside.

The loft was a small room, hardly bigger than a bathroom, and packed nearly from top to bottom with crates, bundles of moth-eaten clothing, and bits of dusty equipment. Thomas was sitting high up on a teetering stack of wooden boxes, his head practically banging against the single skylight, which let in a small quantity of sickly white light. Sam had cleared a space for himself on the floor and looked like an elephant pretending to belong in a dollhouse.

“All right.” Pippa had entered behind Max; she closed the door and leaned against it. “Now that we’re all here, we can begin.”

“Begin what?” Max said crossly, rubbing her arm where Pippa had been gripping it.

Pippa rolled her eyes. “To plan, of course,” she said. “If we’re going to find that stupid head and save the museum, we’ll need to have a plan.”

“If we’re going to do what?” Max squawked.

Pippa narrowed her eyes. “Is there something wrong with your ears?”

“Is there something wrong with your brain?” Max fired back.

“Pippa,” Sam broke in quietly, “you heard what the cops said. The city’s crawling with thieves. It could have been anyone.”

“There are forty thousand unsolved thefts in New York City every year,” Thomas pointed out. Max really wished he would stop spouting off about probabilities and statistics and boring numbers that made her head spin. The problem was all the reading he did. A nasty habit.

“It wasn’t just anyone,” Pippa insisted. “It was someone who knew about the head and knew its value.” She ticked off the list on her fingers. “It was someone who knew how to get in without forcing the lock—so someone with a key or someone who was already inside.”

“Mr. Dumfrey might have forgotten to lock up last night,” Thomas said.

Pippa shook her head. “He’s too careful for that.” She inhaled deeply. “I’ll tell you what I think,” she said. Her eyes were glittering, as they did when she was onstage. “I think Potts did it.”

“Potts?” Sam wrinkled his nose. When he did, a smattering of freckles wrinkled, too.

“He hasn’t got the brains,” Thomas said scornfully.

Pippa shook her head. “What was he doing up past midnight?”

“Maybe he was hungry,” Thomas said.

Pippa looked as if she wanted to strangle him. “He would have come into the kitchen. Besides, why did he lie about sleeping through the night? Why didn’t he tell the cops he was awake?”

“Maybe he just didn’t think it was important,” Thomas argued.

“Then answer me this.” Pippa crossed her arms. “How come he had one hundred dollars in his pocket this morning, huh? Where’d he get it?”

To this, Thomas had no answer. Everyone at the museum was paid a wage, even the children, although Mr. Dumfrey kept the majority of their wages in a strongbox for when they were older. But no one at the museum, not even Mr. Dumfrey, was paid more than ten dollars a week.

“Even if he did take it,” Max jumped in, “I still don’t see what that’s got to do with us.”

“Oh? And I guess you don’t care if the museum shuts down and all of us end up on the street?” Pippa said icily.

“I been on the street before,” Max said, lifting her chin.

“And you’re so eager to go back?” Pippa said.

Max hesitated. As much as she pretended to be hard, the truth was that she found living on the street practically unbearable. There was the stink and the noise, the clots of flies in summer, the driving rains in fall, and the icy grip of winter, like a small death. There was running from police and hiding in churches and getting chased out of stores. There was hunger, a foul taste in the mouth, an aching that filled you from nose to toes.

She had spent most of her life on the streets of New York City—performing knife tricks for coins, pickpocketing when she had to—and another three in Chicago before that, and in all that time she had thought of practically nothing but a roof and a fire when she needed one and a safe place to sleep where she had no fear of getting poked, moved, or chased off.

The museum was that, and more. In her short time there, she knew she had already started to love it: the soft whistles and creaks of the building, the constant jabbering of the other performers, the glass-enclosed exhibits, the hallways smelling of vinegar and perfume. The sunlight filtering through the window, wrapping everything in a golden haze. And then there was the way Mr. Dumfrey had looked at her—as though he’d been expecting her, almost. No one had ever expected her anywhere or cared whether she showed up.

“I thought not,” Pippa said, when Max didn’t speak. “Look. Mr. Dumfrey took a chance on us. On all of us. Plenty of other people wouldn’t have. We’re freaks, remember? Thomas has a spine like a rubber band. I can read minds. Well, almost,” she clarified quickly. “And Sam—poor Sam. He can’t even go a day without breaking something. And you . . .” She turned to Max, frowning. “Well, who knows what’s wrong with you. You’re violent.”

“I am not—”

“My point is,” Pippa said, cutting her off, “we have no one else.” She turned to the others. “Well?”

For a second, there was silence.

“Go on, Pippa,” Sam said. “Tell us what you’re thinking.”