I’ve a bee to tuck up your bonnet.” Ambrose was only this informal when interacting with Hollis on Dreadfuls business. He and his wife, Libby, were the apex of Hollis’s servants’ network pyramid. They knew absolutely everything.

Hollis carefully set aside the manuscript page he was working on and gave the man his full attention.

“It’s Very Merry,” he said.

“Is she giving you difficulty?”

Ambrose shook his head. “She’s a little devil, but we’re keepin’ pace with her.”

“Then what’s the trouble?”

“She’s said things that have my ears perked.” Ambrose leaned his shoulder against the nearby wall. “Told us you and your chums found her belowstairs in some fine house in Pimlico.”

Hollis nodded. “A nearly empty house where she’d not have found much of value to filch. While we were tracking her through London, we had report of her stealing little figurines and worthless bits of costume jewelry and such.”

“She seems more knowin’ than that,” Ambrose said.

Hollis shrugged. “She is little yet. Maybe she hasn’t sorted it all.”

Ambrose folded his arms across his chest. “She told my Libby that she weren’t in that Pimlico house to steal anything. She was hiding, but she won’t tell either of us what or who she was hiding from. The closest we’ve come to an answer was ‘He weren’t supposed to be there.’” Ambrose pushed out a breath. “And it weren’t a casual thing. Someone was where he oughtn’t be, and that someone has her terrified.”

“That someone is likely Four-Finger Mike,” Hollis said.

Ambrose stood straight, his face pale. “What connection does she have to that whisht cove?”

“She was one of his underlings, stealing because he required it of her.”

Ambrose whistled low. “I understand being terrified of that bloke. But he’d not be in that part of Pimlico. He’d be as out of place there as a badger in a horse race. No slippery fellow of his ilk would toss himself where he’d be so quickly sniffed out.”

Ambrose was dead on the money there.

“He must have a reason for taking such a risk,” Hollis said.

“A matter that crushing cain’t be small, and our Very Merry likely knows more than she ought.”

Which meant she was still in danger.

Hollis stood. “I’m going to grab one of the lads and take a stroll down St. George’s—see if we can’t sort out what might send a rat to a tea party.”

“I’ll drop it in your ear if I hear anything through the network,” Ambrose said. “Or if that demon child you stuck on us says anything more.”

“You can’t fool me, man. You’re fond of that ‘demon child.’”

Ambrose laughed. “We are that.”

Hollis snatched his tall hat off the table beside the door. He looked back at Ambrose. “Keep an eye on the place.”

“Keep an eye on yourself.” He nodded toward the desk. “And don’t neglect your writing. I need to know what happens with that Pudding fella.”

Hollis popped his hat on his head, dipped his chin, and slipped from the room.

Dreadfuls’ headquarters was bustling when Hollis arrived. No meeting had been called; it was simply a popular spot that day. Luck seemed to be on his side as the one he most needed to find was already there, reading in the library.

“Ah, Brogan. Just who I was looking for.”

Brogan flipped a page of his book. “Why is it I can’t get any of the lasses to say that?”

“Your ugly mug, probably.”

His mouth tipped at the corner. “I’ve not had many complaints.”

“Or, apparently, many requests.”

Brogan’s smile formed fully. “What brings you ’round?”

“What do you know of the poorer areas of Pimlico? St. George’s Road, in particular.”

Brogan chuckled. “That ain’t a poorer area by anyone’s estimation.”

That had been Hollis’s assessment as well. “Do you remember the house on St. George’s Road? The one where we found our tiny thief?”

“I do.”

“She wasn’t there trying to rob the place. She was hiding. From Four-Finger Mike.”

The Irishman’s ginger brows shot upward. “Boil m’bones,” he whispered.

Hollis rubbed at his mouth. “I can’t sort out why he would’ve been there. I suppose he could have been thieving, but there’s a reason these slippery fellows piece together teams of crooks: saves them the trouble and the risk.”

“’Tis an oddity, for sure.” Brogan crossed his arms over his chest. “He’d be sorted out quickly amongst the Quality.”

“And, yet, he was there. The man who escaped the police, who’s masterminded kidnappings and robberies and arsons, was in a place he shouldn’t have been. That worries me.”

“Worries me, as well.” Brogan rose slowly. “Fancy a stroll around Pimlico?”

“Only a stroll?”

Brogan made a small gesture of casual dismissal. “Perhaps a touch of spying, if we’ve a spare minute or two.”

Hollis eyed Brogan’s working-class togs. He’d likely come directly from one of his missions of mercy. “We need to be dressed at the same level, though. Otherwise we’ll draw notice.”

“For St. George’s in Pimlico?” Brogan chuckled. “I’ll dress up.”

Another testament to how strange the idea of Four-Finger Mike being in that spot truly was.

A quick trip to the Wardrobe Room saw Brogan strutting about in the weeds of the upper classes. They passed Irving and Kumar, who both ribbed him thoroughly for his fanciness. As they approached the front door, they passed Stone.

The man looked them over quickly but thoroughly. “Cutting a dash.”

“I make a fine aristocratic type, if I do say so.” Brogan’s attempt at an upper-class accent emerged far more like drunk Cockney.

“Maybe you’d best let me do the talking.” Hollis slapped a hand on Brogan’s shoulder. “Or at least agree to pretend to be Irish.”

“I am Irish.”

Hollis nodded, lips twisted outward in exaggerated doubt. “Sure you are. Stick with that.”

“You know, you’re a powerful lot funnier when you’re not with Fletcher.”

Hollis bowed with a flourish.

“Where’re you off to?” Stone asked.

“Pimlico,” Brogan said. “Four-Finger Mike was spotted there a bit back. We’re goin’ to sniff out a clue.”

“Keep the rest of us in the know.”

“We will.”

In a bit of déjà vu, they took a hack to a spot a bit removed from St. George’s and walked the rest of the way. Instead of assuming the purposeful saunter of tradesmen, they walked with the easy assurance of the gentry.

Everything seemed exactly as expected. The homes were well-kept. The street was quiet. Of the two people they passed, neither had shifty eyes or held up a sign saying “I have nefarious intentions.”

They were nearly to the house where they’d found Very Merry. She must’ve ducked into that particular spot for a reason. Hollis eyed the homes on either side of it, the park across the street and down a pace, the homes facing it. Nothing was odd or unusual. And nothing offered a place for someone as out of place as Four-Finger Mike to hide.

“I wish I knew what’d been happening before we arrived that day,” Hollis said. “I’m beginning to suspect there was some sort of distraction that let him go unnoticed.”

“I’d wager the same, but it’d need to’ve been something known ahead of time for him to’ve come here.”

Yes, but what?

Hollis’s attention settled on the house directly across from the one Very Merry had been in. A servant stepped out the front door and began screwing in the door knocker.

“Someone’s newly arrived,” Hollis noted.

Brogan made a sound of realization. “The comings and goings of moving in could distract from someone sneaking about.”

“Do you suppose he stole anything from the new arrivals?” Hollis knew the answer.

“And took the lay of the land so he could send his minions back for more.” Brogan rolled onto the balls of his feet a couple of times, watching the street. “We’d best discover who lives there and see if a warning ought to be whispered in their ears.”

“My servants’ network can find that out,” Hollis said.

“Brilliant.”

Hollis straightened his cuffs in a show of pleased arrogance. “That’s a quick mystery solved. What shall we sort out next?”

“I know you’re jesting, but we do have something else to wonder on. There’ve been more thefts matching Very Merry’s style: nothing disturbed, no one taking notice, making off with small items that ain’t worth a lick.”

“Some of what she stole had value,” Hollis said.

Brogan nodded. “But some had none at all.”

“What’s disappeared since we snatched the girl off the street?”

“Most recently, a leather manicure box. Ivory-handled tools.”

A manicure box. And not even a silver-plated one. That, combined with the figurines and trinket boxes that had been nipped, amounted to little more than nothing. Four-Finger Mike didn’t seem the type to let such “mistakes” go uncorrected.

“Is it possible,” he wondered aloud, “that Very Merry is not actually the Phantom Fox, and we’ve another thief on our hands?”

“If I were you,” Brogan said, “I’d worry less about the little thieflings and set m’ sights instead on discovering why Miss Newport is letting herself into the very house where you found the urchin who’s now living under your roof.”

Hollis’s head snapped in that direction. Sure enough, Ana stood at the front door of Very Merry’s hiding place—a house without a knocker up, a house that had seemed empty. And Ana was unlocking the door.

Brogan inched in that direction. “I can’t let a peculiarity on this scale go unexplored.”

“She doesn’t know that I have any friends amongst the penny dreadful writers other than Fletcher,” Hollis warned.

“So use any one of my aliases.” With that, the Irishman moved directly toward Ana. Whatever she was up to, they were about to find out.