Trinket prepared a cup of tea for Booker, and together they retired to the parlour. They sat on the settee and discussed what to do with this new information.

"Did you get a good look at him when you saw him in the shop?" Booker asked.

She closed her eyes, trying to recall the young man's face. "I mean, I saw him, but there was nothing outstanding about his person, other than his very white teeth and the dirt under his nails. If I met him again, though, I'm certain I would recognize him."

Tapping a finger against his cup, Booker stared at the fireplace in deep thought. "If only we knew where he might be lurking, maybe you could identify him."

"Well, we know that he deals in dangerous drugs. And he likely suspects people are after him since he attacked Emma thinking she had sold him out to someone."

"So he's probably one to frequent the seedy underbelly of the city."

"Does this mean we'll be attending a game night?"

He quirked an eyebrow as he considered this. "Perhaps. It might be a little difficult to find him in such a crowd of people, but if I got Gin to help, we may be able to pick him out."

Sipping at her tea, Trinket thought back to the last game she had attended. The smoke, the debauchery, the lack of restraint. And then there had been Scales. If Booker got into another one-on-one card game with him like he had before, she worried he would not be able to keep himself from angering the thug further.

Booker placed his cup and saucer on the table and rose to his feet. "That's the plan, then. I'll inquire about the date and location of the next game, and we'll go from there."

He was already donning his coat when Trinket stood up to voice her concerns. But then he turned to her with an excited smile, and she found she couldn't object to this new strategy. This was the first real lead they had discovered in the case.

She couldn't bear to disappoint him.

"I should be back in a few hours," he said.

She nodded, and he slipped out the door. Sighing, she went to fetch her cleaning supplies as she thought about all the ways this could go terribly wrong.

~

The next game wasn't for four more days. In the meantime, another body surfaced. When Trinket and Booker saw the crowd surrounding it down by the Clocktower, they managed to push their way to the front to get a glimpse before the police arrived. This one had thin layers of skin between her fingers and toes, much like a frog. Her extra parts looked just like the ones on the other bodies, the skin attached by sutures and looking very out of place. But what was more was that the body had clearly been examined already. The woman's clothes were torn open, and the skin, which had started to decompose due to the weather warming up, had flaked off around her arms and mouth. As if someone had been moving her about to find something.

It had to be the Mice.

"Why would they want to examine a dead body?" Booker wondered as they left the scene before the police arrived. "They're not doctors. Were they looking for valuables?"

Swallowing hard, Trinket recalled Scales' words when he had confronted her in the alley. "Perhaps they were looking for clues about the creator." She glanced up at Booker. "Much like you are."

He furrowed his brow. "Why do they want to find Benedict?"

"I have no idea. But you know as well as I do that Scales is very crafty. If he wants to find him, he must have a good reason. And I'm willing to bet that reason will begin a new reign of terror here."

"Save your betting for tonight, my dear."

She looked up at him in panic. "You're not going to make me play, are you?"

He grinned down at her and chuckled. "What? Gin hasn't taught you yet?"

"She's tried, but I'm terrible."

Laughing again, he turned his attention forward. "No, no, I'll do the gambling for us. You just keep your eyes open for our man. Gin will be there, too. I figure she's good at slipping in and out unnoticed, so she may have an easier time examining people's fingernails. You can try to find his unusually white teeth."

Trinket's stomach sank slightly. "Does that mean I need to talk to people so that I can see their teeth?"

"Well, that or observe them talking to others." He glanced down at her. "I don't want you to get into trouble. As you know, the folks who attend these games are not to be trusted."

"You attend these games, Mr. Larkin."

"Point proven. Anyhow, do what you can with the teeth. I mean, you did say that if you saw him again you'd likely recognize him, right?"

She gave a nod. "Right. I'm certain of it."

"Good. Then just do what you do best and observe."

~

Later that night, they were back on the streets, zigzagging through the center on their way to the game night. Trinket's pulse pounded in her ears, her hands sweating beneath her gloves. She checked for the hundredth time that the faux perfume bottle was in her coat pocket. Hopefully she wouldn't need to use it tonight.

They slipped into an alleyway and stopped before a cellar door. Booker turned to her, the excitement practically radiating off of him. "Are you ready?" he asked.

Afraid that if she tried to speak her consent, her tongue would betray her and say "no," she nodded instead. He turned back to the door and knocked five times: two short, one long, one short, and one long. The sound of locks being unlatched came from the other side, and when the door swung open, a young man with a scar on the side of his nose stared up at them. He scrutinized them both and then nodded for them to follow him.

As the door closed again, they were plunged into darkness. Holding tightly to Booker's arm, Trinket carefully felt each step before committing. After a short walk that seemed like an eternity, they came to a halt, and the boy with the scarred nose opened another door.

They were met by raucous cheers and the sight of two men fist-fighting. One's face was covered in blood, both his eyes swollen shut while his opponent sported only a split lip. Despite his obvious defeat, the beaten man continued to swing blindly, doing his best to land a hit. His opponent laughed at his attempts and finished him off with a swift punch to the kidneys. The beaten man doubled over with a cry before he crumpled onto the floor. The crowd around them cheered and lifted the winner onto their shoulders, leaving the loser to slip into unconsciousness.

"If that's the fellow, his teeth are certainly no longer white," Booker said to Trinket as he gestured to the man on the floor.

"This is much different than before," she said, clinging to Booker's arm.

"Fights are rather common, though it is a tad early. Last time I think everyone was so uptight about the Mice and the Wolf that their vigor had cooled down a bit."

The man on the floor groaned and spat up an alarming amount of blood. Trinket gasped and took a step back to keep it from splattering onto her boots. Booker laughed, and she shot him a look.

"I fail to see how a man bleeding to death is funny," she said.

"In my medical opinion, he isn't bleeding to death. Likely just lost some teeth. And chances are that he started it, so he really got what was coming to him."

Though she wasn't sure that she agreed, she followed him as he sidestepped the fallen man and went further into the room. Just as before, there were tables set up for various games—dice, cards, knives—with crowds of people surrounding them to watch the players. Night flowers stalked through the room, flirting with the men and sometimes leading them into a curtained-off section in the back where a lot of grunting and panting could be heard.

"Anyone look familiar?" Booker asked as they gazed about.

She scanned the faces, but none of them registered as familiar save for a few people she knew from the market and shops. "No, I don't see him."

"No worries. We have all night."

The thought of staying in this place for hours on end made her stomach sick. How many more bloody fights would she have to witness? The energy in the room was indeed far different from her previous experience with a game night. There was an almost tangible static in the air, a mixture of greed, excitement, and inebriation. Apparently a madman performing gruesome experiments on people was less terrifying to them than a mutant wolf in the hands of the Dead Mice.

Something slipped into Trinket's pocket, pulling her from her thoughts. She spun around to find Gin standing behind her with a smirk on her face, the faux perfume bottle in her hand. "Better be careful or you'll lose your coin purse next," she said.

Trinket took back the bottle while Booker chuckled. "I wondered when you'd find us. How long have you been here?" he asked.

Shrugging, Gin glanced about the room. "An hour, maybe? Been pretty lively."

"I'll say. We walked in at the end of what looked like a very one-sided fight."

"Hillard? Yeah, he deserved that. Was cheating at cards and actually tried to accuse everyone else of fixing the game. Then he said something about Murray's daughter and—"

She shrugged as she gestured to where the man still lied on the floor.

"Why do people enjoy this?" Trinket asked as she rubbed her arms and again took in the raucousness around her.

"Escape from reality," Booker said. "They'll take whatever they can, no matter how much they'll suffer tomorrow."

A roar erupted from the card table, signaling a win. Based on the volume, the pot must have been high.

"So, any matches with the fingernails?" Booker asked Gin.

She shook her head. "I mean, most everyone's nails here are filthy, but I'm guessing by dirty you mean really, really dirty. Unless he decided to clean up for tonight. Maybe trying to impress his favorite night flower?"

Booker gave a low laugh, but Trinket pursed her lips in thought. "I'm not sure all the washing in the world could clean these nails," she said. "They looked like he had been clawing at the dirt with his hands over a very long period of time."

"Does he live underground or something?" Gin asked.

"Hmm, a mole-human hybrid," Booker said, looking over at Trinket thoughtfully. "Could we have predicted the next corpse?"

"I certainly hope not. I shudder to think of what such a creature would look like," she said.

"What? Tiny eyes, long noses, and sharp claws don't sound appealing?"

Trinket shook her head disapprovingly and tucked the faux perfume back into her pocket, refusing to respond.

"Anyhow, I think maybe we'll make more progress if we split up," he said as he unlinked his arm from hers. "I'll see what I can dig up at the tables."

He slipped into the crowd, and Trinket felt a little colder without him by her side. Nevertheless, she took a deep breath and prepared herself for the task at hand. "So you two think this fella is connected to the man who made that wolf thing and all these weird dead bodies?" Gin asked, watching the crowds in an attempt to keep an eye on Booker.

"It's a longshot, I'm sure," Trinket said. "But he was involved with several suspicious incidents, so we thought it couldn't hurt to investigate further."

"But you don't even know who he is. He could just be a regular old cad like most of the city."

She was right, but the memory of him gnawed at Trinket's mind. Something about him was important, and if Booker was willing to go to such lengths to find him, she had to assume her instinct was right.

"Well, good luck," Gin said as she tucked her hands into her pockets and lowered her bowler. "I'll keep inspecting nails."

She, too, disappeared into the crowd, and Trinket was left alone. She felt for the perfume once more, reassuring herself that if anything were to happen, she was armed. With that in mind, she paced the room, observing the crowd and searching for blindingly white teeth and dirt-encrusted nails.

~

It felt like hours went by, though she had no watch to keep track of the time. Booker and Gin were still in the crowd, both of them robbing unsuspecting folks blind—Booker through cards and Gin with her sticky fingers.

The late hour combined with the smoke from the cigars that so many of the men were puffing on started to have an effect on Trinket. She stifled a yawn and struggled to keep her heavy eyelids open. So far she had seen no one that seemed familiar, nor had she seen any exceptionally white teeth. There was enough laughter and shouting to catch glimpses of plenty of teeth, so she had been saved from engaging in conversation with anyone but a few night flowers who were bored and tired of working.

As she took another turn about the room, her eyes caught on a group of men by the door. They were speaking privately in low voices, away from the games. She didn't recognize any of them at first, but then she remembered seeing one of them searching the alleys with Squeeze the day Scales had spoken to her. Another one of them turned, and Trinket's blood froze.

Booker.

He looked like he was about to leave, but the other three men grabbed hold of him and dragged him out the door. Panic seized her, and she scrambled through the crowds to chase after them. She ran blindly up the stairs of the dark entryway, fumbling with the locks and finally bursting through the door.

Stumbling into the alley, she looked about desperately, praying they hadn't taken him into another abandoned building. But then she saw them heading deeper into the alley, dragging Booker with them.

And waiting for them at the dead end was Scales.