I sidled up to the container, crouched down, and reached for my Stone magic, examining and listening to all the rocks that I’d strategically placed around the container. The rocks were in the same places as before, and they only whispered back to me about the cold, along with faint, steady rumbles from all the cranes, forklifts, and other heavy machinery that moved through the area daily. No dark mutters of malice or murder rippled back to me, which meant that no one had been near the container since the last time I’d been here a few days ago. Good. I got to my feet, pulled a key out of my jacket pocket, opened the padlock, and slipped into the container, pulling the door shut behind me.

   The inside of the container was pitch-black, but I moved along the wall until I came to a small table. I pulled off my gloves, reached down, and flipped the switch on the battery-powered lantern that I’d brought in here several days ago, along with some other supplies.

   Light flooded the inside of the container, and I blinked several times, trying to get my eyes to adjust to the sudden, harsh glare. Instead of being barren, the inside of the container featured a couple of tables, several chairs, and a metal rack with a bottle of gin and some plastic cups perched on the shelves. All put together, it looked as though some homeless person had wandered in here and made this place his new home.

   In a way, that’s exactly what I’d done.

   According to Hugh Tucker, the Circle knew all about me, which meant that they knew about the Pork Pit, Fletcher’s house, and where the rest of my friends lived and worked. They might even know about the various safe houses that I used around Ashland from time to time. So I’d wanted some place that they couldn’t possibly know about, some place new, some place secure, some place where I could sit, think, and compile all the information that I had on them. I’d stumbled across this container several days ago. Since I’d killed Dimitri Barkov, the previous owner of the shipping yard, this had seemed like a perfect spot to make my supersecret Circle headquarters.

   It wasn’t any warmer in here than it was outside, and my breath frosted in the air, but at least the thick metal walls blocked the wind. I could have turned on the small heater that was sitting next to one of the tables, but I decided not to. Maybe being cold and uncomfortable would motivate me to figure out the answers to all my questions. Worth a shot, anyway.

   I switched on a few more lanterns, then turned my attention to the large dry-erase board that was pushed up against one of the walls. I’d gotten the idea from Bria, who’d had something similar in her house back when she’d first returned to Ashland and had been trying to find me, as well as take down Mab Monroe. She’d had photos, papers, and more tacked up to her board, a visual display of all the leads she was running down.

   But my board was depressingly empty.

   Oh, it had a photo of Hugh Tucker, and underneath that I’d written the few facts I knew about the vampire. But that was all the concrete information I had. The rest of the board was covered with questions.

   Oh, the questions.

   Who belongs to the Circle? Number of members? Are they only in Ashland? Who’s the leader? What’s the power structure? What illegal activities are they involved in?

   The questions went on and on, all scribbled in my horrible handwriting. According to Tucker, the Circle had let Mab be the head of the underworld so that all the other criminals would focus solely on her. So I was guessing that all the tribute—all the money—from the bosses’ activities had flowed through Mab to the Circle on the sly. I wondered how much that missing income stream was hurting the group. Probably not much, if they were as rich and powerful as Tucker claimed, but I had no way to know for sure. Only one thing was certain—Mab had only been one head on this monstrous hydra, and I’d have to cut off all the others to finally kill the Circle for good.

   I stalked back and forth in front of the board, looking at all the questions in turn, and massaging the cold, aching scars embedded deep in my palms—each one a circle surrounded by eight thin rays. Spider runes, the symbols for patience—something that I was in short supply of these days.

   My fingers crept up to the ring on my right hand, which was also embossed with my spider rune, and I twisted it around a few times before grabbing the spider-rune pendant around my neck and sliding it back and forth on its chain. The silverstone ring and pendant both pulsed with my Ice and Stone magic that was stored in the metal, but all my elemental power hadn’t helped me solve the riddle of the Circle.

   The more I looked at the questions, the more depressed I became. But the fidgeting certainly wasn’t helping anything, so I dropped my necklace, stepped forward, and grabbed a dry-erase marker from the shelf that ran along the bottom of the board.

   I made a new box on the board and drew a crude hat in it. Fedora, I wrote under the box. Assassin. Acrobatic. Good with guns.

   And . . . and . . . and that was all that I knew about her. Those were the sum total of facts I had about the woman. Once again, I cursed myself for not being faster, stronger, smarter. For not being able to at least capture and question her.

   As an assassin, information was key. Who your target was, where he lived, the number of bodyguards he had, his family, friends, pets, habits, even his hobbies. All of that was important and useful in planning a hit on someone. But I didn’t have any of that when it came to the Circle.

   I didn’t have anything.

   I glared at the stupid hat I’d drawn, more disgusted than ever before. Part of me wanted to swipe my marker across it and the rest of the board, until I’d blotted out ­Fedora, Tucker, and all my damn questions. But that would have been childish, and I would just have had to erase everything and start all over again.

   I still drew devil horns on top of Tucker’s head, though. Just because I could. I put them on top of the hat too.

   It actually made me feel a little bit better, and I stared at the board, wondering how else I could mark up Tucker’s photo—

   Creak.

   I whipped around to the container door. That sounded like someone had taken hold of the handle and tried to yank the door open but hadn’t quite succeeded, given how thick and heavy the metal was.