“Compensating for a limp dick, there, Dekkie boy?” Dan asked, removing a toothpick from his lips. “No wonder Ali couldn’t get you into her bed. Hell, even Talina ran. Figured as hot and heavy as that kiss was, she should have melted right around any normal man’s prick. Then, just as you get hard as stone, she runs right out of the house.”

“You’re over the line, Dan.”

Wirth gestured to Sharascina, giving her a ribald wink. “Maybe you and me, we’ll slip back into Ali’s room. ’Bout time you had the kind of fucking a man who doesn’t give a rat’s ass could give you. Bet you’re tired of having to fake it for the powdered-and-fopped pretty boys.”

Sharascina’s eyes had sharpened, her lips parted, her breathing now deep as a flush crept up her cheeks. She started as Dan grabbed her hand, pulled her close.

“Let her go, Dan.”

The whole of the Tiboronne had gone still. People gaped, stunned, forks stopped in midair, glasses frozen in their hands.

“Let. Her. Go.” Dek repeated, aware of the scintillating colors in Sharascina’s dress as they shimmered like a dancing rainbow, turning a brilliant crimson red, patterns of black shifting and flowing over the conforming fabric in a communication of threat and violence. His lips parted, a long sibilant hiss sounding deep inside.

The surge of instant rage burned through Dek’s core, turned maddening as Wirth gave him that infuriating grin. Quick as a snake, the psychopath reached up, grabbed hold of the front of Sharascina’s dress and ripped downward.

At the tearing of the fabric, Dek shoved the rifle’s muzzle into Wirth’s belly . . .

Only to have the ornate Holland & Holland ripped away. Dek staggered, fought for balance as the world spun. Tiboronne’s lights flashed in a blur, torn away into darkness and night that dropped around him like a blanket.

Sharascina—glowing in a thousand laser-bright colors—stared down at him through three eyes, her collar flared in crimson and black, mouth opening into a triangular . . .

“Dek! Damn it!”

The slap blasted light and pain through his head. He hit the ground hard, the impact slamming up through his spine, bursting more lights through his skull.

He blinked, Tiboronne, with its crystal chandeliers, gleaming floors and transparent walls, the music, and finely dressed diners, was gone.

No Sharascina.

No raging quetzal.

No Dan Wirth.

Only the dark stretch of Port Authority’s main avenue.

Dek’s rage withered away into confused nothingness. As it did, his butt began to hurt; so did the gravel eating into his hands. Up the street, a couple of streetlights shed lonely cones of white onto The Jewel and Sheyela Smith’s electronic shop. Despite the darkness—which should have been absolute given the cloud cover—he could plainly see the new school. The front door was no more than a meter in front of him.