“No,” Frances said, and in her voice was the deep sadness I’d heard when she’d told Dusty, I have a damnably long memory. “He just has a hold on you. The longer you stay, and the more dirty things you do for him, the better the hold will be.”

But I had looked up, uncontrollably, at Tom.

“That’s right,” said Tom, to me. “Mick got you away from them the first time I sent my kids. No love lost between Mick and Myra and Dusty, I’ll tell you. The second time, Franny got you away. But while that was going on, I’d sent Mick himself.”

Mick, in the archives, saying, I came back for my jacket.

“You bastard, that’s not true,” Mick said. “You didn’t send me.”

“That got a little screwed up,” Tom continued, as if Mick had never spoken. “Worked out all right in the end, though. I’ve never been able to get anybody on that goddamn island before.”

This time there was no protest from Mick.

“My God,” Frances sighed, “can you hear yourself? Playing Ming the Merciless, gloating over your explanations to the captive hero?”

Tom looked surprised. “Who says you’re the hero?”

“I do. How can you be so small, Tom O’ Bedlam? How can you have lived so long, and still be so small?”

“I run a city,” he said, his lip curled. “You’re just a little killer.”

She looked mildly insulted. “I’m seeking vengeance for the whole Western Hemisphere. I think that’s positively grandiose.”

Tom leaned into the cushions of the couch and smiled. “Hell, I missed you, Franny. I’d have elected you Goddess.”

“Don’t start,” Frances said softly.

“It don’t hurt to ask. There’s enough here for two of us.” His voice, too, was soft. Albrecht, in the act of pouring himself another drink, made a little noise and turned. “Fran, I know you. I know you better’n anybody. I know Skin here thinks he’s got your number, but he’s just a goddamn puppydog.” And that made Mick flinch, and look to Frances. “But it could be the good old days all over again. I know what you want, Franny.”

His voice, his face, had turned surprisingly sweet. Frances watched him gravely, the line of her dark brows straight, her lips pressed tightly together. The head fight was over. This was the clean, insidious pressure of words and a shared past.

The rest of us sat or stood quite still, waiting for our futures to be decided. I had seen Albrecht’s face when Tom proposed to turn half his city into a courting gift. I had seen Mick’s face. Mick, who a few hours ago had made love to Frances. Cassidy’s expression was of uncomprehending, enduring despair, the look of a man who didn’t expect things to ever be good again. And Dana, beside me, might have been carved out of ice. She hadn’t raised her eyes from the Chinese table since Frances’s pistol had pointed at Cassidy. There was no blood under her faint tan, and her fingers twisted and ground at the silk over her knees.