“But it happened more than once,” I said. I couldn’t bring myself to say it again: You rode me.

“I couldn’t get a solid ride. Sick people are hard. Crazy ones are harder. Jesus, the last one I got on a second too late, and he was dead. I didn’t think that was possible.” He looked up at me, apologetic. “And you were such a good fit. I kept being pulled back. I didn’t mean to be.”

At that, Frances began to laugh. She rose from the arm of the chair and came over to me. She still held the rifle as if she meant to use it. “Heavens, yes. Fits as if it were made for you. And with every convenience built in. Of middling height, to avoid drawing attention. Strong, young, resistant to disease, toxins, and bad food. And eminently biddable.”

“Fran,” said Mick with great care, “you don’t have to mess with Sparrow.”

“No, I don’t. But I want to. Do you know, Mick, that by my reckoning there are only three Horsemen left? I’d thought it was two, until you surfaced, which only shows you that I may be a hair off in my figures.” She was close enough for me to see the gloss of sweat on her skin. “Only the real sharks survived the witch-hunts after the Big Bang. And I found that each passing year pruned them further, leaving only the creme de la creme of sharkdom.

“Now, Mick, my old friend and partner, if there are only three of us left, and my theory of natural selection is correct, mustn’t we be the three meanest sons of bitches in the valley?”

Mick shrugged, not too unconvincingly.

“And yet — I remember you, Mick. You weren’t a nice person—”

“We were all shits,” Mick interrupted.

“ — but you didn’t have the real, cold-hearted taste for blood. Now, how could someone like that have survived for years in a world that will not suffer a Horseman to live? By apprenticing himself to the biggest shark of all, the Daddy Killer of the whole toothy race, that’s how. The slayer of cities, the drowner of worlds, the pusher of Buttons. Let me tell you why I’m in this city. I’ve come to pay a long-delayed call on the Prince of Sharkness.”

The stove burner hissed in the silence while Mick and I worked out what that meant. “Who?” Mick said finally. His voice was a colorless whisper, and all the blood had deserted his face for parts unknown. “Who was it? My family lived in Galveston.”

“Excessive, Mick. Too much pathos. Add the dog that was your boyhood companion, and I’ll throw you off the stage.”

“Who did it, Fran?”

She was grave when she said, “For to see Mad Tom O’Bedlam, ten thousand miles I’ve traveled.”

Mick Skinner stared, his round black eyes open as wounds. His lips formed the first letter twice before any sound came out. “Worecski? Tom Worecski pushed the Button?”