The last volume was dead-on, and I thought, for a fraction of a second, that it might connect. I’m not sure what I expected a bit of leather-bound paper to do to the horrifying commissioner when a two-hundred-pound hound could hardly leave a mark. As the projectile neared, though, Swift’s hand left his victim’s throat and caught the book with a snap. Carried by momentum, the little sinker from Hatun’s line sailed free of the pages in his grasp and caught the commissioner squarely in the forehead. We both glanced down as it rolled to a stop in the dirt a few feet away, then looked back to meet each other’s eyes.

Swift’s face flushed with anger, his eyes narrowed to menacing slits, but his voice remained icy cold. “I was right in the middle of this, but if you absolutely insist”—he dropped the hound’s head and stood—“I suppose I can make time for you. Ladies first, and all that.”

He stepped over Charlie’s limp, bleeding body and strode toward me, not bothering to rush. Like his asymmetric face, the rhythm of his gait was now distinctly uneven. His left leg, still strapped in the brace, swung stiffly, creaking and clinking with each bend. His right swung free, but those iron shoes still clanked their own beat, muffled by the soft earth. As he drew near, that smell, the sickly sweet coppery smell, came with him. He was dripping with blood, and none of it his own.

Hatun’s premonition had come true. Just as she had warned me not to, I had followed Jackaby into the forest and to my demise. My heart hammered against my ribs, I shook, and my whole body felt clammy. My breath was ragged and too fast. Above me, Swift seemed to be enjoying my frantic last moments, sneering his crooked, broken-glass smile as he drew to a stop before me. Jackaby would not give the bastard this satisfaction, I thought. What would he do? Keep his calm. Keep control. I willed my heartbeat to slow and took a long, deep breath.

“It’s a lucky thing for you, Commissioner,” I managed with great effort, “that politics are not a lady’s domain, because you have lost my vote.”

The sound that came out of the ghoulish figure may have been a throaty laugh or a wet growl, but I did not have time to decide before his wicked claws buried themselves in my chest. The wave of pain hit me with a . . .

BANG!