“Into the Expanse? No way. I don’t know anybody from Daisypusher that has. I mean, I’ve heard the stories. I’ve even heard of maps you can buy that’ll take you there, but I figure they’re a load of unhappy horseshit. Not exactly a short trip, either. The Tangle is hundreds of miles long in every direction. Probably more. And frankly, I dunno why’d you wanna go. If this place really is home to a host of starving and insane subterranean gods, I can’t see the value in walking up to their front door and paying them a visit.” He waves it off, pulls out that blue mister bottle and spritzes himself with water. “Fuck it. We gotta go. Get this soul cage back to Mookie. Give him the ghost. Show him what we saw. You ready to ride?”

Skelly’s about to say something about, uh, hell no, she is not ready at all to hop atop the Vomit Comet again and would he please be so kind as to drive just a little more slowly so she doesn’t become a ghost herself, OK, thanks, daddy-o?

She doesn’t get those words out.

There’s movement at the far end of the room. And sound: a horrible, discordant sing-songy chant. Like a choir of oinking pigs and snarling wolves.

Gobbos. A dozen of them.

Carrying a pair of corpses.

The goblins don’t see them. Not yet. Too many salt pillars and skeletons are in the way, and they’re a hundred yards distant.

She ducks and hisses, “I thought you said they never come down here!”

“They don’t! But they still bring bodies from time to time. You kill any back at that temple?”

“I dunno. I think maybe.”

“That’s probably them. Nice work.” She’s not sure if he’s being sarcastic or sincere.

“We have to find another way. Go deeper to find another way.”

“Uh-huh, uh-huh.” But he doesn’t move. He’s staring ahead. “See over there?” She follows his pointing finger, and sees two salt columns that have collapsed.

“Yeah, so?”

“Let’s roll.”

She gets on, thinking he’s going to turn this thing around, head the same direction the ghost of Casimir Zoladski was heading.

That’s not what he does.

Burnsy starts the engine.

“Oh, no,” she says.

“Oh, yes,” he answers. Revving the engine. Grrrrrooom.Vrrrggrrrgrrroom.

“Oh, no no no no no hell no.”

“Oh, yes yes yes yes fuck yes.”

The quad leaps forward like a starving puma. Tires breaking goblin bones. The gobbos ahead see them. They begin to gibber and wail in alarm. Corpses drop. Weapons up. Rusty machetes and glinting shivs. One’s got a slingshot, with something squirming in the slingshot’s pocket. And still Burnsy heads right toward them.

Accelerating.

She figures out what he’s doing two seconds before he does it.

It’s too late–