That moment of distraction is all it takes. The Boss leaps, the suit and shirt tearing as his midsection extends, stretching like taffy–

Mookie catches the old man by the throat.

There. The steps. Sorago stalks up them toward the scene. Looking like he’s been run over by a city bus – dust and splinters and smoking motor oil blood.

He’s flanked by a pair of walking shadows: black sheets with knife fingers and eyes like shining coins. They float up the steps like foul wraiths.

Zoladski’s body begins to bend and coil around Mookie’s arm–

Snap.

Mookie’s arm breaks, bending the wrong way at the elbow.

Werth hides. In a coat closet, of all places. He pulls out his phone. Texts Haversham: HAVE THAT GUN READY. Upstairs, the ground shudders. Banging. Crashing. Gunfire. The walls of the house actually shake.

Werth thinks, I have to go. Now’s the time. Run away. Get out of the city.

But Mookie. Mookie saved his ass. And he didn’t do shit for him.

Loyalty, Werth thinks. Do I even know what the fuck that is anymore?

He decides, suddenly: yeah, yeah he does.

The old goat man creeps out of the coat closet. Another gunshot upstairs. Something – not someone – screams. Werth darts back into the foyer, then to the bottom of the staircase: there, at the bottom, is the body that rolled there. The Snakeface that was pretending to be Lutkevich and now is just a dead Snakeface, skin like gunmetal scales hanging on black leather. At his feet is a gun. Werth picks it up–

Just as Candlefly comes in from the kitchen. A phone pressed against his ear. Ernesto is looking up toward the ceiling as the house shakes. Werth catches snippets of him yelling over the din: “–still don’t have the Ochre, and now this–”

But then he sees Werth.

And Werth has the gun pointed.

Werth makes a gesture: Put the phone down.

Candlefly scowls, rolls his eyes, and sets the phone on the floor.

“You’re making a big mistake,” Candlefly says, then adds: “Etc., and so on.”

“You’re a bad man.”

“Who said I was a man?”

“Then what are you?”

Candlefly’s smile spreads – like jam on toast. “A daemon.”

Werth pulls the trigger. The bang is loud: too loud, impossibly loud, and the kickback on the pistol is worse than he figured, so bad that he can feel it vibrating in his arm, in his chest, like a fist punching him in the heart–

He suddenly can’t get a good breath.

Candlefly looks behind him at the bullet hole in the wall.

Then says, “Thank you, Haversham.”

Haversham? Werth turns. Sees the company man behind him. With a small Walther. Little smoke signals drifting from the barrel, carrying one message: I’ve made my choice.

“Haversham,” Werth blast. “You shit.”

Haversham pulls the trigger again, and it’s lights out for James Werth, the old goat.