“Ah. Impatient. I see that you’re running ragged – look at those pupils! Fat like black flies. Blazing hard tonight, are we? Yes. That secret about your Boss? It was Persephone who told it to me.”

Mookie’s gut twists.

“Funny thing is, Mr Pearl, that secret truly is a big one, but it comes part and parcel with one of those very personal secrets. A piece of information that has a fingerprint pressed into its clay. It’s a secret meant for you.”

The world feels hot and cold. Mookie’s hands form into fists so hard it’s like having a pair of cinderblocks at the end of his arms.

He knows where this is going.

“Persephone is your daughter. Eleanor Pearl. And very few people know that.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking ab–”

“Deny it all you’d like. But here comes the time where we play a lovely little game, a game called Test Your Loyalty. Because now you can either tell me the information I seek – and together we can explore how to undo the empire your Boss has built for the last thirty years – or I can share with that very Boss that it was your daughter who killed his grandson. How does that–”

Smiley doesn’t get the chance to finish.

Mookie moves fast. Flips the table up into the Naga’s face. Smiley catches the table with his writhing snake arms, flings it aside–

It’s all Mookie needs. That moment of disorientation. Soon as the table clears, he drives a fist into the Snakeface’s elongated neck, collapsing the throat. Suddenly Smiley is gasping a gassy squeak, trying to catch air.

Mookie grabs the neck.

Then runs at full speed to the back of the teahouse.

Wham. He slams Mr Smiley into the back wall. Snakefaces have no bones, they’re just a series of tendons and muscles and cartilaginous gel that push and pull off one another. But the Naga keens in pain and hisses just the same.

Snake arms and legs wrap around Mookie. It’s like trying to wrestle an angry squid. Serpentine tentacles wind around his wrists. His midsection. His throat.

Hate glows in Smiley’s eyes. His smile now burned to ash. The Snakefaces flashes his fangs – the curved teeth growing out of blistery poison sacs lining the creature’s grub-white gums, dripping poison the color of dying violets.

Mookie’s on a fast-moving car speeding toward a broken bridge. A little voice in the back of his mind knows this is a bad move – you don’t muscle someone like Smiley. He knows too much. And to kill him? That has consequences. Not the least of which is he’s under the paid protection of the Boss – and Smiley pays in big.

And yet here Mookie is, ready to crush his windpipe. The fire of the Blazes eating up his insides like they’re just twigs and newspaper.

“Tell me where she is,” Mookie growls through gritted teeth. “Where is Nora?”

“Daddy is mad-dy,” Smiley gurgles.