“Yeah, that’s–” He winces. Even talking sends jags of pain into his hip. “Yeah.”

Skelly looks to another girl: a real dieselpunk sweetie, cherub cheeks and thick hips and a tat of a big-ass fire-wreathed wrench on her one bicep. “Lulu, gimme the gun.”

The other girl tosses Skelly a gun. His gun. The shotgun.

Skelly looks the gun up and down. Then she racks the pump – the shell currently in the chamber flips out onto the hard rocky ground.

She does it five more times. Shells bouncing on stone. Until none are left.

Then she hands the gun back to Lulu.

“We don’t like guns,” she says.

“I know.”

“You brought a gun into our home.”

“And what a nice home.”

“It does us all right.”

“I gotta ask, though. You ladies piss in a communal bucket? What do you do with your tampons? Just fling them into the corner? If you’re all on the same cycle–”

She steps forward, puts her boot on his hip. And presses down. Misery. Sheer misery that refuses to stay contained to that one space. It’s like touching a downed power wire. White. Hot. Cold. He cries out. She steps off.

He has to blink back tears. Suck back a snot bubble.

“You know,” she says, “being a woman isn’t easy. It’s tricky sometimes. But I’ll tell you if there’s one advantage we have, it’s that everybody always seems to underestimate what we can and will do. Men, mostly – but even other women do it. Isn’t that sad? It lets us get away with a lot, daddy-o. Lets us pull little surprises. Lets us get tricky.”

“Fuck you.”

“You want me to stand on that broken coat-rack you call a body again? Maybe we’ll all have a go. Use you like a trampoline. Sound fun, sugarplum?”

He winces past the pain and offers a placating smile. “My… apologies. Ma’am.”

“That’s better. I like a puppy knows when it’s licked. Keep showing your belly and maybe you’ll get out of here alive.”

“Wasn’t sure that was an option.”

Now a new voice: “We need a messenger.”

He knows that voice.

He heard it one time. And it told him sorry just before a bullet tore into him.

Nora Pearl. Persephone.

She steps up. And he can see that she’s not with these girls. Not really. Nora looks like she did a year ago, if a bit more made-up. But it’s still the same costume: navy cardigan, a tartan skirt. Like she’s jailbait, still in high school.

Werth can’t even think of something snappy to say. He just waits there. Seething.

“You look a little pale,” Nora says to him. “You feeling OK?”

“I should kill you.”

“That’s what you came to do. Isn’t it?” With the toe of her shoe, she kicks a few 12-gauge shells around. “Oops.”