The boatman stared at Tool as he emerged from the jungle. They had rendezvoused below Moss Landing, but as Tool materialized from the shadows of the jungle, the boatman was so startled that he almost let the current carry him away.

Tool bared his teeth. “I am not here to war with you. We will pass through your life and be gone and you need never remember that we existed.”

The man just stared. He looked at Mahlia. “What are you?”

“Just some castoff,” she answered as Tool swung the two captives aboard the skiff and climbed aboard himself, making the sailboat tilt alarmingly.

“It’s impossible,” the man said. “I can’t hide a dog-face on my boat.”

Tool growled and bared his tiger teeth. “You may call me Tool, or half-man or augment, but if you think to call me dog-face again, I will tear open your chest, and eat your heart, and sail your skiff myself.”

The man recoiled. “It’s impossible. There’s no way they’ll let us pass with… with…” Mahlia could tell he wanted to say dog-face again, but didn’t dare. “You,” the man finished, finally.

Tool dismissed him. “That is not your concern. Tell us where our enemies lie. I will conceal myself at the necessary moments.”

The boatman still looked doubtful. “And you let us go, when you’re done?”

Mahlia and Tool both nodded. Mahlia said, “We’re just trying to help a friend.”

“Helping a friend?” The man looked at Mahlia, askance. “And this is how you repay our kindness? What if we hadn’t helped you with Clarissa? Where would you be, then?”

Mahlia flushed and looked away. “It ain’t personal,” she said.

“It never is with your kind. You pick up guns and you hurt and you kill and none of it is personal.” The man looked at her. “Children with guns. We aren’t even people to you.”

“Hey! I ain’t part of this war,” Mahlia said. “I didn’t ask to be in it. I didn’t ask soldier boys to come hunting after me! I ain’t part of this.”

But even as she said it, she felt stupid. Before her, two boys lay on their backs in the bottom of the skiff, bound in kudzu vines that Tool had twisted into ropes. Her captives. Her victims.

With Tool, she could just as easily cut off their hands and dump them in the water and laugh while they tried to swim. She had power over them, and she’d used it to make sure they did exactly what she wanted.

She was in, all right. All in, and going deeper.

“Just get us downstream and we’ll leave you alone,” she mumbled. “We ain’t here to hurt no one.”