Chapters (115)
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Table of Contents
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
- 37
- 38
- 39
- 40
- 41
- 42
- 43
- 44
- 45
- 46
- 47
- 48
- 49
- 50
- 51
- 52
- 53
- 54
- 55
- 56
- 57
- 58
- 59
- 60
- 61
- 62
- 63
- 64
- 65
- 66
- 67
- 68
- 69
- 70
- 71
- 72
- 73
- 74
- 75
- 76
- 77
- 78
- 79
- 80
- 81
- 82
- 83
- 84
- 85
- 86
- 87
- 88
- 89
- 90
- 91
- 92
- 93
- 94
- 95
- 96
- 97
- 98
- 99
- 100
- 101
- 102
- 103
- 104
- 105
- 106
- 107
- 108
- Also by Derek Landy
- About the Publisher
“That guy, you know. He’s tall and he looks at people like he’s going to shoot them all the time. He was the cop in that other movie, called that guy a punk and made him think about how many times he’d fired his gun because he’d lost track.”
“Clint Eastwood,” said Gracious.
“Yeah,” said Valkyrie. “Anyway, there’s a scene in it, in this Western he was in, and this other cowboy, dressed all in black, was told to go for a gun.”
“Lee Van Cleef,” said Gracious. “At the end of For a Few Dollars More.”
“Whatever,” Valkyrie said. “So he’s told to go for his gun and there’s this big long pause, because the guy who told him to go for it, the sheriff, is armed and he’s ready to fire.”
“Wait,” said Donegan. “It can’t be For a Few Dollars More. El Indio wasn’t the sheriff.”
“I’m pretty sure he was the sheriff,” Valkyrie said. “The other cowboy was in a jail cell. The sheriff was that guy from Superman, and the cowboy was from Harry Potter.”
Fletcher frowned. “Harry Potter was in a Western?”
“Oh my God,” said Stephanie. “It was Unforgiven, OK? Will you please let her get to whatever point she’s trying to make?”
Valkyrie continued. “So the sheriff makes this other guy, a third guy, I think he was in that film with Elvis and Tony Soprano and Brad Pitt lying on a couch, and he’s very nervous, but anyway the sheriff makes him give the cowboy a gun, and he tells the cowboy to pull the trigger, to shoot him and escape. So the cowboy reaches out for it, but he doesn’t know if it’s loaded or not, and the guy from Superman is standing there just waiting for him to grab it. But the Harry Potter guy can’t, so he sits back down. Then the sheriff, the Superman guy, he takes the gun and he opens it up and all these bullets fall out and the other guy’s like, ‘Aw, I could have shot him.’”
“My mistake,” said Stephanie. “There was no point.”
“It was that fear,” said Valkyrie. “The fear that if you make a move, the other person’s going to shoot you. Like they’re just waiting for you to do it, like they set the whole thing up to get you to make this mistake, and when you grab the gun, it’s going to be empty, and they’re going to open fire.