“Stop calling me Dad!” The Conjurer stared at the Kid, and he seemed oblivious to the gun pointed at him. “Wait, dead? How did she die?”

“How do you think she died? She was murdered.”

The Kid remembered again when the Rasmussen Gang, mean and hungry, more wolves then men, with faces painted white and noses painted red, had come riding into town.

We’re looking for the Conjurer, they kept saying. We’re looking for that bastard, he owes us a life, we know he’s been through here, there was a woman, they said.

Then one of the townsfolk, he must have said something to them, and the biggest of the brothers smiled. A terrible dread filled the kid’s heart then, worse than the fear of dying.

They’d strung him up and he swore he’d get them and they laughed. Then they left him to die, but the rotten old beam collapsed under the kid’s weight and he lived, still. But when he ran after them it was too late.

He reached his home only to see it on fire.

He ran inside. . . .

“It was you,” he said now. “They were looking for you.”

“The Rasmussens . . . ,” the Conjurer said. “Ethel’s dead? I never meant . . . When we parted . . . it was only meant to be for a few months, but time flows differently in the Thinning, and when I returned she wasn’t there, the whole town was gone. But that was years ago, and as for a kid, I never . . . she never said . . .”

“I’ve been looking for you for a long time,” the Kid said. He aimed the gun very steadily. “I’ve waited for this moment.”

“I didn’t kill your mother!” He stared at the Kid. “And I don’t want to have to kill you. Put down your gun.”

“You think you can take me?” the Kid said, and the Conjurer laughed.

“I know I fucking can,” he said.

The Stranger backed away from them both. His ears were filled with the even ticking sound of a clock. It felt to him that the seconds were speeding up, and that time was running out. A sense of giddy exhalation . . .

“I hate to break this touching family reunion,” he said. “But I think we have bigger—”

Two shots were fired at once. The Stranger stared at the others. He could see the bullets. See them emerge from the barrels of the guns. See them cut through the air like slow-moving larvae. See them shed the casing, like pupae emerging, like popping corn. The bullets spread wings. Two butterflies rose into the air. They circled each other, then fled out of the open door into the city beyond.

“—problems,” the Stranger said.

The Conjurer stared down at the giant mechanical fish. It whirred now, from some internal mechanism, and it glowed, light escaping through narrow slits under its scales. The ticking sound grew louder.