“You were astonishingly lucky,” he said in a soothing tone. “The doctors say you’ll make a full recovery. The caliber was quite small, and it entered your skull obliquely; by the time it had gone through, most of the energy was gone.” He tapped the side of his head. “It lodged between your brain and the inside of the skull. Gave us quite a fright, though.”

“Cindy died, didn’t she?”

Joffy answered. “Looked to be improving, but then septicemia set in.”

“They really loved one another, you know, despite their differences.”

“She was a hit woman, Thursday, a trained assassin. I don’t think she regarded death as anything more than an occupational hazard.”

I nodded. He was right.

Landen leaned forwards and kissed my nose.

“Who shot me, Land?”

“Does the name ‘Norman Johnson’ mean anything to you?”

“Yes,” I said. “The Minotaur. You were right. He’d been trying to slapstick me to death all week—steamroller, banana skin, piano—I was a fool not to see it. Mind you, a gun’s hardly slapstick, is it?”

Landen smiled.

“It had a large BANG sign that came out of the barrel, as well as the bullet. The police are still trying to make sense of it.”

I sighed. The Minotaur was long gone but I’d still have to be careful. I turned to Landen. There was still something I needed to know.

“Did we win?”

“Of course. You pegged a foot closer than O’Fathens. Your shot has been voted Sporting Moment of the Century—in Swindon, at any rate.”

“So we aren’t at war with Wales?”

Landen shook his head and smiled. “Kaine’s finished, my darling—and Goliath has abandoned all attempts to become a religion. St. Zvlkx does indeed work in mysterious ways.”

“Are you going to tell me?” I said with a wan smile. “Or do I have to beat it out of you with a stick?”

Joffy unfolded the picture of St. Zvlkx and Cindy’s fatal pianoing on Commercial Road, the one from the Swindon Evening Globe that Gran had given me.

“We found this in your back pocket,” said Miles,

“And it got us to thinking,” continued Joffy, “exactly where Zvlkx was heading that morning and why he had the ticket for the Gravitube in his bedroom. He was cutting his losses and running. I don’t think even Zvlkx—or whoever he was—believed that Swindon could possibly win the SuperHoop. Dad had always said that time wasn’t immutable.”

“I don’t get it.”

Miles leaned forward and showed me the picture again. “He died trying to get to Tudor Turf Accounting.”

“So? Oldest betting shop in Swindon.”

“No—in the world. We made a few calls. It had been trading continually since 1264.”

I looked at Joffy quizzically. “What are you saying?”

“That the Book of Revealments was nothing of the kind—it’s a thirteenth-century betting slip!”

“A what?”