Luther crouched and said, “Wait!” and the Deacon held up his hands and said, “Now—” but Jessie fired and the fingers of the Deacon’s left hand came free and hit the wall behind him and the Deacon shouted something Luther couldn’t understand and then the Deacon said, “Hold it, okay?” Jessie fired again and the Deacon didn’t seem to have any reaction for a moment and Luther figured the shot had hit the wall until he noticed the Deacon’s red tie widening. The blood bloomed across his white shirt and the Deacon got a look at it for himself and a single wet breath popped out of his mouth.

Jessie turned to Luther and gave him that big Jessie-smile of his and said, “Shit. Kinda fun, ain’t it?”

Luther saw something he barely knew he saw, something move from the stage, and he started to say “Jessie,” but the word never left his mouth before Smoke stepped out between the drums and the base stand with his arm extended. Jessie was only half turned toward him when the air popped white and the air popped yellow-and-red and Smoke fired two bullets into Jessie’s head and one into his throat and Jessie went all bouncy.

He toppled into Luther’s shoulder, and Luther reached for him and got his gun instead and Smoke kept shooting, and Luther raised an arm across his face, as if it could stop the bullets, and he fired Jessie’s .45 and felt the gun jumping in his hand and saw all the dead and blackened and blue from today and heard his own voice yelling, “No please no please,” and pictured a bullet hitting each of his eyes and then he heard a scream—high-pitched and shocked—and he stopped firing and lowered his arm from his face.

He squinted and saw Smoke curled on the stage. His arms were wrapped around his stomach and his mouth was open wide. He gurgled. His left foot twitched.

Luther stood in the middle of the four bodies and checked himself for wounds. He had blood all over his shoulder, but once he unbuttoned his shirt and felt around in there, he knew that the blood was Jessie’s. He had a cut under his eye, but it was shallow and he figured that whatever had ricocheted off his cheek hadn’t been a bullet. His body, though, did not feel like his own. It felt borrowed, as if he shouldn’t be in it, and whoever it might belong to sure shouldn’t have walked it into the back of the Club Almighty.

He looked down at Jessie and felt a part of him that just wanted to cry but another part that felt nothing at all, not even relief at being alive. The back of Jessie’s head looked as if an animal had taken bites from it, and the hole in his throat still pumped blood. Luther knelt on a spot of floor the blood hadn’t reached yet and cocked his head to look into his friend’s eyes. They looked a little surprised, as if Old Byron had just told him the night’s tip pool had turned out bigger than expected.