“I’m sorry, Sis,” Karas said.

“Don’t be.”

“Keep your drums shut,” Black said. “You can kiss and make up later.”

Darsal led them to Smither’s Barbeque and pushed the door open.

“That’s far enough.” The Dark One stepped past her, sauntered up to the bar, and turned around, wearing a sly grin. “Now. Come in, and keep your hands where I can see them.”

She walked in, followed by Karas. Claude filled the doorway, long gun in hand. The rest stayed in the street, watching.

“Where are they?”

“You expect me to just give them to you?”

Black lifted his hand, and she watched it fill with a long gun with two barrels, stretched out toward Karas. “You expect me not to blow your little doll here all over the wall?”

He’d made his point. “How do I know you won’t anyway?” she demanded.

“I’m going to count to three. One, two, thr—”

“Behind the counter.”

“Get them out.”

Black kept the gun on Karas, who stood too far away for Darsal to touch, no matter how well things went. And she wasn’t going to leave the girl.

“Give me your assurance that you’ll let us go if I give you these four, and I’ll help you find the other three,” she said.

“The other three? What makes you think I need your help?”

“Billos said you needed his help.”

“To bring the four books to me from wherever they came. The rest was just to get his attention.” The man smiled. “And for the record, the other three books aren’t here. They’re in the real world of Paradise. This”—he scanned the ceiling and walls—“is all a simulation of sorts. Real enough, but no flesh and blood. You’re strapped in a chair at the moment, playing a game. The only way to enter the flesh-and-blood Paradise is through an open book. Unfortunately, once you do that, there’s no going back. Ever.”

What he was suggesting was nothing but a trick, of course. “If none of what I see is real, then neither are the books,” she said. “They’re useless.”

“No, the books are outside all this. They’re the only thing that is real here. Except me and your mind, that is. Which is why if I kill little Miss Muffet here, she dies. So it might as well all be real, comprende?”

She didn’t comprende, whatever that meant.

“The books, if you would be so kind. Let’s go on three again, shall we? One, two . . .”

The rear door crashed open. “Three.”

Boom!

Darsal’s breath caught in her throat. Billos appeared in the doorway and finished Black’s threat. But the word hadn’t left Billos’s mouth before Black swiveled his gun and fired from both barrels.