Two minutes after the fox-god arrived Pouncy, Asmodeus, and Julia were the last of the Murs magicians, the cream of the safe-house scene, left alive on the planet. For a moment Julia felt her feet leave the floor—it must have been Pouncy, trying to buy them a minute by taking them up to that high ceiling, but Reynard cut the spell off when they were only a couple of feet off the floor, and they dropped back down hard. He picked up the heavy silver bowl, dumping out the rainwater, and threw it at Pouncy like a discus. Just as He did, Asmodeus finished up something she’d been working on since the god arrived, a Maximal Dismissal maybe, with a little something extra on it, something sharp that actually tweaked Reynard’s attention.

It didn’t hurt Him, but He felt it. You could see His big pointy ears twitch with annoyance. The cup struck Pouncy hard, but off-center. It crunched his left hip and went rocketing away. Pouncy groaned and folded in two.

“Stop!” Julia said. “Stop it!”

Fear: Julia was all out of it. A dead woman didn’t feel fear. And she was all out of magic too. She was going to say some regular words for a change, non-magic words. She was going to talk to this asshole.

“You took our sacrifice,” she said. She swallowed. “Now give us what we paid for.”

It felt like she was trying to breathe at thirty thousand feet. The fox looked down His narrow muzzle at her. With His doggy head and human body He looked like the Egyptian death-god Anubis.

“Give it to us!” Julia shouted. “You owe it to us!”

Asmo watched her from the other side of the room, frozen. All her knowing, savvy Asmo attitude had fallen away. She looked about ten years old.

Reynard gave a loud bark before He spoke.

“A sacrifice is not to be taken,” He said, in a deep, reasonable voice, with only a very slight French accent. “A sacrifice is to be freely given. I took their lives. They did not offer them to me.” It was like He couldn’t believe the rudeness of it. “I had to take them.”

Pouncy had pushed himself up into a sitting position against the wall. The pain must have been appalling. Sweat stood out all over his face.

“Take my life. I’m giving it to you. Take it.”

Reynard cocked His head. Fantastic Mr. Fox. He fingered His whiskers.

“You are dying. You will be dead soon. It is not the same.”

“You can have mine,” Julia said. “I’m giving it to you. If you let the others live.”

Reynard groomed Himself, licking blood and brains off the back of His paw-hand.