Betsy must be pretty worn out by now, he thought, but there was still no telling what she was capable of.

“Jesus,” Stoppard said. “Why’d you do that?”

He seemed to really want to know, but Betsy ignored him. Her face was grim and set.

“Open it. Do it now.”

“What makes you think I can open it?”

“You know what.”

Plum sighed, resigned.

“I guess I do.”

She sat down cross-legged in front of the case and snapped open the latches as if they’d never been locked. As soon as she did Betsy kicked her aside roughly.

“Hey!”

She rummaged through the contents. She picked up a book, tossed it aside, then she held up a long knife made of what looked like tarnished silver. It was a simple weapon, unornamented. It looked very functional and very old.

“Yes,” she whispered to it. Her voice cracked. “Oh, yes. Hello you.”

With a rush of air and a thunderous crackling whump the pool table bashed straight down through the canopy and landed solidly on its thick legs on the forest floor. Lionel rode it down standing up, the bird on his shoulder. There was no sign of Pushkar.

“Where’s the case?” Lionel took in the corpse, Quentin and Plum and Stoppard, Betsy and the knife. “You opened it.”

He’d unwrapped his parcel: it was a gun, a snouty-looking assault rifle that fit lightly under his arm. Stock and barrel were deeply engraved, swirls and tracery—it was obviously a hybrid weapon, high-tech but magically augmented.

“I sure did,” Betsy said.

“Where’s Pushkar?” Stoppard said.

Instead of answering Lionel smoothly raised the rifle to his shoulder, sighted down it and fired two controlled bursts briskly and efficiently at Stoppard’s chest.

He should have died right then. But even before Lionel fired Betsy was between them, holding the blade—she’d moved faster than Quentin could follow. The bullets sparked and clanged off the silver knife, two quick metallic triplets, and ricocheted off into the bushes. Whatever that knife was, it came with a lot of fringe benefits, and one of them was that it wasn’t going to let its wielder get hurt.

Quentin stared at Lionel.

“What the fuck? You fat piece of shit!”