The cards sailed through the air in a flurry, Boss Authority hardly even touching them as they scattered and mixed themselves. I had to do it the old-fashioned way, shuffling them same as I would any old deck. It was humiliating, it was, so I tried to do the accordion-thing. All the cards fell scattered on the table. Cecily Bob and Mr. Hugo busted out laughing. Even Drusilla Fey cracked a grin.

“Lawrence, I do believe we are doomed,” said Johnson, trying to whisper.

This did not make me feel any better. And yet, as I scooped the cards up, there was Tally, lingering a little too close to the table. She put her hand on my shoulder and looked into my eyes.

“I believe in you,” she said.

“Thanks,” I whispered. “Glad somebody does.”

I turned to my daddy, hunkered over in a chair, nursing his wounds. He looked red-eyed and drained, nothing but terror and a sort of manic worn-outness drawing wrinkles all over his face.

“Wish me luck?” I said.

Pop grinned at me. “Buddy, I thought you’d never ask.”

He slipped the vine from around his neck and snapped it quiet in his palm.

I felt it then, the hex break. It was like someone dumping cold water onto me on a hot day, like running outside bare-chested in a snowstorm. It shivered me scalp to toes, it did. I felt like I’d had some kind of supernatural bath, like the stars and moon had finally come out in the great black sky of my life. I hadn’t known how bad that hex had felt, it had been so long since I’d been usual. I had forgotten what being uncursed even felt like. For the first time since I was just a little kid, I finally felt like myself again.

It made me real mad at Pop, to be honest with you. No, not mad. That ain’t the right word at all. Bitter is how it made me feel, just a little bit, that I had suffered all that time and it was his doing. Pop knew it, too, I could tell, the way he hunkered back down in his chair and wouldn’t hardly look at me.

“Someone’s let a piece of magic loose in here,” said Drusilla Fey. “An old hex has been broken, I can smell it for miles. They’re cheating, they are. You want me to call it off, Boss?”

“Let them cheat,” he said. “Might at least make this duel interesting.” He looked at me, his weird eye turning loops in his head. “Go ahead then, Buddy boy. Draw.”

This was it then. I shut my eyes and said a prayer.

Please let it be the Fish Boy. Please oh please let it be the Fish Boy.

I drew my card and flipped it over and there he was. The awkward kid, a little slouched, his hair all mussed and wild, his eyes full with wonder—more and more like me he looked, more even than back on the skiff—holding a little wooden cup in his hands, that big old catfish half leaping out, whiskers flaring, as if he’d popped up to ask a question.