I’d gotten this far before, sure, but it was still a relief to do it when it really mattered. I’d drawn the Fish Boy. My card, more than any other card was mine. That was a start, it was.

Boss Authority just sat across from me and smiled, that blank eye of his boring right down into my soul it felt like, seeing into the deeps of me, into my stomach and heart and bones. It was like I could feel him, crawling through my skin, poking at my dreams and desires. Like he was knowing me, Boss Authority was, seeing all kinds of stuff he had no right to.

I felt a burning feeling right in the back of my head, and Boss Authority flinched a little.

“Keep your eye on yourself,” hissed Marina.

I nodded her a thank-you, but I don’t think she noticed.

I Orated then. It wasn’t the same thing I told Radegar, but it was close. About how this Fish Boy never fit in anywhere, about how all he wanted to do was be somewhere else, back to the river, back to anywhere, and his hope was always that this magic catfish could lead him home, to where he belonged. That it would lead him back to his daddy.

By the end of my talking, I realized the catfish had only one eye on his head, right there in the center. Now that was something.

“My magic, that is,” said Drusilla Fey. “That was me plucking the strings of fate, trying to call all Boss’s possessions back to him.”

“You’re the one who sent all them one-eyed creatures at me?” I said. “Even the toad that mesmerized me and got my mom’s bakery all burned down?”

She laughed, a high shrieking thing, and a weird eye sprouted in her forehead, all horizontal-like, and blinked three times. Then it sank bank into her noggin like it never was there at all.

“I sent out a call to gather back into the swamp all things that were owed to Boss Authority,” she said. “And here you came!”

“But why?” I said. “You could have called Pop to you whenever you wanted. Why now?”

“I’ll tell you why she waited,” said Marina. “He wasn’t strong enough. That’s the truth of the matter. Sure, he had the power to lock me up in this house, but that was just because of your stupid daddy over there. One on one, Bobby Felix couldn’t take me, not even with his pet witch here at his side. Same with Baudelaire Quatro. His was the last Parsnit house standing, Bobby Felix had made good and sure of that, but he didn’t have the power in him to burn it to the ground. It’s only now, after he’s hoarded those piddly little enchantments of his, after he’s cheated and swindled and flat bullied the magic out of every witch and mystic and Parsnit player this side of the river, did he have it in him to try and take over the swamp. That’s why he waited, Buddy. He was too durn weak.”