Boss Authority slammed his fist down on the table so hard I thought it’d crack.

“Yeah, I wasn’t strong enough, yeah I was weak!” he roared. “But that ain’t all it was. No, sir, that ain’t the half of it.” He pointed his big metal finger up at Pop. “It was him! I wanted him to see it! I wanted Davey Boy to see me in my glory, to watch as I took all that was once his and made it mine. I wanted to see Davey Boy humiliated. So I had Drusilla Fey cast her spell upon the waters, to call back to me all I’d won. You wouldn’t believe the riffraff that’s been floating up to my shores, all the scoundrels swirling in the muck.”

Boss Authority turned his weird eye on me in a stare so hard I could feel it, like something invisible in him reached right out and grabbed me by the collar.

“But Buddy boy,” said Boss Authority, “I tell you what. Of all the things that came drifting my way, you are the prize piece. Your blood will be the trophy I wear around my neck for the rest of my life. That and the beautiful look of terror on your daddy’s face while he watches me drain it right out of you.”

Oh boy, not a thing on this earth could have made me madder than that. But I had to stuff that anger down deep. It wouldn’t do to get furious, not quite yet. I still had a Parsnit duel to win.

“Your play, Boss,” I said.

Boss flipped his card next. I figured it would be something mighty, like Old Redbeard or King One Eye or even the Hobble Mystic. Some card to strike fear in me, some warlord card to pummel my little Fish Boy to smithereens.

But nope, Boss Authority flipped the Fish Boy, same as me. Except of course his Fish Boy looked a little different. The kid was shorter than mine, squatter too, like God took a normal-sized kid and squished him down a little with His thumb. He had sandy hair and zits all over his face, and he stood in a messy kitchen with pots and pans tossed all over the floor, spilling stinking-looking food everywhere.

And Boss Authority began to Orate.

As he spoke, his voice lost its snarl, it lost all the meanness and grit. It got softer, it did, gentler. Boss Authority was speaking like a normal person, like a kid even. I looked back at my daddy and I could see it right there, in all the anguish on his face, like he was remembering something that gave him pain all over. Boss Authority wasn’t talking like a Boss anymore. No, he was little Bobby Felix all over again.

He spoke of a lonesome home, of a wretched mom and a no-account daddy. He spoke of holes in the floor and rats in his bed. He spoke of waking up in the night to a snake trying to swallow a bat, a fight to the death right in the corner of the room.