“You forfeit the duel?” said Boss Authority. “Then you forfeit your blood, both yours and your daddy’s.”

“No, Boss,” I said. “My blood doesn’t belong to anybody but myself. No game can give you a right to it, nor my daddy either. I renounce the power of these cards, of this game. I renounce your authority, Boss. I renounce any claim you have to this swamp or its people. I ain’t got time for this garbage anymore, and that’s a fact. So you can get on out of Marina’s Place. She don’t want you around, and I don’t either. Scram already!”

Boss Authority leapt out of his chair. He flipped the table across the room, and it shattered against the wall. I thought he was gonna rip my head off, I thought he was gonna crush my neck in his palms.

But then something happened, something changed. Boss Authority’s ponytail fell from his hair and wriggled on the floor. His teeth fell out, one by one, clattering on the ground like dice. His muscles wilted and his gut sagged. He was nothing without his magic. He was just regular old Bobby Felix, gone wild and strange with power, giving everything that was natural to him away. He lifted his great clockwork fist at me and shook it, but it fell clanging from his wrist.

I could feel it in the air, the spark in my blood, the thunder and boom of my own heart in my chest. I’d done it. I’d out-Orated Boss Authority. The Parsnit duel was mine, and Boss Authority’s power was undone.

Marina grinned. “Looks like we have a winner.”

Harlen burst into the bar, carrying a bouquet of purple and red flowers in his teeth. He bounded past Boss Authority and Drusilla Fey, dropping the flowers right in Marina’s hand. Cecily Bob came chasing in right after him, all huffing and out of breath, his trousers torn to shreds and a big bite mark across his calf muscle.

“Don’t let her have them flowers!” he hollered. “Don’t let her get a hand on them!”

But it was too late.

Marina closed her fist on the flowers and whispered into them, and when she opened her hand the crushed petals rose like embers above her palm.

“I knew it,” she said. “It just took me a second, is all.”

The petals turned into a ball of fire, hovering over Marina’s open palm. She took a step toward Drusilla Fey, and Drusilla Fey backed away from her.

“Somehow you’d gotten powerful enough to break my hex and step foot in here,” said Marina, “and for a minute I just couldn’t figure out how. But it was the stench that gave you away, all that perfume. All those flowers. And I sent Harlen for the one thing I knew could defeat you, could undo every spell you cast on yourself. And Harlen’s a good boy, ain’t he? He brought them right to me.”

Drusilla Fey hissed and charged at Marina. Before she got even two feet Marina blew on the fire in her palm and it erupted in Drusilla Fey’s face. Her hair exploded in flames, and snakes fell from her gown, dozens of them slopping, squirming on the floor. She flew out the window, her hair a great red blaze, and vanished into the swamp night shrieking.