“No thanks,” I said. “I had about enough of strange old folks today, if that’s all right with you.”

Just then I noticed a pigeon perched on a beam about level with my head. The whole place was rotten with pigeons, cooing around on the floor with their funny head-bobbing walk, kind of pretty birds but kind of like rats too. I never did quite know what to think about pigeons, if you want to know the truth about it. But this one was different. For one, it was staring right at me. I mean that. Its head cocked a little to the side, but its gaze fixed on me, like it was waiting on me to up and talk to it.

Also the thing had one eye, a big one, right there on its forehead, boring right into me. It was just like that toad I’d seen the day Mom’s bakery burned down, the one that had mesmerized me. The one that had . . .

“Nice Parsnit deck,” said Tally. “How’d you get it? Huh? Did you steal it?”

Somehow she’d slipped Pop’s Parsnit deck right out of the knapsack and I hadn’t even noticed. Tally sure was one heck of a pickpocket. I tried to snatch it back, but she yanked it away again. By God, she was quick.

“Where’d you get it from, boy?” she said. “I happen to know a lot about Parsnit, and I know this ain’t yours.”

“Just give it back to me, okay?” I said.

“At least tell me your name,” she said, “so I don’t have to keep calling you ‘boy’ like a durn idiot.”

“Fine,” I said. “My name is Buddy.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Buddy,” she said. Tally smiled at me like she meant it. Still, I didn’t like getting pickpocketed, even if it was by a nice person.

“Just give me my daddy’s cards back,” I said.

Her eyes grew wide. “This is Davey Boy Pennington’s Parsnit deck? The famous one that . . . Hey, wait a minute. Why doesn’t he have it on him? Every Parsnit player always carries his deck around with him. They get all twitchy when you separate them. I’ve seen it a million times.”

“I told you already, he got kidnapped. Now can I have it back or what?”

“Sure,” she said, and held the cards out to me. I snatched them back and tucked them away in the knapsack. I was going to have to keep a much better lookout on my stuff henceforth if I was going to make it out of Gentlesburg in one piece. “I really think you should come see my granddad right now.”

“I told you I ain’t got time for your granddad,” I said. “I’m not trying to be rude, really I’m not, but I got to find Pop.” Then something occurred to me. “Hey, did you happen to see a one-eyed pigeon?”

“A what?”

“Never mind,” I said. “It ain’t important.”

I turned to go, make my way around the Skinny Yellow Dog, see if I couldn’t rustle up some answers for myself.