“You know,” said Tally, “I can show you a Parsnit duel.”

That stopped me cold. A real live Parsnit duel? One I could watch with my own eyes? It had been so long since I’d seen a real Parsnit duel, with a witch and everything.

“Yep,” she said, like she could read my thoughts. “A good one too, with real Parsnit players, not like those jokers upriver. They hold them in a secret room in the basement. I’ll take you there, no problem. The men who kidnapped your daddy are probably there right now.”

She did have a point. I mean, where else would I find Pop if not around a Parsnit table somewhere? It was as good a shot as any.

“Fine,” I said. “Let’s go.”

Tally smiled at me. I don’t know, that made me feel good, to be honest with you. I was wondering if finally I had made a friend.

8

TALLY LED ME DOWN A staircase, musty and winding, through a kitchen filled with steam and fire and pots and pans. A skinny man tossed vegetables up in the air, shouting, while a big lady chopped fish heads and screamed back at him. I stopped to stare a minute as she conked a still-wriggling catfish on the noggin, sliced its head clean off, and chucked it at the man. He caught it in one meaty fist, fish guts exploding all over his apron. The man began to shout while the woman cackled and tossed her knife in the air. It stuck right into the ceiling.

“Hurry!” said Tally. “You don’t want to be there when they really get into it.”

She led me through a trapdoor, up a weird scaffolding, onto the rafters in the ceiling, through a hole in the wall, to a beam overlooking a tiny, lamplit room, where two sweaty men sat at a table, cards out in front of them. A straight-backed beautiful woman elegantly dressed who I took to be a witch sat hovering just a tiny bit over her chair, like her body never quite touched the furniture. The duel was still in the early stages, the men having just flipped their top cards over until they landed on a Person card. Pop always said if you knew your deck, really truly knew it same as you do your own left arm and fingers, then you could summon the card you wanted, that you could draw it out of the deck first every time, no matter who shuffled.

“But Pop,” I had said, “that’s like magic.”

Pop just nodded. “Sounds about right to me.”

At one end of the table sat a man with a long mustache, twisty and droopy that dangled far off his face like catfish whiskers and dribbled down to his chin, with a great big sun-faded cowboy hat on his head. He was skinny and dusty-looking, like he’d been riding around on his horse all day. He took huge glugs from an unmarked jug next to him every minute or so. He had drawn the High Lonesome Traveler, with his fiddle and horse and clouds of dust behind him, that haughty chestnut horse swaggering through the desert like all that hot and lonely didn’t bother him one bit. The other player was a black lawyer-looking fella with a nice suit and a monocle. He chewed a cigar but wouldn’t light it. He had drawn the Ornery Banker, and you could tell he was mighty excited about it.