The stairs twisted and turned and spiraled, blind corner after blind corner, each one a perfect hiding spot for someone who wanted to murder me. The stairs led to a hallway with doors on each side, and I saw Tally dart through one of them. I was coming, slow, sure, but steady, I was coming for her, I was coming to get my daddy’s cards back, yes sir.

I turned that corner and lunged through that doorway and there she stood, Tally the Pickpocket, in a tiny room stuffed high with books and glass vials and bundles of sticks and stones and jars of herbs and a bird or two flitting around their cages. The birds were lemon yellow and bright shining, like God had taken a sunbeam and shaped it right into an animal.

A tall skinny old man with a fringe of bushy hair and big bug-eyed spectacles sat in a chair in front of me.

“Buddy, this is my granddad,” said Tally. She held the Parsnit deck out to me like it was a present. I took it back, warily, like there was some kind of catch.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “Why’d you steal the cards if you were gonna just give them right back to me?”

“How else was I supposed to get you to Granddad’s?” she said, shrugging. “I told you he’d know where your daddy was, if anybody did. Heck, if I’d have let you wander around the Skinny Yellow Dog asking after Boss Authority all night, you’d be hogtied in the back of some river bandit’s skiff, headed into the swamp right now.”

Well, she had me there.

“Besides,” said Tally, grinning, “when was the last time you had a good meal?”

“Some old lady gave me some salt fish a couple of hours ago.”

“Let me tell you, Buddy boy,” said Granddad, “my stew is a heck of a lot better than some cold old salt fish, and you can swear on it.” His voice was high and rickety, like an old warped board someone just stepped on. I kind of liked it, to be honest. I liked his stooped back and suspenders and well-darned slacks. He looked like a gentleman inventor, he did, like somebody always sussing out the secrets of the universe. Hard not to like a fella like that.

Granddad reached his hand out to me, and I took it, because Pop always said you never refuse a hand when it’s offered out to shake.

“Charmed,” said Granddad.

His hand was long and thin, his fingers spidery and strong. He had a grip like a durn bear trap, and his eyes gleamed with a little silver light.

“Told you you’d like my granddad,” said Tally, and she was right.

Granddad set the table and ladled out the soup. When he stood to his full height, I realized just how tall Granddad was—near seven feet probably, and he was skinny as a pike pole. He put you in mind of a bug, like a praying mantis, or maybe one of those suckers that never move and just look like sticks. What do you call those? Stick bugs. Harmless things, stick bugs, and I always kind of liked them.