“Yes, he remembers me, the boy does. He remembers me well.” And Sinclair smiled a little sadly at that.

“The five. Myself, your father, Marina—watch her, boy, should you see her, as there be no more powerful witch that walks the earth than Marina dear, not that ever I have seen—Samantha Annie, and little Bobby Felix. Samantha Annie, yes, that’s your mother, child, did you know? Five we were, the best of friends, and never to be separated.”

Sinclair’s eyes caught a flicker of torchlight and brightened a little, and it was as if some kind of joy crept into his face right then.

“Parsnit was our game. It was the cards, the magic of the cards. It was how we made our living, running the tables from the smallest tavern all the way to Baudelaire Quatro’s Place. You have heard of Mr. Quatro, have you not?”

“A little,” I said. “He runs the most famous Parsnit hall in the swamp.”

“Indeed, child.” Sinclair’s eyes grew wide and he stared me deep in my own. “Though the hall has changed significantly, as has Mr. Quatro himself. Your father would not recognize the place were he to lay eyes upon it, so much has it changed. You would be wise not to meddle with Mr. Quatro. Even Marina fears magic such as that, gruesome it is, unwholesome. As am I! Yes, as am I!”

Sinclair snatched a fresh femur bone from the cave floor and split it over his knee and began to gnaw the marrow out from the center. He spat out a chunk of gristle and spoke.

“We played the game well, and the game sustained us. Often we weren’t above hijacking a trader’s longboat, or raiding some wayward boat fool enough to wind its way into our lands, all of it was ours, everything that touched the swamp waters. Those were happy times, I recall.” He shuddered, the bone shard slipping from his fingers. “Famous times, yes. My days in the light, those were.”

“Then how did you become, well . . . ,” said Tally.

“Times changed, they always do, they always will. Time is disobedient to us, children, we are time’s plaything, we are all shaped by it. Changed we are, diminished.”

I heard bats flutter above us, their chirp and call. I wondered what all lived down here, in Sinclair’s caves. I wondered where they all led to, all the secret tunnels and passageways, how many places in the swamp he could reach, how he could appear probably anywhere.

“But this is not my tale, no, not truly,” said Sinclair. “It is Little Bobby Felix’s story, and what he became. Who he became. Do you remember Bobby Felix, child? He was the weakest of us, the smallest, but he was one of ours. Our friend. And we shared all we had with him.”

“He was the short fella, right?” I said. “I think I remember him.”

“Yes, the boy remembers,” said Sinclair. “A gentle soul, so I thought, for a time. And yet little Bobby Felix wasn’t content being Bobby Felix, the weakest of us, the least mighty. He started collecting, gathering little magics. Totems, he called them, each one carrying with it some strange power. The pinky finger of a child saint, a stolen lock of hair from a Dolly Witch, the left fang of the last of the spider-folk.”