I saw what was in the jar. It was a man’s head, shaved bald and beardless, with a slightly hooked nose and bright beaming blue eyes. It was the exact head of the building we were in. It was Baudelaire Quatro’s head. The eyes blinked twice, and the mouth stretched open in horror. The head in the jar was very much alive, it was. The head in the jar was screaming for its dear life.

I felt Miss Arabella’s hand tense up and I heard the slightest whisper escape her lips. She was doing magic. The concierge’s eyes blinked aware and he yanked the head in the jar back to himself. He set it down on the ground and squatted himself down, rolled his sleeves up, and lifted his dukes. He was ready for a fight.

Boss Authority whirled around. Miss Arabella’s hand went ice-cold. Boss Authority’s left eye was deep brown and rimmed with yellow and orange, his right eye a blank white swirl. His nose was knobby and cruel, his face a mask of scars and tattoos and magic carvings into his skin. He had a weeping lady tattooed on his cheek, washing her hair in her own tears, and an hourglass on his neck with all the sand in the top part, none dripping down, like time would never run out on him, not ever.

He saw me. Boss Authority saw me, and it was like I could hear his voice whispering in my ears, I could feel him in the thud of my heart. Boss Authority knew me, he knew just who I was. He could hear the very thoughts jumbling around in my head. Boss Authority knew I was Davey Boy’s son.

I thought he would come for me then. I thought he would walk clink clank across the floor and grab me by my cheeks and snap my neck right then and there.

But the concierge was changing. His arms got plumper and his belly dropped and his hands went clawlike and his nose became a snout, two big tusks jolting out from under his lip. He hunkered down, a great warthog beast on all fours in the hall, growling in fury.

Boss Authority whipped back around. “All right little fella,” he said to the concierge, and spat on the fine red carpet. “Have it your way.”

Above us we heard Drusilla Fey’s cackling and the screams of folks as they tumbled down the staircase. Miss Arabella yanked my hand and we were running then, out the front door mouth past Boss Authority’s men and onto the pier. Rain beat down hard on us, lightning ripping glowing gashes in the gray clouds. Baudelaire Quatro’s Place was a wreck. The giant wooden head was on fire at the top, flames leaping high like some kind of hellish crown, and someone had busted both eyes out. Folks were leaping out of holes in the cheeks, not even bothering to untie their boats, just swimming off into the swamp for dear life. Boss Authority’s men were after them, low-down pirate-looking folks all scraggly and desperate, nothing but hate and glee in their eyes. Something had changed in the swamp, it had. Boss Authority was out for blood.