I staggered up to my feet, the air back in my lungs, my body hurt but with nothing broken.

“Listen up!” I hollered.

Nobody paid me any notice, same as usual. That right about ticked me off. I cupped my hands and gave it all my lungs could give.

“I said shut up, everybody! Boss Authority, you faker! You, having to steal other folks’ magic because you ain’t got any of your own. That’s right I’m talking to you. Listen up now, or you’ll be sorry.”

“You say I’ll be sorry?” said Boss Authority. “I don’t think I got much to fear from a little scamp like you.”

“Shoot, you ain’t much taller than me,” I said, swaggering toward him like I figured Pop would, poking my chest out, faking brave as best as I could. “Figured if you didn’t have a metal hand and that goofy snake ponytail, I could probably whoop you in a fair fight myself.”

That got him, it did. Boss Authority took the bait. He walked clank clomp right over to me, stared me down eye to eye.

“Give me one reason not to slit you gut to gizzard, little man,” he said.

“You play Parsnit, Boss?” I said.

“’Course I play Parsnit,” he said. “Ain’t a better Parsnit player on this whole earth than me, and that’s a fact. Just ask that fella strung up over there.”

He laughed, pointing at my daddy. I couldn’t look at Pop, not if I wanted to keep myself from crying. So I didn’t, I kept my eyes right on Boss Authority, I pulled all the grit and bluster I could into my voice and faked it with every bit of might and power I had.

“I ain’t got to ask him,” I said, “because he’s my no-good rotten lying scoundrel daddy.”

“That a fact?” asked Boss Authority. “You his runt, all grown up?”

“I am,” I said. “And what’s more, I’m ten times the Parsnit player he ever dreamed of being. Besides, I’m blood ain’t I? Parsnit rules say I can take over his bet if I want. I can be his rematch.”

“But what can you offer me?” said Boss Authority. “Look around you. I already got everything I want.”

“True,” I said. “But you won half my lucky blood off Pop already, the luckiest blood on this earth.”

Boy was I laying it on thick.

“Well, if you wound up here, I don’t think it’s half so lucky as you think.”

“It is,” I said. “But the other half of my blood is magic, thanks to my mom the witch. That half you don’t own, not yet. Besides, that piano player who just bolted out the back door? He heard me challenge you. What’s he going to tell the swamp, that Boss Authority was too scared to accept a duel from Davey Boy’s son and heir? That he was afeared of some ‘little runt’ as you said?”

“You got grit, boy,” he said. “I’ll give you that.”