“I told her about that laugh,” Tick-Tock said. His eyes shifted to the other woman, a heavyset redhead who looked like a long-haul trucker. “Didn’t I, Tilly?”

“Ay,” Tilly said at once. Her eyes were lustrous with fear and excitement, and she licked her lips obsessively. “So you did, many and many a time. I’ll set my watch and warrant on it.”

“So you might, if you could reach up your fat ass far enough to find them,” Tick-Tock said. “Bring me my knife, Brandon, and mind you wipe that slut’s stink off it before you put it in my hand.”

A short, bandy-legged man hopped to do as he had been bidden. The knife wouldn’t come free at first; it seemed caught on the unfortunate dark-haired woman’s breastbone. Brandon threw a terrified glance over his shoulder at the Tick-Tock Man and then tugged harder.

Tick-Tock, however, appeared to have forgotten all about both Brandon and the woman who had literally laughed herself to death. His brilliant green eyes had fixed on something which interested him much more than the dead woman.

“Come here, cully,” he said. “I want a better look at you.”

Gasher gave him a shove. Jake stumbled forward. He would have fallen if Tick-Tock’s strong hands hadn’t caught him by the shoulders. Then, when he was sure Jake had his balance again, Tick-Tock grasped the boy’s left wrist and raised it. It was Jake’s Seiko which had drawn his interest.

“If this here’s what I think it is, it’s an omen for sure and true,” Tick-Tock said. “Talk to me, boy—what’s this sigul you wear?”

Jake, who hadn’t the slightest idea what a sigul was, could only hope for the best. “It’s a watch. But it doesn’t work, Mr. Tick-Tock.”

Hoots chuckled at that, then clapped both hands over his mouth when the Tick-Tock Man turned to look at him. After a moment, Tick-Tock looked back at Jake, and a sunny smile replaced the frown. Looking at that smile almost made you forget that it was a dead woman and not a movie Mexican taking a siesta over there against the wall. Looking at it almost made you forget that these people were crazy, and the Tick-Tock Man was likely the craziest inmate in the whole asylum.

“Watch,” Tick-Tock said, nodding. “Ay, a likely enough name for such; after all, what does a person want with a timepiece but to watch it once in a while? Ay, Brandon? Ay, Tilly? Ay, Gasher?”

They responded with eager affirmatives. The Tick-Tock Man favored them with his winning smile, then turned back to Jake again. Now Jake noticed that the smile, winning or not, stopped well short of the Tick-Tock Man’s green eyes. They were as they had been throughout: cool, cruel, and curious.

He reached a finger toward the Seiko, which now proclaimed the time to be ninety-one minutes past seven—A.M. and P.M.—and pulled it back just before touching the glass above the liquid crystal display. “Tell me, dear boy—is this ‘watch’ of yours boobyrigged?”