Jack Schitt made a move to his coat, and I pulled out my pistol, only to see my forearm explode as a high-velocity round passed straight through it. The hand, with the gun still in it, went cartwheeling off past the righteous man. It didn’t hurt, and the Day Player’s military self-sealing design parameters had the blood flow stopped in less than two seconds. In an instant I went for my second pistol but stopped when I saw Jack pointing his weapon at the righteous man.

“Thanks for that,” I said in as sarcastic manner as I could, the somewhat distant relationship I had with my disposable body still surprising me.

“My pleasure,” said Jack with a smile. “Always useful to have a sniper covering your back, isn’t it? Crabbe,” he said, addressing his henchman, “would you?”

The Goliath agent I had last seen at the Lobsterhood divested me of my ankle Beretta and my dagger, then handcuffed me by my ankle to one of the marquee poles. He took my left hand and placed my pistol in it, then held my arm tight in the direction of the righteous man, who looked impassively at us both. I tried to move my arm, but I think Crabbe was a Day Player, too, and his two arms were more than a match for my one.

“Smite minus six minutes,” said Crabbe.

Jack lowered his weapon and walked up to me with a supercilious grin.

“It’s over, Thursday. The unrighteous will be destroyed, and you with them.”

“I’m a Day Player,” I told him, “as you well know.”

“Indeed.” He held the cell phone he’d been carrying to his ear. “Are you in place? Good.”

He turned back to me. “I have one of my people in your house at the moment with a weapon pressed against the head of the real you. This is what’s going to happen: The righteous man will be killed in order that the sinful may continue to attract the pillar of fire away from Swindon. I could kill the righteous man myself, but I thought, Hey! Wouldn’t it be more fun if it were Thursday?”

“Go to hell.”

“Undoubtably. Two choices. Option A: You kill the righteous man and we let the the Sleeping Thursday live. Or Option B: I kill the righteous man myself, and the real you is no more. Either way he’s dead, but using Option A you get to survive. What will it be?”

“Do you get some kind of weird kick out of all this?” I asked.

Jack Schitt smiled. “I do, actually. Like having Judith Trask killed. Unnecessary, but with a certain virtuosity in the baseness of the act, don’t you think?”

“So,” I said, “what you didn’t understand about ‘Go to hell’?” He laughed again.

“Smite minus four minutes,” muttered Crabbe, this time with a hint of nervousness.