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Marla turned her attention to the one still standing. “I need a list of the names and
addresses of all the other sorcerers in town.” The Dalton didn’t react. Marla snapped her
fingers in front of his face, and he blinked. She repeated herself.
“What?” he said. “I can’t tell you that. You’re an outsider.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Marla said. “Mutex has killed three of you so far. Finch, Umbaldo,
and now you. He’s targeting sorcerers, at least all the ones who dismissed or laughed at
him. Apparently he doesn’t have any problem locating you—the Cornerstone probably
makes his divination spells infallibly accurate. That’s three dead in, what, six hours? At
this rate, there aren’t going to be any sorcerers left in San Francisco, except for me, the
outsider. But if you give me the names and addresses of the remaining sorcerers, I can
give them a little warning, maybe manage to save some of them. How does that sound?”
“It makes sense,” the Dalton said.
“Then you’d better get a move on, because you’ve only got about seven minutes to
live.”
“I’d rather spend my last moments jerking off,” the Dalton said, but he went to a desk in
the corner and opened a sleek, thin laptop. He tapped at the keys for a few moments,
entered several passwords in succession, and finally opened a file. A printer on the
blood-spattered desk began to hum and spit out pages.
“That’s just names and addresses,” the Dalton said. “The detailed dossiers aren’t on the
network, they’re on a local drive deep underground.”
“Guess I’ll have to be surprised by their sparkling personalities,” Marla said. “It looks
like Mutex is hitting you in order of succession. Who’s next in line to be chief-ofchiefs?”
The Dalton tapped the first page of the printout.
Marla picked it up, read, and nodded. She turned to B. “We’re going to the Tenderloin.
Which Rondeau tells me is not the meatpacking district. We’re going to meet somebody
named Bethany. No last name. How very pop-star of her.”
“Bethany,” the Dalton said. “Fuck. I like her. Liked her. I hope she doesn’t wind up the
way I did. But she’s good, so maybe she won’t.”
“Yeah? Is she good enough to avoid what just happened to your original?”
The Dalton shrugged. “I would’ve thought I was good enough to avoid that, but I
wasn’t. She’ll put up a fight, though.”
“Good. I’m going to help her out. I’m not sure what I can do to Mutex, but I’ll do my
best. We’d better get moving, though. Mutex hasn’t been taking frequent rest breaks.”
She glanced back at the Daltons, one of whom was still crying, while the other sat at the
desk in the corner, staring blankly across the room at his sire’s heartless corpse. They