LXXXII
They grabbed us so fast the world snapped sideways.
One moment we were standing in the roar of the dog track, Lucky's Private Dancer streaking toward the finish line. One breath and a cash out later,
huge hands closed around our arms, the cat, everything.
Burly men, in dark clothes, obviously mob muscle.
Faces like brick walls, no feelings, no questions, just muscular arms that squeezed us tight, and ham-like hands that shut our mouths.
Half a dozen men surrounded us in the parking lot with their dark color cars, blocking every exit.
The dancer barely had time to gasp before one of them shoved him into the back seat of a black sedan. We were tossed in after him, the cat yowling as he was scooped up by a man with hands the size of dinner plates.
The door slammed as the engine growled.
And the car peeled away from the track with a loud screech of tires.
The cat hissed, claws out, fur bristling.
"I TOLD YOU NOT TO BET ON THE DOGS!"
The dancer whimpered.
"Sorry—sorry—sorry—"
But it was too late for apologies. They drove fast, defying streetlights, weaving through back streets until the city thinned and the smell of saltwater crept in. They had no fear of the cops or getting caught. The docks loomed ahead—rusted cranes, stacks of crates, the distant groan of ships.
The car stopped beside a warehouse painted with peeling carnival colors.
A funhouse.
The same funhouse from the cat's memories.
The one from the dancer's future death.
My stomach dropped.
The men dragged us out, and shoved us through the warped wooden doors. The moment we stepped inside, they were waiting.
The Russos appeared as if they were waiting for just this moment.
Cane Russo leaned against a pillar, arms crossed, bowler hat low over his eyes.
Mutt twirled his watch fob, smiling like a man who already knew the ending.
"Evening," Mutt said lightly. "Quite a race, huh?"
Cane cracked his knuckles.
"Lucky dog."
The dancer swallowed hard.
Slim Amon stepped out from behind a crooked mirror.
Tall. Sharp suit. Hair slicked back.
Smile thin as a razor, and so was his pencil mustache.
Your dancer's manager.
The man he trusted to get him jobs, vouched for him.
But also the man who fed him to the mob one errand at a time.
Slim spread his arms.
"Well, well, well. Look who decided to gamble with money that wasn't his."
The dancer's face crumpled.
"Slim… you were supposed to help me."
Slim laughed.
"Oh, kid. I did help you. I helped you get in deep enough that you'd dance for me forever."
The cat growled, low and dangerous.
"You bastard."
Slim blinked at the cat.
"Did… did your cat just talk?"
Mutt shrugged.
"Eh. Seen weirder."
Cane nodded.
"Yeah. Last week a guy tried to pay us in live chickens."
All in Cahoots
The dancer looked between them—Slim, Mutt, Cane—realizing the truth in slow, painful pieces.
"You… you're all working together."
Slim smiled.
"Of course we are. The Russos run the track. I run you. And you? You run your mouth and your feet. That's the whole system."
The dancer's knees buckled.
The cat stepped in front of him, tiny body bristling with fury.
"You don't touch him. Not this time."
Slim raised a brow.
"And what are you going to do, little kitty?"
The cat's eyes glowed faintly gold.
The mirrors around you shivered.
And the funhouse, the very place where the dancer was supposed to die,
waited.
The moment those wooden clubs and gleaming guns came out, the whole room changed temperature.
Not colder—just sharper.
Like the air itself understood that someone wasn't walking out of this funhouse alive if things went the way the Russos planned.
You took one look at their weapons and felt the timeline tighten like a noose.
I nodded at the hat‑man. He nodded back.
And the fog answered.
The fog rose, and it thickened around the floorboards, curling up the warped funhouse walls, slipping between the mirrors like a living thing. The mobsters laughed, thinking it was dry ice, some carnival trick meant to scare children.
They had no idea.
The dancer saw the fog and understood immediately, his future self's power, weak but present, ready to be used. It was thinner now, the hat man had used up so much power at the track.
He leapt at Slim with a fury you'd never seen in him before.
"You rat! I'm never working for you again!"
Slim barely had time to raise his arms before the dancer's fists connected—quick, sharp, furious. The dancer wasn't a fighter, but he was fast. He sidestepped Cane's swing, ducked under Mutt's grab, and used Slim's body as a shield, dragging him into the path of every blow meant for him.
Slim yelped, stumbling, arms flailing.
"Kid—kid—stop—!"
But the dancer didn't stop.
He'd been betrayed. Used.
Fed to the mob.
And now he was done being their puppet. I grabbed the dancer's arm.
"Run!"
He didn't hesitate.
We sprinted together into the house of mirrors, the cat darting ahead, fog trailing behind him like a cloak.
The mobsters followed, shouting, weapons raised.
But the mirrors swallowed them.
Reflections fractured their shapes—
one Cane became ten,
one Mutt became a dozen shadows,
Slim's face stretched into a screaming smear of glass.
The dancer looked at you, breathless.
"Lady… this place… it's alive."
You nodded.
"Mirrors are the source of our power when injected with soul."
The cat's voice echoed from somewhere deeper inside the maze.
"And sweetheart has the key."
Your hand tightened around the object in your pocket, the shard, the anchor, the thing that let the fog obey you instead of the timeline.
This would be close.
If the golden boy didn't do anything stupid, if he didn't panic—
you might all walk out unscathed.
But the funhouse was shifting. The fog was thickening. The mirrors were waking.
And the Russos were still coming.
Gunshots cracked through the funhouse like lightning splitting glass.
Each shot shattered another mirror, a tinkling rain of shards breaking reflections,
a maze turning into a battlefield.
You could hear the mobsters stomping through the hall, crunching over broken glass, their silhouettes multiplying and warping in the remaining mirrors. Every reflection stretched their faces into grotesque masks—
Cane's jaw elongated,
Mutt's mustache curled into impossible spirals,
Slim's eyes became hollow pits.
They fired at shadows that grew and shrank, at illusions that twisted their own shapes.
They were lost, but they were armed.
And they were angry.
The cat leapt into your arms, chest heaving, tiny body trembling.
"Sweetheart… we can't last much longer."
His voice was thin, strained. He'd been here before.
He'd died here before.
And then a shot rang out, a familiar voice in a groan, then a thud.
I spun around.
The golden boy staggered, hand pressed to his side, blood blooming between his fingers.
"Champ!"
He collapsed against a mirror, leaving a smear of red across the glass. His reflection fractured into a dozen wounded versions of himself, each one clutching their side, each one gasping.
The cat froze in recognition.
He had lived this moment.
He had died in this moment.
His fur bristled, his pupils blown wide, his voice cracking.
"No. No no no—this is the part—this is the part where I—"
He couldn't finish.
He shivered violently, claws digging into your coat.
"I've gone through this before."
The dancer slid down the mirror, breath shallow, eyes unfocused.
"Lady…" he whispered. "I… I think they got me…"
The fog thickened around your feet, responding to the cat's panic, the dancer's blood, your fear. The mirrors hummed, vibrating with soul‑energy, ready to snap open into something deeper, darker, more powerful.
The mobsters were getting closer, their shadows growing. I could hear the click and twirl of their guns reloading.
The cat looked up at you, desperate.
"Sweetheart… if we don't act now, the timeline repeats. He dies. I die. Everything resets."
The dancer coughed, blood on his lips.
"Don't… let me… die here…"
The mirrors flickered.