Roxy might be a sharpshooter, but even she couldn’t risk firing at me with all these tourists around. So the giant and the rest of his outlaw gang started whooping and hollering, as though their chasing me were just another act for the crowd. People fell for it, stepping back to make room for Brody and his goons to stampede after me. Some of the tourists even started yelling and clapping in return, enjoying the spectacle.

   Well, if the crowd wanted a show, I was going to give them a good one.

   I started deliberately plowing into people, knocking them aside and trying to create as many obstacles behind me as I could. I also overturned barrels, kiosks, and other displays, including a whole rack of Western wear that had the guy manning it yelling curses at me. Cowboy hats sailed through the air, floating on the winter wind, while silver belt buckles plink-plink-plinked against the asphalt like bullet casings.

   I reached another alley at the end of this walkway, staggered into it, and headed back toward Main Street, where the majority of the crowd still was. I couldn’t let Roxy, Brody, and the giants catch me. If that happened, Finn, Bria, and Owen were dead, and me along with them. Tortured first, for whatever information Tucker thought we had about the gems, and then murdered, so that we wouldn’t be a threat to him and the Circle anymore. Tucker would probably let Roxy use us all for target practice with her Fire-coated bullets, then have Brody and the rest of the giants dump our bodies in the lake.

   So I kept plowing ahead, knowing that I couldn’t stop, not even for a second. But I was running out of gas—fast. My heart was pounding from all the bobbing, weaving, and shoving through the crowd, making the drug circulate through my body much more quickly than normal. Even though I was flat out sprinting, my legs still felt heavy, numb, and slow, as though I were running underwater. The double vision was getting worse and worse, and my head felt disconnected from the rest of my body, like a balloon that was about to pop off my neck and drift up into the wild blue yonder.

   Even worse, Roxy, Brody, and the giants were gaining on me.

   I could hear the steady slap-slap-slap-slap of their boots on the asphalt, along with the answering jingle-jangle chorus from their silver spurs. In minutes they would run me down, or the drug would finally knock me out, or both. So when I reached the end of the alley and sprinted back out onto Main Street, I darted into the first building I came to, hoping that I could lose them that way.

   Naturally, it was the Good Tyme Saloon.

   I stumbled through the double swinging doors and ran right into a line of saloon girls, who were swishing their skirts and kicking up their heels to some loud, lively piano music. The girls weren’t happy about my slamming into them and interrupting their big finish. Then again, ruining shows was rapidly becoming a habit of mine.

   “Hey!”

   “Watch out!”

   “What do you think you’re doing!”

   Harsh, angry cries rose up all around me, but the tourists sitting at the tables ringing the dance floor thought that it was all just part of the show, and they cheered, whistled, and stomped their feet even harder and louder than before.

   One saloon girl shoved me out of her way, straight into another one, who shoved me right back at that first girl. In an instant, I went pinballing down the whole line of them, bouncing off one after another. Eventually, I staggered forward, landing right in the lap of an old guy with crooked yellow teeth who leered at me.

   “Here to give me a lap dance, honey?” he cackled.

   “Here’s your lap dance,” I growled back.

   I reached over, snatched up the glass mug of sarsaparilla that he was sipping, and smashed it over his head, making the dark brown liquid foam and spew all over his face.

   The guy howled with pain and shoved me away, but not before I grabbed another full mug off his table. I staggered to a stop in the middle of the dance floor, sarsaparilla slopping up and out of the glass, soaking into my clothes, and spattering against the wooden floorboards.

   At this point, the piano music abruptly stopped, the saloon girls scrambled off the dance floor, and the tourists finally realized that maybe I wasn’t part of the show after all. But before I could even think about moving, Brody crashed through the swinging doors.

   “There she is!” he yelled.

   The giant came at me head-on, his arms stretching out wide. I ducked out of the way of his bone-crushing bear hug, whirled around, and smashed the sarsaparilla mug across the back of his head. The glass shattered, making Brody yelp, lose his cowboy hat, stumble forward, and plow directly into a table full of guys, knocking their plastic baskets of wings and nachos to the floor and making them spill their beers all over themselves.

   That last, cardinal sin was what officially started the saloon fight.

   Those guys got exceptionally pissed that they were now wearing their beer instead of drinking it, and they jumped to their feet. Two of them advanced on Brody, while the other two came at me.

   I was wobbling so badly that I could barely stand, much less fight back, so I grabbed the closest saloon girl, twirled her around like we were doing a do-si-do, and shoved her at the two guys coming at me. She squealed, and all three of them fell to the ground in a heap of arms, legs, black lace, and crinoline.

   Click.

   Over the chaos, I heard the hammer snap back on a revolver, and I looked up to see Roxy standing just inside the saloon doors, her gun trained on me, evil intent glinting in her pale green eyes. She took a step forward to better her aim and make sure that she wouldn’t shoot a tourist by mistake, but more and more people started pushing, shouting, and screaming at each other, blocking her shot. I whirled around and ran straight past the bar, shoved through another set of swinging double doors, and ended up in the back of the saloon.

   It reminded me of the back of the Pork Pit, with napkins, straws, mugs, and other supplies stacked up on metal shelves, along with several refrigerators and a couple of freezers humming away up against the walls. For a mad, mad moment, I considered climbing into a freezer to hide, but I’d run out of air long before Roxy and Brody stopped searching for me.