"No."
"I'll be in the other room. I quit being curious about brains a while ago."
"Go to bed if you want."
"No, I'll wait."
The knife went around the forehead, the scalp peeled back. The electric skull saw buzzed right through the bone. The brain didn't look any different from a human's, not that Danny's job had involved much neurosurgery. He was getting tired. He used the long-bladed knife and cut out a wedge, as from a watermelon, pried out the bullet and shoved the section back. He put the bowl of skull back in place and tugged the scalp down. "That's it," he said. "What now?"
"That's all," Stagger Lee said. "I'll call to have the body collected, get the maids to clean up in here."
"I can do it."
"We've got maids. You're a specialist. Get your-" He looked at the mug with its pink stains, wiped it, carefully poured the contents into a paper cup. "Here. Call it a night. Remember, poker game's Monday. Let me know."
Danny didn't object. He carried the coffee up to his room, took a short hot shower and fell into bed.
Something didn't add up right about the bullet business. It might be true about sending the body back to Elfland, it might even have been true about removing the World stuff; but it didn't feel true-at least, not like all of the truth.
He didn't think anymore, he didn't want to. He slept.
There was a tall woman there-really tall, somewhere over six feet-in a red flannel shirt, black vest and jeans, blazing away with a Tommy gun. Danny recognized her from the raid on the bottling plant. She turned her head. "Hi," she said.
"Hello. I'm… Doc."
"Just a sec." She pulled off her soundproof earmuffs. "Hi," she said again. "You said you were Doc, right?"
"Yeah."
"We didn't have a chance to get introduced the other night. I'm Katie Silverbirch. Long Tall Katie if I'm not there to hear it." She pulled the magazine out of the Thompson. "Come to play?"
Danny gestured at the weapon. "I never shot one of those before. I was going to ask Jesse about it."
"Jesse's busy, I think. But he taught me, and I can teach you. If that'll do."
"That'd be great. Thank you."
"Get yourself some goggles and a set of muffs. Right over there."
When Danny was equipped, Katie showed him how to load and work the gun. "You've basically got two useful stances. If you really want to hit targets, you hold it like a rifle, bring it up to your eye, like this. If you can brace against a corner, that's even better; gives you some cover, too." She lowered the weapon to just above her waist, leaned forward on the balls of her feet. "Hipshooting isn't very accurate, but if you've got to charge through a door, it makes the bad guys duck. And a Thompson throws so much lead you'll probably hit something. This is the way." She leaned into the gun and fired a burst, tearing the midsection out of the paper silhouette at the end of the range. She handed Danny the gun. "Try it."
He did. The Thompson bucked like a firehose under full stream, but he clenched hard and got some of the bullets into the target.
" 'S'okay," Katie said. "What do you think made all those other holes in the wall-moths?"
"How long did it take you to learn?"
"Awhile. But I was handling a chainsaw when 1 was four. It's all in the control."
"Four?"
"My folks are loggers, up in Michigan. The Peninsula."
"That's the skinny north part, right?"
She laughed. "Right. How about you?"
"Farmers. Iowa."
"Came 'bout as far. Call strong down there?"
"What do you mean?"
"The call to come here. You know, to where the magic's strong. My Mama calls it medicine. She's Ojibwa. Try changing out the magazine." As Danny did, Katie said, "I didn't know what it was at first. I just had some dreams, and a funny feeling when I saw clouds in the south. But Mama knew. She said to Dad, 'Girl's had a vision. She's gone go.'
"My dad, he's a big old Finn, but he's got medicine of his own… Anyway, Mama packed me up, and said goodbye. Dad drove me to Green Bay, to the train station, and he said goodbye. Don't think he could have done it with Mama there. The way he did it, he could go back home and tell Mama I'd gotten on the train all right, everything was fine. So what did your folks say, when it happened?"
"They didn't want me to go." Danny put the gun down, thinking hard. He thought he'd gone away on his own account. What did it change if something had made him do it? "We argued a lot about it."
"Oh." Katie chewed on her lip, and then said, "I got scared, on the way. I got off the train when it stopped in Milwaukee, and I thought about just not going on. But it was dark, and when I looked out on the lake and saw the Fire glow… I got back on. I don't know what would have happened if it had been daytime."
Danny told her about the old man at the truck stop, with his box of Bibles. "Maybe… there's always a last chance to change your mind." He wasn't at all sure he believed yet in a call, but he couldn't deny that it made sense.
"Turn back, O man," Katie sang without much of a tune, "forswear thy foolish ways."
Danny said, "Do you still hear from your folks?"
"Mama writes every month. Dad's not much of a writer, but he always puts a line or two in. Sends a photo, sometimes. You know what a bloodstopper is?"
"No."
"Some people can stop bleeding, with a word, sometimes just by willing it. This is old, long before the elves came back. All the loggers know about it; somebody'd take an ax in the foot, or a bucksaw right through the hand, and they'd call the bloodstopper. Even if he was on the phone, he'd work the charm, and the bleeding would just quit."
"You've seen that?"
"Yes. My dad can do it, and on the drive to Green Bay he taught me. A man can only teach a woman, and a woman has to teach a man." She paused, put her hands together. "I haven't worked it. Shade medicine's strange-the elves' and ours both. I'm not sure of it. Not like Tommy." She touched the gun. "The Ojibwa say that everything you are is a gift from the spirit world, and until you have those gifts inside you, you aren't really anything."
Katie smiled crookedly at Danny, as if she wanted him to answer that.
He smiled back, and nodded. He didn't have an answer. wver a late lunch Monday, Stagger Lee said, "How long has it been since you went to a movie?"
"A while." It had actually been two years. There was no theater in Adair; every chance they could, Danny and Robin had hitched to the drive-in a county over. Rob usually talked them in for half price, since they wouldn't be taking up a car slot: the guy at the gate looked dubious, but Rob had always been good at getting his point across.
Danny couldn't remember what the movie had been.
Stagger Lee said, "The Biograph's showing The Train with Burt Lancaster. That's supposed to be first-rate, and even if it isn't, it's Lancaster. And it's Monday, so Laughs Lost will be running Chaplin all afternoon."