Bee was looking at me like I was a psychic.

  “How did you know??” she whispered in disbelief.

  The four of us stood in front of Liam Johnson and his bodyguards. All six of them had loaded crossbows in their hands and steak knives hanging from their belts, as well as bullet-proof vests.

  The Chief of Police was lounging on a comfy-looking sofa and surrounded by voluptuous girls in bikinis. There were lines of coke on the glass table in front of him, as well as stacks of cash and jewelry nearby. They also had dressers and cabinets further back, with no signs of the original arcade machines anywhere. Out of all the places to pick in the mall, this place seemed the strangest. The furniture had clearly been looted from the IKEA on the first floor, although whoever had been tasked with assembling them had done a poor job of it, since the glass table leaned at an angle and the dressers had the drawers installed upside-down.

  Liam looked mostly like when I’d seen him last time, minus the five o’clock shadow. A large mane of dark-brown hair full of grey streaks sprouted from his head like an untrimmed bush. His face was pudgy and oily, and his double-chin looked like a lifebuoy strapped under his jaw. The dark-grey suit he wore was stained with what looked like baby oil.

  “What the fuck is all this, Liam!?” Samantha demanded to know. “What happened to upholding peace and order in the city!?”

  Liam wasn’t even looking at her, instead his eyes were locked on me. “Where’d you find this fucking clown?” he asked.

  I took a step forward, but Samantha stopped me with a hand on my chest.

  “Let me deal with this,” she said.

  None of the guards were aiming their weapons at us, but I could tell that all it would take was a single word from their boss and they’d turn Samantha into a pincushion.

  “We have a duty to Castleburg,” she insisted.

  “Remember your place, Samantha. You’re not my fucking boss. But, you give me Camilla and I’ll think about it perhaps.”

  Camilla spat on the ground.

  “Hey!” Liam shouted. “This carpet is fucking expensive, you prideful bitch!”

  I looked down and realized that they’d pulled out the original arcade carpet, though the smell still lingered. In its place was a straw-brown shag carpet that they’d definitely looted from IKEA or some other nearby store. It clashed with the random interior and frankly looked like shit.

  Samantha pointed the crossbow right at Liam’s head. He just grinned.

  “What are you gonna do, huh? You gonna fucking shoot me?”

  His men laughed, as did the bikini-clad women.

  “Ah shit,” Panda muttered.

  Before another word could come out of Liam’s mouth, a loud wet thwack echoed through the arcade. Whether intentional or not, Samantha had shot the crossbow bolt right through his left eye. He was dead in an instant.

  “Well,” Panda started, “at least it was poetic justice.”

  The bikini-clad women screamed.

  I immediately pushed Bee to the side as the guards spun back around and lifted their weapons. Then I stepped in front of Samantha and Camilla a second before all the crossbows fired.

  Of the six projectiles shot towards me, three miraculously reflected back to the shooters, while I caught one in each hand. The last bolt sunk into the flesh of my right thigh, uncomfortably-close to Lil Gambit.

  “Ow.”

  I immediately launched myself at the closest one, slamming him to the ground with enough force to pop his head like a watermelon. Then I flung his body at a guy who’d gotten his own projectile lodged right in his throat, sending him to the floor.

  Liam’s women all fled as I pummeled the rest of the guards.

  Samantha, Camilla, and Bee all just watched.

  When I was done, the shag carpet was repainted red and there was brain matter clinging to the wall like wet chewing gum.

  I dropped onto the couch, eyeing the drugs on the glass table, which had somehow survived the fight. Liam’s dead body slumped next to me, his head leaned back.

  Panda jumped down onto my lap and started tugging on the bolt that still poked out of my thigh. “We’re well on our way towards the dark ending…” he remarked drily.

  “Bullshit,” I replied. “Killing Liam is gonna save a lot of people.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Samantha asked, stepping over a dead guy to reach me.

  She froze when she noticed the bolt in my leg wriggling as Panda yanked it out of my flesh.

  “How… how are you doing that?” she asked. It probably looked weird since she couldn’t see Panda.

  I pushed him aside with the back of my hand, then yanked the bolt out myself. A thin stream of pressurized blood shot a couple feet into the air.

  “I hope that wasn’t an artery it was stuck in,” Panda muttered.

  The wound seemed to close on its own after a few seconds and the Unicorn Suit quickly mended the hole in the pants.

  Bee came over, hugging the katana. “Sorry I didn’t help,” she told me sincerely.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I replied.

  I looked at Samantha. “Warn me next time you plan to just shoot like that.”

  “We should’ve asked him about the Mayor,” Panda added.

  I repeated his words.

  A head popped up from behind the couch. It was one of the bikini women who had hid instead of fleeing the arcade. She had short bleach-blonde hair and way too much makeup, looking almost like a clown with how thick it was applied. She was maybe only twenty years old. “If I tell you about the Mayor, will you let me live?”

  Camilla came over to the couch to stand next to her boss. “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Candy,” she replied.

  “Of course it is,” Samantha said with a sigh.

  “Tell me where he is,” I demanded.

  “He’s got a room in the IKEA on the first floor,” Candy answered. “Him and Liam had some kind of deal.”

  I got up from the couch and Panda hopped back to my shoulder. Bee followed me as I made to leave.

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  “What kind of deal?” Samantha asked.

  “They were bringing him girls every few hours,” Candy replied.

  I paused by the entrance of the arcade and turned around. “They were feeding him!?”

  Samantha looked at me. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “He’s a Skinstealer, Samantha!” I yelled.

  All four women looked at me.

  “What’s a Skinstealer?” Camilla asked.

  Samantha gave me a stern look. “He’s talking crazy, don’t pay attention to him.”

  “He’s right!” Candy said, coming to my defense for some reason.

  I answered the question. “A Skinstealer is someone, like the Mayor, who pretends to be human so that he can fit in and eat his fill of unsuspecting victims. All the while they’re undermining society from within and encouraging conflict, causing people to become too focused on fighting each other, making it easier for the Skinstealers to hunt without being noticed.”

  Samantha sighed loudly. “Enough. I’ve already had to hear this shit from you several times before. Even if you keep repeating it, it won’t magically become true. Just admit it, your meds wore off and you’re seeing enemies everywhere.”

  “He’s telling the truth!” Candy insisted. She finally stood up to her full height, revealing a white bikini with pink cat-paw prints on it.

  Camilla took off her brown suit jacket and put it over the woman’s shoulders to cover her.

  “Thank you,” she said, before repeating, “the weird clown guy is telling the truth.”

  “Who are you calling a clown, Pierrot!?” I shouted, pointing Brock at her.

  Bee put a hand on my shoulder.

  “Relax, Gambit,” Panda said. “She’s backing you up.”

  Candy was unperturbed by my outburst. “Liam sent a bunch of girls down to the Mayor. None of them came back. Skye, Cinnamon, Charity, Angel, and Crystal are all gone. I tried to find them, but nobody has seen them since they entered the IKEA.”

  “What’s with the names?” Panda asked. “Wait, are all these women strippers? And why do so many of their names start with C??”

  I ignored his commentary and said, “Let’s get down there and put a stop to him!”

  Candy hopped over the couch and snatched a steak knife and crossbow from one of the dead guards.

  “I’m coming with you!” she said.

  Samantha sighed loudly, but didn’t say anything to stop us. Her and Camilla quickly looted some ammunition and weapons, with the assistant getting her own crossbow. Camilla also grabbed a tote bag with a logo for some place called ‘Spinning Dames’, which was definitely a strip club, and stuffed the remaining crossbows and bolts inside.

  Then the five of us left the arcade and went over to the nearby elevator. The people around us were hiding inside the various stores-turned-homes and watching us anxiously. It probably wouldn’t take long before someone stepped up to fill the seat left by Liam. Perhaps Samantha might even give it a try.

  “I don’t know how I feel about going into one of these,” I muttered as I stared at the open elevator doors.

  “Scared of tight spaces?” Bee asked.

  “Something like that…” I replied vaguely.

  “Definitely don’t tell them that this elevator might fall hundreds of feet down into a hidden cavern below,” Panda advised.

  “Thanks for reminding me,” I muttered.

  “What?” Bee asked.

  “Nothing.”

  The ride down one floor was a lot slower than expected and we all spent an uncomfortable minute just staring at the door in silence. Then it opened and released us from the suffocating awkwardness.

  “Why are elevator rides with strangers always so weird?” Panda wondered.

  The first floor residents had obviously heard what happened to their leader, since they quickly ran from us and hid inside the stores. Our many weapons no doubt added to their perception that we were here to cause mayhem.

  Only a handful of people didn’t flee. One of them had Cheeto-dust-colored hair, a tall skinny body with a defined chin, and hazel-brown eyes.

  I remembered his face and gritted my teeth in anger.

  “You!” I shouted and pointed at him with Brock. “Stay right there! Once I’m done with the Mayor I’m coming back for you!”

  Samantha sighed. “Do you just love making enemies or something? Leave the poor kid alone.”

  “You know him?” Bee asked.

  “That’s Lucibel,” I replied through gritted teeth. “He ran the card trading store near the metro station. That fucker was cheating me on Yu-Gi-Oh packs by only selling me the duds!”

  “Just let it go already,” Panda told me.

  “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard all day,” Samantha said. “And you just tried to convince me the Mayor is a Skin-walker three minutes ago…”

  To his credit, Lucibel didn’t move an inch from where he stood and just watched as we went towards the IKEA.

  The moment we turned a corner, Panda said, “He just made a break for the doors.”

  “Goddamn it,” I muttered. “I’ll have to track him down later.”

  After some minutes we arrived in front of the IKEA. It wasn’t a full warehouse store like what they were known for, but instead it just covered the corner of the mall on this floor.

  “I didn’t realize Castleburg had an IKEA this small,” Bee said. “I visited one this size in Kyoto though.”

  “You’ve been to Japan??” Panda asked, but of course she couldn’t hear him.

  I repeated his question for her, and she replied, “My parents took me there last year during Spring to see the Sakura.”

  “This place looks like a mess,” Samantha said as she took in the store.

  “Liam’s men helped the Mayor build his own space here,” Candy explained. “They kept referring to it as ‘the nest’.”

  I frowned at the description. But it was hard not to see why it was called that. Normally, there would have been tiny display rooms to showcase various furniture and such, like fake kitchens or bedrooms the size of a small shipping container. There was none of that anymore. At the center of the store were overlapping walls that curved around to form a circle. Anything that hadn’t been useful was thrown against the walls and lay in scrapheaps.

  Candy walked in front of us and over to the curving walls. Then she slid a panel aside to reveal an opening.

  I followed after her, but Samantha quickly pushed in front of me with Camilla. I wondered if she was going to shoot Noah in the head as well.

  “Have you been here before?” Bee asked Candy as we entered through the opening. Her tone was suspicious.

  The woman ignored the question and closed the panel behind us. Then she ran to catch up to Samantha.

  The inside of ‘the nest’ had the walls placed in a way that it created a spiraling tunnel, like a snail’s shell, and we basically walked in circles while Candy urged us forward.

  Bee sidled up next to me and said, “I think she might be a Skinstealer too.”

  Panda bapped me on the head. “Look what you did, Gambit! Even Bee is becoming paranoid now!”

  “I think you might be right,” I told her. “Let’s keep our guard up. Try not to get too close to her and the Mayor.”

  “Gambit, for fuck’s sake!” Panda complained. “The Great Game still hasn’t started yet, so there are no monsters here! All those Skinstealers you saw during the Game were clearly made to mess with you specifically!”

  My balloon gauntlet squeaked, as though making a counterargument.

  I didn’t respond and instead just watched Candy closely. Her personality and attitude had changed almost as soon as we entered the IKEA, which probably meant that Bee was right in her observation.

  We finally reached the end of the curving tunnels and arrived at the center of the Mayor’s ‘nest’. The name was way more accurate than I’d expected. Carpets and furniture were stacked in such a way that it actually made the place look like the nest of some enormous animal. On the floor in the middle sat a fat naked man and behind him were piles of human bones.

  Samantha and Camilla both froze. Candy stopped next to them, while Bee and I hung back.

  “What the fuck…?” Samantha muttered.

  Noah Sullivan hadn’t transformed into a younger version of himself like I’d seen him when we’d fought at the gas station. Instead he looked more or less like the man I’d stabbed with a screwdriver on that fateful night. Only, he was several years older now and about eighty pounds fatter. Coarse black hair covered his torso like the fur of a bear and a thick bush spared us the sight of his cocktail shrimp. Blood was caked onto his beardless face, as well as his shoulders and neck.

  “He’s a cannibal,” Camilla said, staring at the bones.

  “Thank you, Candy,” Noah said as he stood up. “You’ve brought me a lot today.”

  Despite his floppy naked body and short stature, he emanated a dreadful aura.

  Samantha immediately lifted her crossbow and fired at the Mayor. Camilla was frozen in terror.

  Then That’s-Definitely-Not-Candy-Anymore unzipped down the middle, revealing a toothed maw and a purple barbed tongue from within the flesh of her body, which undulated eagerly.

  Before she could devour Camilla and Samantha, I leapt forward and smashed my glove into the side of her body. She whirled around and tried to bite me, but I easily avoided the attack with a hop backwards.

  With a roar, Bee came forward with a downward slash of her katana. She managed to cut the tip off Not-Candy’s tongue. Then the Damage Delay triggered and the impact from my punch finally arrived.

  The Skinstealer was shot across the nest, flying through the back wall and coming undone into pieces of skin and flesh, before crashing against the far wall of the store from the sounds of it.

  Bee looked at the katana in her hand, no doubt having a ‘Is this my real power?’ moment. It was too complicated to explain, so I just let her enjoy the delusion.

  I turned at the sound of Samantha firing a second bolt. Camilla was finally shaken out of her fear, because she fired one as well.

  But the Mayor just stood there, three perfectly-grouped bolts sprouting from his face and not a care in the world.

  “Okay, I’ll admit I might’ve been wrong…” Panda apologized.

  Then Noah Sullivan tilted his head back and opened his mouth. Two blood-red hands appeared from within and grabbed the edges of his mouth, before wrenching his jaw open. Cracking of bones and tearing of skin filled the store as some monstrosity emerged from within the Mayor.

  Within moments, the torn and flappy skin of his original body hung from the waist of the thing that had emerged from within him. It had long-fingered hands with sharp-looking nails. Its tall body was skeletally-thin and vibrant red veins crisscrossed its pale body. Its face and forearms were red with blood, a malevolent red glow shone from its eyes and its lipless mouth was full of shark-like teeth.

  The monstrosity looked past Samantha and Camilla, locking eyes with me.

  “I knew you would come here, Gambit. The Flayed Lady sends her regards.”