If she was struck, she didn’t show it. Neither did her partner, who also failed to bleed or fall.

Halfdead flew past, converging on the dancers, swords flashing, rifle butts rising and falling. Both dancers went down flailing, but down they went.

More halfdead arrived. The dancers never made a sound. As they lost clothes to the struggle I saw complicated metal workings appear-gears and cogs and levers turning uselessly against the ferocity of two dozen determined halfdead.

I gave the rope a mighty heave and the music box, still playing, crashed to the deck.

The tiny dancers still danced, although the automatons lay smashed and still on the floor.

I heaved and struggled. The box slid across the carpet, leaving gashes in its wake. The thin rope cut into my palms, and I marveled at its strength.

Evis appeared at my side, took hold of the banshee-hair rope, and dragged the cursed box easily. I matched his pace until we reached the ranks of grinning skeletons, who clacked their dry teeth and smacked their long swords against their hip-bones in greeting.

“Cut them down,” shouted Evis. He smiled for the first time all night. “Cut them down and keep firing. We’re going in.”

The guns erupted with smoke and thunder. Halfdead closed ranks around us, adding rifle fire to the noise. Darla came to my side and emptied her gun into the dark.

The last of the bone-men fell.

Stitches strode up, hood thrown back, her ruined eyes aimed right at the shadow. She produced a handful of what looked like dust and pitched it out over the shattered heaps of bones.

Nothing happened, but she seemed to be waiting. A pair of fresh skeletons stepped out of the shadow and were brought down before they took another step.

Evis bent, took the music box in both hands, and lifted it.

I’d never seen a halfdead strain with exertion before. Evis clenched his jaw and his lips curled back and I could hear vampire joints popping and creaking against the effort.

But he picked the thing up, and held it aloft, and took a pair of steps forward.

Bones crunched beneath his boots. I followed, Toadsticker at the ready.

Hurry, said Stitches. They are massing beyond the dark.

“Dance, you bastards,” growled Evis. He bent his knees and bunched and threw the box forward right into the heart of the shadow.

The shadow exploded, bursting with harsh white light.

In that instant, I saw through the shadow and the Queen’s hull. Saw through to somewhere else-somewhere blasted and ruined and savaged. Nightmares roamed there, by the tens of thousands, by the hundreds of thousands. The ranks of the bone-men were the least of them.

Before the intensity of the light blinded me, I saw great vast, oily bulks writhing and shuffling, all making their way toward us. Some crawled. Some walked on legs that towered up far and away into the sky. Some oozed and slithered and rolled.

But all were bearing down on us, waiting for the darkness to take root and admit them.

I reached out, grabbed what I hoped was Evis, and yanked him back. I heard Darla shouting as from a great distance. Something out in the dark bellowed and something answered with a roar, and then hands fell upon me and hauled me out of the shadow.

I blinked, stumbling, bones crunching with every step. Darla was shouting at me, but my ears were ringing and I couldn’t make out her words.

Someone pushed a chair under me. I sat, rubbing my eyes, waiting for the bell in my ears to stop its damned pealing.

When I could see faces through the after-images left by the light, I knew we’d failed.

Darla was fighting back tears. Mama was muttering cuss words and laying into her blunted cleaver with a whetstone. Evis sat, head bowed, unmoving.

I could just make out the shapes of the ensorcelled dancers, still spinning and bowing. One went limp as I watched, but could not fall. Instead his body bumped and swayed, as though held upright by a rope around his neck.

“Maybe it just takes time,” I said, barely able to hear my own words.

You may have had some effect. The number of constructs emerging is reduced. The rate of expansion is slowed.

I glanced that way. Ranks of bone-men grinned back. If their numbers were reduced I couldn’t see it.

Evis raised his face.

“You have a huldra,” he said to me. “Why didn’t you use it?”

“Evis. You know I can’t control it.”

His face fell.

“It isn’t real, is it? Damn you, Markhat. That was our only hope.”

“We’re not done yet.” I looked around. No one but Darla and Mama and Stitches was close enough to hear. “Not yet.”

He had no reply.

“Stitches. Did you see anything in the shadow that might help?”

I believe it was a vast cavern, location unknown. Probably under the control of Hag Mary. A number of those creatures were quite ancient.

“Fascinating. Evis, how much ammunition do we have for those rapid-firing guns?”

But Evis was gone, vampire-quick and vampire-quiet.

He was halfway to the dancers before any of us could even stand.

I shouted. The halfdead ringing the dancers looked my way, but Evis waved them aside. I ran, knowing I’d never catch up.

They let me through. I found Evis sprinting beside Gertriss, the banshee-hair rope in his hands.

I backed off.

“Good idea,” I said. Evis nodded, put himself in front of her, and tossed a loop of rope around her.

She danced on, unslowed.

Evis let the rope drop from his hands. I caught up with him and stood beside him as we watched her go.

The first dancer to die flopped past. All the dancers were drooping. Lady Rondalee’s voice was hoarse and beginning to falter.

“You have the key,” said Evis. “Take Mama and Darla and Buttercup. There’s room for Stitches too, if you can convince her to go.”

“We’re not dead yet.”

“I am. I’ve been dead for years. I was just beginning to live again. Now I’ve got no reason. Fare thee well, Markhat. We had some good times, didn’t we?”

And before I could stop him, he darted away.

Before I could take even a pair of useless steps, he’d found Gertriss.

Before I could shout, he put his hands in hers and fell into step with her.

His dead white eyes didn’t glaze, didn’t close, but I saw them lose their focus.

And then they danced away.

Mama snuffled and mopped at her face. I hadn’t seen her come up.

“Reckon I might have been wrong about that one,” she said, gathering up her useless rope. “Might be a heart left in there after all.”

Gertriss rested her head on his shoulder.

“He give up, boy. You an’ me, we ain’t got that luxury.”

“He didn’t give up, Mama.” I looked away. “He chose how he wanted to die.”

“Same damned thing. Now unless you are figurin’ on takin’ up dancin’, we still got people on this boat. You comin’?”

I followed. There didn’t seem to be anything else left to do.

Darla and Stitches met us, Darla with hugs and Stitches with a cursory nod from behind her makeshift tower of bubbling vessels and sparking rods.

I am nearly done.

Darla let go of me reluctantly. I took a deep breath.

“Right. Mama, get ready to shake your birds. Stitches, I’m going to hold the huldra in one hand and Toadsticker in the other, and when I give you the sign, we light this thing up. Shortly after that we’ll know who’s Elf and who is not. Got it?”

Understood.

Buttercup scampered past, laying down her rope in a circle around us. Mama was busy tending her flock of dead birds. Darla was reloading. Stitches was putting the finishing touches on a complex device we both knew was a fraud and a lie.

“Not the time for games, honey,” I said. “Come back here.”

Buttercup giggled and scampered off.

Dutson appeared, a tray laden with beer bottles in his hand. I’d caught a glimpse of him in the fray with the construct dancers. He was bleeding from a cut on his forehead and his dinner jacket was torn, but his bearing suggested we were all merely enjoying another fine meal on another fine evening.