“Gosh, mister, did you know that your knives look really sharp?” I asked, turning my attention to the silently grinning bogeyman. He was starting to look a little white around the eyes, like we’d deviated so far from the script that he no longer knew where to begin. “I mean, really sharp. You could probably cut yourself if you’re not careful.”

“He’s going to cut you,” said the other bogeyman, lip curling upward. “Enough talk. Killing now.”

“Works for me,” said Alice, and her eyes were suddenly bright, and her hands were suddenly holding a pair of pistols. My own hands were full of knives.

The bogeymen had time for one wide-eyed “oh, shit” moment before we were in motion, and the fight was joined.

There are jokes about bringing a knife to a gunfight—or the other way around—but the truth is that sometimes it’s the right thing to do. I charged the one with the shotgun while Alice advanced on the one with the knives. She was straight-backed and calm, firing three shots before my target had the time to pull the trigger even once. Her target howled.

I was preoccupied with my target, who was taking aim at the center of my chest. It would have been a good shot if he’d been dealing with someone who hadn’t been training for speed and flexibility since grade school. I saw the tendons in his hands twitch as he pulled the trigger, and dropped into a split as the thunder of his shot split the air where I’d been standing. I flung two knives while he was racking his second shell. They struck him in the knees, and he joined his partner in screaming.

“You know, there was a joke I thought you’d make that you skipped,” I said, rolling off the floor and running at him. He was standing, but barely; his knees had buckled when the knives hit. He must have had some training. There was no other way he could be on his feet after that.

Just before I hit him I pulled back, smiled brightly, and said, “I expected you to say that no one was going to hear us scream.” Then I punched him in the throat. He made a strangled choking noise and fell backward, landing on the concrete like a sack of wet laundry.

There were no more gunshots coming from my grandmother’s side of the fight. I turned to find her standing over the body of the knife-fighter, a petulant look on her face.

“I broke mine,” she said, only half apologetically. She raised her head. “Is yours in any shape to be questioned? Because mine isn’t.”

“I think so,” I said, nudging the fallen bogeyman with my toe. He groaned slightly. “He’s alive.”

“Great.” Alice made a gesture with her hands. The guns vanished back into her clothing, returning to whatever complicated holster she had hidden under her red tank top. All the women in my family were experts at making our weapons disappear, and most of the techniques I knew had been invented by her. She was a pioneer in the field of concealed violence. “Let’s get these boys out of here before their bosses come back.”

In the end, the most logical thing had been to carry both bogeymen—the living and the dead—down the hall to the room where Alice had made her appearance. As far as we could tell, it wasn’t in use by our snake cultists, and while it was dark, the day Alice didn’t have a candle somewhere on her person was the day I lost all faith in humanity.

Her bogeyman had leaked as we carted it down the hall, her holding the torso—where the bullet holes were—and me taking the legs. Alice and I used the body to prop my bogeyman up in a sitting position while she went back to mop up the spillage. I lit her candle and sat cross-legged on the floor, waiting for the survivor to wake up.

Seconds ticked by. The door opened behind me. “Is he awake?” asked Alice.

“Not yet,” I said.

“Sorry I killed mine,” she said—and she did sound apologetic. “I get a little enthusiastic sometimes.”

“I know, Grandma. At least you didn’t use a grenade.” Scraping bogeyman off the walls and ceiling would have been a lot of work, and would have been necessary if we’d wanted to keep our presence in the underground complex a secret. Not fun.

“No,” she said. “I didn’t think it was appropriate.”

The bogeyman groaned. I leaned forward, pressing my palms into the floor and beaming at him. When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was my smiling face. He groaned again.

“Hi,” I said cheerfully. “Who are you working for?”

He scrabbled backward, stopping when his hand hit the body of his companion. His eyes went wide, and he froze, like a scared rabbit in front of an oncoming car. I kept smiling.