He aimed. She opened two new holes in space: one just past the end of his weapon, the other a couple feet lower. Between the darkness and the water dripping from his eyelashes he didn’t notice the shimmer. He pulled the trigger, shrieked, and immediately collapsed into a quivering heap, having tased himself in the nuts.

Mollie made yet another pair of doorways. She flipped a double bird at the other cop as she leapt from a wet Paris night to the synchronized chaos of Shinjuku Station, Tokyo. She bowled into a salaryman with his nose buried in a manga featuring a cartoonishly buxom caricature of Curveball on the cover. He yelled at her. She put a portal under his feet and dumped the pervert in a smelly Venice canal. Then she sprinted through the crowd, snatching purses and billfolds along the way, leaving angry commuters in her wake. A transit cop tried to give chase but she leapt from the train platform and came to a soft landing on the sand of Cottesloe Beach, just outside Perth. Her cash dash had netted about twenty-nine thousand yen, or a little under three hundred bucks. Not great, but also not bad for ten seconds of work. She dumped the purses and wallets on the beach and stepped across the continent to a laneway just outside a Melbourne currency exchange. Five minutes after passing the fountain in Paris, she identified a suitable replacement blouse in a Sydney department store window. It was nicer than the one the gendarmes had ruined.

“Well?” Baba Yaga demanded when Franny returned to her hospital room. She might be old and frail, but the rap of command was in her voice.

Sucking in a breath, Franny gave a concise description as if he had been reporting to Maseryk or Mendelberg back at the precinct.

“Hmmm, perhaps you are not quite as stupid as I thought.”

The old woman turned to the Otter and said something in what sounded like Russian. The smooth-faced man pulled an incongruous evening gown out of the closet, helped the old woman out of bed and into the bathroom. A few moments later they emerged. Baba Yaga was now dressed. She wore the little slippers provided by the hospital rather than the high heels that Franny could see in the closet.

All five of them headed for the door. It was clear they were blowing this popsicle stand. Franny stood for a few moments reflecting on what he’d seen on those fight videos. The unspeakable horror that had been unleashed on ordinary citizens by the woman who had just walked out.

“Yeah, fuck no,” Franny muttered, and he went after them. It hurt to run and he felt like a fool as he tried to hold the back of his gown together. Baba Yaga and her thuggish entourage were at the front entrance.

“Hey! Hold it! You’re under arrest!” People in the lobby were staring at him. A woman behind a large desk stood and reached for the phone.