Klaus. Not her mother.

In the dream, Barbara screamed, as Klaus’s body started to pull itself from the coffin that held it; as she found herself suddenly awake under the covers, shivering and terrified at the dream’s lingering memory.

“What’s the matter?” Barbara heard Klaus ask sleepily from his side of the bed.

She tried to calm her racing heart. “Nothing,” she told him. “Just a dream, is all. Go back to sleep.”

Klaus grunted. She felt him turn in the bed.

She’d been barely twelve when her mother died …

The nightmare of seeing the ravaged, shattered body of her mother rising from the coffin would haunt her teenage years. In reality, at the funeral the following morning as the coffin was lowered into the earth, Barbara’s card would turn. As Barbara cried out in pain and anguish and fright, the chanting of the rabbi became nothing more than nonsense syllables, and frightened onlookers could only shout incomprehensible questions to the sky.

None of them could any longer understand the other. Like her mother and the young man in the market …

For long minutes, Barbara stared into the darkness of the ceiling above her, pondering what this altered dream meant, afraid for some reason that this was some portent, some warning. She wrestled with herself, insisting that to think such a thing was irrational and ridiculous, but the feeling persisted even under the logic.

When sleep—blessedly dreamless this time—finally came to her again, it was followed far too soon by the stern beeping of her phone’s morning alarm.

The first thing Franny saw were large feet encased in heavy steel-toed shoes. His eyes felt gummy and his mouth tasted of blood. He had apparently bitten his tongue. Slowly he identified the noise he heard as a car engine. He was on the floor of the limo wedged between the facing seats. They went over a bump and Franny gasped in pain. He looked up. Baldy, Stache, and B.O. were seated on the jump seat.

A hand twisted in his hair and he was rolled over to face Baba Yaga. His gown was twisted and hiked up over his hips. Bad enough to be in the custody of a psychopath but having his dick and balls exposed somehow made it even worse.

She tapped a forefinger against her lips and studied him. “You are a great deal of trouble,” she said.

“So why bring me?”

“You might prove useful. If you aren’t I will kill you. Clear?”

“Crystal.”

They continued to drive. The Otter was murmuring into a cell phone. Everyone else was silent. Franny cleared his throat. “So, where are we going?”

“Shut up.”

Ten minutes later he tried again. “May I get on a seat?”

“No.” Baba Yaga was a woman of few words.

Eventually they came to a stop and Franny was pulled out of the car. He groaned as pain flared in his side and his shoulder. They were back at the casino. Not a place he’d ever wanted to see again.