The Handsmith glanced back toward his house, taking everyone’s eyes with him. Aliya stood in the doorway, Nurassyl half hidden behind her, pressed tight to her hip, his large eyes wide with concern. Marcus called gently to the joker boy. “Nurassyl, please come. She needs you.” The boy stared at him, his mouth an oval as round as his eyes. Marcus pointed at his tentacled hands. He mimed his healing touch. He pointed to his own cuts and burns, touching them, and then pointed to Olena. “But not me,” he said. “Her. Heal her.” He didn’t know how to act that part out, so he gestured toward her, beseeching, letting the unconscious evidence of her speak for him.

After a confirming nod from his father, the boy slid forward on his many tentacled base. When he bent over Olena his eyes grew attentive instead of fearful. He pulled his hands away from his chest, tentacles squirming. He touched one hand to her neck, at exactly the place Marcus had tongue-tagged her. The other he eased across her forehead, down across her nose and mouth. The tentacles expanded to cover her face entirely. Marcus almost cried out, afraid that she wouldn’t be able to breathe. He stopped himself, though. As strange as it was to watch, this was what he’d brought her here for. Nurassyl, the boy who he’d named an ace. He knew what that healing touch felt like, he just hoped it would be enough to save her.

The nurse was busy in the plane’s galley heating soup for Baba Yaga. Franny had slept for a few hours and awakened ravenous. He made a sandwich of cheese and hummus and dreamed about getting home and having a cheeseburger and a beer. There was a well-stocked bar on the plane, but he resisted. He needed to keep his wits about him, and he didn’t think a combo of bourbon and pain pills would help him do that. He returned to Baba Yaga and settled in the seat across from her.

“We need to start making some plans.”

“The plan is that you take messages from me to people who can actually accomplish things,” she snapped.

He held on to the fraying ends of his temper. “Okay, fine, but I’ve got to be able to tell them something other than a criminal needs to talk to you.” He decided to test his premise. “Besides, which, I’ve arrested you,” he added. “You can tell them yourself.”

She laughed and it was surprisingly robust like the harsh cry of a crow. “You’ve arrested me? You would be adorable if you weren’t so foolish. My plane, my people. I could have you beaten senseless or tossed out if it pleased me to do so.”

Franny glanced down the length of the plane to where the nurse stared with cold eyes at him. The nurse had four inches and probably eighty pounds on him. Franny might have been able to take him if he wasn’t wounded and exhausted. In his current condition he didn’t have a prayer.