Snot dribbled from her nose, dripped on the cushion. That made her cry even harder. He deserved so much better. And then she realized she was having a complete breakdown in front of Baba Yaga, whom she hated more than anybody, and that humiliation made her cry harder still. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry Ffodor. Ffodor please forgive me.” She dissolved into a sniffling, sobbing wreck.

“Well,” said Billy Ray. “This has been a fun visit.”

Franny held her while she cried herself out. It took a long time.

She felt small and fragile as he held her shaking body. When they’d all headed off to be big damn heroes in Talas she’d been a rather zaftig armful but the events of the past days had stripped all that away. Even the tough-girl act was gone. She wailed like a lost child and despite everything she had done—to the jokers, to him—Franny felt pity.

“Mollie. He knows. He knows,” he said softly. That made her cry all the harder.

He wondered who this Ffodor had been. Boyfriend, lover? Clearly a partner in crime. He had obviously been the object lesson that convinced Mollie to work for Baba Yaga.

Baba Yaga had gone back to making phone calls. Billy Ray was muttering into his cell phone. All of them oblivious to the devastated girl huddled on the floor. Anger stirred in Franny’s breast, but he accepted the reality. Against a threat that could destroy the world this one suffering girl meant nothing.

Her sobs began to subside. Franny stood with a grunt of pain, went into the bathroom, and grabbed a handful of tissues. As he passed Ray, the man grabbed his arm, and hissed into his ear.

“You know what we need. Get it done.”

Franny gave a sharp nod, tore free from the older man, and returned to Mollie. She accepted the tissues and mopped her face.

“Come on,” Franny said gently. “Let’s get out of here.”

Michelle was suffocating.

That cunt had buried her alive. There was a limited amount of time before she ran out of breath. The last breath she had.

Blindly, she began a barrage of bubbles. They hurt as they exploded, but she didn’t have time to think about that. About what that meant. She hoped like hell she was bubbling through to the surface.

She couldn’t hold her breath anymore. It released and instead of a mouthful of air she drew in a mouthful of dirt and started choking. With the one last blast of the power she had left in her now skinny body, she punched through something and her lungs filled with stale air. She began coughing out sandy dirt. It felt as if she were suspended by her lower body, but that couldn’t be right.

Then she fell.

She slammed into something hard. Rock, maybe, or concrete. It didn’t matter because she couldn’t see a damn thing anyway. She was in total darkness. Darkness so heavy it was like a weight on her eyes.