Stupid, she thought. So stupid to come here. Fucking Jayewardene. If she ever got out of here, she would kill him. But slowly. She might not even use her bubbles. There were so many more painful ways to kill someone.

It was Jayewardene’s fault she was in here. His and that fucking Adesina. A faint whisper inside her said, Adesina. I love her. And then the thought was crushed by her fear and rage.

Move.

Down in the hospital commissary, Franny bought her a cup of burnt coffee and a slice of cheesecake. Mollie took one bite of the latter and pushed the plate aside. The cheesecake tasted like ass.

“Want to talk about it?”

“No.”

She concentrated on stirring her coffee. Stirred half a shaker’s worth of sugar into it. The commissary only had skim milk so the coffee had that disgusting not-quite-black-why-even-bother color and taste. She’d been with Ffodor the first time she’d had coffee with heavy cream in it, which had ruined her for anything less ever since. Krémes kávé, he’d called it. The memory of his weird Hungarian vowels tugged at the corners of her mouth. She licked her lips. Tasted salt from her tears.

“What happened?”

“I told you I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay. I’ll talk about it. I think I can piece it together. Months ago you guys decided to rob Baba Yaga’s casino—”

“It was my idea. Ffodor wasn’t crazy about it at first. I’m not talking about this.”

“—but it went wrong. And she caught you. How am I doing so far?”

“Wow. You could make a kickass detective someday. Oh, wait, there aren’t any more somedays.”

Franny continued in the same level tone of voice. “So what happened then?”

Mollie set her cup down so hard that coffee slopped across the table. “You want me to say it? Fine. I abandoned him. I left Ffodor behind. She caught us and I ran away.”

“Can’t say I’m surprised,” he said. Sipped his own coffee. Grimaced. “Where’d you learn to pick the lock on a pair of police-issue handcuffs, anyway? That’s supposed to be almost impossible.”

“Ff—” Her voice hitched. “Ffodor taught me.”

“You two must have been a hell of a team.”

“He was good to me, you know? He was the only person who didn’t treat me like a disappointment, like my parents do, and not like I was just somebody to be tolerated and used, like Berman did. He cared about me. Taught me stuff.”

“He saw your potential.” Franny gave up on the coffee. Jesus Christ. It had to suck if a cop wouldn’t drink it. “There’s a lot of it. But you keep channeling it in unfortunate directions.”

“If that’s a fancy way of calling me an asshole, I already know it.” She sighed. “Escaping. That’s my power. I can run away from anything, so I run away from everything.”

“Well, nobody can run from this. Not forever. Not even you. Not unless we find a way to fix it.”