“Well, then I’d say we’re all fucked.”

“Not necessarily.”

She looked up from the mess on the table. “You guys have a plan?”

Mollie looked up at him and there was a flare of hope in her green eyes. Fuck no, they don’t have a plan! is what Franny wanted to scream at the girl.

“Get it done.” Ray’s cold command. Franny didn’t want to die in horror and madness, twisted and deformed like the people inside that spreading zone of darkness. Mollie was a Hail Mary pass, but he’d take any chance no matter how remote.

And there was only one way to accomplish that. He was going to lie to her and manipulate her and use her the way everybody had used and lied and manipulated her. He would be deformed, but it would be hidden from everyone except him. This deformity would twist his soul.

In that moment he hated himself.

“Nope. Not yet. And I’m sorry I can’t do anything about your friend. He’s past the point of being able to forgive you. You can’t help him, either. But you can still redeem yourself. If you help us you’ll be helping so many more people than you’ve hurt. Me included.” Franny sighed, shook his head. For a moment, he looked much much older, as though a tremendous weight had aged him. He spoke like a man confessing to his priest: “I’m the one who caused all this … by blundering in there. Maybe you can help make it right.”

Mollie squinted at him. He was always such a Boy Scout. But when she examined his eyes, she saw a shadow scudding behind them. The mark that Baba Yaga had mentioned. He worked hard to hide it.

“You’ve seen it, too, haven’t you?”

He nodded. “But not from the inside. Not like you have. But it was touch and go getting out of Talas. I saw people do … very bad things to each other.”

Mollie hugged herself. Don’t think about the baby don’t think about the baby and pitchforks and intestines just don’t don’t don’t think …

“Franny, I…” Ah, screw it. “I’m sorry I left you behind. I didn’t know it was going to be like that.”

He dipped his head, a gentle nod. “I appreciate the apology. Not, you know, a lot, since you did strand me in a foreign country without my passport in the middle of a mob gunfight. But I guess it’s something.”

Mollie took a deep breath. Held it. Exhaled. Tried to calm herself. It didn’t work. Tried to find something to hold on to, something that would keep the fear at bay. But she came up empty. She started to tremble. Her shivering rocked the table and sent rivulets of spilled coffee under the paper napkin dispenser.

Though she already knew the answer, and it filled her with terror, she asked, “This help you’re trying to wheedle out of me. It means opening doorways into the evil insanity zone, doesn’t it?”