He walked up the steps and into the church. Pausing at the holy water font he dipped his fingers, genuflected toward the altar, and crossed himself. There were a lot of people in the shadowed space, hunched over the back of pews or kneeling staring up at the Joker Christ hung above the altar. Others were lighting candles. The space smelled of melted wax and incense.

Franny slipped into a back pew and knelt. He said the rosary and the familiar cadence of the words were a balm to his bruised spirit. He covered his face with a hand and offered up a prayer for the soul of a good man then whispered, “God forgive me for what I’ve done. I may have destroyed your creation.”

This time prayer offered no comfort. His guilt was too great. He left the pew but before he could reach the door he found himself looking down into a pair of eyes peering out from a face deformed by lumps and knobs of twisted skin. It was Wartface. One of the jokers he’d freed in Talas.

“Hey! It is you, man! Where were you? I looked around and you weren’t there and that hole was gone, too.”

“There was fighting. The girl who helped get us there…” She abandoned me flat, the fucking bitch. He swallowed the angry words. They shouldn’t be uttered in this holy place. Instead he said, “She panicked and she ran.” He remembered Mollie’s upthrust middle finger and the look of bitter triumph. Yeah, some panic.

The organist stopped playing. People were starting to stare. Franny saw more of the jokers who had been Baba Yaga’s prisoners. People stood and gathered around him. A gentle-faced man with a chitinous insectile body laid a hand on Franny’s arm.

“Thank you,” he said softly. He paused to push his glasses back up on his nose. “I thought I was going to die there. Thank you for giving me back my life.”

Only for a handful of days, Franny thought. “You destroyed the world. I hope it was worth it.” Baba Yaga’s voice echoed in his head. He wanted to confess, to admit his sin to more than God, but he couldn’t bear to destroy their joy and happiness however brief it might be. He just stood, accepting their congratulations and thanks though every grateful word seemed to scald his soul.

“Excuse me.” A woman’s voice, soft and husky.

Franny turned and found himself facing an older African-American woman dressed in a conservative woman’s business chic. Her hair was lightly silvered and her eyes were red from crying. An older African-American man stood next to her. He was big and powerfully built. Franny saw echoes of Jamal Norwood’s features in both their faces.