“Are you absolutely positive? Maybe you could try it without the shortcut first.”

Joey rolled her eyes. “Yes, I’m fucking positive. It’s not like my goddamned card turned just this morning, you know.”

“If I have to keep a portal open to Talas, that bubble of supernatural psychosis will leak through. It happens fast.” Mollie hugged herself.

… don’t think about pitchforks don’t think about pitchforks don’t think about Daddy’s missing ear don’t think don’t don’t don’t …

“Well we don’t have a lot of fucking choice, do we?”

“Are you even listening to me? You have no idea what you’re getting into.”

Agent Vigil stepped forward. To Joey, he said, “Miss. How large would the opening have to be in order to enable you to do what you need?”

She shrugged. “Not that big. I just need a connection, is all.”

“Would a pinhole suffice?”

“Beats me. Maybe.”

He turned to Mollie. “Miss. Could you do that? Make a portal that small?” She nodded. “Would that be acceptable to you?”

The portal from the family barn to the casino had been large enough for people, tools, slot machines, and loot. And the psychosis had taken over quickly. But maybe, just maybe, if the hole was small enough, Horrorshow’s sphere of influence would seep through more slowly …

She goaded herself to answer before she lost her nerve. “Yes. I can do that,” she said, in a warbly voice that undermined any pretense of confidence. “Where will you guys be?”

He pointed to a mobile command center parked on the far side of the warehouse, a hundred yards away. It looked like an armor-plated Winnebago, and utterly out of place outside a casino parking lot. The roof bristled with dishes and antennae. “We’ll monitor the situation from there as long as the feeds hold.”

Mollie noticed that most of the cables strung around the site ran in thick bundles back to the command center. She shook her head.

“Your electronics are gonna start to fail the minute I do my thing.”

Vigil nodded. “Yes, ma’am. We’ve been briefed on that. The technical perimeter is our early warning sentry. We’ll track the advance of the effect as the electronics fail. We’ll stay outside the trouble zone and pull the plug when it threatens to expand beyond our control.”

Clever. They’d actually thought this through. They’d actually listened to what she told Franny, Ray, and Babel, took her seriously, and come up with a strategy. Mollie didn’t know how to process that. It actually felt … nice. Still, there was a problem.

Her voice trembled. Breathe. Take it easy. Just breathe. “How will you pull the plug if I go off the reservation?”

“With this,” he said. The lieutenant shrugged, unlimbering the rifle slung over his shoulder. It was almost half as big as Joey. “We have shooters stationed around the perimeter.”