“You were mumbling to yourself,” Joey mumbled. “Didn’t like the … sound … of it.” She still had a faraway look in her eyes, as if eavesdropping on a conversation just at the edge of audibility. She frowned. When she spoke, the words came out slurred and distracted, as if she’d been to the dentist and shot full of novocaine. “I … uh … I can barely keep ahold of the toe tags.”

Mollie shook her head, tried to dispel the ringing in her ears. “Okay. Here.”

She concentrated on re-creating the portals she’d made a moment ago, but far smaller. Smaller than a horsefly, smaller than her pinky nail, smaller than a pinprick. The first hole in space came out the size of a basketball. She slammed it shut, tried again. The next was closer to the size of a plum.

Joey squinted. She leaned forward. Mollie flinched. The doorway blinked shut about a hairbreadth from the tip of Joey’s nose. The woman rounded on her, ready to unleash abuse, but whatever she saw on Mollie’s face defused her temper. “Fine. Fuck it. Let’s keep going. Just try not to give me a nose job.”

Mollie kept working to make the smallest portal she could. But she closed the new ones almost as rapidly as they opened—they were still too large.

“Fucking hell, I’m getting whiplash here,” said Joey. “It’s like the z’s are right in the room with me one second and then in a different country the next. Slow your roll before you give me fucking epilepsy.”

But Mollie couldn’t help it. Abject terror made it difficult to concentrate. But after half a dozen tries she managed to create a portal no larger than a pinhole. If she hadn’t made it with her own mind, and thus knew where to look, she might not have known it was there. She pointed it out to Joey.

“How’s that?”

The smaller woman relaxed visibly. She still spoke as if carrying on two conversations at once. “Okay. That’s much better. Still … hard … keeping track of them all, but they’re not so … far away now.”

Mollie watched the lights. They hadn’t begun to flicker. Yet.

There was a stone staircase leading up. Michelle climbed it. At the top was yet another set of stairs. They spiraled up out of sight.

They stopped at a metal door. She reached out and turned the knob. It can’t be this easy. The door opened. Afternoon light poured through, blinding her. She put her arm up to cover her eyes.

When she could see, she discovered she was in a courtyard surrounded by a fancy metal fence. She looked around and saw a sign in Cyrillic. No help there.

There was still some mist here, but much thinner. She let herself out the gate. There was still something in her head, but for the most part, she knew what was real. and that was bad.