“Nothing happened to me. I’m fine,” said Mollie. But then she caught a whiff of something nasty. She frowned. The residual shit smell of ruptured viscera had followed Mollie from California. And now the draft from the AC felt especially cold against her skin, as though she were damp. She looked down and realized she was drenched in blood. What the hell? A second ago she was swiping a handful of cash from—

Oh, Jesus. Oh, God, ohGodohGodohGodwhathaveIdone?

The phone fell from her nerveless fingers. It bounced under Ink’s desk.

“I … I … I need help. I’m not myself anymore. Even when I’m here, I’m not myself. The evil, it’s touched me too many times…” Mollie crumpled to the floor. Rolled into a fetal ball. “I think I just murdered three people. Oh, God, somebody help him.”

Ink practically vaulted her desk. She crouched beside Mollie, cradled her head. “Help who?”

Mollie tried to open a doorway to California. She couldn’t. “The rage, it took me again. I didn’t mean it,” she sobbed. “I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

Ink stood and slapped a button on her phone. “I need paramedics here, now! Administrator Baden’s office!”

“No, no, not here,” said Mollie. She tasted strangers’ blood, and worse, when the tears trickled into her mouth. “Help him instead. Please! You have to help him.”

“Who?”

“There’s a man with a severed arm bleeding out in a T-shirt shop in Half Moon Bay. He’s going to die. He needs help. His arm … I don’t know where I left it. And the others.” She tried to talk but somebody was wailing and sobbing with her voice and she could only speak in little gasps. “The others … oh, God, the others … I … I don’t know how I did that … Somebody help them!”

She tried again to fold space but it slipped through her fingers. She couldn’t get a grip on it. Couldn’t concentrate. Couldn’t breathe. The shame and horror were too heavy. Like elephants mating on her chest. They crushed the air from her lungs and didn’t stop. They squeezed and squeezed until everything went dark.

The Angel awoke, not quite sure where she was. Her head was buzzing with an almost subliminal noise, a buzzing like a herd of Bugsy’s wasps stirred up and angry, and it was making it difficult to think. The heat washed over her like a furnace.