Her doctors had referred her to the cosmetic surgeon who worked on Joey, but Mollie had declined. She couldn’t afford elective surgeries. Her own family’s medical bills were fucking insane, and all the money raised by the auction of the stolen property in her North Dakota apartment, all sixty-eight thousand dollars, had gone to Jamal Norwood’s family and the families of the people whom she’d murdered in Half Moon Bay.

Besides … Mollie deserved the scars. And so much worse. Compared against everything she’d done to—to Ffodor, to Joey, even to Berman—a few physical scars were a slap on the wrist.

But she’d measure her mental scars against anybody else’s.

Dr. Swanson yawned quietly behind her hand. She was jetlagged. They all were. They’d traveled from New York the long way around. The primitive way. Using machines.

Mollie used her ace only on rare occasions, and some Committee bureaucrat had to sign a sheaf of papers for each of those. The jobs usually involved opening shortcuts between dingy warehouses in disparate parts of the world so that aid workers could ferry food and water.

The head gravedigger called a halt to the excavation. They knew what they were doing. The square edges went straight down. Deep enough to bury a Louis XIV chair.

True to the time-honored traditions of their profession, the gravediggers wandered off a short distance to give the mourners space, and promptly lit cigarettes. The strange scent brought a sad smile to Mollie’s face. That had been Ffodor’s brand.

Mollie waited for a nod from her minders before climbing into the grave. They offered to help her lower the deceased, but Mollie insisted on doing it herself. The chair was painfully heavy, but she did manage to lift it over the lip of the grave and set it softly in the dirt. It didn’t list or wobble. Part of her therapy involved learning to work with her hands and learning new (honest) skills, so she’d repaired the damage Ffodor’s transmogrified body had taken during her fight with Joey.

Just glue. No woodscrews, no staples. She couldn’t bear the thought of drilling into Ffodor like that.

She didn’t cry. She’d already cried enough tears for one lifetime. Crying was the easy part. What came after the tears? That was the hard part. The frightening part. The part with apologies and reparations and guilt. She wasn’t ready to face her family yet. Dr. Swanson had warned her that might take a while.

Mollie knelt in the mud. She laid her head on the seat. Sighed.

“I wronged you, Ffodor Mathias,” she said. “You died because of my arrogance, my hubris, and my greed. You were very very good to me. You deserved better. And I am so deeply sorry. I will carry this regret for the rest of my days. That is my pledge to you.”