As it stabilized he saw Betsy already up and staggering in circles. Quentin started to say something, but he could only cough and spit.

“Where is it?” she said hoarsely. “Where is it? Do you see it?”

The woman was still down, ten feet away, but she was stirring. Quentin got a close look at her for the first time: tall and model-thin, older than her picture, with ringletted black hair and a bad cut on her forehead that would need stitches. Quentin spotted the case resting in a patch of ferns, as neat as if it had just come off a baggage carousel, a few yards from her.

The woman saw where he was looking. She made a noise in her throat and began to crawl toward it, but Betsy was way ahead of her. As she walked past her Betsy bent and put a hand on the woman’s neck. She spasmed, arching her spine like a cat. Betsy touched her with the other hand, then straddled her like a horse, pumping energy into her—her fingers sparked. The woman’s body bucked under her like she was being defibrillated.

“Stop!” Quentin croaked.

But it was already too late. She let go and the woman fell face-first on the black earth, still twitching. Quentin smelled burned flesh.

“I stopped,” Betsy said. She kept walking.

She picked up the case, examined it skeptically for damage, hefted it in her hands. It looked like it hardly weighed a thing. Quentin crawled over to the dying woman but stopped short of touching her. There was no telling what kind of fatal magical juice was still in her body. Smoke rose from her black hair. It was too late anyway.

Betsy watched him. She spat on the ground.

“I’ll kill you too if you try to stop me.”

The forest was quiet. It was early spring, the undergrowth was still recovering from the rude shock of winter, and only a few crickets chirped. The woman had been a murderer. Three minutes ago she would’ve let either one of them die. Betsy squatted down and laid the case down and fumbled with the latches.

“Shit.” She strained at them, set herself and strained again. “Shit. I was afraid of that. Where the hell is Plum where you need her?”

“What do you want with Plum?”

More or less on cue Stoppard and Plum came crunching down through the branches, shielding their faces from the bristles. They were crowded together on the same club chair; something must have happened to the other one. Their landing was hard but controlled until the chair came down on a rock and one of its legs snapped off, spilling them onto the soft ground.

Plum got to her feet, rubbing her hands on her thighs.

“Jesus,” she said. “What happened?”

“The girl bit it,” Betsy said. “Open the case.”

“What, now? Shouldn’t we—?”

“Open it!”

“Better do it,” Quentin said. “She killed the woman.”