A sterile white wardrobe stood in the corner, and she went to it, irrationally hoping to find her clothes, her purse, her keys, but of course it was empty.

Beyond the door, she heard a gruff voice.

“. . . still hasn’t woken up . . . no, we’ve kept it off the news . . . I’ve already called WITSEC . . .”

Marcella sneered. WITSEC. She hadn’t designed this life, built a future from nothing, just to spend it hiding. And she’d be damned if she disappeared before her husband. Marcella turned, surveying the room, but there was nothing but the one door, and a window looking out over Merit from at least six stories up.

One room, one door. One window.

And two walls.

Marcella picked the one opposite her bed, pressed her ear to the wall,

and heard nothing—just the steady beep of more hospital equipment.

She brought her fingers to the plaster, barely touching.

Nothing happened.

Slowly, Marcella pressed her palm flat against the wall. Nothing. She glared at her hand, the nails cracked where her desperate fingers had dug into the silk-threaded carpet, clawed at the wood floor— Her hand began to glow. Marcella watched the wall beneath her fingers warping, rotting, drywall slouching as if with damp, or gravity, or time, until a broad hole formed between the rooms, large enough to step through.

Marcella marveled, then, at her hand, at the damage it had done. So it wasn’t a matter of force, but feeling.

That was fine.

Marcella had quite a lot of feelings.

She drew the power back into her chest, as if it were a breath. There it burned, less like a fuse than a pilot light. Steady and waiting.

Marcella stepped through the ruined wall, and into the next room.

The door to the room was ajar, and the woman in the bed—Alice Tolensky, according to the clipboard—was three inches shorter than Marcella and a good thirty pounds heavier.

Her clothes hung in the small, hospital-issued wardrobe.

Marcella wrinkled her nose as she considered the slip-on flats, the frills on the collar of the flower-printed blouse, the jeans with their elastic waist.

But beggars couldn’t be choosers. Marcella was grateful for the room in the jeans when she had to pull them on. She stifled a breath as the denim grazed her bandages, then turned her attention back to the closet.

A knockoff leather purse slumped on the shelf. Marcella rifled through the contents and came up with a hundred dollars in cash and a pair of glasses.

She finished getting dressed, tugged her hair into a bun at the nape of her neck, slipped on the glasses, and stepped into the hall. The cop in front of her door was picking at a bandage on his hand. He didn’t look up as Marcella turned and left.

A queue of taxis waited outside the hospital.

She climbed into the nearest one.

“Address?” rumbled the driver.

“The Heights.” It was the first time she’d spoken, and her voice was raw from smoke, a fraction lower and edged with the luscious rasp that so many starlets craved. “On Grand.”