We didn’t have to wait more than a few minutes before the door creaked open. We could feel Fletcher before she entered, the floor seeming to turn to bare white tiles beneath our feet and the walls laden with strange metal devices. I was pressed up the wall, Robin tucked behind me in the darkest shadows. Not the best hiding place, and easily discoverable if she poked around the room. But we weren’t planning on waiting for her to search the room.

Fletcher had a nasty-looking rusted gun that she held out in front of her. Her ratty brown hair was fallen across her face and she looked the worse for wear, a long and dirty scrape leaving her with only one of her sleeves. “No one has to make a fight out of this place,” she said. “Just the girl. And you…” She frowned, taking a lighter from her pocket and clicking it a few times before the flame jumped to life. In the not-quite-real environment of the hospital surrounding her, it looked wrong, out of place, creating angles and lights that didn’t exist. “Wait. Where are-”

I put Bella to her head and spun the barrel so she could hear the click. “Hello, Fletcher. Let’s talk.”

Her nightmare flared in response. I winced, feeling the spike of pain in my head, but made sure that Bella didn’t waver. “Hexel,” she growled. “Why is it always you?”

“Drop the gun. I want to hear it bounce.”

For a moment, I was worried that she wouldn’t, that she’d call my bluff, that she’d realize I would refuse to kill her because I needed her. Things might get messy then—I needed her alive, but I didn’t need all of her intact. Then she tossed the gun onto the ground, letting it clatter away. “Done. What could be so important that you need to hear it straight from me?”

“I don’t need to hear a damn thing from you,” I said. “You could be as quiet as a pin falling and that’d work just as well for my purposes.” I ground my teeth against one another. “Relax your nightmare.”

“I’d rather not.”

“You have a gun to your head, Fletcher.”

I couldn’t push her much farther. But damn it all, I needed to be able to think straight. She growled something under her breath—something that, I suspected, it’d be best if Robin never heard repeated. The hospital ebbed around us. “I’d rather be free from that as soon as I can,” she said. “We don’t need to talk as equals, sure—but you have a weapon and I do not. Surely you can remove it from my head?”

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I frowned. “Robin, get her gun.”

“Oh, yes. You brought her with you.”

I kept Bella pressed against her cheek while Robin scoured the floor for the gun. Fletcher hadn’t made it easy to find, and it was tucked up against a set of old shelves laden with moldering books. Only when she’d brought it back to me, holding it awkwardly by the barrel, and I had it tucked away safely into my jacket pocket, did I lower my own gun and let Fletcher step away. “There,” I said. “We’ve made our common courtesies to one another, all those that we need. Neither of us need an introduction to the other or what she can do-”

“Petra Fletcher.”

“Hmm?”

“My name. Petra Fletcher. So that we may all be on the right terms with one another.”

I shrugged. “Whatever you think will help you. Names are only as useful as you make them or the power you give them. And I don’t think what I call you will matter for what I gotta ask of you, Fletcher.”

“Oh, I like the sound of that.”

“We need Jabberwock. From you.”

She laughed. “What could you possibly need it for? Of all the things to ask me, Hexel—that’s one I wouldn’t expect of you.”

“It doesn’t matter what I need it for. It doesn’t matter how we’re going to use it. What matters is that I get it from you, Fletcher. I don’t know if you’re a dealer or an enforcer or high up enough in their hierarchy that you’ve some control over where they’re looking—but you can get it. Just a vial or two, barely enough to make a dent in your supplies. I’ve seen the warehouse you’re importing.”

Fletcher bared her teeth. The floor beneath her feet flickered between planks and hospital tiles. “They’ll kill me for it. Oh, I have no loyalty to Valorian or Arcadia or any of the rats that run that ship—but I’m smart enough to fear them.”

“Arcadia?”

“She’s the lieutenant of the whole operation. Cruelest nightmare I’ve ever known.”

I seethed. “Something we both agree on then. But I gotta be honest, Fletcher—I don’t care about the consequences for you after all this, and you really shouldn’t be worrying about them either. After all-” I pulled back the hammer on Bella again, let the click ring in the space, let her see my finger on the trigger. Robin flinched at it this time—had she done that before? I hadn’t been watching. “You might be scared of your future if you help me. I’m telling you it’s a luxury to get a future if you don’t. Are we clear, Petra Fletcher?”

“Clear enough,” she said. “And I do appreciate having my head on my shoulders. Come on, then—they’re moving a shipment tonight and the warehouse will be lightly watched.”

“Now?” I said at the same time Robin said “Tonight?”

She turned back to us, anger glimmering in her eyes. “The longer you drag this out, the more danger you place me in. I do not plan to let my lies pile up behind me and meet the wrong fate for it—so yes, tonight. Now follow me.”