"My mommy is in Heaven."

"Do you think I'm going to go to Heaven soon?"

"I don't know," he says, because what do you say to that. "But the medicine and the chanting was making you sick and we're not going to do any of that so you might start feeling better soon."

"Okay."

"Can I go fishing?"

"Not right now. Maybe later."

"Am I going to keep seeing the nice lady in my dreams?"

"Maybe you will. If you do tell us about her, okay? We are trying to figure out how to rescue her."

"Is she real?"

"Random women in dreams are not real," Frank contributes.

"This woman," Oswald says, to Tereza but loud enough for Frank, "is not a random one. She might be real and if she is we are trying to rescue her." He feels distantly like this is just going to make Frank more generally fed up with their bullshit but is too frazzled to do anything about it.

(Also a little like this is the dumbest thing to come out of his mouth so far but he can't help that. It is the situation. The woman is Tereza's dream is a specific woman, she might be real, if so they're trying to rescue her.)

Meanwhile, when Zoe goes into the hospital, Mordred waits outside, tries very hard to look unobtrusive and hoping nobody actually looks at him in such a way that they might recognize him as that guy who got murdered a week ago, and wishes Lev were here so he could actually be talking to someone.

(He could be talking to Frank but his experience is that talking to the Franks of the world is an endeavor best left to people who are not him.)

"Hello, James."

............well, of the people who might recognize him, this is probably the best option.

"Hello, Joan."

"Fancy seeing you here."

She lights up a cigarette.

"Could say the same."

"You here because someone tried to murder Miss Donovan's daughter?"

He does not visibly look surprised at this fact. (Anita, what the fuck.)

"Yes. You too?"

"Yeah." She breathes in the smoke from her cigarette.

"The way I figure it, either there's no one up there right now, in which case I'm useless, or there is, in which case I'm not going to risk my ass saving someone Savitree isn't paying me to save."

"This was not logic Miss Donovan especially wanted to listen to."

Very small not-quite-laugh. "Fair enough."

Christ, what must Montgomery think of this series of events -- he can worry about this later --

"How'd you hear about it?"

"Inaaya says Miss Donovan doesn't know you're here."

"So you can't wind up drafted."

"I was not drafted. --honestly I noticed them pulling guards from the party and went to the obvious place they'd be pulling to to see what was going on."

How does Inaaya know that -- well, there's an obvious answer, but that answer raises the question of what else Inaaya knows, which he is going to worry about LATER, jesus fuck how many layers of lying is he on at this point --

"Reasonable."

"Do you think it was one of ours or one of yours?"

"Or a freelancer, I guess."

"--I'm not fishing or anything, just making conversation, if you know anything don't tell me."

"I have no idea so I cannot possibly tell you."

Oswald emerges from the hospital holding Tereza's hand. Mordred makes half a second of eye contact, and then does not acknowledge him in any way so that he won't have to spontaneously generate a third (fourth?) layer of lie.

"Me either. Seems more like your guy's style than ours, unless Savitree has some plots I don't know about, which she does."

"I mean. Nobody exactly has a monopoly on people with murderous intent," he says.

"That's true."

Deep inhale of her cigarette.

"At least we know Mexico City's too incompetent to be trying anything."