I heard running feet and the front door open. By the time I stood up footfalls were faintly echoing from the stairwell. The taste of blood seeped into my mouth and I ran my tongue over my teeth. They were all in place, but I’d bitten into my lower lip. I didn’t understand what had just happened, but I knew I had to get help. As I stumbled back to the living room, my head throbbed with each step. The front door of the apartment lay open, but the hallway was empty under the faintly greenish glow of the ceiling lights. There was no point in knocking on the door across the hall; the Decarnos would never help me. I took a lungful of air, and tripped down the hallway, touching the wall for support. I banged on 5C and 5D. Someone had to answer.

A moment later, I heard soft footsteps on the floor inside 5C. “Who is it?” called Sarah Lyons. I could feel her eye on me behind the peephole, and suddenly the locks turned. She was wearing a long, silvery silk robe, her startled face shiny and greasy under a heavy cream. “Lily! What on earth?” She touched my face with one manicured hand. I realized I was barefoot and still in Claudia’s dress. “That’s a nasty cut on your lip. It’s all swollen up.”

She led me into her apartment, putting one arm around my shoulders and the other supporting my arm. A few steps and I was on her sofa. Sarah disappeared and came back with an ice tray and a clear plastic bag. She popped a few cubes into the bag, then handed it to me to hold against my mouth. Then she vanished again and rematerialized with a dish towel to keep my hand from freezing against the ice.

“Thank you,” I said after a minute. “I’m okay, just shaken up.”

“What happened?”

“I was going through some things at my sister’s apartment.” My voice was muffled by the towel. “There was someone there, hiding in the closet. They hit me with the door.”

“Did you see who it was?”

“No, just their hand on the door.” Almost unconsciously, I glanced at Sarah’s perfect French manicure and my eyes snagged on a beautiful, antique-looking diamond ring sparkling on the fourth finger of her left hand. Even in my badly shaken state, my magpie instincts were strong. I glanced at my own nails, chipped vermillion. The hand on the closet door was delicate and pale, the nails unpolished, ragged and dirty.

“Could it have been your sister?” Sarah asked. “Could Claudia have come back to her apartment?”