I crawled into the office. He was strapped to a chair, a slumped old man in a spotless white uniform that was just beginning to attract the fire. I crawled in his direction. The walls were a tapestry of flame.

“Wake up, damn you!” I shouted. He did not. Above Copeland’s waist, the smoke was impenetrable. If I stood, I wouldn’t be able to breathe more than a few seconds. So I did the only thing that made sense. I bit him. Hard.

“The hell?” he murmured. I kept biting, stopping only when blood ran down my chin. He kicked, and I clawed the knots that bound his legs to the chair. My penknife, naturally, had been left in my bag.

“No use,” he said. “Out, girl. Run.”

“Hush.”

“Those are Flemish loops, tied by an old hand. You’ll never . . . there’s a knife.”

“Where?”

“Desk drawer.”

“Wait here.” I dug my hands into the tangle of knots on the back of the chair and yanked him down. The crash shook the floor, which would not hold for long. He groaned, coughing up something too black to be blood, and breathed a little better.

The fire had started in the office. The wall of immaculate cubbies was an inferno. The burning ink put an acrid tang into the smoke that made my eyes water but helped me fight back the creeping urge to sleep.

I pulled out what remained of the top desk drawer, and the knife rolled toward me—a scrimshaw pocketknife decorated with a portrait of a narwhal. I snatched at it, and the white-hot metal fused, ever so briefly, with the skin of my hand. I couldn’t help what happened next. Bellowing the foulest curses of the Westside, I threw the knife across the room, and it landed in the wall of flame.

In the next room, a beam snapped, and half the floor fell away.

“Quick,” said Copeland, “or not at all!”

The office had no fire extinguisher, no watercooler, no pitcher of flowers to douse the blaze. But in the far corner of the room was a ceramic spittoon, half full of a sickening mixture of black tobacco scum. I picked it up, using my skirt to protect my already blistering right hand from the heat, and upended it where I hoped the penknife had landed. The fire hissed into a cloud of noxious tobacco steam, and I fought the urge to retch. There would be time for that later. In a pool of simmering spit and tar-stained cigar ends, the knife was there. I grabbed it through the arm of my dress, pried it open with my teeth, and crawled back to Copeland’s chair.