I lifted my empty, beet-stained dog bowl and crashed it down on the doorknob. The bowl shattered. The knob held firm, and I almost gave in to despair.

But Cherub grabbed the heaviest chunk of split ceramic and swung it until the knob clattered across the floor. I kicked the door with optimism. It did not budge.

Flame spurted through the hole where the doorknob had been.

Flame soft and delicate, and turquoise blue.

It began a slow climb along the wood, moving like no fire I’d ever seen. It danced, languid and twisted, spreading like hairline fractures on cracking ice.

“I’ve gone mad,” said Cherub.

“So have I.”

I knelt on the floor, hoping to get a look inside the mechanism of the lock, certain that if I could see it I could pick it. Through the hole in the door I caught a view of the rest of the bar—a sight that made me lose hope.

The Basement Club’s roof was a sheet of blue fire.

It fell to the ground in clumps, like wet snow melting from a tree. It reached down like swinging vines, then snapped back up, as though it were feeling for something. It was a living thing, a hungry thing that had swallowed the bar and the walls and anything else in the room unfortunate enough to be made of wood or gin—or flesh.

At the center of it, enrobed in fire, Abner Byrd lurched across the floor. Flames swept down from the ceiling, wrapped around his neck, and pulled. He clawed at them, screaming pitifully as his flesh burned away, and banged his bloody stumps on the front door. He pawed at the knob. It did not open. He gave in at last and fell to the floor.

“We’re not getting out that way,” I said.

“Then we’re not getting out.”

“I have no interest in dying in this awful bar.”

I took a breath, trying to think, and quickly wished I had not. I doubled over coughing, landing on a mattress that went squish. As my hands sank into it, I saw a final chance.

Trying not to retch, I grabbed one end of the mattress. Cherub took the other. We thrust it against the door. It sagged, but did not fall, and its filthy damp stopped, for a moment, the flow of smoke.

“The mattresses,” I said. “Stack them. Now.”

There were eleven of them, as thick as bricks and just as comfortable. We dragged them into the center of the room, building a pile halfway to the ceiling.

“You go first,” he said. “I’ll hold it steady.”

There was no time to argue. I clawed my way to the top of the stack, which sagged and swayed under my weight. Cherub handed me the shard of broken dog bowl, and I started to hack at the ceiling.