The bottle’s jagged neck rolled across the sawdust, coming to rest a few inches from my hand. I took it and gathered my nerve. If I shoved one of the higher crates off the shelf, I hoped, it would distract the ogre, giving me the half second necessary to get to my feet and bury the bottle in his neck. I braced my shoulder against the crate and was about to shove when the blast of the pistol tore through the air. The room vibrated as a body thudded to the floor.

It was like ice water down the neck of my dress. I froze, unable to move, unable to hear. When the screaming in my ears faded away, I heard the thug laughing in the display room. I raised myself onto my knees and saw Hellida across the aisle, holding a finger to her lips. She looked down, and I did too, and I wished I had not. Madame Fournier was crumpled on the floor, looking small, frail, and broken. Blood seeped out from the crack in her head and soaked into the sawdust. All that remained of her face was a single eye, still staring into mine, defiant forever.

I dropped the neck of the shattered bottle and tried to find some way that this was not my fault. I did not get very far.

A bottle sailed in from the display room, a flaming rag dangling from its neck. It crashed into the far wall and bathed the room in fire.

The next few minutes were a dream painted red.

The crates burned quick as kindling, but the heavy bottles kept the liquor from igniting. Hellida and I scrambled up, our lungs filling with toxic smoke. I wrapped my arms around Fournier, intent on dragging her body clear. But I slipped in the sawdust, dropped the dead woman, and had to reach for her again. Hellida yanked me away. I yelled something, or maybe I just screamed. Hellida screamed back.

“Leave her!”

I was still reaching back for Madame Fournier when Hellida dragged me into the showroom. The killer was gone. The fire was everywhere.

Have you ever found yourself in a room of flaming corsets? They burned brilliantly, scarlet, turquoise, lilac, and rose, licked by fire as tenderly as one cat grooming another. It might have been beautiful had I not been blinded by smoke and sickened by murder. I fell to my knees coughing, and Hellida helped me up. I made a feeble move to escape through the back, but she was through with creeping. She hurled me at the front door.