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Viv wrapped both arms around one of the big benches, lifted, and heaved it over to the door, squinting against the heat’s blinding intensity.

She hooked one end of the bench under the burning crossbeam and jerked upward, hard.

The beam lurched, but fell back into its brackets, showering the floor in a spray of green sparks that skittered and hissed like water on a skillet.

Several struck Viv’s bare feet and arms, stinging like hornets.

The pain was incandescent, and she smelled her own flesh charring.

She heaved upward again, once, twice, and on the third attempt, the crossbeam was bashed free and slammed to the flagstones, along with another cascade of green sparks.

“Stand back!” shouted Viv. She readjusted her grip toward the center of the bench, lifted it fully, and then charged forward, hammering into the right-hand door and continuing past, leaping over the fallen beam.

A rush of cool night air met her, and she let the bench carry her forward out of the shop, where she hurled it away.

It rolled and clattered into the street, where she could already see the shadows of neighbors emerging.

Viv turned and saw Tandri framed in a hellish green window, the flames from the fallen crossbeam leaping higher.

A shadow to Tandri’s right materialized and then launched itself through the flames. Amity landed in a smoking sprawl on the cobbles. She spared them a brief, terrified glance, and then fled down an alley.

Viv’s gaze snapped back to Tandri. The woman held one arm, grimacing in pain, tears streaking her cheeks.

Taking a deep breath, Viv sprinted back into the building, leaping through the flames, which seemed almost liquid as she passed through, like boiling water. And then she was inside. Hauling Tandri into her arms again, Viv dove back through the green wall of heat.

“Stay here,” she said, depositing Tandri in the street.

When she turned back, the entire building was engulfed, the fire spreading with supernatural speed across every surface. She winced at the sharp reports of more roof tiles popping, and clay shards rained down, peppering onlookers with fragments and dust.

“You can’t go back in there!” Tandri yelled over the rushing howl of the flames.

Viv sucked in a lungful of air and charged back into the building.

She could smell her hair smoldering as she landed inside. Viv spared a glance for the flagstone under the table. Something seemed wrong—was it tilted out of place?

No time for that. Not now.

She scrambled for the kitchen, vaulting the counter top.

The pantry boiled with flames behind her, heat pressing on her like a physical thing.

She yanked the lockbox out and slammed it on the counter.

She leapt over again and tucked it under an arm in a single motion, then sprinted for the doors.

With a roar, she hurled it out into the street, trying her best to aim away from where she thought Tandri was standing.

It struck on a corner with an ominous crack, and tumbled, but blessedly held.

She rushed back to the kitchen.

Viv spared a glance for Blackblood on the wall, the garlands already a glowing ruin of cinders.

Then she heaved the coffee machine off the counter with both hands and walked deliberately back toward the open door.

Sparks from above peppered her shoulders, her hair, little lightning-strikes of pain.

Part of her braid caught fire, but she couldn’t spare a hand to put it out.

She grimly advanced, muscles straining under the awkward load.

She came to a stop in front of the flaming crossbeam and wished she’d had the presence of mind to shove it aside with the bench to clear a path.

But it was too late for that, now. Too late for anything else.

She took one enormous step over the burning beam, holding the machine before her. Fire licked her thighs, cooking her skin, the pain exquisite along both legs, and then she was over.

Staggering into the street, Viv gently set it down and groaned. Her back shrieked in agony, a pain that she hadn’t known for weeks.

As she turned back toward the building, the lintel above the big doors collapsed, and the doors themselves folded inward in a huge gout of green, landing with the booming sound of explosives.

The mullioned window exploded outward in chunks and needles of glass.

Everyone shielded their faces with their arms.

They stood, stunned in the street, baking in the heat rippling from the building. The roof began to creak and snap, and in a shuddering slope, it collapsed, tiles pouring into the room below, where they glowed bright red in the pools of green flame.

Standing in their smallclothes beside the tumbled lockbox and the coffee maker, Tandri’s hand found Viv’s and gripped it tight. She coughed, her eyes watering.

Viv stared into the shop, her face set. The big table began to sag to the side, half buried under cherry-bright tiles, to crumble over the place where the Scalvert’s Stone lay.

She squeezed Tandri’s hand back. “At least we didn’t lose everything.”

Tandri looked bleakly at the machine and the lockbox. “You shouldn’t have risked it.”

Following her gaze, Viv turned fully to Tandri and leaned down until their foreheads met, shoulders slumping under the weight of loss and terror and exhaustion.

In a low voice, so low she was sure Tandri wouldn’t hear it over the roar of the flames and the rising clamor of people and the ringing of watch bells, she murmured, “That wasn’t what I meant.”