He can feel its grip compressing around his chest, like heated iron bands over his throat, an instant before the flames lights it up in an electrifying blaze. Jay wasn't lying about the capabilities of burning film - when it burns, it burns like nothing else he's ever seen. Plumes of red-orange streak from the shadow's mask, from the writhing coils of knotted wires and contorted organs, belching up great puffs of blackened smoke.

It presses down on Jay for a fraction of an instant, then releases him.

Then Tim slides from its grasp and hits wood with the splinter and crack of breaking floorboards. It's hauling ass to water. That won't save it.

Tim gags on the thick, gummy smoke, spitting up a streak of black phlegm. One hand draws taut over his chest as the other digs in against the ground to brace himself to his knees. Between the hiss of flame and water, the hushing swell of steam mingling with the cloying clouds of oily smoke, there's the sound of someone calling out, in pain.

Somewhere in the curtains of flame and the curls of smoke - they're gonna need to put this out fast before it eats the whole bathhouse alive - a char-blackened shape lies at the base of the pooling water, no longer luxuriously scented, no longer swollen beyond comprehension.

Tim presses faintly against the center of his rib cage and is rewarded with a dim twinge of pain. At least he can still walk. He half-stumbles and half-limps to draw even with Jay, panting.

"Is it..." The words die in a dry-throated rasp. He clears his throat and tries again. "Did we get it?"