The third man out of the car was Marcone himself, a man of medium height and build, wearing a suit that cost more than my car, and he looked as relaxed and calm as he always did. Marcone was criminal scum, but I’ll give the rat his due—he’s got balls that drag the ground when he walks.

Marcone’s head whipped around abruptly, back down the alley the way they’d just come, though neither Hendricks nor Gard reacted with a similar motion. He produced a gun with such speed that it almost seemed magical, and little puffs of frost blazed out from the muzzle of the snow-sculpted weapon.

Hendricks reacted immediately, turning to bring that monster weapon to bear, and tiny motes of blue light flashed down the alley, representing tracer fire. Gard put her shield and her body between Marcone and whatever was at the end of the alley. They hurried into a side door of the building, one that had been destroyed in the collapse. Hendricks followed, still spraying bursts of fire down the alley. He, too, vanished into the building.

“Hell’s bells,” I breathed. “Marcone was inside?”

Mab flicked her hand in a slashing gesture, and the top two-thirds of the little snow building disintegrated under a miniature arctic gale. I was left with a cutaway image of the building’s interior. Marcone and his bodyguards moved through the place like rats through a maze. They sprinted down a flight of stairs. At the bottom Marcone stabbed at some kind of keypad with short, sharp, precise motions and then looked up.

Heavy sheets of what looked like steel fell into place at the top and bottom of the stairs simultaneously, and I could all but hear the ominous boom! as they settled into place. Gard reached up and touched the center of the near door, and there was a flash of light bright enough to leave little spots in my vision. Then they hurried down a short hallway to another keypad and repeated the process. More doors, more flashes of light.

“Locking himself in…” I muttered, frowning. Then I got it. “Wards. Blast doors. It’s a panic room. He built a panic room.”

Grimalkin made a low, lazy yowling sound that I took for a murmur of agreement.

My own apartment was set up with a similar set of protections, which I could invoke if absolutely necessary—though, granted, my setup was a little more Merlin and a little less Bond. But I had to wonder what the hell had rattled Marcone enough to send him scurrying for a deep hole.

Then Gard’s head snapped up, looking directly at where Mab currently stood, as if the little snow sculpture could somehow see the titanic form of the Winter Queen looking down upon her. Gard reached into her suit pocket, drew out what looked like a slender wooden box, the kind that really high-end pen sets come in sometimes, and took a small, rectangular plaque of some kind from the box. She lifted it, facing Mab again, and snapped the little plaque in her fingers.