It was a bonded warehouse. Iron bars fronted all the dust-smeared windows, and metal shutters hid everything within from view. The front door was padlocked heavily and looked as if nobody had opened it in years. “This has got to be it,” she muttered, looking up at the forbidding façade. What better way to block off the entrance to a palace on the other side? Probably most of the rooms behind the windows were bricked off or even filled with concrete, corresponding to the positions of the secure spaces on the other side. But there had to be some kind of access to the public reception area, didn’t there?

Miriam moved her locket to her left hand and pulled out her pistol. “How the hell do they do this in the movies?” she asked herself as she probed around the chain. “Oh well.” She carefully aimed the gun away from her, at the hasp of the padlock. Then she pulled the trigger.

The crack of the gun was deafeningly loud in the nighttime quiet, but the lock parted satisfyingly easily. Miriam yanked it away, opened the bolt, and pushed the door in.

An alarm began to jangle somewhere inside the building. She jumped, but there wasn’t anything to be done about it. She was standing at one end of a dusty linoleum-floored corridor. A flick of a switch and the dim lights came on, lighting a path into the gloom past metal gates like jail cell doors that blocked access to rooms piled ceiling-high with large barrels. Miriam closed the door behind her and strode down the corridor as fast as she dared, hoping desperately that she was right about where it led. There was a reception room at the end: cheap desks and chairs covered in dust sheets and a locked and bolted back door. It was about the right distance, she decided. Taking a deep breath, she raised her locket and focused on the symbol engraved inside it—

—And she was cold, and the lights were out, and her skull felt as if she’d run headfirst into a brick wall. Snowflakes fell on her as she doubled over, trying to prevent the intense nausea from turning into vomiting. I did that too fast, she thought vaguely between waves of pain. Even with the beta-blockers. The process of world-walking seemed to do horrible things to her blood pressure. Good thing I’m not on antidepressants, she thought grimly. She forced herself to stand up and saw that she was just in the garden behind the palace—outdoors. Anyone trying to invade the palace by way of the doppelgänger warehouse on the other side would find themselves under the guns of the tower above—if the defenses were manned. But it was snowing tonight, and someone obviously wanted as few witnesses around as possible…