The last time Alex had seen this sales room it had been wrecked, with Harry’s stock of antique toys and mechanical curiosities trashed in a furious fight. A cleanup operation was still underway. Many of the display cases still had shattered fronts and held mangled toys in the process of being sorted. Chairs shrouded in dustsheets huddled against walls like he’d caught them playing ghosts. Boxes, ladders, and paint pots were piled in one far corner. In the other, a door hung ajar, offering a promise of rooms beyond.

Alex weaved warily toward it between display cases. A noise made him flinch. A muffled thud from beyond the door ahead. He stopped, straining to hear. Another, louder thump. A slap. A muted grunt.

Alex dived for cover as the door crashed open and something came flying through. He had a brief impression of a black-clad figure sailing backward and crashing into a set of shelves, tearing them from the wall in a clattering rain.

“Uhhhhhhnnnn.”

The voice was female. A flailing arm appeared from the wreckage and the figure hauled herself up: a tall woman, dressed head to toe in black, including a ski mask. The eyes behind the holes blinked dazedly. As she stood shaking her head, there came further crashes from beyond the door, and she was instantly alert. From a long, padded sheath worn strapped across her back, she drew a rapier sword. Thin blade ready, she dropped into a hostile stance and started for the doorway, a prowling, martial shadow.

Halfway there, she stopped, then slowly turned to Alex, where he crouched by a display case. The large eyes narrowed at him. The head cocked to a confused angle. She took a step toward him, then was bowled off her feet as another black-clad figure came tumbling through the door, crashing into her ankles.

As they went down in a heap, Alex’s grandfather came hurtling in, holding his cane horizontally between both hands. The second figure, a man, got up, limped painfully backward, then, almost reluctantly, lifted his hands, a knife in each. He dropped into a hobbling, circling motion, feinting one way then the other, before trying a vicious swipe.

Alex’s grandfather blocked the blow, knocked the knifeman’s hand aside, and drove his stick into his belly. As the figure doubled over, the old man hooked his neck with his cane and dragged him forward, driving his knee into his face. But completing this move, Alex’s grandfather stepped blindly on a vintage toy car that had been knocked to the floor. As his foot went skidding away, he fell backward, giving his assailant a chance to make a half-stunned lunge with his blade.