The third floor was where Holly's hospitality officially ended.

  She watched the three intruders reach the nding and immediately spread out into their practiced formation. The leader, Kellerman, went straight, toward what appeared to be a file storage room. The second man, the one with the electronic scanner, headed left toward the server room that absolutely did not contain anything important. The third man, their lookout, positioned himself at the stairwell with a clear line of sight to both approaches.

  "Now gentlemen," Holly said over the PA, her tone shifting from pyfully condescending to something with actual teeth in it, "this is where I start taking things personally."

  Three keyboards sounded simultaneously, a practiced dance of commands and countermeasures. Monitor seven showed the Kellerman approaching the storage room door. Monitor twelve tracked the scanner specialist as he reached for the server room handle. Monitor three dispyed a beautiful schematic of the third floor's security grid, now fully armed and absolutely lethal if she chose to make it so.

  She chose moderation instead. For now. She was still enjoying herself.

  The scanner specialist opened the server room door and stepped inside. Holly waited exactly three seconds, long enough for him to get a good look at the rows of humming, blinking equipment that meant absolutely nothing, before activating the magnetic lock system.

  The door smmed shut with a satisfying cng of metal on metal. The man spun around, grabbing the handle and pulling. Nothing. Holly had rated those locks to withstand a battering ram.

  "Oopsie," Holly said sweetly. "Did I mention the doors up here have a tendency to stick? Old building, you know. Settling foundation, temperature changes, the occasional electromagnetic pulse I use to test my equipment."

  The trapped man began speaking rapidly into his throat mic. His companions responded immediately, the lookout moved toward the server room while the leader continued toward the storage area. Professional discipline under pressure. Holly was genuinely impressed.

  "Oh, and before you ask," she continued, "the ventition system in that room is completely separate from the rest of the building. I had it installed after an unfortunate incident with some CS gas and a very persistent insurance investigator. You've got maybe twenty minutes of air if you don't panic. Thirty if you do that meditation breathing thing. Unless something goes horribly wrong… oh no…"

  She triggered the nitrogen purge, dispcing the oxygen in the room as she watched the man’s eyes bulge s he dropped to his knees, suffocating.

  The lookout reached the server room door and began working on the electronic lock with some kind of override device. Holly watched him with interest. The device was military grade, probably NSA or CIA surplus. These weren't run-of-the-mill mercenaries.

  She was typing commands to reinforce the lock's encryption when her screens flickered. Not the gentle flicker of overloaded processors, but the sharp, deliberate stutter of external interference.

  Someone else was in her system.

  Holly's amusement evaporated as lines of foreign code began threading through her defensive protocols like smoke through a screen door. Elegant, efficient, and completely unauthorized. The server room's magnetic locks disengaged with a soft click, air filling the room once more.

  "What the hell? I woulda let him breathe again once her was unconscious." Holly muttered, immediately initiating countermeasures. But even as she worked to trace the intrusion, she watched the trapped man push the door open and rejoin his companions in the hallway, shaken but still a threat.

  A new message appeared across monitor fifteen, written in flowing script that made Holly's blood pressure spike:[Having trouble with your security system, dear? These old buildings can be so unreliable.]

  The signature read simply: H.

  Holly stilled above her keyboards for exactly one second before exploding into motion. She knew that signature, that particur shade of condescending helpfulness wrapped in technical expertise. It had been three years since their st encounter, but some rivalries never fade. It expined the teasing Ghost message earlier too… it was the name Holly had been using when she shut down the little upstart trying to hack a system she had her own designs on.

  "Honeysuckle," Holly breathed, the name tasting like old copper pennies. "I should have known."

  Meanwhile, Kellerman had entered the storage room and was conducting a systematic search. Holly had filled it with genuine office supplies from a defunct w firm, boxes of legal pads, outdated computer equipment, and approximately fourteen thousand mani folders containing absolutely nothing useful. But he wasn't looking for documents anymore.

  He was looking for structural anomalies.

  Holly's amusement died as she watched him tap walls, examine corners, and trace the outline of what appeared to be a ventition grate that was slightly too rge for its supposed function. He was methodical, experienced, and far too close to finding things she'd spent years making sure no one would find.

  "You know," she said, trying to keep her voice light while simultaneously battling Honeysuckle's intrusion attempts, "most people would have given up by now. There's a perfectly lovely Denny's about six blocks from here. Open twenty-four hours. They have pie."

  The leader ignored her, focusing on the ventition grate. He produced a multi-tool and began removing screws. Holly moved to activate the room's defensive measures, but her commands were intercepted and rerouted. On her screen, another message appeared:

  [Now, now. Let's not be hasty. They're just looking around.]

  Holly snarled and dove deeper into her own system, chasing Honeysuckle's digital fingerprints through yers of security she'd thought were impenetrable. The other hacker was good, Holly had to admit. Better than she'd been three years ago. But Holly had home field advantage and a very personal investment in keeping these particur visitors out of her business.

  She found a backdoor Honeysuckle was using and smmed it shut, then activated the building's fire suppression system before her rival could countermand the order. Water began pouring from the ceiling sprinklers throughout the third floor, a cold, drenching torrent that would make their work considerably more unpleasant while giving her time to think.

  "Sorry about that," Holly announced as the intruders scrambled for cover. "Faulty smoke detector. These old buildings, you know. Everything's connected to everything else, and when one system fails..."

  Almost immediately, her screens filled with irritated text:

  [Really, Holly? Water damage? That's beneath you.]

  Says the woman helping armed intruders break into my home, Holly typed back, establishing a direct communication channel while her hands worked other keyboards to reinforce her remaining security measures.

  [Your home? This dusty old warehouse? I thought you'd moved up in the world by now.]

  The lookout was still working on various systems, water cascading over his shoulders as he struggled with devices that kept shifting between functional and completely dead as Holly and Honeysuckle fought for control. The leader had dropped his work on the ventition grate to protect his equipment from the deluge. And in the server room, the formerly trapped man was probably regretting his career choices.

  Holly made a tactical decision and shut off the sprinkler system before the water could damage anything genuinely important. The sudden silence was almost deafening.

  [Afraid of a little water damage? How very domestic of you, Honeysuckle's message appeared with what Holly could swear was a digital smirk.]

  [I'm afraid of expining to my insurance company why I flooded my own building,] Holly replied, while simultaneously tracing Honeysuckle's connection through seven proxy servers and two government satellites.

  [What I want to know is why you're helping military contractors ransack my home.]

  [Who says I'm helping them? Maybe I'm just curious about what you're hiding down there.]

  Holly's blood ran cold. Honeysuckle knew about the lower levels. Worse, she was right there in Holly's system, probably watching every camera feed, reading every security report, mapping every corridor and hidden passage that Holly had spent years perfecting.

  The leader emerged from the storage room, his expression grim. He'd found something. Holly watched in growing arm as he gestured to his companions and pointed toward the exposed elevator shaft access behind the damaged ventition grate. Water dripped from his jacket as he began removing wet equipment, preparing for the next phase of their infiltration.

  "Gentlemen," Holly said, and this time there was no humor in her voice at all, "I'm going to make you an offer. Walk away now, and we'll call this a learning experience. Continue, and I stop pying nice."

  The leader looked directly at one of her cameras, somehow he'd figured out which ones were real, and smiled. It was not a nice smile. He said something to his companions, pointed toward the exposed elevator shaft access, and began removing his wet jacket.

  They were going down.

  [Oh, this is getting interesting, appeared on Holly's screen. I don't suppose you'd care to give me the grand tour? It's been ages since we've had a proper chat.]

  Every monitor in Holly’s control room lit up with threat assessments, security protocols, and emergency procedures she'd hoped never to use. The building's main power grid shifted to backup generators. Bst doors that hadn't moved in three years began grinding into position throughout the lower levels.

  Immediately, she felt Honeysuckle's presence trying to override the bst door controls. Holly blocked her, rerouted the commands through a different system, and watched with satisfaction as three-inch steel barriers smmed shut at critical choke points.

  [Paranoid as ever], Honeysuckle observed. [Though I have to admire the craftsmanship. Hydraulic systems haven't been this well-integrated since the Cold War.]

  [Stay out of my basement,] Holly typed back, while activating automated defense systems that began arming themselves with the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for doomsday scenarios.

  [Now where's the fun in that?]

  Holly watched helplessly as Honeysuckle began systematically overriding her bst door controls. Not all of them, Holly's countermeasures were too good for that, but enough to create clear pathways through the maze of barriers Holly had just erected. It was like watching a master locksmith work, if locksmiths operated through fiber optic cables and spoke in binary.

  "Last warning, boys," Holly said, but she was already reaching for the red phone that would connect her directly to Hunter's emergency line. "You really, really don't want to go down there."

  Kellerman was already rappelling down the elevator shaft. His companions followed, their equipment and expertise allowing them to descend with the same professional competence they'd shown throughout their intrusion. Holly's cameras tracked them down the shaft until they reached sublevel one, where they paused to regroup and assess their surroundings.

  [Sublevel one,] Honeysuckle's message appeared. [Storage and utilities, if the building pns I found are accurate. Nothing too exciting. Though I notice you've made some... modifications.]

  Holly had indeed made modifications. What had once been a simple basement storage area now housed backup power systems, environmental controls, and the kind of redundant communication arrays that could maintain contact with field operatives even if half the continental United States went dark. The intruders moved through it with careful efficiency, but Holly could see they were impressed despite themselves.

  She watched them disappear from her third-floor sensors and felt something she hadn't experienced in years: genuine concern for her own safety. The first three floors were a shell game, designed to waste time and discourage casual intruders. The basement levels were different. They contained her real work, the servers that held information on every supernatural entity on the continent, the communications array that kept Hunter alive in the field, the weapons development b that produced ammunition capable of killing things that weren't supposed to exist.

  And somewhere in those depths, systems that would activate automatically if they detected unauthorized intrusion. Systems she'd built during a particurly paranoid period and had never quite gotten around to disarming.

  Systems that didn't distinguish between hostile intruders and their creator.

  [Getting nervous?] Honeysuckle inquired. [Your heart rate monitoring system shows some concerning spikes.]

  [I have heart rate monitoring?]

  [You do now. Really, Holly, your personal security is appalling. When's the st time you ran a medical diagnostic? Though getting some… strange readings. As we suspected, not all human, are we? Fae I am guessing?]

  Holly ignored the jab and focused on her underground guests. They had reached the junction between sublevels one and two, where her carefully designed corridors split into multiple pathways. Most led to dead ends or storage areas filled with harmless equipment. One led to her actual operation.

  She watched them pause at the junction, clearly aware they were facing a maze. The leader produced a tablet and began consulting what looked like architectural blueprints. Old blueprints, from the building's original construction in the 1970s.

  Holly's heart sank as she realized what she was looking at. Someone had done their homework. Someone with access to city pnning records, building permits, and construction documents that should have been buried in bureaucratic archives decades ago. These men weren't operating blind. They had a roadmap.

  [Impressive research,] Honeysuckle commented. [Though I notice their maps don't show your more creative additions. The secondary elevator system, for instance. Or that fascinating tunnel that leads to the subway maintenance access.]

  [How do you know about that?]

  [The same way I know about the weapons cache behind the false wall on sublevel three, and the server farm on sublevel four that draws enough power to run a small city. I've been studying you, Holly. For three years, I've been studying you.]

  Holly moved across her keyboards with desperate precision. Every security system she'd ever installed was coming online. Motion detectors that could spot a mouse at fifty yards. Pressure ptes sensitive enough to register a change in humidity. Electromagnetic pulse generators that could fry any unshielded electronics within a hundred-foot radius.

  And yet, as fast as she activated these measures, Honeysuckle was there in her system, probing, testing, occasionally disabling the ones she deemed "excessive."

  [Really, dear,] appeared on Holly's screen. [The cymore mines? That's a bit much, don't you think?]

  [They're motion-activated,] Holly replied, while trying to trace Honeysuckle's physical location. [And completely legal under the Castle Doctrine.]

  [Legal, perhaps. But hardly sporting.]

  The intruders had chosen their path: straight down the main corridor toward sublevel two. It was the obvious choice, the one Holly would have made in their position. It was also the route that would take them past her communication center, through her data analysis b, and directly toward the heart of her operation.

  Holly pulled up the building's lower-level schematics and began tracing possible routes through her underground maze. If these men were half as professional as they seemed, they'd find the main server room within an hour. If they were working for someone with serious resources and had Honeysuckle providing technical support, they might even have real-time guidance through the most dangerous sections.

  Either way, Holly's perfect, impregnable fortress was about to become a very expensive tomb, possibly her own.Her hands found the emergency communication array and began composing a message to Hunter's phone. Just in case the next few hours went as badly as she suspected they might.

  [Sending for backup?] Honeysuckle inquired. [That's not like you, Holly. Usually you prefer to handle these situations personally. And who is this Derek Hunter person?]

  [Usually I don't have uninvited guests in both my building and my computer systems,] Holly replied, hitting send on the emergency message. Some days a girl just needs help.

  On sublevel two, the intruders had reached her communication center. Through carefully hidden cameras, Holly watched them examine the banks of equipment with obvious interest. One of them produced a device she didn't recognize and began scanning the electromagnetic frequencies coming off her transmitters.

  They were mapping her network. Learning who she talked to, how often, and what kind of encryption she used. In the wrong hands, that information could compromise every operative she'd ever worked with.

  Holly's concern shifted to genuine arm as she realized the full scope of what was happening. This wasn't just a break-in. It was intelligence gathering on an industrial scale, with Honeysuckle providing real-time technical support and someone with serious resources providing the funding and personnel.

  This, Holly muttered, watching the intruders' heat signatures move deeper into her underground maze, is why I don't let people visit.

  And somewhere in the depths of her system, Honeysuckle's ughter echoed through the digital corridors like the sound of breaking gss.