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liketravel-sickness pills to every agent going out in the field. Just slap one of these against any flat surface, and hey, presto! Instant door!”
    “So why did he stop handing them out?” said Molly, instantly cautious.
    “Something about unacceptable side effects,” I said, weighing the blob in my hand. “And if the Armourer thought they were unacceptable…This must have been overlooked.”
    “Take it anyway,” said Molly. “We’re going to need all the help we can get.”
    “Damn right, I’m taking it,” I said. I slipped the thing into my pocket, straightened up and looked around me. “It’s useful, but it’s not a weapon. I want something that goes bang! in a horribly destructive and disturbing way.”
    And then my head snapped round suddenly as a Voice said Eddie! I looked back and forth, but there was no one else in the Armoury. I looked at Molly.
    “Tell me you heard that, too.”
    “Of course I heard it! Someone said your name in a seriously spooky way. But I scanned the whole place before we came in here, and I am telling you we’re the only ones here. No other life signs anywhere, and that includes lab specimens. So who…Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I’m getting something.…”
    She moved slowly between the empty workstations, turning her head back and forth, scowling fiercely as she searched for something she could sense but not see. I was concentrating on the Voice. It had definitely sounded familiar but I couldn’t place it. I knew I’d heard someone call me by my name in just that tone of voice before, but…Molly stopped suddenly before a pile of junk on the floor and cried out triumphantly. She knelt down and stuck both hands into the pile before I could stop her, and pulled out the Merlin Glass. She jumped up to show it to me, brandishing the small silver-backed hand mirror.
    “Result! This is more like it, Eddie!”
    “Could you please stop waving it around so…heartily,” I said carefully. “That is a very powerful and very dangerous object, and this is theArmoury, after all. The Glass was worrying enough as it was, before it got broken in Castle Shreck, and God alone knows what state it’s in now after Uncle Jack’s been tinkering with it.”
    Molly sniffed airily but wasted no time in pressing the Glass into my hands. I accepted it cautiously and looked it over. The Glass had been created for the Drood family by Merlin Satanspawn, way back in the day, and it had many useful properties. But it had been very badly damaged during the Drood assault on the Immortals at Castle Shreck, to the point where it didn’t work at all anymore. The reflective surface had been cracked from side to side, and given that a whole lot of people thought there might be something or even someone trapped within the reflection, I made a point of handing the damaged mirror over to the Armourer first chance I got, with strict instructions to drop it somewhere secure, like a black hole, if he couldn’t mend the thing and make it safe to use. Frankly, I’d never expected to see the thing again.
    But here it was, back in my hand. And completely uncracked. The Glass was clear and unmarked, as though it had never seen any damage at all.…
    “I didn’t know the Merlin Glass could speak,” Molly said doubtfully. “Let alone call out to you.”
    “Maybe it never had anything to say before,” I said. “But this is a magical instrument, after all, made by Merlin himself.”
    “You said the mirror was cracked. Now it isn’t. Could it have repaired itself?”
    “Who knows?” I said. “I don’t think anyone in the family knows for sure anymore why Merlin gave the Glass to us in the first place. Or what it was supposed to do. I never did get around to reading all the instructions Uncle Jack wrote out for me. I have to say…I don’t think the Armourer did this. I mean, he’s good, yes, but he’s no Merlin Satanspawn.”
    I hefted the hand mirror thoughtfully, turning it back and forth and