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checking every detail. Something about it didn’t look right, didn’t feel right. I’d held it often enough, used it often enough, to know thatthe weight and heft of it in my hand now was subtly, unnervingly different. Wrong. I said as much to Molly.
    “Are you sure?” she said immediately. “I mean, it has been repaired. There are bound to be some differences.…”
    “It’s not that. I’ve handled the bloody thing often enough to know that something’s not right about it! It’s never something you just take for granted; with an artefact this powerful, it’s like juggling a live hand grenade every time you use it.”
    I turned the hand mirror over and studied the design on the back. The silver scrollwork was definitely different. I showed it to Molly, and she traced the raised edges with a fingertip.
    “There’s some kind of inscription worked into the design, but I’m damned if I can make head or tail of it,” she said finally. “Not Celtic, not Sumerian…not Kandarian or Enochian…It is vaguely familiar, but I can’t get my head around it.”
    “The design has changed,” I said. “But I couldn’t tell you how.”
    “Put it away for now,” said Molly. “It’s enough that we’ve got it and the enemy missed it. We’re here to look for weapons. Remember?”
    I slipped the Merlin Glass into the special pocket dimension I keep in one of my jacket pockets. I always like to have somewhere secure about me to store dangerous things. If only so I can get at them quickly in an emergency and throw them at other people. I breathed a little more easily with the Merlin Glass safely stored away, and looked at Molly.
    “Speaking of horribly powerful things that the world is undoubtedly better off without…I’ve been thinking about the Forbidden Weapons. I need to be sure they’re still secure within the Armageddon Codex.”
    Molly looked at me sharply. “You don’t really think the enemy could have got into that. Do you?”
    “I don’t know what to think anymore,” I said. “But given that we are talking about weapons so powerful my family locked them away, only to be used when reality itself is under threat…”
    “We should take a look,” said Molly.
    So I led the way, to the very far end of the Armoury, to the final andvery off-limits stone chamber. The Armageddon Codex is kept in a very private, very separate pocket dimension, for maximum security. To get to it you have to pass through the Lion’s Jaws—a giant stone carving of a lion’s snarling head, complete with mane, perfect in every detail. Not stylised in any way, it looks like the real thing, only some twenty feet tall and almost as wide. The Lion’s Jaws are carved out of a dark, blue-veined stone, so long ago that no one now remembers who did the work. It’s a lion to the life; the eyes seem to glare, the mouth seems to snarl and the whole thing seems ready to lunge forward at any moment and have your head off. To open the Codex, you have to pass through the Jaws, and if you don’t have the proper clearances…at best, they won’t open. Rumour has it that if you so much as put your hand in the Lion’s Jaws and you’re not pure of heart, the Jaws will bite your hand right off. The Armourer had assured me that this was just a story to keep young Droods from messing with the thing for a dare, but I wasn’t sure I believed him. The Lion’s Jaws always looked hungry.
    “You want to try opening it?” said Molly, who knew no fear.
    “I don’t have the key.”
    “Who needs a key when you have me?”
    “No, Molly,” I said very firmly. “I’m not doing anything that might upset it without the Armourer present. He’s the only one who knows the correct Words to access the Codex. I just need you to use your magics to make sure no one’s pressured him into opening it. Make sure the Jaws are still closed and the seals haven’t been compromised. You can do that, can’t you?”
    Molly sniffed loudly and gave me a withering