the boss s office, her shields should be more than enough to hide us from our enemies.
Including Crow Lee?
Let us both fervently hope so.
I concentrated on the Merlin Glass through my torc, visualising the exact coordinates for Catherine Latimer s very private office, and the Glass just sat there in my hand and refused to budge. I kept telling it where to go, and it just kept refusing. The shields around the office were so powerful the Glass couldn t find anything to lock on to. Buckingham Palace s shields weren t the problem, just the office s. Which told me rather more about the nature of the Carnacki Institute s shields than I was comfortable knowing. I looked reluctantly at Molly.
Problem We can t go straight to the boss after all. She s protected by something so powerful it even spooks the Merlin Glass. You know it might actually be safer if you were to stay here, Molly. In the car. Uncle Jack s protections will look after you, and you can always do a runner if necessary.
No way in hell, Molly said flatly. You re not going anywhere without me. Not while you re still pretending to be all cocky and arrogant to hide the fact that you re still grieving for your family. Someone s got to be there with you, to be reasonable on your behalf. And, yes, I do know that by volunteering myself in that department I am indulging in cosmic levels of irony, but How about this: If you can t go directly to the boss, can you get to her indirectly?
Of course! Yes! Molly, you re a genius. I had to wait in the secretary s office before I got to see Catherine Latimer, her own bad self, last time I was there. I concentrated on the Glass again, and it locked onto the secretary s office immediately. There you go! A definite weak spot in the Institute s security, Molly, which I shall be quite sure not to mention to the boss. In case I need to use it again.
You see? said Molly. You re getting smarter all the time just from being around me. Come on, let s do this. Before we have a rush of common sense to the brain. I m just in the mood to bully a functionary.
Ah, I said. Clearly you have never heard of the boss s secretary. Heather does not just type and file; she is also the boss s last line of defence. In that you have to get past Heather to get to the boss. Heather is the most heavily armed person in the whole place. She s not just there to smile politely at visitors; she s there to be very, very dangerous. So be prepared.
Oh, I am, said Molly. Really. You have no idea.
Cocky, and arrogant with it, I said.
You know you love it.
I armoured up. The golden metal swept over me in a moment, sealing me off from the world. The bitter cold was still there, but I was getting used to that. Which would have worried me if I d had the time to be worried. Molly looked at me dubiously.
Is that really necessary? Just for a quick drop-in and a chat?
Oh yes, I said. Really. You have no idea.
Shut up and get on with it.
Yes, mistress.
I shook the hand mirror out to door size, and immediately I could see Heather s office through it. I stepped quickly through, Molly all but treading on my heels in her eagerness, and the Merlin Glass immediately slammed itself shut behind me, pushed through my armoured side, and hid in my secret pocket. Out of harm s way. It occurred to me that if the Glass was that scared, then I ought to be, too. But I just didn t have the time.
The office itself was small and cramped and drab; just a close, windowless room with Heather the secretary sitting quietly at her desk, leafing through some paperwork. She looked up, startled, as Molly and I appeared out of nowhere, right in front of her, and she actually gaped for just a moment at the sight of a Drood in his armour. Which is one of the helpful things Drood armour is psychologically designed to do.
Heather herself was a calm, professional-looking sort, pretty in a pleasantly blond, curly-haired sort of way. She wore a white blouse over a navy skirt and had a really big silver ankh hanging round her neck. Anyone else would have seen her as sweet and harmless, just another secretary. Which was, of course, the point. I knew better, but I was still caught off guard when Heather threw off her surprise in a moment, pulled a really big gun out of nowhere and opened fire on me. The damned thing some kind of energy weapon I didn t even recognise was so big she needed both hands to aim it. She just blasted away without even saying a word to me or Molly, and the energy blast hit me right in the centre of my golden chest. The impact was enough to send me staggering back a step. I dug in my heels, regained my balance, while Heather fired at me again and again, the energy beams vividly bright in the enclosed space, leaving shimmering trails of Cherenkov radiation hanging on the air behind them. I leaned forward into the energy fire and advanced slowly and deliberately into the concussion blasts. My armour soaked up the deadly energies and the impacts with increasing ease. It was like wading forward against a strong chest-high tide, but it took me only a few steps to reach the desk, sweep it out of my way with one blow and then snatch the energy gun right out of Heather s hands. I crumpled it easily in my golden gauntlets, and all the little lights flashing on the weapon went out. I dropped the scrunched-up mess to the floor, and it dented the floor when it hit.
Out of nowhere Heather produced an aboriginal pointing bone. Molly slapped it out of her hand. The bone flew away across the office. Heather grabbed Molly s wrist and flipped her right over with a swift judo move. Molly barely had time to get out a surprised obscenity before she was flying through the air, upside down, and heading for the nearest wall. She managed to turn enough to take most of the impact on her shoulder, but the impact was still hard enough to knock all the breath out of her. She slid slowly down the wall, her eyes half-closed and her mouth slack.
I advanced on Heather. She snapped her fingers and the pointing bone reappeared in her hand. The bone was old cold brown, steeped in time and accumulated power. She stabbed the nasty thing at me, and the whole front of my golden armour reverberated like a struck gong, and I slammed to a halt as though I d just been hit in the chest by an invisible battering ram. To my utter astonishment, circular fingernail cracks radiated across my golden chest, a whole series of widening rings like ripples on a pond. I froze for a moment and then the cracks healed themselves, vanishing away as the golden metal re-formed. Heather froze when she saw that, and that was all the time I needed to surge forward and snatch the pointing bone out of her hand. I must have hurt Heather s fingers when I did, but she didn t make a sound. I crushed the bone in my armoured grasp. The bone cracked loudly and then collapsed in on itself. I opened my golden hand, and only dust and a few very small bone fragments fell out.
While I was busy showing off, Heather turned away and retrieved something else from her overturned desk. It turned out to be a shillelagh, a huge gnarled club made from black oak and decorated with all kinds of carved runes and sigils. Given the size and weight of the thing, I was frankly astonished Heather could even heft it. She came straight at me, and when I went to take the club from her, she avoided me expertly and hit me really hard around the head and shoulders. My armour made loud booming noises of distress with every hit, and while I couldn t feel the impact, the sheer ferocity of her attack drove me back several steps.
She flailed away at me as though the shillelagh was weightless to her, hitting me from this side and from that until finally I was sure my armour could take it. And then I snapped a golden hand forward into just the right place to stop the shillelagh in midblow. I held it firmly, and Heather s hands skidded off her end of the club. That must have hurt her, too. She looked at me with something like shock as I hefted the shillelagh easily in one golden hand and then tossed it across the room to Molly, who was already back on her feet. She caught the club easily, hefted it appraisingly and then advanced on Heather with the light of battle in her eyes. Heather looked at her and then at me, and then headed for her desk again. Molly got there first and held the shillelagh threateningly over Heather s work computer.
Hold it right there! Or I ll kill your files!
Heather glared at her. You wouldn t dare!
Trust me, I said. She will. This is Molly Metcalf.
Oh, poot, said Heather.
Things then took a turn for the weird. All four walls of the enclosed office were covered in portraits: professionally painted and photographed faces of old Carnacki Institute agents who had fallen in the field. There were an awful lot of them, men and women who had covered themselves in glory, if not renown. I had heard them referred to as the Honoured Members. It reminded me of the long gallery of Drood portraits back at the Hall. All of them gone now, of course.
All the faces on the office walls suddenly came alive in their frames, and one by one opened their mouths to roar and howl in fury, sounding the alarm at our intrusion. The sound was deafening, overpowering. Even Heather flinched, and she had to be protected. My armour took most of the brunt, but the sound was still so loud and so
