A gun went off. I escaped along a side street. A clamor of rocks being thrown and glass breaking serenaded me, but the sounds faded as I fled. I was winded by the time I fetched up on Enterprise Road, panting loudly enough that passersby looked around to see who was breathing like a steam engine. I leaned in the stoop of a closed shop until I caught my breath, then made my way to Fox Close. There was something odd about the neighborhood, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.

The lane was lined with modern gas lamps, although naturally they were not lit during the day despite the overcast gloom and smoky pallor. The lane lay deserted except for a man loitering at the corner with a hat pulled low over his brow. I did not see Bee and Rory.

I walked right past the law offices. When I retraced my path, no business sign met my eye, only a boarded-up house where the sign of orange letters against a feathery brown backdrop had once proclaimed GODWIK AND CLUTCH. The sign was missing; it had been taken down.

I mounted the steps. The door had been staved in with what appeared to be axe blows, then repaired with planks hammered over the rents. I jiggled the latch and found it unlocked. Cautiously I pressed it down, but remembered before I opened it that it would look awfully strange if anyone caught sight of the door opening by itself. It was quiet along the street, every window shut.

The man at the end of the lane vanished, stepping out of sight onto Enterprise Road. I opened the door and slipped inside. A muted light filtered from streaked mullioned windows above the door, illuminating the stairs that led up to the shadows of the first floor above. A tall mirror had been set on the stairs to catch any movement into or out of the house.

Trolls used mirrors in the complicated mazes they drew around their nests. I could not walk in a troll maze, nor could the Wild Hunt enter one because the confusing tangle of shards and glints woven into a troll maze cut the threads of shadow from the spirit world. I had saved Bee by sending her to troll town in Expedition, where the Wild Hunt could not reach her.

This was no part of a troll maze. This was a djeli’s mirror, like the one on the first-floor landing of our old home. In such a mirror, a djeli could see into the spirit world.