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“Now listen, you little rotters,” the Magazine Man whispered, though there was no one to hear the to set you down for half a tock and you ht think it’s a swell idea to run off, but I proet nowhere fast but dead if you do I know these twisty-turnies like my own covers, front and back, but you can’t see in the dark any better than a blind, drunk hedgehog Understand your old Brunto?” The creature sniffed the air He turned right “Postscript! There’s a chasm three inches to your left that botto with ravenous wormsharks and at least one imround, right?”

Branwell trelad Anne couldn’t see it Anne Why couldn’t old Brunty have grabbed Charlotte instead? Anne was little and slow and any tihter

going aave them all sweet, tender burials and resurrections in Tabitha’s butter dishes What could he do with an Anne?

Anne looked up at him in the dark He couldn’t see her, not really, but he could see a sliver of the shine in her big eyes

“Don’t leave me,” she whispered “Don’t you run off”

She didn’t think he would But she couldn’t be sure If only the Magazine Man had snatched Emily instead, Anne would have felt et the idea that he could save her better by dashing off to do so with a trebuchet, a bucket of nails, and a bloodsucking bat, or whatever other savagery caht his knuckles popped

“Right, Mr Brunty We’ll be good” But Bran felt rather s e or new shirt collars So he added: “For now”

Brunty clapped his illustrated hands Anne could hear it in the dark, dry and raspy and sneering “Oh, very brave, Little Lord Backtalk!”

The buzzing grew louder and ed and rustled with sohtful business Bran and Anne strained to see Finally there was a popping, sucking noise and the blackness fizzled away in a gout of greenish-blue light Brunty had got his uncanny contraption working again, that strange and sickly hourglass fra of shining obsidian stone, bubbling with acid and sizzling with tiny forks of lightning The ghostly lantern-light flickered over the pages of Brunty’s brutal face, his scroll knob belly, his glossy evening-edition hands It turned his spectacles to spectral green lamps And they could see, now, that Brunty was all bad news The newspapers on his waistcoat announced WAR! and MURDER! and ALL-DESTROYING FLOOD CONSUMES PLANET in giant headlines The azines that formed his meaty hands showed terrible woodcuts of famine and mayhem The master spy raised the capital O’s of his eyes to heaven and patted his waistcoat for solass vial of sand, which in any other light, would have shone red

“What is that thing?” Bran asked He could hardly take his eyes off it The seething, venoreen danced deep in his pupils

“None of your bloody business, Quentin Q Questions! Hasn’t anyone taught you anything? The first rule of spying is Do Not Ask Plainly for What You Seek or Nobody Will Tell You Nothing You’d get strangled on your first day Oh, the Great Encyclopedia tests me so! He knows I hate children What a better world we’d have if ere all born grown!”

“That’s a nasty thing to say and you’re a nasty man,” Anne said matter-of-factly

“What’s the second rule?” Branwell piped up

“Eh?”

“Of spying You said the first rule already What’s the second?”