Chapter 1

Merlin Jacobs, who has always believed himself to be a reasonably intelligent and responsible man, was seriously wondering whether his brain had slipped a cog and the events about to be described were the manifestations of some incipient mental illness, or whether he had in fact stumbled upon some medieval wizardry, some arcane, atavistic magic not encountered outside children’s fairy tales.

He’s always considered himself a common sense kind of person, a believer in science, evidence, fact. Practicality might have been his middle name. He appreciates why many grownups still want to believe in fantasies, and he even believes some fantasies, some delusions can be beneficial in that they might offer some small ray of hope in the face of grim reality. But as for Merlin, given the choice between hard truth and fiction, he choses truth every time. He has never once read his horoscope, he doesn’t toss salt over his left shoulder if he knocks over the shaker, he doesn’t avoid black cats, and breaking a mirror doesn’t evoke in him any sense of dread. Friday the 13th is just another Friday.

But there came a time about a year and a half ago when he was forced by circumstances to reconsider his worldview, and for a man like Merlin who’s comfort and sense of wellbeing are to no small degree reliant upon an entirely predictable day-to-day routine, those circumstances were very upsetting indeed.

But before we get into the details of our protagonist’s enlightenment, perhaps a little something about the man himself might be useful. You can judge for yourself whether he’s a sane, rational creature or a man teetering on the edge.

Merlin was and is flawed in some ways, as are we all, but not so flawed that he stands out among his peers; i.e., there’s nothing glaringly unusual about his appearance or his behavior. Certainly he has his quirks and eccentricities, like being an OC neat freak and his insistence on never ever being late for an appointment! He may have a few personal mildly embarrassing secrets he doesn’t choose to share with anyone, but then who doesn’t?

As this story begins, Merlin is a healthy forty-one year-old man, five-eleven, one hundred eighty-two pounds, generally fit and reasonably attractive, in his own humble estimation. He grew up on a farm in rural Oklahoma and attended Colorado State University where he earned his MS in chemistry. Following a few years spent in R&D, he earned his MBA and became a regional honcho heading up product development at a medical supply company, earning a generous enough salary to place him at the lower end of the upper middle-class economic stratum. When it comes time for him to retire in twenty-five years or so, his 401(k) and investment portfolio will provide him with a very comfortable living throughout his remaining years unless government and industry find some way to cheat him out of it.

So far, nothing all that unusual.

Merlin is divorced. He didn’t intend to be, but he got caught the one and only time he ever cheated on his wife. It was a combination of bad luck and a small lapse in judgment on his part. His two children, a fifteen year-old boy and an eleven year-old girl live with their mom; not their choice, but the court’s. The law in its wisdom isn’t inclined to be very forgiving of fathers who stray. Straying mothers seem to fare better in that respect.

Since he lives several hundred miles from his estranged family, he only gets to have his children with him for one month during the summer. Of course they talk often on the phone and visit on Skype, but it’s just not the same when you can’t hug them. They look forward to their time together as much as he does, and that’s a lot. If prodded, he might own up to a sense of schadenfreude that the kids are always less than enthusiastic about returning home to their mother, but Merlin is a man of principle and he’s very careful to never drop any disparaging remarks about his ex in their presence.

In the love-life department since his divorce, he’s had a couple of minor flings, neither of them initiated by him. Although sex with a real woman was certainly preferable to autoeroticism, nothing could tempt him to consider remarrying. The mere thought of another wedding in his future was enough to give him the vapors. Having fulfilled his biological imperative by fathering two healthy children, he saw no reason to risk his tender sensibilities on another foray into that matrimonial abyss.

In truth, the idea of entering into any kind of relationship with a woman made Merlin uncomfortable because he was by nature a shy man, somewhat socially inept and not inclined to initiate anything of a sexual nature. His ex-wife had been the aggressor from the very beginning, practically railroading him into a marriage he was less than enthusiastic about, probably because she believed he had good financial prospects. But it wasn’t long after they were married that the sex part became merely perfunctory.

When he was caught in the tryst that was the grounds for his divorce, it was the pretty young redheaded divorcee down the hall who had lured him into her apartment under the pretext that she couldn’t get her computer to work properly and seduced him on the spot. His wife caught him exiting the woman’s apartment, flushed and reeking of sex, and browbeat him into confessing his adultery. She cared not a whit that the seduction had been carefully planned and engineered by the horny young widow.

Merlin’s likes include reading good literature (he loves good sci-fi and mysteries), good music (preferably classical, but he appreciates virtuosity in most genres), and hiking. He takes a week by himself every summer to do an extended solo hike somewhere in the world. His last adventure was in Nova Scotia.

Oh, and he has an abiding passion of antique furnishings.

So there you are. On the surface, Merlin Jacobs is so conventional, so ordinary, that his acquaintances sometimes jokingly refer to him as Mr. Vanilla.

And now to the issue at hand, brought about because of his interest in antiques.

Once upon a nice warm Saturday morning in May, Merlin was poking around the antique shops in the south part of the city. He wasn’t shopping for anything in particular, he just wanted to look around to see if an interesting piece would reach out and grab him.

If you know antiques - and Merlin considered himself very well informed on the subject - there are some pretty amazing bargains to be had if you have a sharp eye. Of course most of the dealers in the district are quite aware of what their pieces are worth, but a few of them are actually more junk dealers than antique dealers and their shops are often where you find some of the best bargains.

He’d been to at least a half dozen boutiques and found nothing for which he was willing to shell out his hard-earned money, so he was about to give up and head home when his keen eye caught sight of a large oval framed mirror peeking from behind an atrocious oil landscape. It was about five feet high and three across, and it was leaning against the back wall of an old shop stuffed from floor to ceiling with mostly useless and tasteless crap. He lifted it out of its hiding place and stood back to take a good look. The damned thing must have weighed nearly a hundred pounds and he began to examine it closely to determine what kind of wood the heavy frame was carved from, how thick the glass was, and what it was backed with.

He recognized the wood as walnut, beautifully carved in an ornate, baroque style. His first estimate was that it might be very old indeed, possibly seventeenth century, but he’d never seen or even read about a very old mirror so large. The back of the mirror was painted over with cheap flat black paint. He couldn’t imagine why someone would do that, but you see it all the time. He looked around to make sure no one was watching and took out his pen knife to scraped off a little of the black paint, hoping to see what kind of original backing lay underneath.

As he began scraping, he was startled to hear someone challenge rather brusquely, “Do you mind?!”

For an embarrassing moment, he assumed he’d just been busted, and looked around to explain that he wasn’t vandalizing the piece, just trying to verify its age.

But there was no one there. How strange.

“Hello?” he called out tentatively.

No answer. Could he have imagined it? He shrugged and bent over to examine the spot where he’d scraped off a half-inch square area of the paint ... and damn near peed himself!

The mirror was backed with gold leaf, and that meant two things: One, that it was probably worth a hell of a lot of money, and two, that it was probably very, very old; possibly from as far back as the middle ages. Gold leaf hadn’t been used to back mirrors for centuries!

Feeling rather excited and hoping that little fact hadn’t been discovered yet, he went to find the proprietor. He approached a pot-bellied, sixtyish man at the front counter dressed in baggy pants, an age-yellowed white shirt and red suspenders. The man was puffing away on a cigar and studying a green ledger book through thick horn-rimmed glasses. Merlin put on his best poker face and asked the man how much he wanted for the old mirror in the back.

“There’s an old mirror back there?” the shop owner asked, squinting against the smoke from his smelly cigar.

Merlin was hopeful. “Um, yes, it’s in a walnut frame. It’s really the frame I’m most interested in.”

The man smiled lopsidedly around the cigar clenched in his teeth and said, “Well I guess it must have come in with that last load from the estate sale my wife went to a couple of days ago, so I haven’t really had a chance to look at it yet. Let me give her a call and ask her what she has in mind for a price.”

Merlin’s hopes faded. If she’d bid on it at an estate auction, she probably had a pretty good idea what she was buying.

But for whatever reason, she wasn’t answering her phone. The proprietor shrugged and said, “I guess she must be on the road somewhere. She has this thing about not answering her cell phone if she’s driving, so I can’t say when I’ll be able to talk to her. Tell you what, let’s go back and take a look and see if we can’t come up with something satisfactory to both of us.”

The man stood in front of the mirror, grabbed it and spun it around, probably grinding off a good millimeter of ancient wood. Merlin almost gasped out loud at such callous treatment of the piece, but he managed to hold his tongue.

The proprietor leaned it against the wall, crossed his arms over his protruding belly and stepped back to look at it. “Kind of an odd piece, isn’t it? A little too fancy-schmancy for my taste. Don’t think I’d hang it on a wall in my house, but then it’s different strokes for different folks, I guess. What would you be willing to give me for it?”

A little thrill went through Merlin when the man’s comments indicated he was no antique dealer, that he didn’t have a clue what he was looking at. Still in his casual voice, Merlin said, “Yes, well I thought I could restore the frame and replace the mirror with a nice still life, maybe hang it sideways on the wall.” He stepped forward and ran his fingers over the wood. “Looks like it’s going to need a lot of cleaning up, though. I don’t know, I guess I might go a hundred bucks.”

The shopkeeper tried to look shrewd, cocking his head to the side. “I was thinking more like one-fifty.”

Merlin had played this game many times before and he was good at it.

“Really? Seems like a lot. Well, let me see what I brought with me.” He patted his jacket pocket, looked slightly distressed, and said, “Damn, I’ve gone off without my wallet.” He reached into his front pocket and pulled out some bills, turning his back on the man to count them. “Sorry,” he said with a shrug, “I guess I’m out of luck. I’ve only got a hundred and six dollars with me. Oh well, thanks anyway.” He turned to walk away.