“Good morning, ma’am!” she said, appearing in front of me so abruptly I almost cried out. She spoke in the overeager manner of the terminally keen, a trait that began to annoy soon after I’d agreed to assess her suitability, twenty-four hours before.

“Do you have to jump in so abruptly?” I asked her. “You nearly gave me a heart attack!”

“Oh! I’m sorry. But I did bring you some breakfast.”

“Well, in that case…” I looked into the bag she handed me and frowned. “Wait a minute—that doesn’t look like a bacon sandwich.”

“It isn’t. It’s a crispy lentil cake made with soy milk and bean curd. It cleanses the bowels. Bacon definitely will give you a heart attack.”

“How thoughtful of you,” I remarked sarcastically. “The body is a temple, right?”

“Right. And I didn’t get you coffee because it raises blood pressure. I got you this beetroot-and-edelweiss energy drink.”

“What happened to the squid ink and hippopotamus milk?”

“They were out.”

“Look,” I said, handing back the lentil animal-feed thing and the drink, “tomorrow is the third and last day of your assessment, and I haven’t yet made up my mind. Do you want to be a Jurisfiction agent?”

“More than anything.”

“Right. So if you want me to sign you out for advanced training, you’re going to have to do as you’re told. If that means killing a grammasite, recapturing an irregular verb, dressing Quasimodo or even something as simple as getting me coffee and a bacon roll, then that’s what you’ll do. Understand?”

“Sorry,” she said, adding as an afterthought, “Then I suppose you don’t want this?” She showed me a small lump of quartz crystal.

“What do I do with it?”

“You wear it. It can help retune your vibrational energy system.”

“The only energy system I need right now is a bacon roll. You might be a veggie, but I’m not. I’m not you—you’re a version of me. You might be into tarot and yogurt and vitamins and standing naked in the middle of crop circles with your eyes closed and your palms facing skyward, but don’t think that I am as well, okay?”