The seriously heavy-duty wards preventing him from using his telepathic abilities probably weren’t helping. Happy always described the experience as enduring the hangover without having first enjoyed the drunk.

Melody was playing the latest version of Doom on her phone and giving it her entire concentration; apparently completely impervious to the demands and dangers of the everyday world. Melody really didn’t care much about the ordinary world, except when it interfered with her personal needs and interests. And she was never happier than when she had a new toy to play with. Only someone who knew her really well would have detected the sullen anger coiled and waiting in her tense muscles. Melody’s first impulse was always to fight. With her tech, her knowledge, or a really big gun. She always played to win, or at the very least to go down with her teeth buried in an enemy’s throat.

Happy cracked first. He turned abruptly in his seat and glared at JC. “This is all your fault!”

“Really?” said JC. He made a point of relaxing even further in his chair, so that he seemed positively boneless. “And how, pray, is this my fault? Considering that we haven’t even been told what we’ve been called in for yet.”

“Because it always is your fault!” said Happy.

“He has a point,” said Melody, not looking up from her computer game. “Always first through the doors, always first into the thick of things, and dragging us along behind you. With us usually yelling Can we please talk about this first? Remember Harroby Hall?”

“I thought we’d all agreed that the Harroby Hall situation was not my fault,” said JC, with quiet dignity. “Neither of you noticed anything out of the usual either. How were we supposed to know the house was the haunting, and not the people? That the extremely unfortunate Price family were in fact living in the ghost of a house that had burned down thirty years before? It’s not as if any of your precious instruments detected anything, did they, Melody dear? Still, since we’re so happily reminiscing, perhaps we could share some precious memories of the Case of the Glasgow Bogle? When you assured me that the Bogle was, in fact, entirely harmless? Hmm?”

“Well it was,” Melody muttered defensively. “Right up until Happy provoked it.”

“Oh right, blame me!” said Happy. “Why do I always get the blame?”

“Because you deserve it,” snapped Melody, crushingly. “Remember the Phantom Bugler of Warwick-on-Sea?”

Happy sniffed, stuck out his lower lip sulkily, and wouldn’t meet her eyes. “How was I supposed to know it wasn’t a bugle? I’ve led a very sheltered life. Or at least, I did, right up until I got drafted into this bloody organisation. I can feel one of my heads coming on.”

“Children, children,” murmured JC. “Let us not discuss our personal failings while the enemy is listening.”