JC always thought of her as the last of the Bulldog Breed. But only to himself, and never in her presence. He didn’t think she could actually read minds, but he didn’t feel like taking the chance.

Rather than meet the Boss’s unnerving gaze directly, JC looked around her office. It was not without interest. The Boss had been a field agent herself, back in the day, and she still kept souvenirs of that time around to brighten up her otherwise-coldly-efficient office. So, apart from the expected shelves crammed with books and files, and the necessary modern technology, there was also a large goldfish bowl, half-full of murky ectoplasm, in which the ghost of a goldfish swam calmly back and forth, flickering on and off like a faulty light bulb. An old Victrola wind-up gramophone, complete with curving brass horn, waited patiently in one corner. It played the memories of old 78 rpm recordings that didn’t physically exist any more. JC had once heard it play a 1908 recording of the last English castrato, David Tennich. A beautiful, eerie, subtly inhuman sound. The Haunted Glove of Haversham, which had strangled seventeen young women in 1953, until the Boss figured out what was going on, and captured it, now resided under a glass display case. Very firmly nailed to its wooden stand, just in case. It looked like a very ordinary glove.

And, finally, there was a portrait of Her Majesty the Queen, taking pride of place behind the Boss’s desk. The whole face seemed to follow you around the room.

Having run out of excuses not to meet the Boss’s gaze, JC decided to get his retaliation in first. He arranged his crossed legs so casually it was practically an insult, leaned back in his chair, and looked down his long nose at the Boss.

“What is so important that we had to be summoned here, like peasants to the Great Hall, so soon after our last case?” he demanded. “We are entitled to sufficient downtime between cases. It would say so in our contracts if we were allowed contracts, which we aren’t, and is another matter I’d like to discuss. Hold everything; don’t tell me one of the Royal corgis has got possessed again . . . I keep telling you, they’re too inbred these days. The corgis, not the . . . Look; we do all have lives, you know, outside the Institute . . .”