Unfortunately there’s no approved C of E standard script to handle I’m a vampire. So Pete improvises, and smiles brightly at Alex: “How long have you known you were a vampire?”

The lad relaxes slightly, which is unexpected. “It happened at twenty to seven in the evening, six weeks ago next Tuesday,” he says. His eyes flicker sidelong in a saccade indicative of mild distraction, then he pulls out a gigantic slab of a smartphone and peers at it. “Although I didn’t really confirm it was contagious until the next day at, um, six thirty-three? That’s when I turned Evan. And the blood thing, well, um, ah, that is to say”—his cheeks redden: surely with blood vessels like that he was the victim of any number of cruel embarrassments during his school days!—“we didn’t get to confirm that it actually worked for another couple of days, when management authorized us to take a one-week unscheduled diversionary sprint to provide inputs for the pivot narrative.”

Pete blinks. There are words coming out of Alex’s mouth, and they even sound like English, but—he catches Andy’s eye. Andy nods, almost imperceptibly, but Alex spots it and tenses up again: “I’m not mad!” he says. “I’m not the only one of us, either.”

Andy is clearly playing his cards close to his chest, and this leaves Pete feeling unaccountably annoyed. “I assume if Alex was mad he wouldn’t be here,” Pete points out. “So shall we take it as read that Alex really is a vampire?”

Andy muffles a cough with his fist. “The politically correct terminology is still a matter of some debate, but I am told it’s hard to give offense by talking about, ah, Photogolic Hemophagic Anagathic, um, Neurotropic . . . um . . . what does the ‘G’ stand for, Alex?”

“I’m not sure; I think whoever invented it was just fishing for the world’s ugliest medical backronym.” Alex squirms, as if trying to shrug his way out of a straitjacket. “Anyway, it’s PHANG syndrome. Or Persons of PHANG. Photogolic because we really don’t get on with sunlight; hemophagic because, er, let’s not go there? Anagathic because some of my older colleagues suddenly don’t look a day over twenty. Neurotropic because it has some other interesting side effects, and the ‘G’ got tacked on the end because you can’t call someone a PHANG Fucker without one, yes, ha ha, very droll, you’d better get it out of your system because you’ll be meeting the rest of us in due course, and Janice really doesn’t have a sense of humor about that kind of shit—”