I take a deep breath. “Sally, I am going to give you a keyword. Tell me, have you heard of OPERA CAPE?”

“What, you mean—that’s an internal classification?”

“Yes.”

“No, can’t say I have.” Her crow’s-feet wrinkles deepen. “Is it relevant?”

I feel like groaning, but confine myself to a small nod. “Yes, it’s relevant. Unfortunately I can’t tell you why. So, um. You believe this is a blind training scenario, to test our business process for generating procedures for handling new classes of paranormally endowed personnel, am I reading you right?”

“Exactly!” She beams. “And as our go-to structured cabling guy you’re clearly level-headed and approach things systematically. Anyway. As you can tell, we’ve been given a mish-mash of unsuitable personnel, not to say deadweight. Which means the rest of us are going to have to do a lot of the heavy lifting.”

Oh dear. The committee chair isn’t cleared for OPERA CAPE. Which means I may be the only person on this committee who actually knows anything about vampires. And if they’re not cleared, I can’t tell them.

“You’re assembling a little subcommittee. Am I right?”

“You are indeed right. Clearly a man of hidden talents!”

“Jolly good. So I assume this means you want me to do something for you. Again, am I right?”

“Ye-e-s . . .”

Every instinct is telling me to run away, very fast. But I harbor a morbid curiosity, and something tells me it’ll be useful and instructive to study the way unbriefed members of the unwashed masses deal with the idea of vampires, and in any case I’m the only person here who has any idea why this committee exists, so . . . I lean closer and say, “Tell me more.”

She tells me. After which I want to set fire to my beard and flee, screaming. And I don’t even have a beard.

• • •

HOMEWORK: I HAVE IT.

I have the angries, too.

“This is such bullshit!” I brandish a fistful of email printouts in the general direction of Lockhart’s desk, carefully not pointing it at him directly—it’s not his direct responsibility in any case. “The committee is overloaded with coffin dodgers. I mean, even Sally Carlyle couldn’t get Basil to stay on-topic for more than thirteen consecutive seconds, and as for Bill . . .”

“Sit down, Mr. Howard!” booms Lockhart, in a stentorian tone that is familiar to sergeant-majors everywhere.

I sit, hastily, balancing on the edge of the visitor’s chair in his office.

“Your point that nobody else on the DRESDEN RICE committee has been cleared to know about persons infected with OPERA CAPE is well-taken.” Lockhart moderates his voice. “But has it occurred to you that there might be a reason for that?”

“I can think of several.” I cross my legs. “Mostly ranging from the inane to the criminally irresponsible.”

“Do enlighten me, then. What options do you see?” The hairy caterpillar balanced on his upper lip hunches its back in a sneer.