You get the really barking cases less often: they’re usually paranoid schizophrenics who are convinced their meds are poisoning them or the radio is giving them orders from the gangster computer god on the dark side of the moon. When Jesus drops round for a chat in the day center, carrying a twelve-hundred-page printout of his new gospel in six-point type with no margins or paragraph breaks, you have to follow a slightly different script: one which involves discreetly checking for concealed carving knives, followed by a phone call to Social Services after he beams back up to the mothership.

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?”