I close my eyes for a moment and open my inner eye. I stare at Pete, and the thing in his arms. Human. Cat. Human. Cat. No doubled vision: it’s a cat, singular. A solitary diurnal ambush hunter with good hearing and binocular vision and a predilection for biting the neck of its prey in half while disemboweling it with the scythe-like claws on its hind legs. Basically it’s a velociraptor with a fur coat and an outsize sense of entitlement. Right now it has convinced Pete that it is harmless, but I know better: just give them thumbs and in no time at all they’ll have us working in the tuna mines, delivering cans from now until eternity. (Hey, wait a minute, doesn’t this one have thumbs?)

I open my eyes again. “Andy, it’s just a cat, not a Black Chamber spy wearing a furry suit. Pete, we can talk about what to do with Spooky later.” (I can tell the name’s going to stick: What else do you call a stray cat that decides to adopt a secret intelligence agency?) “Drag up a pew and I’ll give you an update on the meeting.” Pete, despite his extremely probationary status, has got clearance for OPERA CAPE by default, if only because it would be impossible for him to mentor Alex without it, and Andy was in on the original Code Blue.

“The DRESDEN RICE committee is supposed to formulate policy for dealing with, ah, PHANG syndrome as they’re calling it. From a human resources and health and safety perspective. First it was nobbled from the top down—the only person on it with OPERA CAPE clearance was yours truly, and it was over-endowed with WOMBATs.” (A WOMBAT is a Waste Of Money, Brains, And Time: the non-IT equivalent of a PEBCAK. (A PEBCAK is a Problem that Exists Between Chair And Keyboard. (You get the picture: it’s parenthesized despair all the way down.))) “So I complained to Lockhart”—Andy looks at me sharply, but Pete, bless his little cotton socks, shows no sign of awareness, being focussed entirely on fulfilling the hedonistic whims of a furry egomaniac with a brain the size of a walnut—“who said he’d investigate. Anyway, the upshot is that the DRESDEN RICE chair was replaced by someone who does indeed have OPERA CAPE clearance . . . Mhari.”

“Mhari.” Andy frowns: it was a long time ago. “Wasn’t she your—”

“Never mind that,” I say hastily, “the point is, they just handed Dracula the keys to the blood bank.”

“Why would they do that?” Pete looks up, interested, to the apparent displeasure of his lap fungus. “For that matter, who are the ‘they’ you speak of?”

“Management,” I say hastily, just as Andy says “Mahogany Row.” I send him a dark look.

“What’s Mahogany Row?” asks Pete.