“Really?”

“I can vouch for him.” I glance at Pete, minutely, and Andy nods, getting the picture. “Unless Angleton had some other reason to squelch the old vampire monitoring program, it’s not him. And as he’s on . . .” Andy nods again. Pete has no need to know about BLUE DANDELION. So I change the subject away from sensitive topics. “Pete, what have you discovered so far?”

“Oh, that’s easy!” He looks up. “Would you believe that, of forty-six parishioners informally polled, thirty-six of them believe in the existence of evil incarnate, in the person of the Devil?” He sighs. “Well, their average age was somewhere north of sixty, and they’re self-selected for being frequent attendees at religious services, so there was bound to be an element of literal-mindedness to them. But, taking the Devil as a baseline, the really interesting thing is that forty of them believe in vampires. Over 85 percent! Vampires are out-polling Satan in the bogeyman charts this decade.”

He takes a mouthful of fizz. “Mind you, I added a couple of control questions. I said they were a self-selected sample? 52 percent of them think gays are going to hell, and 39 percent think the Earth was created late one Saturday night in October of 4004 BC.” He looks pained. “I can see I have some sermons to write on the subject of metaphor and creation myths. And tolerance.”

“What about the office?” I ask.

“Well, um, I had a problem there. I emailed the same questionnaire to the entire department and Jack from the Security Office came round to have a little chat about asking questions—”

“Oh shit,” Andy and I say, nearly simultaneously.

“No, no, it was quite all right!” Pete looks startled at our reaction. “I explained that I was sending out the poll because you’d asked me to.” I tense. “Then I asked if he really believed in vampires or Satan? So we had a good chuckle and he went away. Answer was ‘no’ and ‘no,’ by the way.”

The cold sweat that began to spring up the instant Pete mentioned Jack from Security is drying. I share a knowing look with Andy. Mentally I’m kicking myself. Tasking Pete with asking questions of his church parishioners? That’s totally fine. Pete asking questions of random passers-by in a secret government security organization is another matter entirely. I should have seen this coming—by nature he’s an organizer, so of course he’d mailbomb the entire department, and of course Security would prick up their ears the instant someone not on their radar began asking questions. Even innocent-sounding ones. Demarcation and Chinese Walls and OPSEC and need-to-know rule our procedures. Those of us who are on the ladder and have worked together for over a decade sometimes cut corners to get things done, but a new inductee is another matter entirely.

Luckily, everyone in the Laundry knows that Satan doesn’t exist. (We have worse nightmares to keep us awake in the dark.)