Somewhere in the guts of the departmental mail server there’s a logfile recording the origin and destination of every email message that was delivered to Pete’s desktop client. (Or anybody else’s, for that matter.) But somehow I don’t expect to find Pete’s joker listed in it.

In the process of confirming that belief in vampires is bizarrely, implausibly low within the organization, and that an active surveillance program was discontinued more than forty years ago, we’ve blundered into a tripwire.

And now they know we know.

14.

THE HUNT IS ON

DESPITE MY DEEP FOREBODING OVER THE ENTIRE FANG FUCKER fiasco, life goes on.

Work: I attend committee meetings, write reports, and continue to grind on the bid acceptance process for the networking infrastructure in Dansey House (which is running eight months behind schedule already, and losing ground by approximately forty days per elapsed month of calendar time). I also get to go off-site a couple of times because I am supposed to be taking a self-defense course. Not that I’ve ever been much into unarmed martial arts—my general response to people trying to kill me is to scream and run away as fast as I can: I don’t like pain—but some REMF in HR has expressed concern about my ability to look after myself without a basilisk gun and a Hand of Glory. And after my run-in with Alex and Janice, I have to admit that they have a point. So it’s off to the dojo I go-go, dammit. (Where I am signed off as somewhere between “cannon fodder” and “zombie bait,” but that’s another story.)

Play: at the weekend, Mo and I visit my parents again. They’ve stopped taking every available opportunity to ask when they can expect to hear the patter of tiny feet, which is a minor blessing, but our inability to talk about work and their inability to talk about work (because Dad’s recently retired and his idea of a hobby is watching EastEnders) are leading to increasingly uncomfortable gaps in the conversation. Mum insists on baking cakes, and Dad discovered one of the secrets of a happy marriage early on (never criticize your spouse’s culinary skills) and applies it as a religious observance. So, let’s just say Mum’s cakes are sub-optimal and leave it at that, shall we?

Despite the lack of children there is a new and exciting presence in our life. When we get home, we discover that Spooky has expressed her displeasure at being left all alone in the dark in typical feline fashion, right in the middle of the front hall. Mo waits outside in the cold while I deal with it, and it takes considerable effort to persuade her that she doesn’t actually want a new fiddle right now. In other news from the Fur Kids Department, the expensive new cat-tree goes unused, the living room sofa receives the Spooky imprimatur of best scratching post ever, and every open cardboard box in the house receives a mysterious lining of shed hairs. Spooky is a graduate of the “if I fits, I sits” school of feline furnishings. (If Mo ever gets serious about getting rid of the cat, all she needs to do is to leave an open FedEx shipping box on the kitchen table.)