I shake my head. I’m feeling distinctly fuzzed. “I found them. Genuine no-shit vampires.” I motor on, anticipating her resistance and not wanting this to turn into another argument: “As in, they’re super-strong, can project at least a level three glamour, are predisposed for the practice of ritual magic, and they need factor-one-million sunblock to go outside in daylight. Oh, they also drink blood. Unfortunately I didn’t find them fast enough; Mhari got there first and reactivated herself and now HR are running in circles trying to draw up a policy for handling their Special Needs.”

“What? Mary who, hang on, wasn’t she your . . .”

“Yes, her. Mhari Murphy. Back from the land of the merchant bankers and even crazier and more ambitious, in a blonde-executive-with-sharp-shoulder-pads-and-sharper-fangs kind of way.”

Mo stares at me for a moment, clearly wondering if I’ve taken leave of my senses. Then she takes another sip of whisky and sits back, the gears visibly beginning to mesh. “You’ve verified this, I take it.”

“Oh hell yes.” I count off points on my fingers. “Epidemiological factors—we’ve got a whole new thaumodegenerative neuropathy to deal with, tentatively called V syndrome. Andy can vouch for my research on the data mining side. That’s all logged confidential OPERA CAPE. Then we’ve got the HR briefing and the DRESDEN RICE committee, currently sitting. The clusterfuck when I confronted them, well, you can find it filed under BLUE DANDELION. And I just set up another one, GREEN LIME, although we haven’t got very far yet. That one is investigating the possibility that for some time now we’ve been infested with fang fuckers telling everyone to shut up and look the other way because there’s no such thing as vampires.”

There’s an odd double-thud. I look round: Spooky has teleported from the extractor hood to the worktop and is now sniffing the electric kettle suspiciously.

“Vampires? You’re sure? That can’t be right . . .”

“They’re not fucking Dracula but they’re close enough for government work. It’s fallout from an algorithm research group supporting the quantitative trading desks at one of our larger banks. Turns out a rather rare combination of a multidimensional visualization system and a particular area of group theory makes mild-mannered mathematicians grow fangs. Anyway, the first of them only turned about five or six weeks ago. He turned his colleagues, and they went all agile on it, exploring the parameters, which triggered the V syndrome spike in Tower Hamlets which led me to them.”

“Where does Mhari come into all this?” Mo asks, still sounding confused. “I thought she got shown the door, years ago?”