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

“Pete,” Andy says, calmly enough, “I don’t think you should get into the habit of asking questions on unclassified mailing lists. In fact, before you do that again, just make a point of checking if it’s okay with me or Bob, right? We wouldn’t want you to get into trouble.”

“Oh. Um. I see.” Pete is subdued, perhaps a little surprised at how scared we both looked for a moment. Not realizing that we’re not scared for us, we’re scared for him.

“Did you get any results?” I ask, leaning forward.

“Um, yes!” Pete brightens. “Mostly from junior staff and new inductees—I included a time-of-service question and the median was fifteen months. It turns out that of the eighteen responses I got, nobody at all believes in Satan and only two believe in vampires. Those two were recent inductees, by the way, time of service less than twelve months. Age is much more representative than the church survey, averaging thirty-two, outliers as young as twenty-one and as old as, well, one joker wrote in that they were two hundred and thirty-one and what was my blood group, please?”

Pete stops and stares at me. Then at Andy. “That was a joke, right?” he asks uncertainly. “Wasn’t it?”

“Do you still have the responses?” I ask, trying to keep my voice level and even and unfrightening.

“Sure: they’re in a mail archive I created for them . . .”

“What do you think?” I ask Andy.

“I think”—Andy looks as worried as I feel—“it’s probably a joke. Probably.”

“Well, then,” I say, pushing my mostly undrunk pint glass away: “Let’s go and find out, shall we?” I stand up.

“What, right now?” asks Pete.

“When better?”

• • •

BUT WHEN WE GET BACK TO PETE’S OFFICE HE CAN’T FIND HIS mailbox full of survey responses.