The door to Andy’s office was still half-ajar, a skeletonized hand dangling from the doorknob. Angleton stepped around the remains of the door zombie with the delicate gait of a man in expensive shoes avoiding a dog turd. He raised a hand: dust and bones and other disquieting shapes gathered themselves up from the pile on the threshold and rolled beneath the lintel, vanishing into the darkened space beyond.

Angleton waited a few seconds, then pulled the door shut with his fingertips. Next he raised the black folder and delicately removed a decal. “By the authority vested in me,” he said, “I declare this office closed.” Then he carefully applied the sticker to the center of the door, and stepped backwards.

“Have we closed the—” I began to repeat, then stopped. “Hang on. What’s going on?” I stared at the mess of paint, charred patch of carpet, and graffiti’d patch of blank wall at the side of our office area. “Hang on,” I repeated, backing up mentally. “Wow.”

I took a step towards the wall. Angleton caught my arm. “You don’t want to get too close until it’s had time to anneal.”

“Until what’s had time?”

“The ward I placed on Mr. Newstrom’s office. Class ten,” he added, almost smugly.

“Class ten?” I’d heard of wards that strong: I didn’t know we actually had any.

“Yes, boy. By tomorrow morning nobody except you, me, and Mr. Newstrom will even remember there was an office there—and Andy will only do so because he left his coat inside.” He clapped his hands together. “I want you to prepare a report on this incident for me. But be a good chap and fetch Mr. Newstrom back inside first. I believe it has begun to rain, and as I mentioned, he doesn’t have a jacket anymore.”

• • •

I WENT OUTSIDE AND HAULED ANDY IN, AND THEREAFTER WE didn’t get much work done, apart from the inevitable clean-up and sending the surviving Residual Human Resources back to their crypt. Then I made an executive decision that Andy and I needed to finish the night shift by performing a destructive bioassay on the contents of a bottle labelled “drain cleaner” I’d found in a drawer in my desk. After repeated oral analysis, we concluded it was mislabelled. It was a risky procedure—if the bottle hadn’t been mislabelled we could have made ourselves very ill indeed—but certain traditions must be upheld. In particular, a young high-flying officer should not tell a former superior that they’ve been bloody idiots without the plausible deniability lent by a sufficiency of single malt whisky. Even if it’s true.

“So what’s your ten-percenter?” Andy asked after I finished explaining precisely why he needed the refresher course on health and safety procedures when conducting summonings. “Don’t tell me you’re working on an admin-side scheme?”