I glance sidelong at Angleton. He glances back at me. “This is your fault, boy,” he mouths. What, it’s my fault we’re stuck in traffic while Constable Savage lectures us about how to arrest a vampire for wearing a loud opera cape in a built-up area? Angleton turns his head and makes eye contact with our driver in the rearview mirror. “Kindly shut up and drive, there’s a fine chappie,” he says; “we’re in a hurry. Oh, and don’t ever talk about this conversation to anyone. On pain of extreme pain.” He doesn’t even bother to pull his warrant card: his words have the weight of stones. And, for a miracle, the officers of the law stop speculating above their pay grade and mash the pedal to the metal.

16.

CODE BLUE

THE BRIEFING ROOM IS WAITING. IT’S CROWDED: JEZ, LOCKHART, and Andy are there, obviously. Less obviously needed are the other heads at the back of the room, who bracket just about everyone from the DRESDEN RICE committee, including Mhari—and also Pete and Alex. Neither of whom are remotely cleared for this kind of shit, so I view their presence here as either a sign of desperation or of leaking stovepipes and prolapsed security. “Who invited them?” I ask Andy as I join him at the top table.

“Why don’t you ask the ring-wraiths?” Andy murmurs back, swiveling his eyes in the direction of a side-door which is just opening to admit a familiar figure whose mere presence makes my blood run cold and my ward tingle: it is the Senior Auditor, followed by another of his cabal—middle-aged, female, kind-faced as death in her twinset and pearls.

“Good evening, all,” announces the Senior Auditor, looking round the assembled crowd. A quick smile; light flashes from the gold frames of his half-moon reading glasses. “Mr. Schwartz, I’m pleased to meet you.” Alex jerks, doing his best guilty schoolboy impression. “Our Patient Zero. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Charmed,” says the female Auditor, a twinkle as of ice in her eye.

“What is this?” Alex squeaks, sounding as intimidated as a mouse that has just woken up in the middle of a cattery.

“One moment.” The Senior Auditor raises his left hand, extends a couple of fingers—reminding me, incongruously, of a death-metal star messing with his audience’s head—and utters a word. I don’t hear it so much as I feel it, ricocheting back and forth inside my skull like a really angry hornet getting ready to sting someone repeatedly. “I declare this meeting room sealed by the authority vested in my office. What is spoken here may not be discussed with those elsewhere, on pain of execution of your oath of office.”