“Nah, they were easy enough to get rid of: I just made an appointment to discuss the Bible later, then invited Pete round. We’ve been blacklisted ever since. It was the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh.” I rub my right upper arm instinctively. Everything is better with cannibalism and necromancy.

She closes the front door and I relax as the defensive ward reactivates itself. For a moment we had a break in the secure perimeter. But now . . . we’re okay. I begin to shrug out of my overloaded jacket, planning to hang it in the hall, as Mhari squeezes past in the direction of the kitchen.

“Wrrraow?”

“Waugh!” Mhari almost levitates out of her Louboutins. “You didn’t say you had a cat!”

I look round. The cat is lurking on the staircase that runs up one side of the hall, roughly at eye level, staring out at her from between the baluster poles with an expression of concentrated, black-eyed malevolence. One paw flops between the rails, over the side of the stairs. “Er. I have a cat. Mhari, meet Spooky. Spooky—ah, what the hell. You don’t have a problem with cats, do you?”

“No.” She eyes Spooky warily from just out of paw’s reach. I can guess what happened. Darkened hall, dark brown carpet, black-furred ambush hunter. “Did she go for you?”

“She nearly gave me a nasal piercing!” Spooky, detecting that she is the subject of attention, rolls on her back and squirms, purring and exposing her rib cage like a hairy mantrap. Mhari glares, then walks through into the kitchen, leaving the cat to enjoy her control of the commanding heights. “Huh. This doesn’t say ‘Bob’ to me.”

“That’s because it says ‘Bob and Mo,’” I point out. “Tea and coffee’s in that cupboard, milk’s in the fridge, bread bin’s over there, recycling’s under that worktop by the back door.” She hasn’t put her bag down yet. And now that I’m paying attention, I realize that all she’s got is what she’s wearing and what’s in her handbag. Nobody was planning a sleepover when they woke up this morning. “Hmm. We’ve got some spare toiletries and a dressing gown you can use, and if you give me a list of necessities I can pick them up tomorrow and drop them round before plan beta kicks off. But first I need to check the spare bed’s made up and the blackout curtains are adequate. Let me show you around . . .”

“If you don’t mind.” She smiles, uncharacteristically diffident. “I’ll try not to be any trouble.”

• • •