I get my feet on the floor and sit up, then nearly double over in pain. There’s a clattering thump from downstairs, and a muffled scream, and the base of my right middle finger throbs painfully. It’s the counterpart to the signaling ring I gave Mhari. An uncanny musical tone wobbles up from below, clawing at my eardrums.

“No!” I yell. I make a dive for the staircase and slap my hand on the light switch. The note dies away to a distant hum. But it leaves a metallic stink in the air, like high-voltage switchgear, or an electric chair just before it is switched on.

Mo stands in the hall, just in front of the porch, the ivory-hue violin braced between chin and shoulder, bow resting lightly across the strings. It’s aimed like a gun at Mhari, who is crouched in the living room doorway. She’s half-dressed, and in the green-tinged light from the CFL bulb she looks as pale as the violin. Lithe and bone-white, her canines extended, she cringes away from Mo, whose posture reminds me of a junkyard dog on the edge of exploding in a murderous frenzy of biting and clawing.

“Stand down!” I shout. Instinct makes me duck back round the bedroom door, grab the dressing gown hanging on the back of it, and throw it around myself before I set foot to stair. The foot of the staircase is between the living room door and the kitchen. I reach the bottom and turn. We make an odd triptych: me, in dressing gown and bare feet; Mhari, huddling in the living room doorway with something between a snarl and an ingratiating simper on her face; and my wife, the avenging angel, red hair and gunsight eyes staring over the bridge of her weapon.

But she’s not moving the bow across the glowing, barely visible superstrings that thread her instrument. Not yet.

I try to keep my voice level, speaking clearly and slowly, to be as unthreatening and unsuspicious as possible. “We had an internal threat. I told her she could stay here. The threat situation was resolved about three hours ago at the New Annex. She’s about to leave.”

Mo says nothing. But her eyes narrow, almost imperceptibly, and I see her tighten her grip on the violin.

“It’s true,” Mhari says, words tumbling out: “there was an elder inside the Laundry he was sending a vampire hunter to murder all the PHANGs Bob said he must have access to the personnel records this would be the last place a vampire hunter would look for me I’ve been using the living room I’ll just get my stuff and be going—”

Mo breaks eye contact with Mhari and looks at me. There is death in her fingertips. “Is. This. True?”