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By Root 1569 0

Does Mo realize what my being entangled with Ramona means? I hate to think what she’ll do if she figures it out and Ramona’s on the same continent. Mo is a very tactical person. Tactile, too—passionate, fiery, and capable of thinking outside the box—but if you show her an obstacle, she has a disturbing tendency to punch right through it. That’s how she ended up in the Laundry, after all: making an end run round the Black Chamber, straight into our organization’s lap. I love her dearly, but the thought of her turning up at my hotel room and me trying not to touch her while I’m in this embarrassing bind with Ramona scares the shit out of me. It’s not exactly your normal sordid extramarital affair, is it? It’s not as if I’m actually sleeping with Ramona and it’s not as if I’m married to Mo, either. But it’s got all the same potential to explode in my face—and that’s before you factor in the little extra details like Ramona being the corporeal manifestation of a demonic entity from beyond space-time and Mo being a powerful sorceress.

“You’re breaking up. Hang in there! See you the day after tomorrow!” She buzzes, then the connection drops.

I stare at the screen for a moment. Then I dry-swallow and press the SERVICE button for the flight attendant. “I need a drink,” I say, “vodka and orange on the rocks.” Then some instinct makes me add: “Shaken.” Just like me.

I SPEND A GOOD CHUNK OF THE REST OF THE FLIGHT determinedly trying to get drunk. I know you’re not supposed to do that sort of thing when flying in a pressurized cabin—you get dehydrated, the hangover’s worse—but I don’t give a shit. Somewhere near Iceland Ramona wakes up and snarls at me for polluting her cerebral cortex with cocktail fallout, but either I manage to barricade her out or she decides to give me the day off for bad behavior. I play a drunken round of Quake on my Treo, then bore myself back to sleep by reading a memorandum discussing my responsibility for processing equipment depreciation and write-off claims pursuant to field-expedient containment operations. I don’t want to be on the receiving end of a visit from the Auditors over a misfiled form PT-411/E, but the blasted thing seems to be protected by a stupefaction field, and every time I look at it my eyelids slam shut like protective blast barriers.

I wake up half an hour before landing with a throbbing forehead and a tongue that tastes like a mouse died on it. The huge gleaming expanse of Maho Beach is walled with hotels: the sea is improbably blue, like an accident in a chemistry lab. The heat beats down on me like a giant oven as I stagger down the steps onto the concrete next to the terminal building. Half the passengers are crumblies; the rest are surf Nazis and dive geeks, like extras auditioning for an episode of Baywatch. A strike force of hangover faeries is diving and weaving around me on pocket jet packs when they’re not practicing polo on my scalp with rubber mallets. It’s two in the afternoon here, about six o’clock in Darmstadt, and I’ve been in transit for nearly twelve hours: the business suit I’m wearing from the meeting in the Ramada feels oddly stiff, as if it’s hardening into an exoskeleton. I feel, not to put too fine a point on it, like shit; so when I come out of baggage claim I’m deeply relieved to see a crusty old buffer holding up a piece of cardboard upon which is scrawled: HOWARD—CAPITAL LAUNDRY SERVICES.

I head over towards him. “Hi. I’m Bob. You are . . . ?”

He looks me up and down like I’m something he’s just peeled off the underside of his shoe. I do a double take. He’s about fifty, very British in a late-imperial, gin-pickled kind of way—in his lightweight tropical suit, regimental tie, and waxwork mustache he looks like he’s just stepped out of a Merchant-Ivory movie. “Mr. Howard. Your warrant card, please.”

“Oh.” I fumble with my pocket for a while until I find the thing, then wave it vaguely in his direction. His cheek twitches.

“That’ll do. I’m Griffin. Follow me.” He turns and strides towards the exit. “You’re late.”

I’m late? But I only just got here!