“Pay attention, Bob,” he admonishes me sternly. “If you’re alive, you’re getting this briefing because you’ve penetrated Billington’s semiotic firewall. This means you’re approaching the most dangerous part of your mission—and you’re going to have to play it by ear. On the other hand, you’ve got an ace up your sleeve in the form of Ms. Random. She should be secure in the safe house your backup team has organized, and she’ll be your conduit back to us for advice and instructions.”

No she bloody isn’t! I try to yell at him, but he’s playing the usual tricks with my vocal chords and I’m not allowed to say anything that isn’t on the menu. Propelled by the usual inexorable dream logic, the briefing continues.

“Billington has let it be known that he will be conducting an advance Dutch auction for the specimens he expects to raise from JENNIFER MORGUE Site Two. These are described in vague but exciting terms, as chthonic artifacts and applications. There is of course no mention of his expertise in operating Gravedust-type oneiromantic convolution engines, or of the presence of a deceased DEEP SEVEN in the vicinity.

“He is restricting bidding to authorized representatives of governments with seats at the G8, plus Brazil, China, and India. Sealed bids are solicited in advance of the operation, which will be honored once the retrieval is complete. This indirect pressure makes it difficult for us to stay out of the auction, while simultaneously rendering it nearly impossible for us to take direct action against him—he’s very carefully played the bidders off against one another. Of rather more concern is who Billington hasn’t invited to bid—namely BLUE HADES. As I mentioned in your earlier briefing, our immediate concern is the response of BLUE HADES to Billington’s activities around the site, followed in turn by what Billington really intends to do with the raised artifacts.

“Regardless, your actual task remains, as briefed, to determine what Billington is planning and to stop him from doing anything that arouses BLUE HADES or DEEP SEVEN—especially, anything likely to convince them that we’re in violation of our treaty obligations. To supplement your cover you are officially designated as an authorized representative of Her Majesty’s Government, to deliver our bid for the JENNIFER MORGUE Site Two artifacts. This is a genuine bid, although obviously we hope we won’t be called upon to make good on it, and the terms are as follows: for an exclusive usage license as designated in schedule one to be appended to this document, hereinafter designated ‘the contract’ between the seller ‘Ellis Billington’ and associates, corporations, and other affiliates and the purchaser, the Government of the United Kingdom, the sum of two billion pounds sterling, to be paid . . .”

Angleton rattles on in dreary legalese for approximately three lifetimes. It’d be tedious at the best of times, but right now it’s positively nightmarish; the plan has already run off the rails, and the worst thing of all is, I can’t even yell at him. I’m committing this goddamn contract that we’re never going to use to memory, seemingly at Angleton’s posthypnotic command, but the shit has hit the fan and Ramona’s a prisoner. I’d gnash my teeth if I was allowed to. I’ve got a feeling that Angleton’s sneak strategy—use me to leak disinformation to the Black Chamber via Ramona, of course—is already blown, because I don’t think Billington is serious about running an auction. If he was, would he be dicking around risking a murder investigation in order to push a line of cosmetics? And would he be kidnapping negotiators? This is all so out of whack that I can’t figure it out. I’ve got a sick feeling that Angleton’s scheme was toast before I even boarded the airbus in Paris: if nothing else, his bid is implausibly low given what’s at stake.

Eventually the briefing lets go of me and I slide gratefully beneath the surface of a dreamless lake. I’m rocking from side to side on it, with the leisurely wobble of a howdah perched on an elephant’s back. After a brief infinity of unconsciousness I become aware that my head is throbbing fiercely and my mouth feels like a family of rodents has set up a campsite, complete with latrine, on my tongue. And that I’m awake. Oh no. I twitch, taking stock. I’m lying on my back which is never the right place to be, breathing through my mouth, and—

“He’s awake.”

“Good. Howard, stop fooling around.”

This time I groan aloud. My eyes feel like pickled onions and it takes a real effort to force them open. More facts flood in as my brain reboots. I’m lying on my back, fully dressed, on something like a padded bench or sofa. The voice I recognize: it’s McMurray. The room’s well lit, and I notice that the padded surface beneath me is covered in beautifully finished fabric. The lights are tasteful and indirect, and the curving walls are paneled in old mahogany: the local police cells, it ain’t. “Give me a second,” I mumble.

“Sit up.” He doesn’t sound impatient; just sure of himself.

I force arms and legs that are heavy and warm from too-recent sleep to respond, swinging my legs round and sitting up at the same time. A wave of dizziness nearly pushes me right back down, but I get over it and rub my eyes, blinking. “What is this place?” I ask shakily. And where’s Ramona? Still trapped?

McMurray sits down on the bench opposite me. Actually, it’s a continuation of the one I was lying on—it snakes around the exterior of the trapezoid room, past out-tilting walls and a doorway in the middle of the only rectilinear wall in the cabin. It’s a nice room, except that the doorway is blocked by a gorilla in a uniform-like black jumpsuit and beret, plus mirrorshades. (Which is more than somewhat incongruous, in view of it being well past midnight.) The windows are small and oval with neatly decorated but very functional-looking metal covers hinged back from them, and there are drawers set in the base of the padded bench—obviously storage of some kind. The throbbing isn’t in my head; it’s coming from under the floor. Which can only mean one thing.

“Welcome aboard the Mabuse,” he says, then shrugs apologetically. “I’m sorry about the way you were handed your boarding pass: Johanna isn’t exactly Little Miss Subtlety, and I told her to make sure you didn’t abscond. That would totally ruin the plot.”

I rub my head and groan. “Did you have to—no, don’t answer that, let me guess: it’s a tradition or an old charter, something like that.” I continue to rub my head. “Is there any chance of a glass of water? And a bathroom?” It’s not just a barbiturate hangover—the martinis are extracting a vicious revenge. “If you’re going to take me to see the big cheese shouldn’t I freshen up a bit first?” Please say yes, I pray to whatever god of whimsy has got me in his grip; being hungover is bad enough without a beating on top of it.

For a moment I wonder if I’ve gone too far, but he gestures at the gorilla, who turns and opens the door and retreats down the narrow corridor a couple of paces. “The head’s next door. You have five minutes.”

He watches as I stumble to my feet. He nods, affably enough, and gestures at another door set next to the rec room or wherever the hell it is they’d put me in to sleep things off. I open the door and indeed find a washroom of sorts, barely bigger than an airliner’s toilet but beautifully finished. I take a leak, gulp down half a pint or so of water using the plastic cup so helpfully provided, then spend about a minute sitting down and trying not to throw up. ★★Ramona, are you there?★★ If she is, I can’t hear her. I take stock: my phone’s missing, as is my neck-chain ward, my wristwatch, and my shoulder holster. The bow tie is dangling from my collar, but they weren’t considerate enough to remove my uncomfortable toe-pinching shoes. I raise an eyebrow at the guy in the mirror and he pulls a mournful face and shrugs: no help there. So I wash my face, try to comb my hair with my fingertips, and go back outside to face the music.

The gorilla is waiting for me outside. McMurray stands in front of the closed door to the rec room. The gorilla beckons to me then turns and marches down the corridor, so I play nice and tag along, with McMurray taking up the rear. The corridor is punctuated by frequent watertight bulkheads with annoying lintels to step over, and there’s a shortage of portholes to show where we are: someone’s obviously done a first-rate coach-building job, but this ship wasn’t built as a yacht and its new owner clearly places damage control ahead of aesthetics. We pass some doors, ascend a very steep staircase, and then I figure we’re into Owner Territory because the metal decking gives way to teak parquet and hand-woven carpets, and up here they have widened the corridors to accommodate the fat cats: or maybe it’s just that they built the owner’s quarters where they used to stash the Klub-N cruise missiles and the magazine for the forward 100mm gun turret.

Klub-N vertical launch cells are not small, and the owner’s lounge is about three meters longer than my entire house. It appears to be wallpapered in cloth-of-gold, which for the most part is mercifully concealed behind ninety-centimeter Sony displays wearing priceless antique picture frames. Right now they’re all switched off, or displaying a rolling screensaver depicting the TLA Corporation logo. The furniture’s equally lacking in the taste department. There’s a sofa that probably escaped from Versailles one jump ahead of the revolutionary fashion police, a bookcase full of self-help business titles (A Defendant’s Guide to the International Criminal Court, The Twelve-Step Sociopath, Globalization for Asset-Strippers), and an antique sideboard that abjectly fails to put the rock into baroque. I find myself looking for a furtive cheap print of dogs playing poker or a sad-eyed clown—anything to break the monotony of the collision between bad taste and serious money.

Then I notice the Desk.

Desks are to executives what souped-up Mitsubishi Colts with low-profile alloys, metal-flake paint jobs, and extra-loud, chrome-plated exhaust pipes are to chavs; they’re a big swinging dick, the proxy they use to proclaim their sense of self-importance. If you want to understand an executive, you study his desk. Billington’s Desk demands a capital letter. Like a medieval monarch’s throne, it is designed to proclaim to the poor souls who are called before it: The owner of this piece of furniture is above you. Someday I’ll write a textbook about personality profiling through possessions; but for now let’s just say this example is screaming “megalomaniac!” at me.

Billington may have an ego the size of an aircraft carrier but he’s not so vain as to leave his desk empty (that would mean he was pretending to lead a life of leisure) or to cover it with meaningless gewgaws (indicative of clownish triviality). This is the desk of a serious executive. There’s a functional-looking (watch me work!) PC to one side, and a phone and a halogen desk light at the other. One of the other items dotting it gives me a nasty shock when I recognize the design inscribed on it: millions wouldn’t, but the owner of this hunk of furniture is using a Belphegor-Mandelbrot Type Two containment matrix as a mouse mat, which makes him either a highly skilled adept or a suicidal maniac. Yup, that pretty much confirms the diagnosis. This is the desk of a diseased mind, hugely ambitious, prone to taking insanely dangerous risks. He’s not ashamed of boasting about it—he clearly believes in better alpha-primate dominance displays through carpentry.

McMurray gestures me to halt on the carpet in front of the Desk. “Wait here, the boss will be along in a minute.” He gestures at a skeletal contraption of chromed steel and thin, black leather that only Le Corbusier could have mistaken for a chair: “Have a seat.”

I sit down gingerly, half-expecting steel restraints to flash out from concealed compartments and lock around my wrists. My head aches and I feel hot and shivery. I glance at McMurray, trying for casual rather than anxious. The Laundry field operations manual is notably short on advice for how to comport one’s self when being held prisoner aboard a mad billionaire necromancer’s yacht, other than the usual stern admonition to keep receipts for all expenses incurred in the line of duty. “Where’s Ramona?” I ask.

“I don’t remember saying you were free to ask questions.” He stares at me from behind his steel-rimmed spectacles until icicles form on the back of my neck. “Ellis has a specific requirement for an individual of her . . . type. I’m a specialist in managing such entities.” A pause. “While you remain entangled, she will be manageable. And as long as she remains manageable, there will be no need to dispose of her.”

I swallow. My tongue is dry and I can hear my pulse in my ears. This wasn’t supposed to happen; she was supposed to be back in the safe house, acting as a relay! McMurray nods at me knowingly. “Don’t underestimate your own usefulness to us, Mr. Howard,” he says. “You’re not just a useful lever.” There’s a discreet buzz from his belt pager: “Mr. Billington is on his way now.”

The door behind the Desk opens.

“Ah, Mr. B—Howard.” Billington walks in and plants himself firmly down on the black carbon-fiber Aeron chair behind the Desk. From the set of his shoulders and the tiny smile playing around his lips he’s in an expansive mood. “I’m so pleased you could be here this evening. I gather my wife’s party wasn’t entirely to your taste?”

I stare at him. He’s an affable, self-satisfied bastard in a dinner jacket and for a moment I feel a nearly uncontrollable urge to punch him in the face. I manage to hold it in check: the gorilla behind me will ensure I’d only get one chance, and the consequences would hurt Ramona as much as they’d hurt me. Still, it’s a tempting thought. “I have a bid for your auction,” I say, very carefully keeping my face straight. “This abduction was unnecessary, and may cause my employers to reconsider their very generous offer.”

Billington laughs. Actually, it’s more of a titter, high-pitched and unnerving. “Come now, Mr. Howard! Do you really think I don’t already know about your boss’s paltry little two-billion-pound baitworm? Please! I’m not stupid. I know all about you and your colleague Ms. Random, and the surveillance team in the safe house run by Jack Griffin. I even remember your boss, James, from back before he became quite so spectral and elevated. I know much more than you give me credit for.” He pauses. “In fact, I know everything. ”

Whoops. If he’s telling the truth, that would put a very bad complexion on things. “Then what am I doing here?” I ask, hoping like hell that he’s bluffing. “I mean, if you’re omnipotent and omniscient then just what is the point of abducting me—not to mention Ramona—and dragging us aboard your yacht?” (That’s a guess about Ramona, but I don’t see where else he might be keeping her.) “Don’t tell me you haven’t got better things to do with your time than gloat; you’re trying to close a multi-billion-dollar auction, aren’t you?” He just looks at me with those peculiar, slotted lizard eyes, and I have a sudden cold conviction that maybe making money is the last thing on his mind right now.

“You’re here for several reasons,” he says, quite agreeably. “Hair of the dog?” He raises an eyebrow, and the gorilla hurries over to the sideboard.

“I wouldn’t mind a glass of water,” I confess.

“Hah.” He nods to himself. “The archetype hasn’t taken full effect yet, I see.”

“Which archetype?”

McMurray clears his throat. “Boss, do I need to know this?”

Billington casts him a fish-eyed stare: “No, I don’t think you do. Quick thinking.”

“I’ll just go and check in on Ramona then, shall I? Then I’ll go polish the binnacle and check for frigging in the rigging or something.” McMurray slithers out through the door at high speed. Billington nods thoughtfully.

“He’s a smart subordinate.” He raises an eyebrow at me. “That’s half the problem, you know.”

“Half what problem?”

“The problem of running a tight ship.” The gorilla hands Billington a glass of whisky, then plants a glassful of mineral water in front of me before returning to his position by the door. “If they’re smart enough to be useful they get ideas about making themselves indispensable—ideas about getting above their station, as you Brits would put it. If they’re too dumb to be useful they’re a drain on your management time. All corporations are an economy of attention, from the top down. You should take McMurray as a role model, Mr. Howard, if you ever make it back to your petty little civil service cubicle farm. He’s a consummate senior field agent and a huge asset to his employers. No manager in their right mind would ever terminate him, but because he likes field-work he doesn’t spend enough time in the office to get a leg up the promotion ladder. And he knows it.” He falls silent. I take advantage of the break in his spiel to take a mouthful of water. “That’s why I headhunted him away from the Black Chamber,” Billington adds.

When I finish coughing, he looks at me thoughtfully. “You strike me as being a reasonably adaptable, intelligent young man. It’s really a shame you’re working for the public sector. Are you sure I can’t bribe you? How would a million bucks in a numbered account in the Caymans suit you?”

“Get lost.” I struggle to maintain my composure.

“If it’s just that silly little warrant card you guys carry, we can do something about it,” he adds slyly.

Ouch. That’s a low blow. I take a deep breath: “I’m sure you can, but—”

He snorts. And looks amused. “It’s to be expected. They wouldn’t have sent you if they thought you had an easy price. It’s not just money I can offer, Mr. Howard. You’re used to working for an organization that is deliberately structured to stifle innovation and obstruct stakeholder-led change. My requirements are a bit, shall we say, different. A smart, talented, hard-working man—especially a morally flexible one—can go far. How would you like to come on board as deputy vice-president for intelligence, Europe, Middle East, and Africa division? A learning sinecure, initially, but with your experience and background in one of the world’s leading occult espionage organizations I’m sure you’d make your mark soon enough.”

I give it a moment’s thought, long enough to realize that he’s right—and that I’m not going to take the offer. He’s offering me crumbs from the rich man’s table, and not even bothering to find out in advance if that’s the sort of diet I enjoy. Which means he’s doing me the compliment of not taking the prospect of my defection seriously, which means he considers me to be a reliable agent. And now I stop to think about it, I realize to my surprise that I am. I may not be happy about the circumstances under which I took the oath, and I may gripe and moan about the pay and conditions, but there’s a big difference between pissing and moaning and seriously contemplating the betrayal of everything I want to preserve. Even if I’ve only just come to realize it.

“I’m not for sale, Ellis. Not for any price you can pay, anyway. What’s this archetype business?”

He nods minutely, examining me as if I’ve just passed some sort of important test. “I was getting to that.” He rotates his chair until he’s half-facing the big monitor off to my right. He stabs at the mouse mat with one finger and I wince, but instead of fat purple sparks and a hideous soul-sucking manifestation, it simply wakes up his Windows box. (Not that there’s much difference.) For a moment I almost begin to relax, but then I recognize what he’s calling up and my stomach flip-flops in abject horror.

“I do everything in PowerPoint, you know.” Billington grins, an expression which I’m sure is intended to be impish but that comes across to his intended victim—me—as just plain vicious. “I had to have my staff write some extra plug-ins to make it do everything I need, but, ah, here we are . . .”

He rapidly flips through a stack of tediously bulleted talking points until he wipes into a screen that’s mercifully photographic in nature. It’s a factory, lots of workers in gowns and masks gathered around worktops and stainless steel equipment positioned next to a series of metal vats.

“Eileen’s Hangzhou factory, where our Pale Grace™ Skin Hydromax® range of products are made. As you probably already figured out, we apply a transference-contagion glamour to the particulate binding agent in the foundation powder, maintained by brute force from our headquarters operation in Milan, Italy. Unlike most of the cosmetics on the market, it really does render the wrinkles invisible. The ingredients are a bit of a pain, but she’s got that well in hand; instead of needing an endless supply of young women just to keep one old bat pretty, we can make do with only about ten parts per million of maid’s blood in the mix. It’s just one of the wonders of modern stem cell technology. Shame we can’t find a replacement for the stress prostaglandins, but those are the breaks.”

He clicks his mouse. “Here’s the other end of the operation.” It’s a roomful of skinny, suntanned guys in short-sleeved shirts hunched over cheap PCs, row upon row of them: “My floating offshore programmer ranch, the SS Hopper. You’ve probably read about it, haven’t you? Instead of offshoring to Bangalore, I bought an old liner, wired it, and flew in a number of Indian programmers to live on board. It stays outside the coastal limit and with satellite uplinks it might as well be in downtown Miami. Only they’re not, um, actually programming anything. Instead, they’re monitoring the surveillance take from the mascara. Because the Pale Grace™ Bright Eyes® products don’t just link into the transference-contagion glamour, they contain particles nano-engraved with an Icon of Bhaal-She’vra that backdoors them into my surveillance grid. That’s actually the main product of my sixty-nanometer fab line these days, by the way, not the bespoke microprocessors everyone thinks it makes. It’s a very useful similarity hack—anything the wearer can see or hear, my monitors can pick up, and we’ve got flexible batch manufacturing protocols that ensure every single cosmetics product is uniquely coded so we can tell them apart. It’s almost embarrassing how much intelligence you can gather from this sweep, especially as Eileen’s affiliates are running a loyalty scheme that encourages users to register their identity with us at time of sale for free samples, so that we know who they are.”

I’m boggling already. “Are you telling me you’ve turned your cosmetics company into some kind of occult ubiquitous surveillance operation? Is that what this is?”

“Yup, that’s about the size of it.” Billington nods smugly. “Of course, it’s expensive—but we manage to just about break even on a twenty buck tube of mascara, so it works out all right in the end. And it’s less obvious than using several million zombie seabirds.” He clears his throat. “Anyway, that’s by way of demonstrating to you that you can run, but you can’t hide. Now, to explain why you shouldn’t run . . .”

He flicks to the next slide, and it’s not a photograph, it’s a live surveillance take from a camera somewhere. I’m pretty sure it’s aboard this very ship. It’s Ramona, of course. She’s sprawling across a double bed in a stateroom, out cold. “Here’s Ms. Random. I figure you know by now that you don’t get to talk to her without my say-so. You need to know three things about her. Firstly, if I’ve got you, I can make her do anything I want—and vice versa. You’ve figured that out? Excellent.”

He pauses for a few seconds while I force myself to stop trying to break the arms of my chair. “There’s no need for that, Mr. Howard. No harm will come to either of you unless you force my hand. You’re here because I need her to do a little job for me, one relating to the recovery of the alien artifact—and I need her willing cooperation. So that’s item two out of the way. Item three, I gather you’ve met Mr. McMurray? Good. It might interest you to know that he’s a specialist in controlling entities like Ramona’s succubus, or Johanna’s necrophage. I could threaten to hurt you if she tries to resist, but I always find that positive incentivization works much better than the big stick on employees: so I’m going to offer her a deal. If you and Ms. Random cooperate fully, I’ll have Mr. McMurray see if he can permanently separate her from her little helper. As he was part of the team who invoked and bound it to her in the first place . . . well, what do you think she’ll say to that?”

I pick up my water glass and drain it, hoping for something, anything, to occur to me that’ll show me a way out. Billington may not have tried to figure out my price, but I’m pretty sure he’s got Ramona’s. “What’s the job?”

Billington prods at his fancy remote again and another screen comes to life: a view of a huge metal chamber, something like a factory floor—only the floor itself is covered in black water. A moment’s confusion, then it springs into focus for me. “Isn’t that the Glomar Explorer?”

“It’s now the TLA Explorer, but yes, well spotted, Mr. Howard.”

I focus on the pipe that pierces the heart of the pool of water. There’s something big and indistinct lurking just under the surface down there, impaled on the end of the drill string. “What’s that?”

“Can’t you guess? It’s the TMB-2, a clone of the original Hughes Mining Barge 1, equipped with updated telemetry and new materials so that pressure-induced brittleness in the grab cantilever arms won’t stop it from working this time.”

“But you know the Deep Ones won’t let you retrieve—”

“Really?” His grin widens.

“But!” My head’s spinning. I know about the original HMB-1, Operation JENNIFER, the BLUE HADES defense system that nearly dragged the mother ship down. “You said this was about Ramona?”

“She’s one of the in-laws,” Billington explains cheerfully. “She’s got the Innsmouth look, you know? She tastes right to their minions, the abyssal polyps. You didn’t think the Deep Ones guarded every inch of their territory in person, did you? The polyps are subsentient, just like your burglar alarm. They work by biochemical tracers, discriminating self from other.” He picks up his whisky. “I need her to ride the grab down and keep an eye on it while it locks onto the target. If the defenders of the deep smell Old One in the water they’ll stay cowering in their burrows in the abyssal mud. What do you say to that?”

“It’s an interesting theory,” I admit, which is true because I don’t know one way or the other whether it’ll work.

“It’s more than a theory. I sank a lot of money into arranging for the Black Chamber to send her, boy. Her folk aren’t so numerous, and most of them would die rather than let themselves be turned to such a purpose. She’s been tamed, which is unusual, and you’ve got a handle on her, and I’ve got you. So, I’ll make you a new offer. Convince her to ride the barge for me willingly, and I’ll have McMurray free her from her curse. Convince her to ride the barge and I won’t even have to threaten you. How about it?”

He’s backed me into a corner, I realize. And not just with menaces; the thing is, he has found Ramona’s price. And having been inside her skull, even if only a bit, I’m not sure I can criticize her. Or easily stand in her way, if she really wants to do it. Threats of torture are redundant—just forcing her to go on living in her current state is torment enough. Plus, if she doesn’t cooperate, Billington might turn nasty and take it out of my hide. Which reminds me of something else . . .

“Why me?” I finally burst out. “I mean, if you needed her, surely you don’t specifically need me to control her? I’m nothing to you. You’ve got McMurray. You already know about my government’s offer. What am I doing here? Why don’t you just do the disentangling ritual and dump me overboard?”

Billington’s smile widens, disturbingly: “Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong, Mr. Howard. Your presence here prevents anyone else—like the US Navy, for example—from turning up and spoiling my scheme. Which I realized would be a likely response to my current operation right at the outset, and took steps to prevent, in the form of a monumentally expensive and rather intricate destiny-entanglement geas that compels the participants to adopt certain archetypal roles that have been gathering their strength from hundreds of millions of believers over nearly fifty years. The geas doesn’t mess with causality directly, but it does ensure that the likelihood of events that mesh with its destiny model are raised, while other avenues become less . . . probable. Going against the geas is hard; agents get run over by taxis, aircraft suffer inexplicable mechanical failures, that sort of thing. Now you’ve jumped through all the hoops in the geas and in so doing massively reinforced it. You’ve taken on the role of the heroic adversary. Which in turn means that nobody else is allowed to play the hero around here. And in accordance with another aspect of the geas, you’re in my power for the time being and you’re going to stay there until a virtuous woman turns up to release you. Got that?”

My head’s spinning. What the hell is he on about? And where am I going to find a virtuous woman on board a mad billionaire’s yacht at three in the morning as we steam towards the Bermuda Triangle? “What about the auction?” I ask plaintively.

Billington laughs raucously. “Oh, Mr. Howard! The auction was only ever a blind, to make your superiors believe I could be bought and sold!” He leans forwards across the Desk, and his eyebrows furrow like thunderclouds: “What use do you think I have for mere gigabucks? This is the high-stakes table.” He looks past my shoulder, towards the gorilla. “Take him back to his room and lock him in until morning. We’ll continue this conversation over breakfast.” The gorilla stomps over and lays a beefy hand on my shoulder. “When I have JENNIFER MORGUE they’ll do anything I want,” he mutters, and my skin crawls because I don’t think he’s talking to me anymore. “Anything at all. They’ll have to listen to me once I own the planet.”

Being locked in one of Billington’s guest rooms is a comfortable step up from a police cell. It’s aboard ship so it’s smaller than a five-star hotel suite, but that’s about the only way it suffers by comparison. The bed’s a double, the carpet is luxuriously thick, there’s a porthole (non-opening), a wet bar, and a big flat-screen TV; a shelf next to it holds a handful of paperbacks and a row of DVDs. I assume I’m supposed to drink myself comatose while watching cheesy spy thrillers. The desk (small, guest-room-sized) opposite the bed shows raw patches where they must have yanked out a PC earlier—it’s a damn shame, but Billington’s people are smart enough not to leave a computer where I can get my hands on it.

“Shit,” I mutter, then sit down in the sinfully padded leather recliner next to the wet bar. Surrender has seldom been such an attractive prospect. I massage my head. Looking out the porthole there’s nothing but an expanse of night-black sea, overlooked by stars. I yawn. Whatever that bitch Johanna used to put my lights out was fast-acting; it can’t be much past three in the morning. And I’m still tired, now that I think about it. I look around the room and there’s nothing particularly obvious in the way of escape routes. Plus, they’re probably watching me, via a peephole in the door if they’ve got any sense. “What a mess.”

★★You can say that again, monkey-boy.★★

I flinch, then force myself to relax. Trying to show no sign of anything in particular, I open my inner ear again. ★★Ramona?★★

★★No, I’m the fucking tooth fairy. Have you seen my pliers lying around? There’s a couple of folks here in line for some root-canal surgery when I get free.★★

The wash of relief is visceral; if I was standing I’d probably collapse on the spot. It’s a good thing I found the recliner first. ★★You’re all right?★★

She snorts. ★★For what it’s worth.★★ I can feel something itchy where my eyes can’t see. Focusing on it, I see the inside of another room, much like this one. She’s kicked off her heels and is pacing the floor restlessly, examining everything, looking for an exit. ★★They’ve wired the walls. There’s a shielding graph in the floor but they must have switched it off for the time being to let us talk. I don’t think they can overhear us, but they can stop us any time they want.★★

★★Nice of them—★★

★★To let us know they’ve got us where they want us? Don’t be silly.★★

★★How’d they catch you?★★ I ask, after an uncomfortable pause.

★★It’s probably the oldest trick in the book.★★ She stops pacing. ★★I was looking for Eileen’s inner circle when I ran into a lure, a daemon disguised as someone I know professionally—a real class act, I could have sworn it was really him. He suckered me into an upstairs meeting room and before I knew what was happening they had me in a summoning lock. Which should be impossible unless they’ve got the original keys the Contracts Department used when they enslaved me, yet they did it. So I guess it’s not impossible after all.★★

I stare at the blank TV set. ★★Not if it was the real thing. His name’s McMurray, isn’t it?★★

I can taste her shock. ★★How the fuck did you know that?★★ she demands.

★★Because he took me for my entire expenses tab at baccarat, ★★ I confess. ★★He’s got a new employer with very deep pockets. Has Billington tried to buy you yet?★★

She starts pacing again. ★★No, and he won’t. Where he comes from there are different rules for people like me. You’re employable. You’re human. I’m ... ★★ I can feel her working her jaws, as if she’s about to spit: ★★Let’s just say, there are minorities it’s still okay to shit on.★★

I wince. ★★He led me to believe that . . . well, if you don’t think he’s going to try to buy you, what’s he got on you? Besides the obvious.★★

She tenses. ★★He’s got you. That’s bad enough, in case you hadn’t figured it out.★★

Whoops. ★★He knows all about your curse.★★ The idea begins to sink in. ★★Tell me about McMurray. You worked with him, right? In exactly what capacity?★★

★★He made me.★★ Her voice is chilly enough to liquefy nitrogen. ★★I’d rather not discuss it.★★

★★Sorry, but it’s relevant. I’m still trying to work out what’s going on. How Billington turned him. I wonder what the key was, if it’s just money, like Billington said, or if there’s something else we can use ... ★★

Ramona snorts. ★★Don’t waste your time. When I get out of here I’m going to kick his ass.★★

I pause. ★★I think you may be wrong about Billington. I think he has every intention of trying to buy you. He’s got your heart’s desire in a box, if you’ll just turn a trick for him.★★

★★You English guys, you’ve got such a way with words! Look, I don’t bribe, okay? It’s not a matter of being too honest, it’s just not possible. Suppose, for the sake of argument, I go down for him and he gives me whatever it is you’re hinting at in return. What happens then? Has that occurred to you? I’d be dead meat, Bob. No way can he let me walk.★★

★★Not so fast. I mean, I think he’s nuts. But I think he believes that if he succeeds there won’t be an ‘after,’ in the conventional sense; he’ll be home clean and dry, immune to any consequences. I put the offer Angleton—my boss—gave me on the table, and Billington just laughed at me! He laughed off about five billion dollars at today’s exchange rate. He’s not in this for the money, he’s in it because he thinks he’s going to come out of it owning the entire planet.★★

She snorts theatrically. ★★How boring, just another billionaire necromancer cruising the Caribbean in his thinly disguised guided missile destroyer, plotting total world domination.★★

I shudder. ★★You think you’re joking? He monologued at me. With PowerPoint.★★

★★He what? And you’re still sane? Obviously I underestimated you.★★

I shake my head. ★★I didn’t have much choice. I figure we’re stuck here for the duration. Or at least until he gets wherever he’s taking us.★★

★★The other ship.★★

★★Yeah, there’s that.★★ I stand up and walk over to the sliding door at the far side of the room. The bathroom beyond it is small but perfectly formed. There’s no porthole, though.

★★If we could figure out a way to spring you, could you do your invisibility thing?★★

The question takes me by surprise. ★★Not sure. Damn it, they took my Treo. That would make it a whole lot easier. Plus, he’s got an occult surveillance service that’s going to be murder to evade. You don’t use Eileen’s make-up, do you? Especially not the mascara?★★

★★Do I look like a dumb blonde?★★ she snorts. ★★Pale Grace™ is for department store sales clerks and middle-management types trying to glam up their suits.★★

★★Good for you, because he’s got a contagious proximity-awareness binding mixed in with it—that’s what he married Eileen for, that’s why he bankrolled her business. The goddamn seagulls weren’t how he was watching us, they were just cover: it was all the thirty-something tourist women. All of them, at least the ones who take the free samples down at the promenade. And I reckon if he’s got any sense, all of the crew on this boat will be using it, or something similar.★★

★★At least they’ll all have beautiful complexions.★★ She pauses. ★★So what does he want with us? Why are we still alive?★★

★★You’re alive because he wants you to do a job. Me . . . probably because he needs someone to monologue at. He said something about a geas, but I’m not sure what he meant. And we’re still entangled, so I guess ... ★★

I stop. While I was wibbling, Ramona realized something. ★★You’re right, it is the geas,★★ she says sharply. ★★Which means nothing’s going to happen until we arrive. So go to sleep, Bob. You’re going to need all the sleep you can get before tomorrow.★★

★★But—★★

★★Lights out.★★ And with that, she pushes me out of her head, blocking me off from that sudden flash of understanding.