**I'm not sure. Bear with me for one last test?**
**What?** She half stands as I get off the bed, but the constraining field prohibits her from reaching me: **Hey!
Ow! You bastard!** It brings tears to my eyes. I clutch my right foot and wait for the pain to subside from where I kicked the bed-base.
Ramona is bent over, hugging her foot as well. **Okay,** I mumble, then kneel down and switch off the signal generator.
I don't particularly want to switch it off — I feel a hell of a lot safer with Ramona trapped inside a pentacle; the idea of setting her free makes my skin crawl — but the flip side of the entanglement is fairly clear: not only can we talk without being overheard, there are other (and drastically less pleasant) side effects.
**You're not a masochist, are you?** she asks tightly as she hobbles towards the bathroom.
**No **
**Good.** She slams the door shut. A few seconds later I clutch at my crotch in horror as I feel the unmistakable sensation of a full bladder emptying. It takes me seconds to realize it's not mine. My fingers are dry.
**Bitch!** Two can play at that game.
**It's your fault for keeping me waiting for ages.** I breathe deeply. **Look. I didn't ask for this — **
**Me neither!**
** — so why don't we call it a truce?** Silence, punctuated by a sharp sense of impatience.
**Took you long enough, monkey-boy.**
**What's with the monkey-boy business?** I complain.
**What's with the abhuman-bloodsucking-demon-whore imagery?** she responds acidly. **Try to keep your gibbering religious bigotry out of my head and I'll leave your bladder alone. Deal?**
**Deal — hey! How the hell am I a gibbering religious bigot? I'm an atheist!**
**Yeah, and the horse you rode in on is a member of the College of Cardinals.** I hear the toilet flush through the door, a sudden reminder that we're not actually talking.
**You may not believe in God but you still believe in Hell.
And you think it's where people like me belong.**
**But isn't that where you come from ...?** The door opens. Her glamour's as strong as ever: she looks like she just stepped out of a cocktail party to powder her nose.
**We can go over it some other time, Bob. You can just call room service if you want to eat, I have to make more elaborate arrangements. See you tomorrow.** With that, she picks up her evening bag from the bedside table and departs in a snit.
'Mo'
'Hi! Where are — hold on a moment — Bob? You still there? I was about to jump in the bath. How's it going'
Gulp. 'About a ton of horse manure just landed on me.
Have you seen Angleton this week'
'No, they've billeted me in the Monkfish Motel again and it's really dull — you know what the night life in Dunwich is like. So what's Angleton up to now'
'I, uh, well, I got here — Darmstadt — to find — ' I double-check my phone to confirm we're in secure mode ' — new orders waiting for me, care of Boris and the two mad mice.
Almost got run off the autobahn on the way in and, well — '
'Car accident'
'Sort of. Anyway, I'm being shunted off on a side trip instead of coming home. So I won't be back for the weekend.'
'Shit.'
'My thoughts exactly.'
'Where are they sending you'
'To Saint Martin, in the Caribbean.'
'The — '
'And it gets worse.'
'Do I want to hear this, love'
'Probably not.' Pause. 'Okay. I'm sitting down.'
'It's a joint operation. They've inflicted a minder from the Black Chamber on me.'
'But — Bob! That's crazy! It just doesn't happen! Nobody even knows what the Black Chamber is really called! 'No Such Agency' meets 'Destroy Before Reading.' Are you telling me ...'
'I haven't been fully briefed. But I figure it's going to be extremely ungood, for, like, Amsterdam values of ungood.' I shudder. Our little weekend trip to Amsterdam involved more trouble than you can shake a shitty stick at. 'I guess you know the Chamber specializes in taking the HUM out of HUMINT? Golems and remote viewing and so forth, never send a human agent to do a job a zombie can do? Anyway, the minder they've sent me is, you know, existentially challenged.
They've sicced a demon on me.'
'Jesus, Bob.'
'Yeah, well, He isn't answering the phone.'
'I can't believe it. The bastards.'
'Listen, I've got a feeling there's more to this than meets the eye and I need someone watching my back who isn't just looking for a good spot to sink their fangs into. Can you do some discreet digging when you get back to the office? Ask Andy, perhaps? This is under Angleton, by the way.'
'Angleton.' Mo's voice goes flat and cold, and the hair on the back of my neck rises. She blames Angleton for a lot of things, and it could turn very ugly if she decides to let it all hang out. 'I should have guessed. It's about time that bastard faced the music.'
'Don't go after him!' I say urgently. 'You're not meant to know this. Remember, all you know is I've been sent off somewhere to do a job.'
'But you want me to keep my ear to the ground and listen for oncoming train wrecks.'
'That's about the size of it. I'm missing you.'
'Love you, too.' A pause. 'What is it about this spook that's got you so upset'
Whoops. I'm no good at hiding things from her, am I?
'For starters she's crazier than a legful of ferrets. She's seriously bad magic, wearing a perpetual glamour — level three, if I'm any judge of such things. The only thing keeping her on track is the geas that ate Montana. She's not a free actor.
Actress.'
'Uh-huh. What else'
I lick my lips. 'Boris, um, applied some sort of destinyentanglement protocol to us. I didn't run away fast enough.'
'Destiny — what? Entanglement? What's that'
I take a deep breath. 'I'm not sure, but I'd appreciate it if you could find out and tell me. Because whatever it is, it's scaring me.'
It's still early in the evening, but my encounter with Ramona has shaken me, and I don't much want to run into Pinky and Brains again (if they haven't already packed up and left: there's quite a lot of banging coming from next door). I decide to hole up in my room and lick my wounded dignity, so I order up a cardboard cheeseburger from room service, have a long soak under the shower, watch an infinitely forgettable movie on cable, and turn in for the night.
I don't usually remember my dreams because they're mostly surreal and/or incomprehensible — two-headed camels stealing my hovercraft, bat-winged squid gods explaining why I ought to accept job offers from Microsoft, that sort of thing — so what makes this one stand out is its sheer gritty realism. Dreaming that I'm me is fine. So is dreaming that I'm an employee of a vast software multinational, damned and enslaved by an ancient evil. But dreaming that I'm an overweight fifty-something German sales executive from an engineering firm in Dusseldorf is so far off the map that if I wasn't asleep I'd pinch myself. I'm at a regional sales convention and I've been drinking
