May Contain Traces of Magic

About the Book

There are all kinds of products. The good ones. The bad ones. The ones that stay in the garage mouldering for years until your garden gnome makes a home out of them. Most are harmless if handled properly, even if they do contain traces of peanuts. But some are not. Not the ones that contain traces of magic.

Chris Popham wasn't paying enough attention when he talked to his SatNav. Sure, she gave him directions, never backtalked him, and always led him to his next spot on the map with perfect accuracy. She was the best thing in his life. So was it really his fault that he didn't start paying attention when she talked to him? In his defence, that was her job. But when 'Take the next right' turned into 'Excuse me,' that was when the real trouble started.

Because sometimes a SatNav isn't a SatNav. Sometimes it's an imprisoned soul trapped inside a metal box that will do anything it can to get free. And some products you just can't return.

Cover Illustration: Simon Sheffield / Darren Nash

An Extract from Chapter One

He was losing her, he could tell. The polite smile was still there, but the eyes were glazing over, the mind was drifting away. Right, he thought.

'Or there's the new BB27Ks,' he said, increasing the volume just a trifle. 'I think they'd do really well for you. Ever since we brought them out, it's been phenomenal.'

He'd got her back, just for a moment. 'I read about them,' she said; just enough enthusiasm to dirty a microscope slide, but that was something like a ninety per cent improvement. 'How are they going?'

'Brilliant,' he said, 'absolutely brilliant. Doing very nicely. Everywhere I go, people keep telling me they're just flying off the shelves.'

Immediately, he knew he'd said the wrong thing; her mouth tightened, her eyes narrowed a little. No idea why. 'In fact, we're doing a special ...' he started to say, but a flicker of movement behind her head snagged his attention and he dried up. On the top row of the shelf unit facing him, a cardboard box had just sprouted wings.

Sod it, he thought. The NM66.

'Um,' he said, as the box stretched, preened its light grey feathers and made a soft cheeping noise. The shopkeeper looked round, swore and grabbed at it, but it was too late. The box spread its wings, hopped off the shelf and glided lazily, just out of reach of the shopkeeper's flailing hands, over their heads, out through the open door into the street.

She looked at him.

'We're working on that,' he said sheepishly. 'Bit of a snarl-up with quality control, but they promise me the next batch ...'

'Fifteen of them,' she said bitterly. 'In just one week.'

'It's the mating season,' he mumbled. 'But they've completely redesigned the DNA sequence, and that'll sort it, no problem. Meanwhile, if you'll just do us a returns note for the, um, escaped stock, we'll get that straightened out for you, and ...'

He ran out of words. The expression on her face was quite clear: forget it, don't bother, save your breath. But that wasn't his way. He sucked in a little air, and said brightly, 'So, shall I put you down for three dozen of the BB27K, for starters? We're offering special display materials, dumpbins, special promotional ...'

'No, thanks,' she said.

Oh, he thought. Right, fine. 'Well, I guess that's about it for today, then. Thanks ever so much for seeing me, and I'll be back again first week in June. Meanwhile, if there's anything I can help you with ...'

It was like pouring water into sand. He was used to it, but that didn't make it fun. And it'd be nice, just once, if he got a chance to end a sentence with something other than three dots. He smiled, closed the lid of his briefcase, thanked her once again for her time and left the shop.

It was raining outside, needless to say, as though tears for the miserable fate of all salesmen everywhere were rolling down heaven's face. One of these days, he thought, I'll get a proper job, in an office, and I won't have to do this any more. One of these days.

He looked up, and saw the stray NM66 perched on top of a nearby traffic light. Stupid bloody things, he thought as the box, now distinctly damp, cooed mildly at him; not enough sense to stay out of the rain, it'll get all soggy and fall to bits if it's not careful.

He walked back to his car, which winked its indicators at him as he thumbed the plastic key thing. At least someone's pleased to see me, he thought.

Before he drove off, he filled in the order form. That didn't take long. No BB27Ks, no GP19s, he'd been stone-cold certain he'd be able to shift a couple of outers of YJ42s but no dice. Just a couple of trays of AA1s and the inevitable repeat order for DW6 ...

That made him frown, as it always did. DW6: one of the firm's biggest sellers, but in seven years he'd yet to meet anybody who knew what the stupid stuff was actually for. It was, by any criteria, the weirdest, most totally improbable concept he'd come across (and in this business, that was saying a lot). None of the reps knew what it was supposed to do, the buyers hadn't got a clue, the shop managers and sales assistants didn't know; but the customers bought it, by the bucketful, by the skipload, so-

Never mind, he told himself firmly as he switched on the SatNav and waited for it to warm up. A mystery it might be, but at least he could shift it; three hearty cheers for small mercies. There were some months (and this might well prove to be one of them, the way things were going) when the only thing that stood between him and an excitingly challenging change in areer direction was DW6.

Even so.

SatNav flickered into brightly backlit life, and he touched the nail of his index finger to the screen. The colours swirled, and it said-

(It said; she said -)

- SatNav said, 'Your route is being calculated; please wait,' and for a moment he forgot about snotty shop managers and flying cardboard boxes and his monthly target and perversely inexplicable megaselling DW6, because there was something about its voice, her voice, that was so wonderfully soothing and reassuring; like she understood him, like she cared-

He frowned. They'd warned him about that, of course. He glanced at the little screen, as the picture swung wildly through the x axis and settled itself. Straight on out of town until he hit the main A666, then take the second exit. Fine.

Not much traffic at this time of day. He'd warned them about the NM66, of course, told them till he was blue in the face and would they listen? Fat chance. He'd told them that it was just a matter of time before an escaped pair started breeding, and then the brown stuff'd hit the swiftly whirring blades all right: tabloid headlines, billion-dollar lawsuits, the boingboing noise of rolling heads in the deep-pile-carpeted corridors of corporate power. He sighed. They lived in a world of their own in Kettering.

He turned the radio on, but it was some phone-in, so he fished about in the glove compartment for a CD. Now there (he thought, as he scrabbled one-handed through the plastic cases) was another bloody mystery, because a third of the stuff in there was garbage he'd never have bought in a million years, a third he couldn't even recognise, and of the remaining third that he was prepared to acknowledge as his own, the one thing he actually wanted to find was always missing. White Stripes; no, not today. Very Best of James Blunt - contradiction in terms. He looked up just in time to avoid smashing into the back of a lorry, and grabbed something at random.

It turned out to be a home-made job, no label or writing on it, so presumably one of Karen's compilation CDs - no idea how they came to end up in his glove compartment; another mystery. He stuck it in anyway, and it turned out not to be too bad after all, though of course he had to keep the volume right down so he could hear SatNav-

'After three hundred yards,' SatNav said, 'turn left.'

He realised he was smiling, and frowned instead. So what, she had, it had a nice voice: bright, warm, friendly, ever so slightly sexy but- All right, so what? Obviously they'd chosen a voice that was carefully designed to appeal to the tired, stressed-out male driver, and they were good at their jobs, and they'd succeeded. There was absolutely nothing wrong with that, nothing odd or sinister or strange about it, and if he'd rather listen to her - it - than to the Proclaimers or the miserable sods on the radio, that was perfectly all right, nothing whatsoever to worry about. Even so, he turned the CD player up just a little bit, and self-consciously tapped out the beat on the steering wheel with his fingers.

I worry too much, he thought; and when there's too much or too little to worry about, I worry about worrying. Maybe Ishould be worried about that, too. Or maybe I should just get a bloody grip, and concentrate on getting through the next call without screwing up too monumentally badly.

'At the next junction,' SatNav said, 'turn left.'

'What? Oh, yes,' he muttered, and dabbed at the indicator stalk. 'Thanks.'

'You're welcome.'

Now then, he thought. Next call was Stetchkin & Sons: old-established family firm, conservative, the archetypal nocall- for-that-round-here outfit, which meant he was going to have to come up with something pretty stunningly amazing if he was going to offload any BB27Ks on them. He rehearsed the standard pitch in his mind. No chance. Come on, he told himself reproachfully, you're a salesman, you can do this-

'I can,' he said aloud, like they'd told him to on his Innovation & Assertiveness Awareness Day (complete waste of time, except for the spring rolls at lunchtime). 'I can. There's no such word as can't.'

It sounded even sillier than usual, and he grinned. Yes, he thought, but just for the hell of it, like it's some kind of bet I'm having with myself; if only to see the look on old Mr Stetchkin's face when he realises he's just placed an order for three dozen of something he didn't know he wanted. I can do this-

'Yes,' he said. 'Can't I, SatNav?'

'Of course you can.'

He frowned, changed down to overtake a cyclist, and said, 'Yes, well, it's easy for you to say. You've never met old Mr Stetchkin.'

'Tell me about him.'

He grinned, and turned off the CD player. 'Oh God, where do I begin? Right, then, for a start he's seventy if he's a day, bald with little bits of white fluff over his ears like cotton wool, stupid little tufty white beard-'

'He sounds rather sweet, actually.'

Bitter laugh. 'I don't think so,' he said. 'He's one of those miserable, nit-picking types, never satisfied, nothing's ever right, won't ever listen to what you've got to say, reckons he knows it all, you really wouldn't-'

'After three hundred yards,' SatNav interrupted, 'turn right. And perhaps,' she went on, 'if he's been in the business for a long time and he's still going, maybe he does know it all. Or at least quite a lot of it.'

He was going to laugh derisively, but he didn't. 'It's a good business, Stetchkins,' he said thoughtfully. 'They've always done well, even in the recession. There's not many that can say that.'

'Now turn right,' SatNav said. 'So perhaps Mr Stetchkin's got good reason to think he knows it all.'

'Maybe.'

'I'd have thought someone like that would be quite proud of his experience.'

He frowned. 'Go on.'

'Oh, I was just thinking, after all those years in the trade, he must have heard every pitch there is, over and over again, till he's sick of hearing them all. People trying really hard to sell him things, I mean.'

'I suppose so,' he said. 'But that's not helping me, is it?'

'After six hundred yards, take the second exit. If I was Mr Stetchkin,' SatNav said, 'I wouldn't want some young rep coming into my shop and trying to shove some new product up my nose, telling me how wonderful it is. No, if there's a new line I might be interested in, I'd want to look at it carefully, see if it's any good and make my own decision. Don't you think?'

'Fine,' he replied huffily. 'That's me out of a job, then.'

'Not at all. Your job is to bring the merchandise to the customers' attention.'

'That's one way of looking at it,' he said sarcastically. 'Only I wouldn't last very long if all I ...'

'Take the second exit.'

'What? Oh, shit, right.'

'Personally,' SatNav went on, 'if it was me, I'd start off just taking down the reorders, let him do all the talking to begin with, and then I'd say something like-'

'Like?'

'I'm thinking, please wait. Something like, "I don't know if you've got a moment, Mr Stetchkin, but I'd quite like your opinion of this new line we're bringing out"; and then you hand it to him and take a step back, and don't say anything until he's finished looking at it-'

'That's not bad,' Mr Stetchkin said.

Oink, he thought. 'You think it's OK?' he said.

Mr Stetchkin nodded. 'It's quite good,' he said. 'Neat. Well thought out. Good value for money.'

He frowned, like she'd told him to, and tried to sound slightly worried. 'You don't think the packaging's a bit, well, loud-?'

Mr Stetchkin shook his head. 'No, not really. Nice bright colours, catches the eye.'

'But isn't it a bit on the dear side? For what it is, I mean.'

Mr Stetchkin thought about that for a moment. 'I don't think so,' he said. 'Customers know they get what they pay for. If it was any cheaper, it'd send the wrong message. You wouldn't expect to get anything like this worth having for nine ninety-nine.'

'That's true,' he said, as though reluctantly conceding the point. 'And you think the way it folds up at the back is all right? I was a little concerned people might think it's a bit, well, fiddly.'

Mr Stetchkin gave him a patronising smile. 'Hardly,' he said. 'Look, I can do it with one hand, see?' And he folded it up easily, as though he'd been practising for a week. 'No, I have to say, I really like this - What did you say the code was?'

He made a show of looking at his book. 'BB27K,' he said.

'Yes, thank you.' Mr Stetchkin handed him back the sample, and nodded. 'I'll take ten dozen.'

'I think we may be able to - Just let me check.' He looked back at the book and saw that it was upside down. Luckily, Mr Stetchkin hadn't noticed. 'Yes, we can let you have ten dozen, just about. Usual rate?'

Mr Stetchkin nodded again, and for a moment the shop seemed to flicker, because Mr Stetchkin always screwed you to the floor over discounts. 'Now then,' Mr Stetchkin went on, 'I'd like another six dozen of the DW6, and this time, tell them I don't want to find any of them with the seals broken, I think I may have mentioned this before-'

'It was amazing,' he said. 'Ten dozen. He took ten dozen, and-'

'At the end of the road, turn left.'

'Yes, I know, I've been here before. Now all I've got to do is shift three dozen more and I've made my target, and I'm pretty sure I can get rid of two dozen on the Valmet brothers, which just leaves one, and I'm home free.'

'That's marvellous. I knew you could do it.'

He was grinning again. But, he thought, why the hell not? Nobody else would've said that to him. 'I reckon we've done a good day's work today,' he said. 'You and me.'

No reply; but that was fair enough, it was a straight stretch of road. He sat back in his seat and tapped the wheel a few times, beating out the rhythm from one of the tracks he'd played earlier; catchy tune, he wondered who it was by.

'Excuse me.'

'Mm?'

'Only,' she said, 'I was wondering.'

'Yes?'

'This BB-'

'BB27K?'

'That's it, yes. Only ...' Brief hesitation, like she was about to take a slight liberty. 'What is it? I mean, what does it actually do?'

He smiled. 'It's the latest thing,' he said. 'Kettering's mad about it, really pushing it. Hence the bloody enormous target.'

'Yes, but-'

His smile widened. 'It's a portable folding parking space,' he said. 'It comes in a little plastic wallet, and you take it out and unfold it and lay it down on the road, and it expands into a space big enough to take anything up to a small minibus. When you're ready to leave, you just pick it up and put it away and off you go. Even works on double yellows. I'm going to see if I can nick one for myself, it'll make my life so much-'

'That's a really good idea,' she said.

'Invented by Professor Cornelius Van Spee of Leiden,' he recited, 'a by-product of research into-'

'Wasn't he the one who went mad and tried to blow up the planet?'

He shrugged. 'Search me,' he replied. 'I just sell them. Or try to,' he added. 'And, thanks to you ...'

'Not at all,' she said. 'You were the one who made the sale. I just-'

'Should I be turning right here?'

'What? Oh, yes, sorry.'

'No problem,' he said, turning the wheel. 'And then it's right at the crossroads, isn't it?'

'Yes. I mean, at the end of the road, turn right. Sorry.'

'That's OK.' He slid the gear lever into fourth. 'What were you telling me just now about Professor Van Spee?'

'Well,' SatNav replied, 'if he's the one I'm thinking of, he tried to create a pocket universe. There was a lot of trouble about it, at the time.'

He frowned. 'That's no big deal,' he said. 'I mean, we do those: the JH88C. Get away from it all in a world of your own for only two-nine-nine ninety-nine. We sell a lot of them.'

'Yes,' she said. 'But this one actually worked.'

'Ah.' He thought for a moment, then said, 'Hang on, though. The JH88C works. Any rate, I've never had any sent back, so they must be all right.'

Slight pause; then she said, 'The JH88C creates an interdimensional bubble capable of supporting one adult human for up to forty-eight hours at a time, while the inbuilt matter/energy transfiguration unit allows limited holographic imaging for a strictly limited range of pre-programmed fantasy activities. Van Spee's version was permanent, and you could do anything you liked in there.'

'Really?' He raised his eyebrows. 'Cool.'

'Cool,' she agreed, 'except that it did all sorts of horrible things to the real world. But he didn't care about that. Not a nice man.'

'Obviously.' He thought for a moment, then said, 'You know a lot about it-'

'For a SatNav, you mean?' She didn't say it nastily or anything, but he got the message. 'I don't just do quickest-way-from-A-to-B, you know.'

'That's for sure,' he said. 'You know, I went to this launch meeting about the JH88C, and they told us all about it and the points we should be stressing to customers and all that, but they didn't say anything about interdimensional bubbles or blowing up planets.'

'Didn't want to overload you with stuff you didn't need to know, presumably.'

'I guess so.' Pause; thought. 'But you know-

'After six hundred yards, take the first exit.'

So he did; and a sociopath in a Daf sixteen-wheeler tried to carve him up on the inside, which provoked him into the use of intemperate language, and after that he'd forgotten what they'd been talking about; and soon afterwards they turned into Frobisher Way, and she said, 'You have now arrived at your destination,' and he parked the car and went in to the office.

'Oh, it's you,' said Julie on reception. 'You're late.'

'Am I?'

She nodded. 'He's waiting for you,' she said. 'In the small interview room.'

'Ah,' he said. 'Lucky me.'

As he trudged slowly through the industrial Axminster, he ran through a short list of possibilities. Get rid of the most unlikely ones first: he's pleased with me, he wants to give me a pay rise, he wants to promote me. Yes indeed; and the pig now boarding at gate number six is the 17:09 scheduled flight to Mogadishu. Rather more probable: he's pissed off at me, he's really pissed off at me, he's really seriously pissed off at me-

He knocked on the door, waited for the familiar grunt, and went in. At the far end of the room, his huge pink face reflected in the highly polished table top, sat Mr Burnoz, area manager; not a pleasant sight, but not so bad if you're expecting it. Opposite him was some scraggy kid in glasses.

'You wanted to see me, Mr-'

'Come in, sit down.'Mr Burnoz turned his head and smiled at the scraggy kid. Female, he noted, more than a passing resemblance to a weasel. 'Angela, I'd like you to meet Chris Popham, one of our sales reps. Chris, this is Angela -' some surname he didn't catch '- who's joining us for a month as part of her degree course.' Burnoz smiled hugely, as if he was trying to catch the sun in his teeth. 'Angela's taking advantage of our sponsored graduate-intake programme. Ultimately we're hoping she'll be joining us at Kettering, meanwhile we're giving her this opportunity to get some front-line hands-on experience in basic marketing.'

A chill sensation, like a column of frozen ants climbing up his leg. 'That's great,' Chris said through a fixed smile. 'How do I-?'

'We thought it'd be a really good idea if Angela sat in with you while you do your rounds for the next six weeks,' said Mr Burnoz, cheerful as a game-show host, oblivious as an icebreaker grinding through permafrost. 'You can show her what it's really like in the trenches, so to speak, the raw, bloody cut and thrust of modern marketing. Not something you can get a feel of from books or sitting in front of a computer screen, I'm sure you'll agree. I know Angela's really looking forward to it.'

In which case, Chris thought, never under any circumstances play poker with this child for money, since she clearly guards her emotions like a dragon on a pile of gold. 'Absolutely,' he heard himself croak. 'Great idea.'

'Splendid,' said Mr Burnoz, as the scraggy kid shifted her head a fraction to the left and gave him a look that would've separated paint. 'In that case, why don't you pick her up outside the building here at, what, let's say six-fifteen tomorrow morning, and you can take it from there.'

Chris hoped he'd managed not to let the pain show in his face. 'All right, then,' he said. 'I'll look forward to it.'

The raw, bloody cut and thrust of modern marketing. That was, he told himself as he slouched back across the pure-wool tundra, one way of describing it. But offloading a trainee - and not just a trainee: a graduate trainee, a graduate bloody trainee who hadn't even graduated yet, a kid - on him was a refinement of cruelty he wouldn't have thought anybody, even Mr Burnoz, was capable of. It was heartless, it was vicious, savage, inhuman and unnatural; furthermore, he was at least ninetynine- point-nine-eight per cent sure that Mr Burnoz hadn't meant it that way. Far from it. Somebody - Kettering, presumably - had sent Mr Burnoz a memo saying offload this skinny kid on one of your reps, and Mr Burnoz had chosen him at random, or because he'd seen his name on a report or an expenses claim at some point recently, and had recalled it when faced with the chore of placing the trainee ... Arguably, that was worse. Which would you rather be: the martyr on the lonely gallows, or the hedgehog squashed flat by the artic whose driver hadn't even seen you?

Back into reception, where Julie - she was married, and every time she mentioned her husband Chris couldn't help thinking of those birds in Africa who live by picking shreds of meat out of the jaws of crocodiles - handed him a sheaf of yellow While You Were Out notes, which he stuffed into his briefcase without looking at them. A trainee, he muttered to himself as he splashed through puddles in the car park, a sodding kid. And six-fifteen in the bloody morning.

He'd started the car and let in the clutch before he remembered; and then he felt a little better. Today was Wednesday, Karen's evening class, which meant ... He smiled, eased the car into gently purring motion, and drove gracefully home, stopping to let other people go at junctions.

There was a note on the kitchen table: no food. Chris acknowledged it with a slight nod. Sometimes, though rarely, Karen cooked. He didn't hold it against her; he guessed it was something she felt she had to do now and again, and it was probably just as well that she got it out of her system, rather than bottling it up and getting some sort of a complex. Nonetheless, in their house the definition of good food was like the proverbial definition of good news. He'd get a burger instead, or a kebab. Things were looking up.

Chris changed quickly, lynching his suit on a wire hanger and pulling on a pair of jeans, transferred his wallet, phone and keys to his civilian jacket, checked the mercifully mute answering machine and lunged back out again, walking quickly without actually running, as if escaping from a PoW camp. A glance at his watch told him he was cutting it fine, for which he had Mr Burnoz and the skinny teenager to thank. As he turned the corner by the pillar box, he realised that he was rehearsing an opening line in his head. He wondered about that, just briefly, but so-whatted away the tender shoots of guilt. My evening off, he told himself. I deserve it.

She'd got there first; she always did. She'd bagged a table - not too close to the door, the bar or the toilets - and bought the drinks. She always did it, and he'd never once commented on it. Furthermore, she always smiled when she saw him. He couldn't think of anybody else who did that.

(But that's OK, Chris told himself, his inner voice just a touch nervous inside his head. That's the difference between a permanent might-as-well-be-married girlfriend and a, well, a friend. A friend is someone who likes you.)

'Sorry I'm late,' he said, dropping into his seat. 'Held up at the office. Don't ask. No,' he added, as his fingers closed around the cool, damp body of the glass, 'Ask. I need to whine at somebody.'

'Fine,' she said. 'Whine away.'

So he whined: Mr Burnoz (she knew all about him by now), the trainee, six-fifteen in the morning. She nodded at just the right times, precisely the right tempo and degree of spinal flex, the murmurs and tongue-clicks interpolated at exactly the right moments. All fake, of course; but somehow, that didn't spoil it. Quite the reverse, in fact. Chris knew perfectly well that if her boss called her in and assigned her a trainee to babysit for six weeks, she'd accept the assignment as an interesting and worthwhile challenge, and by the time the six weeks were up the trainee would scuttle back to college with a renewed sense of purpose, and quite likely they'd send each other Christmas cards for the rest of their lives. So of course she didn't understand why he was ranting about the bitter injustice of it all, but nevertheless she was pretending to, and that was really very kind-

'Anyway,' he said (rant over; and yes, he felt a whole lot better now), 'that's quite enough of that.'

'Yes,' she replied, with a very slight nod of her head. 'So, how's Karen? I haven't heard from her for ages.'

'Oh, same as usual.' He was frowning, for some reason. 'Still doing the evening classes. And working late.'

She absorbed the information without any show of opinion. It was a special talent of hers. 'She always was a busy bee,' she added. 'I remember her in our A-level year-'

'You can't talk,' Chris felt constrained to point out. 'You were worse.'

She nodded. 'Still am,' she said. 'All work and no play makes Jill a senior executive officer and deputy head of department. Of course,' she added, 'it helps if you enjoy what you do.'

He frowned a little. 'Quite,' he said. 'Killed anything interesting lately?'

'As a matter of fact, yes. We had a level-three infestation just outside Faversham, and it was my turn. Bloody Robinson tried to gazump me, but I insisted. Two of them,' she went on, fiddling with the rim of her glass. 'A nesting pair.'

In spite of himself Chris was impressed. 'They're supposed to be particularly nasty, aren't they?'

Nod. 'We eventually got them cornered in the toilets of a sort of Happy Eater place - me, Derek and old George Ruffer - he's supposed to be semi-retired now but he still turns out when we're short-staffed. They had to cone off two lanes of the motorway. Got them in the end, though.'

'Rather you than me,' Chris said, with genuine feeling. 'I really don't know how you can do that,' he went on. 'I mean, quite apart from the danger. I just can't get my head around how you go about it. Mentally, I mean. You wake up, coffee and cereal, what shall I wear to work today, seat on the train if you're lucky, and then, ten minutes after you've clocked in you're out there with a suitcase full of weapons fighting the forces of primeval darkness. I don't think I could face it, really.'

Jill shrugged. 'It's interesting,' she said. 'Also useful, you've got to admit.'

'Dirty job but someone's got to do it?' Chris pulled a face. 'Come on,' he said, 'that's not the real reason.'

'Very true.' She smiled. 'The real reason is, if I stick at it for another three years-'

'And manage not to get killed or horribly mauled-'

'Yes, quite. If I stick at it three more years, I'm practically guaranteed the next junior secretaryship when one crops up, which otherwise I wouldn't have a hope in hell of being considered for until I'm at least forty. And after that-'

Chris pulled another face, and Jill laughed again. 'Well, I'm sorry, that's just how I am,' she said. 'I like being ambitious, it keeps things interesting. I know it doesn't suit you, and that's fine. I guess I'm just not a rut person. And if it means having to kill a few demons now and again, there's worse ways of making a living. Accountancy. Insurance. Anything with children.'

'Or selling,' he said. 'Now there's a dead-end career if you like.'

'Quite.' Jill grinned. 'Look at you, for example. Seven years of devoted service, and they land you with a trainee. Give me a nice, straightforward demon any time.'

Chris realised he was scowling, but made no effort to stop. 'Ah well,' he said. 'I didn't go to university, so what can I expect?'

She didn't react; she never did. But Chris felt something click into place between them, separating them, and (as always) wished he hadn't said it. Meanwhile, she was looking at him, and he could read the message as clearly as though she had a ticker-tape machine on her forehead. It's not just because she's a trainee, he read, it's because she's a graduate trainee. Can't forgive her for that, can you? He shrugged, and she knew him well enough to accept it as a retraction, a reset to zero, as though the U-word hadn't been said out loud that evening.

'Changing the subject,' he said briskly (and a slight glow in Jill's eyes meant she approved), 'there's something I've been meaning to ask you, since you know all about the business and everything.'

'I do,' she said. 'Go on.'

So he told her all about the DW6 mystery; but he hadn't got very far when she stopped him.

'How do you mean,' Jill said, looking uncharacteristically blank, 'powdered water?'

Chris looked at her. 'You're kidding me, right?'

But she wasn't, because she didn't do that sort of thing. He paused, while the world went all to pieces and slowly re-formed around him. 'Are you seriously telling me you've never heard of-?'

Jill frowned. 'Come to that,' she replied, 'are you seriously telling me there's such a thing as powdered water?'

'Apparently.' Chris shrugged. 'At least, it's this sort of very fine grey powder, like a kind of mixture of talc and soot. It comes in a plastic tub with a kidproof lid, you can have the one-kilo size or the five-hundred-'

'Powdered water?'

'That's what it says on the label,' he replied, ever so slightly defensively. 'Mind you, I've never actually seen it in action, so to speak. But-'

Jill was focusing on him. He knew that look. It was lucky she didn't wear glasses, or she'd burn holes in things. 'It's a gag thing, surely. Like pet rocks and bottled LA smog, novelty Christmas gifts for sad people.'

Chris shook his head. 'I don't think so,' he replied. 'We don't do stuff like that.'

Now Jill raised her eyebrows; not a good sign. Two gym mistresses and a maths teacher had needed counselling, back in Year Ten. 'Does it say on it how you're supposed to use it? I mean, are there instructions on the tub?'

Another headshake. 'All it says is, instant powdered water, just add ...'

Pause. She was thinking. 'Just add?'

'And then three dots,' he told her. 'Just add dot dot dot. Oh, and there's a lot of legal stuff: for use as a water substitute only, may contain traces of-'

'Just add.' Jill's thoughtful frown had escalated into a scowl.

'That's silly,' she said.

'Yes.' His turn to frown. 'Really, haven't you heard of it? I thought you knew all about - well, trade stuff. Magic artefacts and their properties. Didn't you do a-?'

'A course, yes,' Jill said. 'In my second year at Loughborough. And yes, we did everything, you name it, from mandrake roots to elixirs of eternal youth.' A thought struck her; Chris could see the ripples of impact in the lines appearing on her forehead. 'Is it a fairly recent thing?' she asked. 'Only I suppose it could be a recent invention, hence not covered in the course.'

Shrug. 'Don't think so,' he replied. 'I get the impression from customers that they've been ordering it from us for years.'

'Powdered water, for crying out loud.' Now he'd done it; a question to which Jill didn't know the answer. She hated those. 'And you've no idea what the people who buy it use it for?'

'That's what I wanted to ask you.' Now he was starting to feel guilty. She took things seriously. Something like this could spoil her whole day. 'I wish I hadn't asked you now. Only I was sure you'd-'

'No, that's fine.' She sounded like she was having trouble remembering he was there. 'I'll ask around at work,' she said, making an effort to break free of the mystery. 'Someone's bound to have ... And you sell a lot of this stuff?'

'Hundreds of kilos,' Chris replied. 'One of our best lines. Most of the places I go've got a standing order.'

'Oh. Oh well. As soon as I've found out about it, I'll tell you. Just add,' Jill repeated, the frown coming back and changing her face into one he hardly recognised. 'Just add what, though? And why bother? I mean, it's not as though water's all that hard to come by in this country. For export, yes, I could see the point. But when all you've got to do is turn on a tap-'

This could go on all night, Chris realised, and it wasn't the way he wanted to spend his evening off. If he wanted tension and one-sided conversations, he could talk to Karen- 'Anyway,' he said, a little louder than he'd meant to, 'how's everything with you? Apart from work, I mean,' he added quickly.

'What? Oh, fine.'

'Heard from any of the others lately?'

He was on firm ground there. Jill had taken on herself the duty of collating and distributing detailed updates on everybody in their year, and needless to say, she did it very well. 'Paul's still with the BBC, of course, he's producing gardening programmes now. Amelia's transferred from the Tank Corps to Signals. Sara got deported from Bolivia for raising awareness about something or other; she's being very smug about that. Colin's still on the run, there was a sighting in Leeds about six weeks ago, they assume he's trying to leave the country on a false passport-'

Fine. Ten minutes or so later, the difficulty had evaporated, though Chris knew it hadn't really gone away. Rather, Jill had filed and stored it, and sooner or later an answer would be forthcoming. He noted with approval that at no point had she said, 'Well, why the hell don't you ask someone, it's your stupid firm that makes the stupid stuff,' or words to that effect. She understood perfectly why that simply wasn't an option; though of course, if she was a sales rep for JWW Retail, it'd have been the first thing she'd have done. As for that cursory What? Oh, fine, he was prepared to take it at face value; not because he wasn't interested. Quite the opposite. One of these days, he'd get an answer to that question that he knew he wasn't going to like. The longer that particular experience could be postponed, the better.

They chatted aimlessly for a while after that, and Chris managed to keep the conversation away from any more danger areas, though it was touch and go a few times; the nastiest moment was when Jill started complaining about how she'd been putting on weight again (and, since she'd raised the subject, it was perfectly true; but he knew it didn't signify, since she had one of those Stock Exchange metabolisms - massive gains one week, huge losses the next - and so long as she kept two sets of clothes, one in size zero and the other in extralarge, he couldn't see how it could possibly matter to a rational human being ... In the event, he deflected her away from all that by asking her about the demon-hunting business; it wasn't something he liked being told about, but it was better than a detailed analysis of her latest diet.

'We really need to find out how they're getting through,' Jill was saying. 'Until we know a lot more about that, it's really just guesswork and how quickly we can react once an infestation's been reported to us. There's theories, of course, but none of them seem to hold up once you try applying them in practice. For example, there was this article in New Thaumaturgical Quarterly about quantum fluctuations in the Earth's metadimensional field-'

'Is that right?' Chris said hopelessly. 'I didn't even know we had a-'

'Which,' Jill ground on, 'may give rise to anomalous crossfield events which the demons could've evolved to exploit, sort of like cracks, or bubbles. But it's all a bit vague and theoretical, if you ask me. I still prefer the hypothesis put forward by Kanamoto and Van Spee in 1846, which seeks to explain demon incursions in terms of artificially induced Otherspace interfaces, presupposing a negatively charged ionic curtain existing somewhere in the D6 void-'

In other words, white noise, which Chris had long since learned to tune out; it was soothing, when you were sitting in a pleasant pub holding a full glass, and basically he just liked hearing the sound of her voice: eager, earnest, clever, friendly, safe; not asking him to understand, let alone agree or form an opinion. It wasn't like when Karen talked at him, when there was always a very real threat that there'd be a test afterwards, or a sudden silence which he was supposed to fill with exactly the right form of sympathetic reassurance. Most of all, he liked being talked at by Jill because she never ever talked about Us; though the downside of that was that there wasn't an Us for them to talk about. But, he felt sure, even if there had been (if only - ), she'd never have dreamed of talking about it. He couldn't imagine her doing such a thing. To the best of his knowledge, in all the years he'd known her she'd never been half of any kind of an Us. She belonged to too many people, he supposed, too many friends all relying on her to listen and understand. A greater Us, of which she was the coordinator and historian. For a moment he felt a stab of jealousy, but it didn't take long for it to pass.

Closing time swooped down too soon; Chris said goodnight and walked home. It was only as he unlocked the door, shoving the thing he'd been carrying in his right hand under his arm so he could get out his keys, that he realised he'd picked up her bag by mistake. Ever since he'd known Jill, she'd always had a carrier bag; Tesco or Safeway in the early days, upgraded to M&S once she left school and started earning; these days, now that she was affluent and successful, it'd be something black or burgundy with gold lettering on it, but still a plastic carrier, her trade mark. What she carried in her carriers had always been something of a mystery, since she packed her vital instruments - purse, phone, glamour-repair kit and the like - in a conventional handbag, usually of great elegance and splendour. But she also had the knack of frustrating curiosity without even seeming to try; the carrier always came to rest between her feet, or wedged between her thigh and the side of the chair, safe from surreptitious investigation. But not, apparently, this time.

Chris paused, standing in the hall by the cheap Ikea phone table, and tried to reconstruct the sequence of events. Jill had stood up; the carrier had been in her hand, but she'd rested it on the table while she'd put on her coat; he'd picked it up to give it to her, but then she'd dropped her handbag, and by the time she'd retrieved that they'd been talking about something - Izzy Bowden's divorce, he recalled - and then someone had nearly barged into them and they'd been preoccupied with taking evasive action; and they'd walked out of the pub together, and he'd still been holding the carrier-

Chris went into the kitchen and sat down. A square of spilt milk on the worktop told him that Karen was home - she had an unfortunate tendency to attack cardboard milk cartons with wild enthusiasm and knives, which meant milk went everywhere when she poured - but he couldn't hear her crashing about and she hadn't called out when he opened the door, so presumably she'd already gone to bed. He put the carrier bag down on the kitchen table and looked at it, torn apart by opposing forces of extraordinary power.

On the one hand: anybody who took advantage of an honest mistake to go snooping about in other people's private carrier bags was obviously lower than a basement, and even the thought of doing such a thing made Chris shudder. The honourable course of action would be to seal the top with parcel tape and quickly leave a message on her answerphone to say he'd got it. On the other hand-

As the debate raged inside him, Chris examined the outside of the bag. It was dark navy blue, with Shotwell & Hogue written on it in curly gold italics. He knew them, of course. They were on his patch; good customers, in fact they'd taken a dozen BB27Ks purely on his unsupported recommendation. Somehow, that tipped the balance (he had absolutely no idea why). Feeling like someone robbing his child's piggy bank to get money for drugs, he gently opened the bag and peered inside.

Something of an anticlimax. Inside the bag Chris saw a paperback book (something by Alan Titchmarsh entirely unrelated to gardening), a packet of plain digestive biscuits, a baseball cap with the letters DS on the front and a pair of black patent shoes. He frowned, feeling let down and betrayed as well as guilty. It was a bit much, he felt, to have sold his soul and forfeited his honour for this collection of old tat.

The phone rang. Chris let go of the bag and lunged back into the hall, to shut the stupid thing up before it woke Karen.

'Chris?' It was Jill.

He scowled. 'Yes, I've got it,' he said. 'Your blasted bag. And before you ask,' he added, 'no, I haven't looked inside it. It must've been when you were putting on your coat, I suppose I-'

'That's OK,' Jill said; and it wasn't just his imagination, she did sound relieved. 'I was just worried I'd left it in the pub, that's all. Look, is there any chance you can drop it round at my place on your way tomorrow morning? Only-'

'Sorry,' Chris said, 'not really. I've got to pick up that bloody trainee at six-fifteen, remember. Which reminds me,' he added. 'Must remember to set the alarm.'

'You could leave it in the porch,' Jill said. 'Or ring the bell and I'll pop down.'

Chris felt his eyebrow hitch. 'At half past five in the morning?'

'I'll be up, I expect,' she replied, in a voice he couldn't immediately analyse. A pause; then, 'It's just that strictly speaking we're not supposed to take confidential stuff out of the office, and the new manager gets quite stressy about that sort of thing. I don't want to give him an excuse to have a go at me.'

'Fine, no problem,' Chris replied, as he thought: Confidential stuff? Would that be the top secret paperback or the For-Your-Feet-Only slingbacks? 'I'll drop it off, then.'

'Thanks.' Again, the relief. 'Just ring the bell, don't wait for me. Sorry to have bothered you.'

As Chris returned to the kitchen to pick up the bag and put it in the hall where he wouldn't forget it, the criminal urge came back. After all, Jill wouldn't know if he took just one more peek, and somehow the fact that she'd lied (confidential stuff, mustn't leave the office; yeah, right) made it seem tantalisingly easy. This time, though, he fought it back, and that made him feel rather proud - she'd lied, he'd resisted temptation, so he'd managed to fight his way back to the moral high ground, which is always nice. He turned off the lights and went to bed.

The blue Shotwell & Hogue carrier bag waited until it was quite safe - the humans were making loud respiratory noises, indicating deep sleep - then stirred, its thin plastic fabric shivering like the shell of a hatching egg. If anybody had been there to see, he'd have had a frustrating time of it, because as the bag shivered it sucked in darkness from the surrounding shadows, a useful trick well known to its kind. When it felt dark enough to be safe, it shook itself like a dog and stood up, the plastic stretching and moulding itself into a new shape: humanoid but short, bow-legged, crouching. It took a step forward, leaving the cap, the shoes, the book and the empty biscuit wrapper (it had been peckish) lying on the carpet. Treading carefully, it stepped over them and walked silently through the hall into the kitchen, following the human's scent trail. It found nothing of great interest there, though it did pause to lap up the few drops of spilt milk, and went on into the sitting room, where it rubbed itself against the television screen, happily absorbing the static electricity, pulled out the plug and licked the brass prongs. A few sights and smells there, but nothing it could really use; the good stuff had faded, dried up so that it tasted dusty and bitter, all the nourishment desiccated out of it. A pity: if it had been there a week earlier it could've had a feast. It yawned and stretched; then, taking extra care not to make a sound, it gently nudged open the bedroom door and peered round it, to stare at the two humans asleep in the dark.