“Pro­fes­sor of Egypt­ian and Per­sian Mythol­ogy at the Uni­ver­sity of Bath,” I said. “But I’m guess­ing you don’t want to hear how the lec­tur­ing is going. No, my younger days are what you’re after, aren’t you? Hah! ‘Younger days,’ says the 28-year-old.

“Now a few years ago there was a cer­tain spot of trou­ble in occult cir­cles — you know, demons ris­ing, gate­ways to other planes of exis­tence, end of the world, stuff like that. Nat­u­rally, the Stook-Vaughan and Black Occult Detec­tive Agency was closely involved with the whole thing, and along with some help­ful friends — and some extremely unhelp­ful ones — we prob­a­bly, er… Might have saved the world. A bit.

“Stook-Vaughan? Yeah, he… We parted ways. There was an inci­dent with some mir­rors and things. We still speak every now and again, but we’re no longer… copla­nar, as it were.

“Now, on a related sub­ject, did I ever tell you about MI9…?”