"Good afternoon, Miss Barnes.” Emmylou Pembroke's watery blue eyes glared through her steel-rimmed bifocals. Her graying hair was scraped back in its familiar no-nonsense bun. “I have something very important to speak with you about."

Chess set her pen down, her face frozen into the accommodating smile learned in third grade as a defense against bullies. Oh, good God, what is it now? She set aside the stack of papers and folded her hands, refusing to look up at Pembroke. Instead, she stared at the old woman's midriff. The Indignant was wearing the blue cardigan and tweed skirt today, and her liver-spotted hands trembled against her tartan bag.

"Won't you sit down, Mrs. Pembroke?” Chess inquired sweetly. “It's so good to see you. May I offer you a cup of tea?” Or a face-to-face with a tentacled demon in the sewers? I think that would be just up your alley, Pem.

Pembroke clutched her small purse to her solar plexus as if strangling a small pet dog against her cardigan. “No… no tea.” She sounded shocked. Relations between Chess and the Indignant had been icily polite ever since the great Barbara Cartland fiasco, with no détente in sight.

After dealing with an octopus-looking demon, Pembroke the Indignant didn't rattle Chess nearly as much. Her shoulder still throbbed a little bit when she reached up over her head, and her face was in good shape despite the tendency of one eyelid to twinge every once in a while, when she forgot and rubbed at it. Her hair didn't smell like filthy garbage water, for which she was extremely grateful. Her clothes had lost the smell of sewer after a good two-day soaking in laundry detergent.