Episode 17

Director Opal regarded the hand-held GPS tracker with its steadily glowing red dot.

"Turtles Wood Heights." he mused, "Nice address these black Sheep have. Good work Agent."

As India's supposed superior officer, Agent Mercury felt mildly envious of the praise India was getting. As a far more experienced agent, he should have thought about the tracker himself, but hadn't. He shook off the unworthy bad feeling with a finger-wagging mental reprimand: shame on you, you know she deserves it, now learn from it and move on.

"We'll need to move quickly," said India, "the battery in the Ladybird won't last forever,"

"Indeed," agreed Opal. "We'll need a different approach this time, though: we can't just bust into a private residence – especially one in that particular neighbourhood. They'll probably have private security and everything. Thinking caps, people!"

"So," said Harold, now ensconced comfortably in one of Ray and Nicole's expensive electric recliner chairs, "If you're on a mission and I'm supposed to be helping you, why did I have to waste my time working in a bar all those weeks, why didn't we meet sooner? And what was that all about me finding a job and slumming it when we could have been as snugs as bugs here all the time?"

So many questions, thought Teatime, as he wracked his brains for a quick answer. He had not been completely candid with Harold about the latter's purpose on Earth. Oh, yes, it was true he was here to assist Teatime in a way, but (and there really was no way this could be sugar-coated) he was here because his father considered him completely expendable. The original plan had been for Teatime to follow and observe Harold covertly to see if his naive bumbling about on the Brightside would attract the attentions of whoever (or whatever) was making demons disappear.

When, after a few weeks, this hadn't happened, Teatime had decided to make himself known to Harold and encourage him to be a bit more proactive to see if that would do the trick. It was still early days on that one, and the run-in with OGS hadn't helped matters. He had to admit, though, a charismatic "human" would probably be useful in the investigation for the reasons he had told Harold earlier, so if the plan didn't work out it didn't really matter, and if it did, well... Having never once come close to drowning in the milk of human kindness, Teatime was not the most soft-hearted of creatures, but even so, he couldn't really bring himself to tell Harold that he had been basically set up as bait.

"I was busy with other matters, old sock," he prevaricated, "Took a while to sort things out, but I came as quickly as I could."

"But why didn't you tell me straight away that all this stuff was going on?" persisted Harold,

"Er, well, I wanted to see what you were like for a bit first." replied Teatime, wishing the demon would just let it go. "Getting to know someone is a bit like prospecting for gold: not to be rushed into without a proper survey, as it were."

Harold shrugged and was silent for some time after that, but Teatime could see that he was not altogether satisfied by the answers he'd been given. Perhaps he wasn't as big a duffer as Teatime had previously thought.

"Right, well, anyway," declared Teatime brightly, "I think it's time we packed our luggage and made a move. I think we should go and take a look at the crime scene, so to speak. What say we go and have a look around Baron Samedi's?"