It’s only the faintest echo of the youngest sib of a frown, but I quail inwardly under his minute inspection. I feel like I’m pinned on a microscope slide, probed with searing lights beneath the merciless gaze of a vast, cool intellect. “He — He’s employed by the hotel,” I stammer. “Security staff.”

“That would be Paris, would it not?” I nod, mutely. “A good fellow, but slightly prone to excessive enthusiasm,” Jeeves pronounces, with a subtle emphasis that implies anything beyond completely supine boredom should be viewed with deep suspicion, if not prosecuted for breach of the peace. “Harrumph.” He stares at me speculatively. “Ichiban led one to understand that you have worked as an escort in the past. Is this your usual mode of apparel, or is one to conclude that you have fallen among loan sharks and thugs?”

I shake my head hastily and bat my eyelashes in denial: “No! No!” It takes me a moment to realize that he can’t see my eyes, and I don’t have the hair for it right now. Damn, foiled again. I pop my goggles and blink at him. “ ’M sorry. Overreacting. They tried to kill me,” I gush, suddenly unable to hold it in any longer. “Broke into my room and kidnapped me! And they were going to do unspeakable things! But I escaped-and -got-away, and I’m afraid I’m not quite myself just now…”

The room tilts weirdly to one side. It takes me several seconds to realize I’ve fallen out of my chair. Jeeves surges to his feet, dismayed. He leans forward to offer me a hand. “There, there, my dear, your assailants cannot reach you here! You are perfectly safe. But if you don’t mind” — he glances aside — “do you think you could reassure your tank that you are safe and well? He appears to be trying to gain access, and one isn’t entirely sure the stairs will take his weight.”

“Eek.” Jeeves’s hand is cool and dry. As he stands over me I realize that he’s taller than I am, and his eyes are beautiful, exactly the right size — I’m overwhelmed by his kindness. Rarely activated autonomic reflexes kick in, and my vision fogs; for a moment I nearly panic, then I realize, I’m exuding saline solution. Tears. It seems surprisingly non-functional, this part of my behavioral repertoire, and they’re leaking down my nose: I sniff. “Excuse me?” I blink and focus on my pad for long enough to send Blunt a brief message to cease and desist, then take deep breaths to purge my transpiration system. “I’m so sorry I went to pieces, this is embarrassing—”

“There is nothing to apologize for, Freya.” He hovers solicitously, as if uncertain whether to hug me, but once I sit down and wipe my face, he goes back behind his desk and sits down with a creak of tired springs. “You’ve had a tiresome and difficult journey, certainly.” He pauses for a moment. “One has heard reports. Ichiban was right to refer you to us; you were wasted on that overpriced clip joint.”

Huh? “I do not understand.”

“Of course not. You’ve been through a very distressing time, for no reason that you can see, even though the Black Talon — but that’s getting ahead of the game, what? Let’s see. Where to begin… Well, the reason you’re here is because you went to see a man about a job. Yes?”

I nod, cautiously.

“Ichiban is occasionally helpful, but it doesn’t do to tell him too much. His sole attachment is to Mammon, and one can never tell who might be bidding for his loyalty on any given day. Be that as it may, you are exactly what he was sent to look for, and we — that is, the Jeeves Corporation — would like to make you an offer of employment.”

“Employ—” I try not to bite my tongue. “What kind of employment? What is the Jeeves Corporation, anyway? What do you do?” I shuffle nervously at the faint suggestion of a flared nostril — is it disapproval? “Sorry. It just seemed like a good… idea…”

“No, no, it’s perfectly alright to ask.” He makes a strange smoothing motion with one hand. “Jeeves Corporation is not an institution that will have come to your notice in the past; we take great care to be as unobtrusive as possible.” He straightens up slightly. “We facilitate. Whenever our clients wish for something, it is our job to expedite. We make the difficult seem natural, and we render the complicated transparent. Whenever our clients require our services, we are there in the background — invisible, polished, and anticipating their needs.” He focuses his smile on me, confiding, “We like to think of it as making ourselves indispensable.”

“Uh, ah, I see. I think.” It’s hard to think in the presence of his disturbing, compelling aura of masterful repose. “But, um.” I try to sit up, bite the inside of my cheek, and cross my legs. I’m not the only one with odd autonomic reflexes — he swallows and glances aside. “What is it that you do?” A nagging, itchy memory wants out; a nasty suspicious corner of me is trying to tell me something.

“One’s template-patriarch’s greatest aspiration was to be a gentleman’s gentleman,” Jeeves pronounces sonorously. “And it is the consensus among my selves that there is no higher calling. But one is forced to concede that suitable masters are somewhat thin on the ground these days, and consequently we must undertake somewhat more recondite tasks from time to time, and for somewhat less-than-ideal employers.” His expression hardens, but it isn’t me he’s staring at. “Even if it entails ungentlemanly behavior. Such activities have always been part of our calling, but there is somewhat more of it than less, these days. Whatever pays the household bills, one fears.”

Suspicion crystallizes into certainty: “You’re a spy!”

Jeeves recoils in shock. “Absolutely not! Gentlemen do not spy on one another. The Jeeves Corporation exists merely to conduct certain necessary exchanges that lubricate the social intercourse of our employers. A degree of lucubration comes into things, and some discreet observation, but that is all.”

“Oh.” That’s a shame. For a moment I was on the edge of fantasizing my future life as a secret agent; it seemed all too plausible for some reason. “What, then…?”

“One would think it was obvious,” Jeeves raises a pained eyebrow. “You will naturally forgive the necessary intrusion, but our research into your background reveals that your template-matriarch was a Class D escort developed by Nakamichi Heavy Industries and trained by PeopleSoft, in response to a specification raised by Hentai Animatics. Alas, as a late production model, you were yourself obsolescent — surplus to requirement — before you opened your eyes. But your training encompassed all the social graces. You can sing, you can dance, you can play musical instruments…”

“I specialized in the hurdy-gurdy,” I am driven to confess. “I started out with the basic harmonic and theory aptitude package, and I was meaning to work on the violin, but I had to cross-train to get work during the Hungarian folk craze.”

Jeeves nods along with my interruption. “Indeed, and you are an expert in the erotic arts, too. You were built to be one of the great seductresses of the age; indeed, if the aesthetic ideal of beauty had not shifted away from your archetype over the many decades since our employers went to their final slumber, one would opine that our roles in this little interview would be reversed. But there’s no accounting for fashion.” Sympathy oozes hypnotically from his voice, dripping in thick, syrupy waves. “It could have happened to anyone. Although entertainers have always been among the most vulnerable members of society, lauded and looked down on at the same time.”

I shake my head, in search of clarity. “What do you want me to do?”

“We have an opening for a courier.” Jeeves walks out from behind his desk, and I get a second look at him, free of the confusion that at first assailed me. The skin on my palms is damp; he’s perfect. In outward form, a dignified older male; created, like my lineage, to serve my Dead Love’s kind while passing among them. I feel my nostrils flaring, searching for the arousal pheromones to lock on to. I’ve been stranded in uncouth backwaters populated by munchkins and xenomorphs for so long that I’ve almost forgotten what civilized company is like. He paces across the hearth rug and pauses before the mantelpiece, staring at a framed photograph that stands beside the ticking antique clock. Then he looks at me, as if measuring me against someone else’s shadow.