The bus journey had been tolerable, the tired old monsters that had hung around after deregulation had now been pensioned off as the few big players consolidated their holds on the cities. Now if the designers would just take note of the fact that the population was now a couple of inches taller than after the war, well they might put a bus on the road that was comfortable to ride on.
He joined the general throng entering the Physics building a little before nine, students, lecturers, postdocs, the technicians usually beat them all into work by a good half hour, and made his way to the lab.
Inside he could hear the unwholesome racket of the local commercial radio station coming from the STM room, that would have to go, but the main lab just echoed to the steady thrum of the orbital incubator.
“Hi Jonny.” Jenny waved from her bench.
“Morning Jenny.” He greeted her cheerfully. “Who’s in ?” He nodded at the STM room.
“Oh that’s Don, Bill Jones student.”
“The messy one.” Jonny observed wryly.
“Umm, yes.” She agreed quietly.
“Well no time like the present.”
Jonny stepped through the doorway and saw the gangly figure leaning over the old Picopulse instrument, his lank brown hair brushing over it.
“Morning.” He announced over the radio.
Don looked up and around in surprise.
“Ohh. Hi.” He replied defensively.
“Jonathon Zbydniewski.” He said with a pleasant smile and held out his hand.
“The new postdoc. Hi, Don Shepherd, I don’t actually work for Gordon, Just use this kit.”
“I’m going to be using the STM so …..” Jonny began and picked up an overflowing beaker of tips and tissues. “…this needs clearing up.”
“Sure, sorry. I’ll get onto it.”
“Thanks, see you around.” Jonny replied and left the student to stare at his retreating back.
Jenny grinned at him and shook her head, Don never cleaned up.
“Gordon in ?”
“Yeah, he’s an early bird.”
“I’m more of a night owl.” Jonny avowed. “Less disturbance after seven, best time for SPM work.”
“SPM ?”
“Sorry. Scanning probe microscopy, a blanket acronym that covers everything to do with AFM, STM and the like.”
“Bacteria grow anytime.” Jenny laughed.
“Hope they let you go out sometime.” Jonny replied with a subtle emphasis on the ‘sometime’.
“Course.” Jenny dimpled winningly.
She would have cowered under the bench if she had seen the black winged Artemesia hovering like a thunderhead over her, but mercifully only the dying ever usually got to see an angel, or a demon.

Knocking on the open office door Jonny looked inside as Gordon Forest turned about.
“Ah, Jon. Ready to start ?”
“Yes. I just need Phils notes and a place to set up my laptop.”
“You can have Phil’s old desk.” Gordon said as he stood up and came out of his office. “Here…ohh.”
Like the STM bench, Phil’s desk had succumbed to the inevitable encroachment of other peoples dross; a tide that swept endlessly around labs and offices just waiting for an unclaimed space to flood onto. Equipment catalogues, photocopied papers, coffee cups with five years of ancient brown stains encrusting their insides, last weeks newspapers, unclaimed mail, all formed tottering piles on the little horizontal space while more clung to the narrow ledges of the shelves above.
“No problem.” Jonny said as Gordon made a move towards the desk. “I’ll clear it off.”
“Well…yes…sorry.” Gordon mumbled and retreated gratefully back into his office as the phone rang.
Going back into the lab Jonny claimed an empty box that hadn’t found its way to the waste and proceeded to sort out the needed, catalogues and papers, from the not wanted, old newspapers and assorted dross, which filled the box to the brim. Then the coffee mugs were sanitised and left to drain on a paper towel. With Jenny pointing to where the catalogues lived out in the lab Jonny started organising; first his own little corner of the office, then the chemical area of the lab, mercifully small in a physics environment. By the time Craig had dragged himself in just before coffee time the bottles and catalogues were in alphabetical order and Phil’s old bench area gleamed from a fresh scrubbing. As Craig cast around for his mug he noted the presence of a flash widescreen Apple laptop sitting in glorious isolation on the newly cleared desk, a swirling dark blue and black pattern screensaver did unnerving things to his eyes and he looked away from it.
“Jen, seen my mug ?” He called out into the lab.
“Where you left it.” She answered dismissively.
“Not there, someone’s cleared it away.”
It was at that moment that Jonny appeared out of the STM room with another load of waste and dumped it in the disposal bin. Craig did a double take. The tall bald headed stranger looked a little familiar, like the guy who had been directing builders near his own flat.
“Hello, you must be Craig.” Jonny said in a friendly manner. “Mugs are all over there.”
“Oh, thanks. You want a coffee ?”
“You have a cafetiere ?” Jonny asked innocently.
“No, just instant.” Craig shrugged with a smile.
“Sorry, can’t stomach the stuff. Is there a coffee room ?”
“Down on B floor.” Jenny said brightly, emerging from her corner. “Want to go ?”
“Yeah.” Jonny answered and ducked into the office to return with a gleaming stainless steel mug.
“Nice.” Craig said eying it.
“Got it from a rep.” Jonny said turning it around to show the company logo.
“Reps never give me anything like that.” Craig grumbled.
“Cos you never talk to them.” Jenny remarked a little tartly. “This way.”
“Later.” Jonny grinned at Craig and followed Jenny out of the lab.

It was a good way to begin mixing with the rest of the department and he effortlessly insinuated them into a group already present, making the introductions with the ease of a chat show host, then keeping Jenny in the conversation when it threatened to get too geeky.
“How do you do that ?” Jenny asked him as they headed back to the lab.
“Do what ?” He returned disingenuously.
“Just get talking like that, I’m much to nervous to try it.”
“I just put on a persona, Dr Zee, so I can talk to anyone, a world expert at a conference, or chat to complete strangers in a coffee room.” He explained with a grin.
“Seriously ?” She pressed him suspiciously.
“Sure. You’ve got a Ph.D., they’ve got a Ph.D., no difference.”
“But they’ve got all those years of experience.”
“Which makes them more than ready to talk to any interested party about their work, all you’ve got to do is ask.”
Jenny didn’t look totally convinced.
“Morning David.” Jonny said cordially to the familiar cherubic face.
“Oh, good morning Jon, and who is this ?” David Oryzca replied with a slightly lecherous look at Jenny.
“Jenny Daniels, works for Gordon too.”
“He’s been keeping you under wraps, cagey fellow.” David grinned. “Must go, bye.”
He said a little abruptly and hurried away.
Jenny raised her eyebrows.
“I’ve been here for over six months and he doesn’t even know me from a cleaner.” She groused. “But you’re on first name terms already, it isn’t fair.”
“Gordon introduced me when our paths crossed back when I came for interview.” Jonny explained. “Otherwise he wouldn’t have known me from a porter.”
Jenny laughed and the uneasy moment passed, but Jonny was keenly aware of why the academic had taken fright and scurried away. Artemesia had been radiating undisguised malice towards the possessing demon and its discomfort had caused the retreat. Fortunately a possessing demon could only see through the eyes of its host, so it had not been able to see Artemesia.  He would have to have a quiet ‘word’ about that, not only must the tests be applied but he didn’t want her rash actions revealing his presence here to the demon world.
In the second week Jonny began his first measurements with the STM on patches of purple membranes from Halochloris halophila, a control material that was easily available and well characterised.
“Why start on that ?” Jenny enquired as he carefully pipetted a few microlitres of the diluted purple solution onto the gold electrode. “I’ve got loads of channel protein made.”
“This is a control. I know I can get good big patches of this that will be easy to find and then use them to find the best tip, no sense in wasting your valuable protein on a mundane calibration exercise.”
“Oh, okay.” She replied, clearly mollified by the explanation. “Is it really difficult to find these patches then ?”
“It can be, imagine I dropped a penny out in the lab and you had to find it by feeling for it on the floor. You’d find it eventually but you would spend a lot of time looking.”
“And these are bigger, easier to find.”
“Certainly they are big, easily 500 nm, but I also know what concentration to use to get a good coverage, like spreading loads of pennies on the floor. Wherever you feel, you’ll find some.”
“Right.” She nodded happily.
“Gordon said that you had made membrane patches. We should do some imaging of them in the AFM on mica to see how big they are.”
“Cool, when ?”
“Maybe Friday ?” Jonny suggested.
“Okay, just give me a shout when you want them.”

Jonny smiled to himself as Jenny went back to her bench, she liked being a part of the team and not just the token biologist; something Gordon hadn’t quite latched onto.
He shrugged mentally, the profs often spent too much time in the office, the postdocs ran the lab.
The students messed it up. He had entered the small STM lab and found that Don had spread his detritus over the STM bench again. Jonny scooped it all up and threw it in the waste bin so he could set his own experiment up. He also removed the battered old radio cassette player from the room and stuffed it in a cupboard, no way was he going to listen to mindless drivel dribbling from DJ’s lips over the top of bass heavy casio compositions of truly banal loops. He had the STM working nicely when the door swung open and Don shambled in with a small plastic tube in one hand and a tin of Red Bull in the other.
“Where’s my stuff ?” He asked looking around for his solutions.
“In the bin.” Jonny replied matter of factly.
“Hey.” Don protested. “Those were my working stocks.”
“Then you should have put them in the fridge, in my experience anything left out overnight is history, doubly so when its left on my bench.”
“You could have ….” Don began.
“You could have kept it on your bench.” Jonny cut him off coolly. “Now if you don’t mind I’d like some quiet for my measurements.”
Don gave him a sour look and shambled out of the room leaving the door wide open, he’d learn, Jonny was a very persistent teacher.
Returning from lunch Jonny was greeted by the unholy racket from the STM room. Don was back, and he had found the radio. However his solutions precariously lined up on the very edge of his mess ridden bench, he was learning, slowly.
“Sorry.” Jonny announced as he pulled the plug on the radio.
“Hey….” Don began.
“The STM is very sensitive to any sort of noise, I have to have total quiet when I’m measuring.”
“But I was listening to that.” Don said in an aggrieved tone.
“Get your iPod out if you must listen to something.” Jonny suggested unkindly and began to retune the STM ready for his first scans.
At the end of the afternoon when Jonny emerged from the room, long after Don had given up and left the lab, Jenny gave him a grin.
“How’d you stop Don playing that crap ?”
“Good scientific reason, any noise plays havoc with the readings.” Jonny smiled.
“Really ?”
“Well, I might have been exaggerating a little bit, but I didn’t see any reason why I should have to endure it just for his comfort.”
“He was well pissed off this morning, I heard him complaining to Craig that you’d junked all his solutions.”
“I did.” Jonny admitted. “He left them all over the STM bench, messy bugger.”
“I know he is sloppy, but that seems a bit harsh.” She remonstrated with him.
“Messy students need to be trained.” Jonny shrugged. “And if I have to do it the hard way, well I’m ready, willing and able.”
Jenny caught a glimpse of a hitherto hidden side to her new colleague, a hard and ruthless centre that seemed quite out of keeping with his normally sunny and helpful character.
“I would have put them on his bench and had a word.” She concluded. “It wouldn’t have taken much effort.”
Jonny looked down at her as she gently berated him, still so very young and forgiving. That part of him had been burned and flayed away down the long dangerous years. But she was right, he had to be a bit more gentle in his dealings with Don, and to a lesser extent Craig. He could be in this lab for more than a few months and he shouldn’t upset them, even if they were in need of some stiff discipline.
“You’re right.” He admitted. “But other people’s mess on my turf gets right up my nose.
And I actually did him a favour.”
“What ? By throwing everything in the bin ?” She retorted.
“Some of those old solutions were growing very nice fungal furries.” Jonny explained patiently. “I don’t know what Don thinks he’s been measuring for the last few weeks but I’d bet that it wasn’t all what he is supposed to be measuring.”
“Oh, right.”
“Now as we’re being helpful to Don, is there a spot in the fridge where we can store his solutions ?”
“I can make some room.”

Even as the experiments proceeded Jonny needed to spend some time on a second and equally important matter, the testing of Professor David Oryzca for demonic possession. The first test for possession was to hand the victim a copy of the bible, not quite so easy to do in these more secular times and the demon would easily spot such a weighty tome and make some excuses before retreating. This called for a more devious approach. Jonny used sheets of specially prepared A4 to print a review article on, one that was in David’s field. To the eye the paper was just ordinary paper, but Jonny had printed particularly potent bible extracts on it in white ink, that would ‘sting’ the possessed victim when he grasped it. Now he just needed the opportunity to perform the test. Coffee time was an excellent time for the ambush and Jonny timed his entry to coincide with David’s.
“Morning David, I saw this while I was doing some reading, thought you might find it interesting.” Jonny said with the right tone of professional gravitas, and held out the stapled sheets.
“Oh, thanks.” David beamed.
His fingers closed on the sheets, immediately spasmed and let them fall.
“Ouch.” He muttered and inspected his thumb closely. “Think I’ve got a splinter in my thumb. Can you drop it in my pigeonhole ? I’ll read it later, I want to get this out just now.”
“Sure, no problem.” Jonny replied.
Very slickly done. A very plausible explanation and an expertly executed retreat; this was a wily demon indeed. But it had failed the first test.
“Not a word Mesi.” He murmured as he collected his coffee.
He could feel her smugness like a hot breath on his cheek.
The review appeared in his pigeonhole later that same day, a little post-it note attached.
‘I have photocopied this for Prof Oryzca. Thanks. Julie.’
So he had gotten his secretary to handle the ‘poisonous’ document for him, nicely sidestepped. But this only convinced Jonny that he should pursue this particular demon aggressively, it was getting too good at covering its tracks and thus much more dangerous to other people, not just the already damned victim. Two more tests to apply.

Friday came and was spent with Jenny testing binding conditions for the membrane patches that she had made and imaging them in the AFM. Jonny found that her lively company elevated this normally tedious business to an enjoyable, as well as useful, exercise.
“Want to go for a beer or six ?” He enquired lightly as they packed up.
“Sure, let me call Brian.” Jenny replied.
So she had a boyfriend, pity, but he wanted to have good night out and this actually simplified matters. Artemesia cocked her head at him and smiled her ‘ever so annoying smile’ at him, intimating that she had already found this out for herself.
“Jealous bitch.” Jonny mouthed at her while Jenny was busy dialling her boyfriend.
“Hi Brian, we on for a night out ?
Okay, cool. Bye.”
She shut her phone and looked up.
“Meet at The Shack on West Street, bout 8.” She suggested.
“No problem.” Jonny grinned. “See you there.”
The timing was pretty near perfect, enough time to go back to the flat, have a bite to eat, shower and get togged up for the evening out. He stood before the demon mirror that protected the front door and checked his jacket, a deep dark purple that verged on black, very Goth, lined with lurid crimson silk. The black belt with many silver studs and his black cowboy boots with silver faux spurs were more than just fancy duds, they were weapons in the fight with any demon he might encounter. Normally he carried a silver bladed switch blade knife, but any doorman worth his pay would find that, so more subtle defences would have to suffice. He had donned a pair of eye wateringly white chinos in place of his standard jeans and he thought the combination had just enough dash to not mark him out immediately as an ‘oldie’.
“What do you think Mesi ? Could I pull in this ?”
There was a loud snap of wings from behind him and she was nowhere to be seen when he turned around. She never liked it when he went out looking for a sexual partner, she did not want to share him. She appeared a moment later, a grim set expression on her perfect face, carrying an unsheathed sword of liquid fire that writhed and seethed with eldritch power.
“Always watching my back Mesi.” He said warmly. “I love you.”
Her hard set features melted into a dreamy smile as he pronounced his love for her.
“You know I could never love another Mesi.” He told her.
“I know Jon.” She replied softly and sheathed the sword by her side, his guardian angel.

The Shack was a rowdy joint but Jon had no trouble getting past the doormen in his neat ensemble and his very sure manner.
“Hi Jonny !” Jenny called across the crowded bar, barely visible over the much taller bodies in between.
He insinuated himself easily through the intervening crowd and joined the group at a table. Jenny introduced her friends, Brian, Colleen, Dominique and Andy.
“You’re looking good.” She said admiring his clothes. “Is that real silk ?”
“’Fraid so.” Jonny admitted with a smile.
“Its gorgeous.” Jenny said running an appreciative finger over the lining. “Wish I could afford more silk clothes.”
“I’ll let you in on a secret.”
“What ?” She demanded leaning in close.
“So do I, but the salary sucks.”
His joke got them all laughing and Jonny saw Dominques’ light brown eyes give that little twinkle that said ‘interested’. Using the social dynamics of the group as they got up to go for drinks, or relieve themselves, Jonny moved closer to Dominique, exchanging a few words at first, then another shuffle to bring him to her side. He spoke to her in fluent French and her delighted eyes sparkled as she became more animated and lively. Jonny had long since found that French was one of the best languages for conversing in a crowded noisy bar, the precision of the pronunciation overcame the static of all the other voices. Now he and Dominique were enclosed in a little sphere of clarity, whilst the bar roared and blared incomprehensibly about them. An intimacy of words that was moving quickly towards an altogether more physical intimacy of bodies.
In the darkness there was no sight, but the night was filled with the other senses, touch, smell, taste, sound, in delirious combination.
Jonny opened his eyes in the early morning light to see a familiar face hanging in the air above the bed, a hurt but faithful look that he knew so well.
“Morning.” He said to Artemesia as she hovered over them, her pearlescent white wings a protective canopy cupped together over them.
Her presence had ensured that he and Dominique had been hidden from the demons that prowled the night searching for lovers, lost in their sensual world, vulnerable to possession. He knew he would have to make it up to her, demonstrate his enduring love for her.
“Bonjour.” A sleepy voice said from beside him and Dominque’s head appeared from under the duvet.
“Café?” Jonny enquired and kissed her lightly.
“Ah oui.” She murmured happily.