The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny

THREE Familiar Faces, Come Round Again

I headed for home, via the Underground. I must have been looking more than usually grumpy, because everyone gave me lots of room. A few of Walker’s security people were still hanging around the station entrance, but they made a point of looking the other way. I ended up sitting in a carriage on my own, indulging myself in a quiet brood. At least the trains are always on time in the Nightside. Supposedly because if a train does arrive late, the System Controller takes it out the back and shoots it, to put all the other trains in a properly motivated frame of mind.

I still didn’t feel like going home, so I went to Strangefellows, the oldest bar in the world; where everybody knows your game. Not actually the sleaziest bar in creation, but pretty damned close. It was just another night in Strangefellows. The Witches of Woking were out on a hen night, getting tipsy on Mother Superior’s Ruin and reanimating the bar snacks so that they scampered back and forth on the table before them. Someone had got the Water Witch of Harpenden drunk by sneaking up behind her liquid form and injecting it with a horse hypodermic full of neat gin. You could actually see the ripples running up and down her as she giggled, lurching splashily between the tables, watering everyone’s drinks in passing. At another table, two vaguely humanoid robots from some future time-line were sucking on batteries and farting static.

A young woman wearing far too much make-up was wailing for her demon lover, because he’d just dumped her and gone off with her best friend. A stone cherub from a nearby graveyard was checking its investments in the Financial Times, and frowning a lot. A newly reborn vampire was sitting sadly at a side-table, staring at the glass of wine before him, wine that he’d ordered but couldn’t drink. He was telling anyone who’d listen that he hadn’t wanted to come back as a vampire, that he’d tried so hard not to come back ... but he got so bored just lying in his coffin. So here he was now, with gravedirt still clinging to the good suit they’d buried him in, trying to come to terms with all the normal, everyday things he’d never be able to do again.

He didn’t need to worry. If he kept up the self-pity routine long enough, someone would ram a stake through him if only to shut him up.

I leaned on the bar, and waited for the barman to get around to serving me. Alex Morrisey owned and ran Strangefellows, and didn’t believe in being hurried. He was currently busy with a minor Norse deity at the other end of the long bar and was putting a lot of effort into ignoring me, but I was used to that. It was his little way of reminding me that I still hadn’t paid off my bar tab.

Beside me on the bar an upturned top hat juddered briefly, then a pale, elegant hand emerged, waggling an empty glass plaintively in request for a refill. The magician had been in there for some time now, and we still hadn’t figured out a way to get him out. Damn, that rabbit had been angry. Never do a magic trick with a pookah. Further down the bar, two white-robed Sisters from the Order of Saint Strontium were getting stroppy over glowing Half-Life cocktails, and everyone else was giving them plenty of room. Any other bar would have banned them, but Alex liked having them around to irradiate some of the more elderly bar food.

I leaned patiently on the bar, glad of a chance to do a little quiet thinking. As cases go, the elven client’s had been particularly annoying. Chased half-way across the Nightside, attacked from all sides at once, and not a penny richer at the end of it. Just a word of warning, a name out of legend. Excalibur ... I supposed I shouldn’t be so surprised. Everything turns up in the Nightside eventually. Except ... Excalibur never had before. Why now, and where had it been all this time? I was pretty sure the Collector never had it, if only because he’d never have stopped boasting about it. Could the sword’s reappearance into history be connected to Merlin Satanspawn’s recent final death? Or could it be heading here through a Timeslip, direct from King Arthur’s time? The trouble with the Nightside is that it offers so many more possible answers to a question than anywhere else.

Excalibur.

It isn’t what you think it is, and it never was.

Sewer Man Jack arrived at the bar beside me, smelling strongly of several different colognes and spotlessly clean. It wasn’t his fault that a kind of awful psychic aroma seemed to hang around him anyway; but that’s what you get from working in the Nightside’s sewers. You wouldn’t get me down there on a bet. With all the weird sciences and strange magics fizzing and shaking and detonating all over the place, it’s hardly surprising so many failed experiments end up flushed down the sewers. Where they have been known to combine with the wildlife and kick them way, way up the evolutionary ladder. Which sometimes leads to the need for the Sanitary Brigade, with their really big guns and flame-throwers. Operatives like Sewer Man Jack get to earn their combat pay.

Sewer Man Jack’s party trick is to blow smoke rings. Only he does it by lighting his farts. And he wonders why he isn’t invited to more parties ...

“Busy night, John?” he said politely.

“You could say that,” I said. “Yourself?”

“Just finished dealing with another would-be Phantom of the Sewers. I blame that Lloyd Webber musical myself. Then there was the giant ants last month. Still, every time you think you’ve got it bad, someone’s always ready to tell you something worse. I was just chatting with the Sonic Assassin, outside the Time Tower. Word is, the Collector has thieved a whole new kind of time-travel device, from some far-future museum; a device that can project his consciousness into any person in the Past, Present, and Future. So now he can track down his precious rarities in complete anonymity. Must be very dispiriting, having everyone shoot at you the moment you show your face ...”

“So basically, anyone could be the Collector now,” I said. “That is seriously spooky. I just went through something similar with Dr. Fell. You can’t trust anyone to be who they claim any more. As if the Nightside wasn’t paranoid enough already ...”

Sewer Man Jack looked at me interestedly. “You finally had a run-in with Dr. Fell? What happened?”

“I happened—to him,” I said.

“You worry me sometimes, John,” Sewer Man Jack said sadly, and he moved away.

Alex Morrisey finally drifted my way and poured me a glass of wormwood brandy without waiting to be asked. I looked at it.

“What’s wrong now?” said Alex. “It’s a clean glass. Because I know you’re fussy about things like that.”

“Nothing wrong with the drink,” I said. “I was just wondering if I’m becoming predictable. Never a good idea, in the Nightside. Start falling into familiar routines, going to the same place, always ordering the same drink, and you can bet good money someone will figure out a way to take advantage.”

“Oh, shut up and drink your drink,” said Alex. “This bar already has a resident gloomy bugger, and it’s me.”

Alex was dressed all in black, as usual, in mourning for the way his life had turned out. He also wore a black beret, to hide his spreading bald patch, and designer shades, in the mistaken belief that they made him look cool. Alex was born miserable and hadn’t improved with age. He gave short measures, always got your change wrong, and mixed the most distressing cocktails in the world. Wise men avoided the bar snacks. On the other hand, he put up with people and behaviour that wouldn’t be tolerated for a moment anywhere else, and viciously enforced a general truce that made Strangefellows one of the few real neutral grounds in the Nightside.

Alex and I go way back. We’re friends, sort of. It’s complicated.

I pushed the wormwood brandy determinedly to one side. “What else have you got, Alex?”

“A fast-receding hair-line, lower-back pains, and you really don’t want to hear about my bowel movements.”

“I shall slap you in a moment, and it will hurt. I meant, do you have anything more interesting in the booze department that you might feel like recommending? I’m in the mood for something ... different.”

“Well, you could try the Valhalla Venom,” said Alex. “I got a job lot, cheap, because no-one in the Adventurers Club felt brave enough to try it. So far, everyone here has wimped out, too. I have a feeling it’s something to do with the way the bottles sweat blood.”

“Pour me a glass,” I said. “A big glass, with a lead-lined straw.”

Alex raised an eyebrow. “You’re in one of your moods again, aren’t you? Just sign this release form naming your next of kin while I open the bottle with my special long-handled tongs.”

The drink, when it arrived, turned out to be a pale amber liqueur. It didn’t seethe or try to eat its way through the glass, so I took a good sip. The liqueur rolled languidly across my tongue, and then hit me between the eyes with a half brick and mugged my taste-buds. It was like drinking a whole summer orchard at once. But after my trip to the Dragon’s Mouth this was strictly amateur hour. I took another good sip, and Alex smiled triumphantly out across the crowded bar.

“Look! He’s actually drinking it! Pay your bets!”

“It’s good,” I said. “Vicious, but good. Why not try a glass with me?”

“Because I’ve got more sense.” Alex leaned forward com panionably across the polished bar. “It’s coming to something when the most exciting thing in this bar is betting whether or not a new drink will make your head explode. It’s been really quiet here lately, and you know how dangerous that can be. There’s always something, of course ... minor things, like snakes getting into the Real Ale barrels and improving the flavour ... And there’s no rats in the traps, which mean something’s eating them again ...”

“How are you and Cathy getting on?” I said casually. “You know, my teenage secretary who is barely half your age, of whom I am inordinately protective?”

“Surprisingly well,” said Alex. “I keep waiting for the other thunderbolt to drop. I have a horrid suspicion I might actually be happy when she’s around, and I’m not used to happy.”

“She is a lot younger than you.”

“I know! Half the bands I like had split up before she was even born! And she’s never even heard of half the old television shows I watch on DVD. And she will insist on trying to cheer me up.”

I had to smile. “I could have told her that was a lost cause.”

“I don’t know,” said Alex. “There’s this thing she does in bed ...”

“Change the subject right now,” I said.

“All right. Have you seen the state of Agatha?” Alex gestured bitterly at his pet vulture, currently perched on top of the old-fashioned cash register, giving everyone the evil eye. “Look at the little slut. Twenty months pregnant, which is going it some for a vulture. God alone knows what she had sex with, or what she’ll eventually produce. There’s a pool going, if you want to lay some money down...”

And then he broke off and stared out across the bar, his jaw actually dropping. I turned to look, and winced. There are some people who, when they walk into a room, you know there’s going to be trouble. Alex’s ex-wife came striding through the packed bar with her usual intimidating attitude of complete self-confidence, not in the least bothered that she’d just entered the kind of place where most angels have more sense than to tread. She was tall, lean, and wore her power business outfit like a suit of armour. She had a hard-boned face that expert, understated make-up entirely failed to soften, under close-cropped platinum blonde hair. People got out of her way without even realising why they were doing it because she so clearly expected it of them. She slammed to a halt at the bar beside me, gave me a quick look over, and sniffed loudly.

“Hello, John. Been a while. You’re looking very yourself. But then, you never did have much ambition.”

“Hello, Agatha,” I said. “Not often you choose to grace us with your presence. What brings you to this low dive, all the way from the great counting-houses of the business sector? Did they give you time off for good behaviour?”

“That’ll be the day,” she said. “So, still playing at being a private detective?”

“And very successfully,” I said. “How about you? Still playing at being a human being?”

She gave me a cold, unblinking glare. “You always did take his side.”

“Hey,” I said, “I have to drink here. How’s your boy toy accountant?”

“Rodney is fine. Doing very well. Up for junior partner, actually. And he’s only three years younger than me. How’s your psycho gun-nut girl-friend?”

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll tell Suzie you asked after her.”

Agatha’s cold, superior smile disappeared, and she turned abruptly away to give her full attention to Alex.

“Hello, Alex. Still determinedly down-market, I see. And still wearing black.”

“Only until someone comes up with a darker colour,” he said. “What are you doing here, Agatha? I didn’t think you liked people from your new life knowing where you came from.”

“Into every life a little slumming must fall,” said Agatha. “I’ve brought you your monthly blood money.”

She took an envelope from an inner pocket and slapped it on the bar between them. Alex snatched it up.

“Do I need to count it?”

“It’s a cheque, Alex. No-one uses cash any more.”

“I do. Credit has no place in a bar. Why deliver the alimony in person, Agatha? You’ve always sent a messenger before.”

“Because I heard about you and your latest,” said Agatha, smiling sweetly. “A teenager, Alex? You always did like them young and impressionable.”

“At least I like them alive!” snapped Alex.

My head came up sharply at that, but neither of them had time for me now. They were glaring at each other so fiercely they were all but incinerating the air between them.

Agatha gave Alex her best superior smile. “Do I really need to remind you of the terms of our agreement? If you choose to marry again, you’re on your own, Alex. No more money.”

“Typical of you, to think of that first,” said Alex. “And you’ve got a hell of a nerve, criticising me on my choice of lover. You cheated on me with Merlin!”

“Hold everything,” I said. I knew better than to get involved, but this was too good to miss. “You had sex with Merlin, Agatha? Our very own dead but not departed enough sorcerer, Merlin Satanspawn? The one who used to be buried under this bar? That is so tacky ...”

“You didn’t know him like I did,” said Agatha. “He was so much more mature than Alex.”

“Only in the sense that cheese gets mature if you leave it lying around long enough,” said Alex. “The back-stabbing bastard! He possessed my body so he could have sex with you! It took me ages to figure out why I kept waking up in odd places. You cheated on me using my own body!”

“And he was so much better in bed than you,” said Agatha.

Women always fight dirty.

Alex started to reach for one of the many unpleasant weapons he kept behind the bar, then stopped himself. “Get out of my bar, Agatha. My life is none of your business any more.”

“I’ll go where I please! I still have a lot to say to you ...”

“No, you don’t. Leave. Or I’ll show you one of the nastier magic tricks I inherited from Merlin Satanspawn.”

Agatha hesitated, then sniffed loudly, turned on her heel, and stalked out of the bar. I looked thoughtfully at Alex. He might have been bluffing, or he might not. Alex looked at me.

“I might have known she’d turn up, after you mentioned meeting her sister Augusta Moon at the Adventurers Club.”

“Big woman, Augusta,” I said. “Very ... hearty.”

“She fancies you,” said Alex.

“I’d rather stab myself in the eyes with forks.”

I retired to a private booth at the back of the bar, with the bottle of Valhalla Venom and a glass, so I could drink and brood in peace. Never get involved in domestic disputes. Whatever you say, you’re going to be wrong. One of the many reasons why I don’t do divorce work. I could still remember Alex and Agatha when they first got together. We were all a lot younger then. They were so happy, so full of life, so sure of all the great things they were going to do. Their love burned in them like a fire, and I was so jealous, so sure I’d never know anything like it. Agatha and I never really got on, but we pretended for Alex’s sake.

When the end came it came quickly, and apparently out of nowhere. Agatha walked out on Alex because he wouldn‘t, couldn’t, leave the bar; and she was determined to get on in the world and make something of herself. She’d never hidden her streak of naked ambition, but it was still a shock when she just disappeared one evening, in pursuit of her dreams. She never looked back. Never contacted any of her old friends. She was going places, and we weren’t. I didn’t know about the Merlin business; I don’t think anyone did. But it wouldn’t surprise me if she engineered the whole thing, just to make sure Alex wouldn’t try to stop her leaving. Agatha always was the practical one in their relationship.

I really hoped the thing with Alex and Cathy would work out. Even in the Nightside, miracles can happen. Look at me and Suzie Shooter. I sure as hell didn’t see that one coming. We were closer than ever now. It still surprised me, sometimes, to wake up and turn over in bed and see Suzie lying there beside me, sleeping happily. I took a long drink of the Valhalla Venom and wondered if that was why I’d been feeling so unsettled. Was I feeling the need to have a proper grown-up life, to go along with my grown-up relationship? Agatha might be right about one thing. Maybe it was time to stop playing at being a private eye and do something that mattered with my life.

Or, it might be time to have another drink and stop thinking so much. Yes; that felt right. I filled my glass to the rim. Larry Oblivion appeared out of nowhere and sat down opposite me without even waiting to be asked. I glared at him, and he stared calmly, coldly, back. You’d think, after all my time in the Nightside, that I’d be used to seeing dead people; but sitting and talking with the risen dead is never easy. Doesn’t matter whether it’s an old friend like Dead Boy, or a business rival like Larry Oblivion ... There’s just something about a walking, talking corpse that puts my spiritual teeth on edge.

Larry Oblivion, an average-looking man in an expensive suit, with a pale, washed-out face under flat straw blond hair. He was dead and didn’t care who knew it, so he didn’t bother to disguise some of the more distressing aspects, like not blinking often enough and breathing only when he needed to talk. He’d been murdered by his own partner and brought back as some kind of zombie; and he was still bitter about it. Larry was probably the best-known private eye in the Nightside, next to me. The Dead Detective. The Post-Mortem Private Eye. He ran his own Investigations Bureau, did a lot of corporate work, and advertised in all the right places. It must kill him that I made more money than he did. I smiled, politely, and offered him my glass of Valhalla Venom. He shook his head curtly.

“I don’t drink. I’m dead.”

“No need to be obsessive about it,” I said. “Dead Boy eats and drinks and...”

“I know what that degenerate does!” said Larry. “Some of us have more dignity.”

“Some of us have more fun,” I said. “What do you want, Larry? I have important drinking and brooding against the injustices of the universe to be getting on with.”

“I want you to find my missing brother, Tommy. You do remember Tommy, don’t you, Taylor? Went missing during the Lilith War, when he was supposed to be under your protection? Still missing after all this time, presumed dead. I don’t believe that. I won’t believe it. I’d know if he was dead. He’s still out there, somewhere, maybe lost, maybe hurt ... and you’re going to find him for me, with your amazing gift.”

“I did what I could to protect him,” I said. “There was a lot going on, and in any war ... bad things are going to happen. There were crowds; there was fighting. A wall collapsed over Tommy; then ... the press of fighting moved us all away.” I didn’t tell Larry about the half-mad mob that fell on Tommy’s half-buried body. I didn’t tell him about the screaming. “I went back later, when it was all over, but there was no trace of him anywhere. Why come to me now, Larry, after all this time?”

“Because Hadleigh has decided to get involved.”

The name seemed to drop into a sudden silence, and heads rose sharply all around us. Some people got up and left; others just disappeared into thin air. And all through the bar, there was a general feeling of Oh shit ...

Everyone in the Nightside knows the history of the three Oblivion brothers. If only because knowledge is so often self-defence. Their father was Dash Oblivion, the famed Confidential Op, private investigator back in the thirties. Their mother was one Shirley den Adel, the Lady Phantasm, a costumed adventurer from the same period. They had their first son, Hadleigh, soon after they were married. Then they went time-travelling in 1946 in pursuit of an escaped war criminal, the Demon Claw. They followed him into a Timeslip, and when they came out again, it was 1973.

They had two more boys, Larry and Tommy. During their long absence, Hadleigh had gone his own way and made a name for himself, outdoing even his parents’ reputation. He represented the Authorities in the Nightside, much like Walker, all through the sixties and into the seventies. Hadleigh ... was the Man. Taught Walker everything he knew. But then ... something happened. No-one knows what, or if they do, they’re not talking, which is almost unheard of in the Nightside. Hadleigh was never the same afterwards. He went a bit strange ... and left the Authorities to walk forbidden paths.

There are forbidden paths, even in a place like the Nightside. Certain doors and ways that are sealed off, locked, and guarded—closed to all but the most powerful and the most stubborn. Not because they’re so dangerous or because so many who go in don’t go back ... The Nightside has always believed that everyone has a right to go to hell in their own way. The problem is that some of those who come back return strangely changed and horribly altered.

People talk in whispers of the House of Blue Lights, where many are tempted in but only a few come out; and when they do, they aren’t even remotely human any more. They’re Blue Boys. People who’ve been hollowed out to make room for something else. They study our world through human eyes, and they play with us as though we’re just toys. They have appetites, too ... Nasty appetites. Walker has them killed the moment they’re identified, but the bodies take a lot of killing, and they’re always empty. When things get really bad, and Walker decides there are too many Blue Boys loose in the Nightside, he orders a cull. He bangs the drum and waves handfuls of money around, and we all come running. The bounty hunters, the assassins, and concerned citizens like me, who just want the bloody things off our streets. The pay is good, the risks are appalling, and no matter how many we kill, there are always more Blue Boys ...

Suzie looks forward to the culls. I think they’re her idea of an all-you-can-kill buffet.

Blue Boys. Dr. Fell. And now, the Collector. All of them looking out at the world through someone else’s eyes. It’s moments like this I wonder if Someone is trying to tell me something ...

Hadleigh Oblivion went underground after he left the Authorities—all the way underground. He descended into the world beneath the world, into the sombre realms; and there he studied at the Deep School, the Dark Academy. The one place you can go to learn the true nature of reality. Most people fail the course. They die, or go mad, or both. Like the infamous Sigismund, the Mad Mathemagician. I worked with him on one case, when he was simply known as Madman. Last I heard he was still sleeping peacefully in his cocoon. No-one’s sure exactly what will come out of it, but Walker’s arranged an armed guard, just in case.

However, a few extraordinary souls do make it all the way through the course and return to the world above disturbingly powerful and strangely transformed. Like Hadleigh Oblivion. He walks in the shadows now, between Life and Death, Light and Dark. Or perhaps above them. Hadleigh Oblivion, the Detective Inspectre, who only ever investigates crimes and cases where reality itself is threatened. So if he’d decided to get involved ...

“Oh shit,” I said.

“Exactly,” said Larry Oblivion.

“Why didn’t he show up during the Lilith War?” I said, to avoid saying a whole lot of other things. “We could have used his help.”

“Who says he didn’t?” said Larry. “There was a lot going on. And Hadleigh has always operated on a far bigger stage than us. Did you never wonder why Heaven and Hell didn’t get directly involved in the Lilith War? Do you really think your mother could have kept them out if they’d wanted in? We were knee-deep in angels when they came here looking for the Unholy Grail.”

“I didn’t start the Angel War!” I said, perhaps a bit loudly.

“Never said you did,” said Larry.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m a bit touchy about that. Carry on.”

“The point is, there are rumours that Hadleigh intervened, to keep the angels out and let us take our own shot at winning the War.”

I looked at him for a long moment. “Could he really do that?”

“Who knows? Who knows what they made him into, down in the Deep School? He’s the Detective Inspectre now.”

“Good point.”

“Enough about Hadleigh; I’m here to talk about Tommy.”

“All right,” I said. “Let’s talk about Tommy. The existential private eye, who specialised in cases that might or might not have happened. A good soul, but not terribly bright.”

“No,” said Larry. “Or he wouldn’t have trusted you to look after him. But this isn’t only about him. The more I looked into Tommy’s disappearance, the more I learned of other people who’d just ... vanished in the aftermath of the Lilith War. I’ve compiled a list, of Major Players and minor players who’ve dropped off the radar. No reason, no motive, no trace of them anywhere. And these were people who could look after themselves. Names you’d know, or recognise. I have to wonder; did someone take advantage of the chaos that followed the War, to ... remove certain people? It’s taken me some time to put this list together, but I’m convinced it means something. There’s a definite connection between all the people on this list. Take a look.”

He passed me a sheet of expensive monogrammed paper. As his hand briefly touched mine, the skin was so cold it almost burned me. As though his dead flesh sucked the warmth right out of mine. I didn’t snatch my hand back, but I took the sheet from him as quickly as possible. The thick paper crackled loudly as I unfolded it. Thirty-seven names, all more or less familiar. Some of them jumped out at me: Strange Harald the Junkman, Bishop Beastly, Lady Damnation, Sister Igor, Salvation Kane, and Mistress Murmur. People good, bad, and in between. Some I’d worked with, some I’d known, and some I’d cross the street to avoid. But all the people on the list were, I knew, powerful personages in their own right.

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll bite. What do all these names have in common?”

“They all knew Tommy,” said Larry. “Every single one of them.”

“Tommy did get around.” I thought about it. “Who is there powerful enough to make all these people disappear?”

“Maybe someone interested in removing potential competition,” said Larry. “But ... why Tommy? He wasn’t interested in becoming famous, or important, or powerful. All I can see is that he moved in the same circles as these people. I need to know what happened to my brother, John, and I need to know why. Will you work with me on this case?”

“No money, right?”

“You owe me, John. You promised me you’d look after him.”

“So I did. All right; let’s do it. I have wondered whatever happened to Tommy Oblivion.”

“Is Suzie Shooter available to work with us?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Expecting trouble?”

“Always.”

“Unfortunately, no. Walker has her out on the fringes, hunting down a bounty. Old Mother Shipton’s set up another baby-cloning clinic, and Suzie’s been sent to shut her down with extreme prejudice. Mother Shipton has her own private army, so that should keep Suzie happy for a while. You really expecting serious opposition?”

“Yes,” said Larry. “And she’s the one person I could think of who wouldn’t be intimidated by Hadleigh.”

“How do you feel about him?” I said carefully. “I mean, he’s your brother.”

“I don’t know what Hadleigh is any more. Some of the stories I’ve heard ...”

I nodded. We’ve all heard stories about the Detective Inspectre. Few of them had happy endings.

“I’ve lost one brother,” Larry said abruptly. “I won’t lose another. Tommy ... should never have become a private eye. He only did it to please our father. And because he’d acquired his special existential gift. He won it in a poker game, you know, bluffing with a pair of threes. No-one could believe it. I was right there when it happened, and I still can’t believe it. I asked him to come and work with me, in the Bureau. So I could teach him the ropes, look after him till he was ready to stand on his own two feet. But Tommy ... always had to go his own way. Maybe he was right. In the end, I couldn’t even protect myself from my own partner.”

“Why come to me?” I said, after a moment. “When you do, after all, have a whole Bureau of your own people to call on?”

“Because none of them are up to this,” he said flatly. “Hell, maybe even the infamous John Taylor isn’t up to going head to head with Hadleigh Oblivion. But I can’t do this on my own. I need heavy-duty backup, in case it all goes ... Besides, you owe me. You promised me Tommy would be safe with you.”

“Yes,” I said. “I did. You’d think I’d know better than to make promises like that.” I looked at him for a while. “You’ve never ... approved of me, Larry. Why is that?”

“Because you’re not a real investigator. Not like me, or my father. We do the job the way it’s supposed to be done: taking statements, gathering evidence, putting the clues together to get a result. You have a gift that does half the work for you, and for the rest you rely on guesses, intuition, and intimidating the truth out of people. You’re not a professional, only a gifted amateur. I’m only prepared to work with you on this because, if we do cross paths with Hadleigh, I need to be able to fight fire with fire.” He suddenly leaned forward to fix me with his cold blue eyes. “I need your gift to find Tommy.”

“I’ve already tried,” I said. “Right after the War, and many times since. Did you think I didn’t care? Tommy was my friend. But I can’t locate him anywhere. He’s not dead, or my gift would have showed me his body. But I can’t See him anywhere in the Nightside.”

“How can anyone hide from you?” said Larry.

“Good question. He hasn’t left the Nightside; I did some asking around. But he’s not here.” I considered Larry carefully. “Of course, I’m not the only one at this table with a special gift, am I? You have a magic wand, Larry. An elven wand. What did you do for the Fae, Larry, that Queen Mab gave you an elven weapon?”

He looked straight back at me, not blinking, unnaturally still in his seat. “How in God’s name did you find out about that?”

“You’d be surprised at some of the things I know.” I actually found out by eavesdropping at a party, but I wasn’t about to admit that. “And, I just worked with Puck.”

“You do get around, don’t you?” said Larry. And that was all he would say.

I decided to change the subject, for the moment. “You’re part of the new Authorities. Why not go to them for help?”

“Because Hadleigh’s involved. That makes it family business.”

“A thought has just struck me,” I said. “And not a very pleasant one. Could Hadleigh be responsible for all these disappearances?”

“I can’t believe he’d harm his own brother,” said Larry. “I can’t afford to believe that.”

“He’s your brother,” I said. “Are you scared of him, Larry?”

“Of Hadleigh? Oh yes ... We got on quite well, when I was young. He was more like a really cool uncle than an elder brother. But then he went away, to the Deep School, and when he came back ... I couldn’t even stand to be in the same room as him. None of us could. Just to look at him ... was like staring into the sun. People aren’t supposed to blaze that brightly. I don’t know what the Detective Inspectre is; but he’s not the Hadleigh I knew. I’m not even sure he’s human any more.”

Time to change the subject again. “So,” I said. “You don’t drink, you don’t eat, and you don’t...”

“No,” said Larry. “I don’t. I’m dead. I don’t need the distractions and illusions of life.”

“So what do you do?”

“I keep busy. To avoid brooding on the realities of my condition.”

“You don’t like being dead? I’m told there are advantages ...”

“I don’t sleep. I’m cold all the time. When I touch something, it feels like I’m wearing gloves. I never get tired, never get out of breath, never feel anything ... that matters. I can’t feel any of the things that make us human. No advantages are worth that.”

“If you hate being a zombie so much,” I said carefully, “why do you keep going? There are any number of people in the Nightside who could ... put you to rest.”

“I know,” said Larry. “I’ve talked to some of them. But I have to go on because I’m afraid of what might come next. I did a bad thing once, when I was young and stupid. I did a terrible thing ... so I have to go on until I can put things right again.” He shook his head slowly. “It’s the wand. It always comes back to the wand.”

“What did you do, Larry?” I said. “What did you do to earn your wand?”

“I brought Queen Mab up out of Hell.”

“What?” I said. “How? And more importantly, why? Mab is one of the great old monsters! Everyone knows that!”

“I didn’t know what I was getting into! I thought it was just another job. I wasn’t a private eye back then. Just a treasure-hunter, trying to make a name for myself. And I always was a fool for a pretty face.”