by Simon Green
“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 Time
slip, 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?”