enough to keep the Bride from a party. Jack was sitting on the Bride’s lap as they fed each other pieces of bread soaked in gooey stringy cheese, using the fondue set that had arrived as an early wedding present. From someone who didn’t really know Suzie and me all that well. I’d donated it to the party, in the hope someone would break it or steal it. Back at the bar, Alex had a large wormwood brandy waiting for me.
“Who did give you that fondue set, anyway?”
“Julien Advent,” I said. “He never really got over the seventies. I suppose we should be grateful he didn’t give us a Soda Stream.”
Alex winced. “Can you still get those things?”
“This is the Nightside,” I said. “You can get all kinds of abominations in the Nightside.”
“I haven’t seen the Lord of Thorns yet,” said Alex. “Imagine my relief.”
“I did ask him,” I said. “Because you sort of have to when he’s performing your wedding; but luckily, he’s busy preparing for the ceremony at St. Jude’s. Just as well. He didn’t strike me as a party animal.”
“I’ll tell you who is here, large as life and twice as stuck-up,” said Alex, not even bothering to lower his voice. “Two-thirds of everyone’s favourite disturbing brothers: Tommy and Larry Oblivion. At least Hadleigh isn’t with them. I don’t know if this place could stand being pushed that far up-market.”
I looked where he indicated. I’d sent invitations to all the Oblivion Brothers but never actually expected them to turn up. Larry was sitting perfectly upright at his table, a tall pale sight with flat yellow hair, dressed in the very best Armani. Larry was dead and looked it, but he had made a concession to the party atmosphere by loosening the knot on his tie. He wasn’t drinking or eating anything, (because he was very firm about being dead, and having no illusions about the state), but he did seem to be picking up something of a contact high from his surroundings.
Tommy Oblivion slumped bonelessly in his seat, grinning happily in all directions, a tall and terribly effete person in brightly coloured New Romantics silks. Unlike most of us, the existential private eye had enjoyed a pretty good eighties. No doubt being so utterly existential helped. I could hear him loudly boasting to one and all that he was so existential he couldn’t even be sure of exactly what he was drinking. It might be sparkling water from the River Ganges, and therefore good for his karma. Or it might be still water from the Reichenbach Falls. Or possibly even shimmering water from Chernobyl, the only isotonic energy drink that glowed in the dark. And if you drank enough of it, so would you. Already people around him could be heard asking if he couldn’t tune his existentialism down a bloody bit, so they could be sure where they’d left their tables?
I was rather more interested in Old Father Time, who’d come in specially from Shadows Fall (that quiet backwater town where legends go to die when the world stops believing in them, an elephants’ graveyard for the supernatural). He was holding court at one of the larger tables and being avuncular to one and all. A wiry but imposing figure with a sharp-featured face and a great mane of pure white hair, he dressed to the very height of Victorian fashion. He stood straight-backed at the head of his table, both hands clutching firmly at his lapels, dispensing wisdom for all those with the wit to hear. There wasn’t anything he didn’t know about Time, so I wandered over to have a quiet word with him. He nodded happily at me and moved away from his table to grasp my hand in both of his.
“John Taylor, my dear boy! Come, talk with me. I’ve been expecting you. And congratulations, on becoming Walker! About time you settled down and stopped making trouble for everyone, eh? Eh?”
“I’m not retiring,” I said. “I’m . . . changing direction.”
“Quite so, dear boy, quite so.”
“Who’s running the Time Tower, while you’re enjoying yourself here?” I said.
“Oh, I’m there, too,” said Old Father Time. “And I’m back at Shadows Fall, in the Gallery of Bone. Being in more than one place at the same time is one of the first things you learn in the Time business.” He let go of his lapels long enough to beckon me in close, lowering his voice as much as he could and still be heard. “There’s something I haven’t been meaning to tell you, until you were ready, and now I fear I may have left it too late. Now what was it, what was it? Hmm? My memory isn’t what it used to be, if it ever was. Ah yes! We, that is to say all of us here in the Nightside, we are approaching . . . a moment of decision. You know the sort of thing, one of those focal moments in Time, where everything depends on the decision one vital person will make. Which may or may not be you. The moment is very near. Oh yes. And whatever it is that’s about to happen . . . it could see the sun finally rise over the Nightside, an end to the longest night the world has ever known; and then nothing would ever be the same again.”
“And it had to happen the night before my wedding,” I said heavily.
“Well,” said Old Father Time, “that’s Time.”
He went back to his table, his eyes far away, looking at the things only he could see.
“Don’t mind him,” said Time’s usual companion, the young woman called Mad. “You should never take him too seriously. I don’t.”
Mad was a punk, and proud of it. All leathers and chains and uncomfortable-looking piercings, with the word HATE tattooed on both sets of knuckles. I was pretty sure I hadn’t noticed her at Time’s table, but then Mad had a gift for turning up where she wasn’t wanted. (There were those who said Mad was short for Madeleine; but I’ve never been convinced.) She looked at me with her angry, fey eyes.
“He’s been going on about the End of All Things for as long as I’ve known him,” she said carelessly. “And we’re all still here. Hey, want to see a really upsetting party trick I can do with two flick-knives and an unwilling volunteer?”
“Not right now,” I said.
Harry Fabulous was on the prowl and on the prod, moving easily from one group to another, smiling his professional smile and working his professional charm, happy and eager to supply everyone with anything that was bad for them, at very reasonable prices. I hadn’t actually invited him, but trying to keep Harry Fabulous out of a convivial gathering was like trying to keep ants out of a picnic. Always sharply dressed, always smiling a smile that never reached his eyes, Harry used to be the best go-to man in the Nightside. He could get you absolutely anything if you could meet his price. But then something happened, in the back room of some very private members-only club, and he was never the same afterwards. These days he does his best to Do Good Things, while he can, to save his soul from certain damnation. He seemed cheerful enough, but I noticed he never liked anyone to get behind him, and he had a tendency to jump at his own shadow. Or anyone else’s. I strolled over to join him. He saw me coming, thought about running, thought better of it, and greeted me with his best smile.
“Mr. Taylor! Hello! How’s it going?”
“Hello, Harry,” I said. “Are you being a good boy?”
“Always, Mr. Taylor; you know that!” His smile switched on and off as though he couldn’t quite see the point in working the thing when the person before him was never going to believe it anyway. “I’m here to see that everyone has what they need, to have a good time on your stag night. In a good way, of course. Is there anything I might have on me that would tempt you, Mr. Taylor? Got some very nice black centipede meat, very spicy. Or how about a little snuff, made from the crushed and ground-up bodies of Egyptian mummies? Black Lotus Smoothie?”
“And this is you, being good?” I said.
“Good?” said Harry Fabulous. “At these prices I’m practically martyring myself!”
I left him to it. William and Eleanor Griffin, no longer immortal and looking much happier for it (especially after the Devil himself turned up in person to drag their father down to Hell), were bellying up to the bar and ordering the very best champagne Alex had to offer. Which would make him very happy. No-one ever notices they’re being overcharged when ordering the very best champagne. William and Eleanor nodded benignly to everyone and did their best to fit in before blowing it completely by asking if anyone could recommend a truly trustworthy butler?
Percival Smyth-Herriot had also turned up, all the way from the Museum of Unnatural History, with a miniature
