The first copy was destroyed during the Lilith War; I don’t know how many generations beyond the original this one was. It sat there, squatting in place, looking like a house and stinking the place up. No-one was ever so homeless or so desperate they’d want to venture inside this house. I sat down on the cold stone steps before the front door, put my back to the house, and waited.
It felt like sitting with my back to a giant freezer with the door left open. A cold bad enough to chill the soul as well as the body. There was a constant sense of being watched—by something that would hurt me if it could. I didn’t care. Didn’t even look back at it. I had too many bad memories of the original house. And of a woman named Joanna, who turned out not to be a woman, any more than the house was a house. Poor Joanna. I could have loved her if she’d been real.
Some people you shouldn’t remember. If only because the Nightside can find so many ways to hurt and haunt you . . . For a moment, there, I had to wonder if maybe the Sun King might not be right about the Nightside after all . . . And then there was the roar of a mighty motor, and Cathy turned up, taking the far corner on two wheels, racing down Blaiston Street in an old MINI Cooper, complete with bright Union Jack colours. The “Self-preservation Society” song blasted out of the open windows. I should never have brought her that DVD. Cathy brought the MINI to a squealing halt right in front of me, and the passenger door jumped open of its own accord. I got up off the steps and hurried over, clambered into the passenger seat, and Cathy had the car off and away before the door could even shut itself again. I looked for a seat belt, and, of course, there wasn’t one. You can take authenticity too far. I clung to the dash-board with both hands and braced both feet against the floor, to hold myself firmly in place in my seat. Cathy drove us out of the area at great speed and headed towards the main flow of traffic like a shark scenting blood in the water. She darted a glance at me and grinned fiercely.
“Just like old times!” she said loudly. “You were right; we owed it to ourselves to have one last adventure together, before the old firm closes down!”
“Having to come back to Blaiston Street didn’t . . . bother you?” I said carefully.
“Come on, boss; that was Where we met! Best thing that ever happened to me! So where are we going now?”
“I need to see the place where the Hawk’s Wind Bar & Grille used to be,” I said. “I’ve already been there once, but I can’t help feeling I missed something.”
It felt good to be able to relax again. I hadn’t felt safe with anyone since Julien Advent died. I hunched down in my seat, so as to present a smaller target. The music system was playing a Matt Munro song. I smiled . . . I wanted to close my eyes and sleep, and not have to wake up until the whole mess was over. But I couldn’t do that. Cathy reached a main road and threw the MINI Cooper into the main flow of traffic like a knight entering a joust. I told her about the Sun King, about everything that had happened, and what might still happen if I couldn’t stop it. She didn’t get a lot of the sixties stuff—way before her time. So she concentrated on the bit she did understand.
“If you’re going to be dealing with a ghost,” she said, hitting her horn imperiously and steering her car like it was an offensive weapon, “you’re going to need help and advice from someone who specialises in the differently departed. Ghosts can be really difficult characters.”
“You have a specialist in mind?” I said.
“I always have someone in mind,” Cathy said loftily. “I know everyone, or at the very least, everyone worth knowing. I’ll take you right to the gent in question, but I’ll warn you now, boss; you’re really not going to like him. No-one ever does.
“I’m really not going to like this person, am I?” I said.
“Boss, you’re going to hate him on sight. Everyone does.”
Cathy finally pulled up outside a really sleazy nude dancing club, specialising in ghost girls. SPIRITED DANCING, it said on the sign. It looked like the kind of place where you could contract a whole new kind of STD, have your wallet lifted, and do a dozen things that were morally bad for you, all before you sat down. Cathy parked her MINI half on the pavement, got out, and glared around her at anyone who even looked like they might object. I clambered carefully out and managed to whip the tail of my trench coat out of the way before the door slammed itself shut. Cathy slapped a display sign on the windscreen, reading EXORCIST ON CALL! THIS CAR IS PROTECTED BY SOMETHING YOU WON’T EVEN SEE COMING!
“Is it really?” I said.
“Who can say?” said Cathy, beaming brightly. “Would you risk it?”
I gave my full attention to the front of the club, which was basically an open door surrounded by photos of dancing girls wearing nothing but smiles. Not the girls we’d be seeing inside, of course. Ghosts don’t photograph well; normally, all you get is a shimmering blob of ectoplasm. The barker at the door was a large, muscular type in a tweed suit who gave me his best professional smile.
“Come on in, sir! They’re dead, and they dance! They’re all naked and not in the least departed! Oh, hello Cathy. How’s it going?”
“Not too bad, Tim,” said Cathy. “Do you know my boss, John Taylor?”
“No, and I don’t want to,” the barker said firmly. “You go in. I’ll go and hide in the toilets till the trouble’s over. Give me a call when it’s safe to come out again.”
“It would appear my reputation proceeds me,” I said, as Cathy led the way in.
“Isn’t that what a reputation’s for?” said Cathy.
We barged straight past the ticket-seller in her little glass cage. She took one look at me and ducked completely out of sight. Inside, the club was dark and dingy, with a side order of openly disgusting. It smelled like something really bad had happened in the toilets. Very recently. The floor was sticky under my feet, and I didn’t want to think with what. There was a general air of cheap and nasty, including some of the girls and most of the customers. Sawdust had been scattered thickly on the floor around the edges of the raised circular stage, to soak up the usual spilled fluids.
Ghost girls danced on the spotlit stage, sliding up and down steel poles in defiance of gravity, leaping and soaring through the smoke-filled air, often passing in and out of each other’s translucent figures. Their faces pretended delight, but their eyes were empty. Faded rainbows moved slowly across their semi-transparent forms, like the colours you see sliding across the surface of a soap bubble. The girls moved sexily, even gracefully, but with little emotion. They were only the memories of living flesh, going through the motions.
Row upon row of customers pressed close around the raised stage, jostling each other to get in close. Sweat gleamed on their fascinated faces, and they couldn’t look away. None of them offered money; ghosts have no use for cash. They sucked a little life energy out of any customer who got close enough. Sucking them dry, bit by bit, and making them love it. Not too different from any other such club, really.
Cathy took it all in her stride. I looked at her suspiciously.
“You’ve been here before. And you knew the man outside by name. How is it you even know places like this exist?”
“Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies,” Cathy said calmly. “You really don’t want to know about how I spend my spare times, boss. I’m all grown-up now. And you probably have enough trouble sleeping as it is. This way . . .”
She beckoned imperiously to a figure at the bar, and the owner of the place came smarming forward to join us. I knew immediately why Cathy hadn’t told me his name. Because if I’d known we were going to talk with Dennis Montague, I would have hurled myself out of the car and into the on-coming traffic. Oh yes, I knew Dennis of old. This wasn’t the first disreputable club he’d owned. I’d shut down several of them on moral-health grounds and because his very existence offended me.
Dennis, or Den-Den, as he preferred to be called, in the mistaken belief that it made him seem more engaging, was a minor player and major-league scumbag who always seemed to land on his feet, no matter how high a building you threw him off. He came sleazing forward to greet Cathy and me as though we were most- favoured customers, smiling and smiling as though he were genuinely pleased to meet us. A short, shiny butter-ball of a man, with slicked-down black hair, a face like a boiled ham, and large, watery eyes. He looked like he ought to leave a trail of slime behind him when he moved, like a snail. Though given the state of the floor in this club, it
