“Hi,” I said carefully. Paul, or Polly? Polly would seem more friendly. “I’m John Taylor. I need to talk to you, Polly.”
“You don’t have to say anything to him, honey,” the Pussy Galore said immediately. “Say the word and we’ll…”
“It’s all right,” Polly said, in a soft and very feminine voice.
“We can protect you!”
“No you can’t,” Polly said sadly. “No-one can. But it’s all right. I don’t think Mr. Taylor came here to hurt me. I’ll have a quick word with him, then I’ll come right back, I promise. And don’t you dare finish that story without me. I want to hear all the horrid, intimate details.”
We moved away to a small empty table at the very edge of the dance floor. Polly moved gracefully, in a fashionable off-the-shoulder pale blue gown. The long blonde hair looked very natural. A dozen assorted Spice Girls sat at the next table, and after a few quick glances, made a point of ostentatiously ignoring us. I had a sneaking suspicion that one of them might be the real thing. Polly and I sat down, facing each other.
“We all have secrets,” he said softly. “And Griffin family members have more than most. It’s as though we’re born with lies in our blood. This is my secret, Mr. Taylor. I want to be a woman. Always have. Even as a small child, I knew some terrible mistake had been made. My body was a foreign country to me. I grew up knowing that while I was Paul outside, I was Polly inside. And Polly was the real me. I had to keep it secret from the rest of the family, as well as the outside world.
“Grandfather in particular would never understand. Could never understand…He can be very old-fashioned, sometimes. For him, a man must always be strong, aggressive, masculine in all things. He’d see…this as a weakness. So would everyone else. If our family’s enemies ever found out, they’d seize the opportunity to make me a laughing-stock, and through me, my grandfather. And I won’t have that. I won’t be used as a weapon against my family.”
“There are any number of advanced sciences and sorceries in the Nightside,” I said, “that could change a man into a woman, or indeed, anything else.”
“I know,” said Polly. “I’ve tried them all. Every difficult, painful, and degrading process I could track down… and not one of them would work on me. Even temporarily. The magic that makes me immortal is so powerful it overrides any other change spell or scientific procedure. Even simple surgery. I’m stuck like this, forever and ever and ever. The best I can manage is Paul dressed up as Polly. The only time I feel even half-real.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “There’s nothing I can do to help you. But I’m hoping there’s still time to help your cousin. I need you to tell me all you know about Melissa and her kidnapping.”
For the first time Polly looked away from me, his whole body language changing, becoming tense, stubborn, evasive. “She was kidnapped. Never doubt that, Mr. Taylor. But I can’t help you.”
“Don’t you have any idea who might have taken her, or why?”
“I can’t talk to you about that. I just can’t.”
“Can you at least tell me why they went after her and not any other member of the family?”
Polly looked back at me, and his eyes were desperate, pleading. As though begging me to come up with the answers myself so he wouldn’t have to tell me. He knew something, but it was up to me to trick or force it out of him.
“Melissa had a secret,” Polly said finally. “Just like me. Something about herself, her real self, that she kept from the rest of the family, and the rest of the world. Because they could never understand. And no, I won’t tell you what it is.”
“Is it anything to do with the story about your grandfather selling his soul to the Devil?” I said.
Polly just smiled sadly. “Melissa is the only one in our family who hasn’t sold their soul to the Devil, one way or another. Out of all of us, she alone is good and true and pure. You’d never know she was a Griffin at all.”
“And how did she manage that?” I said, honestly curious.
“She has the strength of ten because her heart is pure,” said Polly. “She always was the most strong-willed and stubborn member of our family. I think that’s why Grandfather always liked her best. Because in her own way, she was the most like him.”
I thought about that. Paul clearly idolized his cousin. Perhaps because she was the woman he could never be.
“Why do you lock yourself in your bedroom?” I said finally. “So you can dress up as Polly?”
“No,” he said immediately. “I’m only Polly when I’m here, or among friends I know I can trust. I’m Paul at the Hall. I wouldn’t dare dress up there. It isn’t safe, there. It always feels like I’m being watched. Hobbes seems to know everything. He always did, even when I was a child. You couldn’t get away with anything, when he was around…Nasty, creepy old man. Always watching and spying and reporting back to Grandfather. We all hate Hobbes, except for Grandfather…
“I lock myself in my room because my life is in danger, Mr. Taylor. You have to believe me! I haven’t dared sleep in my room for weeks, but I can’t stay away too much or it would look suspicious…They’d know for sure that I know…They have to kill me because I know the truth!”
“Which truth?” I said. “About Melissa? About the kidnapping?”
“No! The truth about Jeremiah Griffin! About what he did to become what he is!” Polly leaned forward across the table and grabbed my hand with masculine strength.
“Ask Jeremiah. Ask him why no-one is ever allowed to go down into the cellar under Griffin Hall. Ask him what he keeps down there. Ask him why the only door to that cellar is locked and protected by the most powerful magics in the Hall!”
Polly let go of my hand and sat back in his chair, breathing hard. There was something about him of a small animal in the wild, hunted and harried by wolves.
“Talk to me,” I said, as gently as I could. “Tell me what you know, and I’ll protect you. I’m John Taylor, remember? The scariest man in the Nightside?”
Polly smiled at me sadly, almost pityingly. “You can’t help me. No-one can. I should never have been born. I’m only safe here because I’m Polly, and no-one here would ever tell. Sisterhood is a wonderful thing.” She looked at me with sudden intensity. “You mustn’t tell either! You can’t tell anyone! How did you find me here?”
“Relax. I’m John Taylor, remember? Finding things and people is what I do.” It was a lie, but he didn’t need to know that. He didn’t need to know that his mother knew about Polly. “My only interest in you is what you can tell me about Melissa.”
Polly smiled, a little shamefacedly. “Sorry. When your whole life is a secret and a lie, you tend to forget the whole world doesn’t revolve around you. Grandfather tried to make me his heir, you know; when I was younger. He’d given up on Uncle William. But I was stubborn, even then. I never wanted anything to do with the family business. That’s why Grandfather finally turned to Melissa, because he saw so much more of himself in her. And because she was the only one left. All I ever wanted was to be me, and to sing every night at Divas!”
He stood up suddenly and strode away from the table, heading for the raised stage. He took the microphone from the departing Mary Hopkin, and there he was, standing tall and proud in the spotlight, singing “For Today I Am A Boy,” by Anthony and the Johnsons. He put his whole heart into the song, and it seemed like the whole room stopped to listen. He was good, he really was, and I have heard the Nightingale sing and lived to tell of it.
I sat and listened to Polly sing, and it occurred to me that Paul had found his own safe artificial world to hide away in, just like his Uncle William. All the Griffins had their own worlds, their own secrets…and it seemed to me that if I could only discover Melissa’s, I’d know the who and how and why of everything that had happened.
That was when a small army of heavily armed women in combat fatigues came abseiling down from the high ceiling, a dozen of them, firing short machine pistol bursts over the heads of the crowd below. The glittering disco ball exploded, and everyone on the ballroom floor jumped to their feet and ran screaming in all directions, like so many panicked birds of paradise. Some ducked down behind hastily overturned tabletops, while others scrambled for the nearest exit. Alone on the stage, Polly stood frozen where he was, staring in horror at the assault force that had invaded his private world.
I vaulted up onto the stage, grabbed Polly, and threw him to the floor, covering him with my own body. I glanced out across the ballroom floor. The women in army fatigues were all touching down now, still firing their short, controlled bursts into the air at regular intervals. As far as I could see, they hadn’t actually hit anyone yet,
