howling with rage. Fire blazed at me from an outstretched hand, but I held the parchment up before me, the contract that could not be destroyed by anything…and the fire couldn’t reach me. And then the nails holding William and Eleanor and Gloria and Marcel to the wall jerked out of their pierced flesh and disappeared, and the four of them fell helplessly onto the cold stone floor. They struggled to get up onto their feet, while Hobbes stood frozen in shock and surprise.
“Get me down!” shrieked Mariah. “You can’t leave me here!”
“Of course they can,” said Jeremiah. “We are where we belong, darling. Taylor, get my family out of here!”
Melissa burst through the barrier of the pentacle and fell sprawling at my feet. I hauled her up.
“No!” roared Hobbes, in a voice too loud and too awful to be borne. “I’ll see you all dead before I let you go!”
And I used my gift to find the sunlight again, and bring it to me, right there in the cellar deep under Griffin Hall. Brilliant sunshine smashed down on Hobbes, holding it in a bright circle like a bug transfixed on a pin. Hobbes screamed, and Jeremiah laughed. Melissa grabbed my arm.
“Please, can’t you help him…?”
“No,” I said. “He sealed his fate long ago. He is where he’s supposed to be. But you’re not, and neither are the others. There’s still hope for them. Help me get them out of here.”
“
I could feel it. Something huge and unspeakable was rising inexorably from the place beneath all places, come to claim what was his. We had to get out while we still could. Between us, Melissa and I got the others moving. The stone floor was rocking and breaking apart under our feet. A terrible presence was beating on the air, and none of us dared look back. Jeremiah was still laughing, and Mariah was screaming in horror. I pushed the Griffin family through the cellar door. And suddenly we were standing in the courtyard, outside the front door of Griffin Hall, and there was Sister Josephine with the Hand of Glory held out before her.
“I told you they couldn’t keep me out!” she said, and hurried forward to help with the walking wounded. We made our way as quickly as we could across the empty courtyard, then we stopped and looked back as all the lights in the Hall suddenly went out. With a long, loud groan like a dying beast, the great building slowly collapsed in on itself, crumbling and decaying, and finally disappeared into a huge sucking pit at the top of the hill.
We all stood together, thinking our own thoughts and holding each other up, and watched the fall of the house of Griffin.
EPILOGUE
I don’t do funerals. I don’t like the settings or the services, and I know far too much about Heaven and Hell to take much comfort from the rituals. I don’t visit people’s graves to say good-bye, because I know they’re not there. We only bury what gets left behind. And besides, most of the time I’m glad the people concerned are dead and not bothering me anymore.
The only ghosts that haunt me are memories.
So I didn’t go to Paul Griffin’s funeral. But I did go to visit his grave a few weeks later. Just to pay my respects. Suzie Shooter came along, to keep me company. Paul was buried in the Necropolis graveyard, in its own very private and separate dimension. It was cold and dark and silent, with a low ground mist curling slowly around the endless rows of headstones, statues, and mausoleums. I stood before Paul’s grave, and Suzie slipped her arm lightly through mine.
“Do you still feel guilty about his death?” she said after a while.
“I always feel guilty about the ones I can’t save,” I said.
The simple marble headstone said PAUL AND POLLY GRIFFIN; BELOVED SON AND DAUGHTER. I was pretty sure I detected Eleanor’s way with words there. Paul would have smiled. The mound of earth hadn’t settled yet. The large wreath from all the girls at Divas! was made up entirely of plastic flowers, bright and colourful and artificial. Just like Polly.
Not that far away stood a huge stone mausoleum, in the old Victorian style, with exaggerated pillars and cornices and altogether too many carved stone cherubs. The oversized brass plaque on the front door proudly declared to one and all that the mausoleum was the last resting place of Jeremiah and Mariah Griffin. Only the names; no dates and no words. Jeremiah paid for the ugly thing ages ago, not because he thought he’d ever need it, but because such things were the fashion, and Mariah had to have everything that was in fashion. And of course her mausoleum had to be bigger and more ornate than everyone else’s. I was surprised she hadn’t had the stone cherubs carved thumbing their turned-up noses at everyone else.
Of course, Jeremiah and Mariah weren’t in there. Their bodies were never recovered.
“I hear Melissa joined a convent after all,” Suzie said finally.
“Yeah, a contemplative order, tucked away from the world, like she wanted. Attached to, though not really a part of, the Salvation Army Sisterhood. So she should be safe enough.”
“She’s the richest nun in the Nightside.”
“Actually, no. She did inherit everything, according to the terms of the final will, but she gave most of it away. William and Eleanor were guaranteed very generous lifetime stipends, via a trust, in return for not contesting the will, and everything else went to the Sisterhood. Who are currently rebuilding their church and fast becoming one of the main movers and shakers on the Street of the Gods. Evil-doers beware. God alone knows what kind of armaments the SAS could buy with an unlimited budget…”
“And William and Eleanor?”
“Both getting used to being only mortal, now that Jeremiah is gone. Since they’re not immortal or inheritors anymore, Society and business and politics have pretty much turned their backs on the pair of them, which is probably a good thing. Give them a chance to make their own lives, at last. William’s off visiting Shadows Fall, with Bruin Bear and the Sea Goat. They’re the only real friends he ever had. Eleanor’s gone into seclusion, still mourning her child. But she’ll be back. She’s tougher than anyone thinks. Even her.”
“You think their spouses will stick around?”
“Probably not,” I said. “But you never know. People can surprise you.”
Suzie snorted loudly. “Not if you keep your guard up and a shell in the chamber.” She looked around her. “Depressing bloody place, this. All the ambience of an armpit. Promise me you’ll never let me end up here, John.”
I smiled and hugged her arm briefly against my side. “I do know of a place, called Arcadia. Where it’s calm and peaceful and the sun always shine, and only good things happen. We could lie side by side on a grassy bank, beside a flowing river…”
Suzie laughed raucously, shaking her head. “You soppy sentimental old thing. I was thinking more along the lines of being buried under a bar, so there’d always be music and laughter, and people could pour their drinks on the floor as a libation to us.”
“That does sound more like you,” I admitted. “But the kind of bars we frequent, someone would be bound to dig us up for a laugh.”
“Anyone disturbs my rest, I’ll disturb them right back,” Suzie said firmly. “It’s in my will that I’m to be buried with my shotgun and a good supply of ammunition.”
I nodded solemnly. “I thought I’d have my coffin booby-trapped. Just in case. Maybe something nuclear.”
Suddenly Suzie pulled away from me and drew her shotgun from its rear holster in one smooth movement. I followed her gaze, and there was Walker, standing calmly at the other end of Paul’s grave. I hadn’t heard him approach, but then I never did. He smiled easily at Suzie and me.
“Such a dramatic reaction,” he murmured. “Anyone would think I wasn’t welcome.”
“Anyone would be right,” I said. “How did you know we’d be here?”
“I know everything,” said Walker. “That’s my job.”
“Come to check that the Griffins are really dead?” said Suzie, not lowering her shotgun.
