my favorite and that I would burn down all the Nightside to avenge her. Besides, there’s been no ransom demand, no attempt at communication. It is possible she just ran away, I suppose, intimidated by the responsibilities lying ahead of her. She never wanted to be a part of the family business…Or, she might have been afraid of what the rest of the family might say, or do to her. But if that was the case, she would have left me a note. Or found some way to contact me. No, she was taken against her will. I’m sure of it.”
“Any friends who might be sheltering her?” I said, to show I hadn’t given up on the running away idea.
“She only has a few real friends, and I’ve had them all checked out carefully, from a distance. They don’t even seem to know she’s gone missing yet. And that’s the way it has to stay. You can’t tell anyone, Mr. Taylor. I can’t be seen to be vulnerable, or distracted.”
“An impossible case, with impossible conditions, and an impossible deadline,” I said. “Why don’t you just tie both my legs behind my back while you’re at it? All right, let me think. Could she have fled outside the Nightside, into London proper?”
“No,” he said immediately. “Impossible. None of my family can ever leave the Nightside.”
“It always comes back to the family, doesn’t it?” I said. I thought for a while. “If she’s out there, I’ll find her. But you have to face the fact that she could already be dead. Murdered, either by someone in your family’s employ, to prevent her from inheriting, or by one of the many enemies you’ve made in your long career.”
“Find my grand-daughter,” said the Griffin, his voice cold and relentless. “And in return I will pay you the sum of ten million pounds. Find out what happened, and why, and who is responsible. And either return her to me safely, or bring me her body, and the name of the man responsible.”
“Even if it’s family?” I said.
“Especially if it’s family,” said Jeremiah Griffin.
He pushed a briefcase across the table towards me, and I opened it. The briefcase was packed full of banknotes.
“One million pounds,” said the Griffin. “Just to get you started. I’m sure there will be expenses. You get the rest when I get Melissa. Are you all right, Mr Taylor?”
“Oh sure,” I said. “Just having breathing difficulties. Money is only numbers to you, isn’t it?”
“Do we have a deal, Mr. Taylor?”
“We have a deal,” I said, closing the briefcase. “But understand me, Mr. Griffin. You’re hiring me to bring you the truth about what happened. All of the truth, not just the bits you want to hear. And once I get started, I don’t stop till I get to the end, no matter who gets hurt in the process. Once you unleash me, even you can’t call me off. Do we still have a deal, Mr. Griffin?”
“Do whatever you have to, to find Melissa,” said the Griffin. “I don’t care who gets hurt in the process. Even me. They say…you have a special gift, for finding things and people.”
“That’s right, I do. But I can’t simply reach out and put my finger on your grand-daughter. That’s not how it works. I need a specific question to get a specific answer. Or location. I need to know which direction to look in before I can hope to pin her down. Still, I can try a basic search here, see if my Sight can reveal anything useful.”
I concentrated, opening up my inner eye, my third eye, my private eye, and my Sight came alive as my gift manifested, showing me all the things in the conference room hidden from everyday gaze. There were ghosts all over the room, men and women reliving the moments of their murders over and over again, trapped in endless loops of Time. Jeremiah had been busy here. I grabbed his hand so he could see them, too, but his face showed no emotion. There were other creatures, too, not in any way human, but they were only passing through, using our dimension as a stepping-stone to somewhere else. They’re always there. And finally I got a glimpse of Melissa, running through the conference room. I couldn’t tell if she was running to someone, or from someone. Her face was cold, focused, intent.
And then my Sight was blocked and shut down by some outside force.
I staggered backwards, and almost fell. My Vision of the greater world was gone, closed off from me. I fought to force my inner eye open again, to See Melissa again, and was shocked when I discovered I couldn’t. This had never happened to me before. Only some incredibly powerful force could shut down my gift, like one of the Powers or Principalities. But that would mean the involvement of Heaven or Hell; both of whom were supposed to be barred from intervening directly inside the Nightside. Jeremiah grabbed my shoulder and thrust his face into mine, demanding to know what was happening, but I was listening to something else. There was a new presence in the conference room, something strange and awful, building and focusing as it struggled to find a form it could manifest through. The Griffin looked around sharply. Still linked to me, he could feel it, too.
The temperature in the room plummeted, hoarfrost forming on the windows and the walls and the tabletop. The air was full of the stench of dead things. Somewhere someone was screaming without end, and someone else was crying without hope. Something bad was coming, from a bad place, smashing its way through the Hall’s defences with contemptuous ease.
I reached into my coat-pocket and drew out a packet of salt. I never travel anywhere without condiments. I drew a salt circle around the Griffin and myself, muttering certain Words as fast as I could say them. You don’t last long in the Nightside if you don’t learn the basic defences pretty damned quickly. But spiritual protections can only defend you against spiritual attacks.
All the television screens exploded at once, showering me and the Griffin with shrapnel. He started to flinch away, outside the salt circle, and I grabbed his shoulder, shouting at him to hold his ground. He jerked out of my hand, but nodded stiffly. Oddly, he didn’t look frightened, just annoyed. I looked back at the shattered televisions. The electronic innards were crawling out of the broken sets, spilling out in streams of steel and silicon and plastic. And from this possessed technology the invading presence made itself a shape.
It stood up slowly as it came together, tall and threatening, manlike in appearance but in no way human. An unliving construct, made of jagged metal bones with silicon sinews, razor-sharp hands, and a plastic face with glowing eyes and jagged metal teeth. It lurched towards me and the Griffin, crackling with imperfectly discharging electricity. A purely physical threat, to which the salt circle would be no defence at all.
“The Hall’s security defences should have kicked in by now,” said the Griffin, his voice strained, but even. “And my security people should be bursting in here any minute, armed to the teeth.”
“I really wouldn’t bet on it,” I said. “We’re dealing with a major Power here. I’d bet every penny of the money you just gave me that it’s sealed off this room completely. We are on our own.”
“Do you by any chance carry a gun?” said the Griffin.
“No,” I said, and smiled. “I’ve never needed one.”
I cautiously tried my inner eye again. The Power had shut down my ability to look for Melissa, but the gift itself was still operating. I inherited it from my mother, that ancient and awful Being known as Lilith, and probably only the Creator or the Enemy themselves could take it away from me. So I eased my third eye open just a crack, hardly enough to be noticed, and sent my Sight hurtling out over the Nightside, searching for someplace where it was raining. The metal construct was almost upon us, reaching out eagerly with its jagged metal hands. I found a rain-storm, and it was the easiest thing in the world for me to bring that rain into the conference room and drop it on the construct.
The plastic face cracked as it cried out harshly, an inhuman squeal of static, and the whole form collapsed and fell apart as the pouring rain short-circuited it. The construct shattered as it hit the floor, scattering into a million harmless pieces. I sent the rain back where I found it, and all was calm and still in the conference room.
I looked around cautiously, but the feel of the invading presence was gone. The room was already warming up again, the hoarfrost running away in trickles from the walls and windows. I stepped outside the salt circle, kicked at a few metal pieces on the floor, then gestured for the Griffin to join me. We looked down at what was left of the construct. He didn’t seem too upset, or even impressed.
“One of your enemies?” I said.
“Not as far as I know,” he said. “One of yours, perhaps?”
That was when the Griffin’s security people finally charged into the room, shouting and carrying on and waving their guns about. The Griffin yelled right back at them, wanting to know where the hell they were while his life was in danger. The security people started backing up, under the sheer force of his anger, and he quickly drove them all away with instructions to check the rest of the Hall for possible incursions, and not to report back until they’d found or done something to justify their jobs and expensive salaries.
