be the result of conscious or subconscious desires. I had to wonder what it said about Molly that we’d ended up here.
An old woman dressed as the Lone Ranger, complete with black silk mask, tottered up to me from out of the crowd and grabbed one of my hands. She held on to it with impressive strength, despite my efforts to pull it free, and cackled loudly.
“Cross my palm with a silver bullet, dearie, and I’ll tell you your future!”
I wrested my hand free of hers with an effort. “Do I look like a tourist?”
“Oh, come on,” she said, dropping me a roguish wink. “Live a little!”
“Not today,” I said.
She spat on the ground between us, turned her back, and tottered away. At the last moment, she turned to glare back at me. “You don’t have a future! He’s coming for you, from the other side of the mirror, and oh he’s so angry! Doctor DOA is coming for you!”
And then she was gone. I looked at Molly.
“Haven’t a clue,” she said.
You hear the damnedest things in the Nightside.
I looked around me, hoping to spot either the Sin Eater or the magician Chandarru, but there was no sign of either contestant. Given how easily Tarot Jones had found us, I didn’t think it would be long before one or the other, or even both, turned up here. But there was nothing in the street to present an obvious threat; it was just another disturbing scene from the Nightside. I really wanted to armour up, if only to keep from catching something nasty . . . but that would attract attention. This might or might not be the real Nightside, but I was pretty sure Droods would still be banned here. And the one thing absolutely guaranteed to bring all the disparate elements of the long night together would be the chance to gang up on a Drood.
Something that might have been a Yeti, with heavy eye makeup and false eyelashes, stomped past, hauling along several naked old men on leather leashes. Half a dozen nuns had hiked up their skirts in order to give a street mime a really good kicking. And a pack of small children tottered past, their bulging oversized heads tattooed with demonic script and their eyes blazing with hellfire. They saw me watching, and chattered among themselves in harsh inhuman voices. I wanted to do . . . something, but I knew there was no point. I couldn’t hope to change anything for the better—not here. Molly patted me comfortingly on the arm.
“Leave it, Eddie. It’s the Nightside.”
And you chose it, I thought, but had the good sense not to say out loud.
“We can’t just stand around here, doing nothing,” Molly said briskly. “That would make us conspicuous, and it’s never a good idea to stand out in the Nightside.”
“I’m almost sure this isn’t the real Nightside,” I said, trying to sound casual.
“It might be,” said Molly. “You’d be surprised how many places are attached to the long night, one way or another.”
“But we haven’t finished playing the Game,” I said. “I don’t think the Powers That Be would let us go anywhere we might escape from. So if this is another fake . . . there might not be anywhere else for us to go. This street could be all there is to this world, this setting.”
“All right,” said Molly. “Maybe I could summon one of my favourite watering holes here, if I put my mind to it. Strangefellows, say; or the Hawk’s Wind Bar and Grill.”
I knew both of those appalling locations by reputation, and suppressed a shudder. “They still wouldn’t be the real deal. And I have a strong feeling that any place here could be full of nasty surprises, courtesy of our subconscious.”
“How right you are,” said Crow Lee.
And there he was, standing before me, grinning unpleasantly. The Most Evil Man in the World, by popular consent. A large, broad-faced, powerfully built man, perfectly at ease in a long white Egyptian gown with gold trimmings. He had a shaven head, dark piercing eyes under bushy black eyebrows, and enough sheer presence for a dozen men. He gave me his best hypnotic stare, and I glared right back at him.
“You’re dead!”
Crow Lee shrugged easily. “You should know, you killed me. But you should also know by now that’s no drawback here. One of you called me back. I wonder who, and why?”
I drew my Colt Repeater, and shot him between the eyes. His