bothered. I looked around. The Great Auction Hall had started out life as a thirteenth-century tithe barn, and had changed remarkably little down the years. The walls were a creamy grey stone, in large close-fitting blocks held together by artistry and tradition rather than mortar, rising up to soaring wooden rafters that came together in a complex latticework half hidden in shadows. There were only slit windows in the walls, and the floor was unpolished wood, covered in sawdust. Fluorescent rods provided almost painfully bright light. There were no comforts or luxuries, but then, people didn't come here to admire the scenery. The Great Auction Hall was a place of serious business.

I walked past the rows of cheap wooden folding seats, set up to face the no-frills auctioneer's stand, and looked over the various items in their display cases. It was the usual mixture, the famous and the infamous, of dubious value and debatable provenance. You could buy anything in the Nightside, whatever your interests or pleasure, but no-one guaranteed it was necessarily what it seemed to be. You could get lucky, or you could get dead, with precious little room in between. And just because you owned a thing, it didn't mean you could always hang on to it...

The first item was a heavy thigh-bone, identified as the weapon with which Cain slew Abel. There was a letter of confirmation from the ancient city of Enoch, but you took such things with a pinch of salt in the Nightside. Next in line were three different Maltese Falcons (buyer beware), a cast-brass head of JFK that supposedly spoke prophecy, Nostradamus's quill pen, one of Baron Frankenstein's scalpels, a small lacquered wooden box that claimed it held the ashes of Joan of Arc, and a Yeti's-foot umbrella stand. The rest was just junk and tat, stuff only a collector could love. Certainly nothing I'd give house-room.

I've never believed in acquiring objects of power. They always let you down. Either the batteries run out at the worst possible moment, or you go blank on the activating word; and you can never find the instruction manual when you need it. More trouble than they're worth. And far too many of them turn out to be just bits and pieces that have hung around long enough to acquire a reputation. Not unlike me, I suppose.

I paused to study myself in a tall standing mirror in an ornate silver frame. (It was labelled The Mirror of Dorian Gray; make of that what you will.) The reflection didn't look anything special; though I supposed I did at least look like a private eye. Tall, dark, and interesting-looking, wrapped in a long white trench coat that hadn't seen a laundry anywhen recent. A bit tired and battered round the edges, maybe, but that's life in the Nightside for you. I tend to get the cases no-one else wants, the kind other investigators have the good sense to turn down, and I like it that way. I have a gift for finding things, whether they want to be found or not, a hunger for the truth, and a stubborn streak that keeps me in the game long after anyone with any sense would have legged it for the horizon.

My father drank himself to death, after finding out my mother wasn't human. No-one knows who or what my mother really was, but everyone in the Nightside's got an opinion. There are those who treat me like the Antichrist, and others who see me as a King in waiting. And, an unknown group of enemies have been sending agents to kill me ever since I was a small child.

I try not to let it go to my head.

Lucretia Grave came stomping back to join me. She was wearing the monocle in the other eye now. I wondered whether I was supposed to say something, but decided not to. Some conversations you just know aren't going to go anywhere useful. Grave started in on me again as though we'd never stopped talking.

"We get all kinds of stuff coming through here on a regular basis, old sport, things you wouldn't believe, even for the Nightside. Some silly sod put his soul up for auction just the other week, but it didn't make the reserve. Ah yes, I've seen it all come and go, and known more than my fair share of tears and curses. Property is the curse of the thinking classes. Now, Taylor, old boy; the Hall is of course surrounded