is. We all do things we later regret, when we're being rebellious teenagers. Anyway, I got over that phase, and after travelling extensively through the many levels of reality, seeing the sights and working out my options, I finally ended up in the world of men. Not that men had made much of an impression on the place, in those days. Beings and Forces still walked freely, and a new legend was born every minute. I created the Nightside, a world within a world, in a place the Romans would later name Londinium. Interesting people, the Romans. A very savage form of civilisation. Some of them worshipped me, and I let them.

"Now pay attention, John, because this is the important bit. The Nightside was created and designed to be the one place on Earth where Heaven and Hell could not interfere or intimidate. A place set apart from the ordained war between Good and Evil. An alternative way to live. The only truly free place on Earth. It didn't turn out the way I expected, but then, that's life for you.

"Creating the Nightside, on Earth but not of it, stable but entirely separate, seriously weakened me. My power was much diminished, and the rising major players of that time, some human but mostly not, seized the opportunity to band together and thrust me back out of this reality, and into Limbo. So that they could be truly free, even from my intentions. I don't bear them any malice. Not really. I've outlived nearly all of them. And Limbo wasn't the worst place to be exiled to. Limbo is a place, or not-place, where things only exist in potential. Ideas without form."

"Like the Primal?" I said, just to show I was paying attention.

"Oh, please. They're just chalk-drawings, compared to me. But as an idea without shape or form, I was helpless to do anything. I was trapped in Limbo, unable to open a door into any other realm. Until someone here created an opening I could use. They were trying to incarnate a female principle into physical existence, a part of the Babalon Working, and it was easy for me to push the Transient Being aside and imprint myself upon the summoning. Someone in that group hadn't done his homework properly. He'd left all kinds of openings for a determined mind to take advantage of. And once I'd left Limbo behind, they couldn't keep me out. All the Powers and Dominations that ever were couldn't have stopped me then.

"I came through, decanted myself into the idealised body I found waiting in their minds, then disappeared, losing myself in the Nightside. Partly because I wanted to walk incognito to see how much things had changed in my absence, and partly to conceal myself from any of my old enemies who might have survived. I was still vulnerable, then. I needed to rebuild my power in peace. After some

time, when I was myself again, I chose one of my unwitting summoners, who seemed to have grasped a little of the truth, and—disguised as the woman Fennella Davis—I made a child with him. The child rooted me in this reality, so that I could never be forced out again. I hadn't planned to stick around afterwards, but you were so fascinating, John ... I'd never had a human child before. Flesh of my flesh, spirit of my spirit... I was curious to see how you'd turn out. And I enjoyed playing human. Being mother. Carrying out the role I had originally been intended for ...

"And then Charles found out. Somebody told him; I never did discover who. But it meant I had to disappear again, back into the more secret depths of the Nightside, so that no-one would ever guess your true identity, your true nature and purpose. If any of the day's major players had even suspected, they would have been lining up to kill you, for any number of reasons. I knew Charles wouldn't talk. If anyone ever suspected he was responsible for bringing back Lilith, the manner of his death would have been legendary, even in the Nightside. And, of course, he still believed his research would uncover a way to banish me again. He couldn't talk to his old friend Henry, by then so highly placed in the Authorities, and he wouldn't talk to his old friend Mark, who had been the Collector, because Mark had found Fennella Davis in the first place. Charles was alone. He couldn't trust anyone