throat, held in place by an ornate silver pin supposedly presented to him by Queen Victoria herself. He looked to be a handsome man of about thirty, and had appeared so for several decades.
Jessica Sorrow’s appearance was altogether more disturbing. Called the Unbeliever because for many years she didn’t believe anything was real except herself, and she believed that so fiercely that if any particular thing or person caught her attention . . . she disbelieved in them until they stopped existing. A very scary and dangerous personage, until I helped defuse her. She still had a powerful presence, a kind of anti-charisma that fascinated and appalled at the same time. Barely five feet tall, she sat curled up in her chair like a feral child, horribly emaciated and corpse pale. Her eyes were very big in her face, her colourless mouth little more than a slit. She wore a battered brown leather jacket and leggings, the jacket hanging open to reveal her bare, sunken chest, to which she tightly hugged the teddy bear I’d found for her. Her old childhood friend, perhaps her only friend, it helped her ground herself in reality. Given the fierce, unsettlingly blank look in her dark eyes, I wouldn’t have put money on her stability, but just the fact that she was there, interacting with other people, was a good sign. She cocked her head suddenly to one side, and looked at me, and knew me. For a moment, her expression was almost human. She smiled briefly. Her eyes didn’t blink nearly often enough.
Annie Abattoir was altogether easier on the eye. A ripe, voluptuous woman in her midforties, Annie was an accomplished seductress and heart-breaker, and many other things beside, most of which could not be discussed in polite company. Six-foot-two, broad-shouldered and imposing, with a sharp sensual face, she wore a ruby red evening gown, cut daringly low at front and back, that went well with her great mane of copper red hair. She was beautiful and sexy and effortlessly charming, and she knew it. She wore long white evening gloves; presumably to disguise how much blood she had on her hands.
Count Video was a Major Player, when he could get his act together, and an old adversary of mine. And a real pain in the arse. Tall and stiff, he wore a stylish suit with little grace and less poise. I could still see the staples and stitches on his neck and face from where he’d had his skin ripped off during the Angel War, then reattached afterwards. The skin also puckered around the odd silicon node, or patch of implanted sorcerous circuitry, which powered his impressive binary magics. Plasma lights sputtered on and off around him, as some drifting thought or impulse rewrote reality on some basic level. He was good-looking enough, in a sulky sort of way, and would probably be dangerous if he ever got around to growing a pair.
King of Skin was more than a man but less than a god. Or possibly the other way round. It was hard to tell. Wrapped in his usual sleazy glamour, people only saw of him what he wanted them to see. He could charm or enchant you with a word or a look, or show you what you feared most. He could make nightmares real and send them chasing through the street after you, or grant you something very like your heart’s desire, though it might look very different in the morning. Except mostly . . . he couldn’t be bothered. A nasty man with nasty tastes and worse habits, King of Skin was also a Major Player, when he chose to be. For today’s meeting, he had chosen to appear as the young Elvis, in Ann-Margret drag.
And, finally, there was Larry Oblivion. The dead detective, the post-mortem private eye. He looked in pretty good shape, for a zombie. Word was he’d been betrayed and murdered by the only woman he ever loved. She brought him back as a zombie, and he killed her for it. Just another love story, in the Nightside. Tall and well built, he wore the very best suit Armani had to offer. He had a colourless, stubborn face under lank, straw-coloured hair, and his icy blue eyes burned with something much worse than life. Up close, I knew he would smell faintly of formaldehyde. He had a good reputation as a private eye. Almost as good as mine.
His brother was missing, presumed dead. Because of