a little under the blow, but it didn't break or even crack. Suzie hit it again and again, grunting with the effort she put into it, to no avail. She glared at the wall, breathing hard, and then kicked it in frustration. The leather toe of her boot clung stickily to the wall, and she had to use all her strength to pull it free. Part of the leather toe was missing, already absorbed. Drops of dark liquid fell from the ceiling, and more slid slowly down the walls and oozed up out of the floor. Suzie hissed suddenly, in surprise as much as pain, as a drop fell on her bare hand, and steam rose up from the scorched flesh.
"John, what the hell is this? What's going on?"
"Digestive juices," I said. "We're in a stomach. The house has decided we're too dangerous to absorb slowly, like Cathy. It doesn't want to savour us. We're going to be soup. Suzie, make us an exit. Blast a hole right through that wall."
Suzie grinned fiercely. "I thought you'd never ask. Stand back. This could splatter."
She trained her shotgun on the wall where the door had been, and let fly. The wall absorbed the blast, the point-blank impact producing only ripples spreading slowly outwards, like when you throw a stone into a pond. Suzie swore briefly and tried again, reloading and firing repeatedly till the close air stank of cordite, and the sound was overwhelming. But even as the roar of the gun died away, the
ripples were already disappearing from the unmarked wall. Suzie looked back at me.
"We are in serious trouble, John. And don't look now, but your shoes are steaming."
"Of course," I said. "The house isn't fussy about what it eats."
Suzie looked at me steadily, waiting. Without an enemy she could hit or shoot, she was pretty much lost for another option; but she trusted me to find a way out of this mess. She'd always been too ready to trust me. That was one of the reasons why I'd left the Nightside in the first place. I got tired of letting my friends down. I thought hard. There had to be a way out of this. I hadn't come back after all these years, fought my way through all the madness, just to die in an oversized stomach. I hadn't come back to fail again. I looked at Cathy, and then I looked at Joanna, still standing very still by the living wall. She hadn't said a word or moved an inch since the house revealed itself. Her face was eerily calm, her eyes unfocused. She hadn't even flinched when Suzie opened fire right next to her. Shock, I supposed, then.
"Joanna!" I said loudly. "Come over here and talk to your daughter. See if you can focus her mind on you, separate her from the house. I think I've got an idea on how to break her and us free, but I don't know what effect it might have on her... Joanna! Listen to me!"
She turned her head slowly to look at me, and
there was a slow horror forming in her eyes that made me want to look away.
"Why are you talking to her about me?" said Cathy.
"Because I need your mother's help in this," I said.
"But that's not my mother," said Cathy.
The words seemed to resonate endlessly in the quiet room, their sudden awful significance driving all other thoughts out of my head. It never even occurred to me to doubt Cathy's word. I could hear the truth in her voice, even if I didn't want to. So many little things that hadn't made sense suddenly came together, in one terrible moment of insight. Joanna looked at me, and there was nothing in her eyes but a calm, resigned sadness. All the vitality had gone out of her. As though she didn't have to pretend any more.
"I'm sorry, John," she said slowly. "But I think it's all over now. My purpose is over, now you're here. I think I did care for you ... but I don't think I'm who I thought I was ..." Her voice changed, and under it I heard the harsh alien voice that had briefly spoken through Cathy. "I'm just a Judas Goat, the perfect bait, designed and programmed specifically to lure you back into the Nightside, so that you could be ... dealt with."
"Why?" I said, and my voice was little more than a whisper.
"The house was provided with all the necessary details—the