Nightingale's lament - By Simon R. Green Page 0,57

just stepped back from the very brink of a cliff. The overpowering sexual pressure was gone from the room, though faint vestiges of its presence still lingered on the air. Sylvia sat up slowly on the bed, naked and normal, and looked at me with merely human eyes.

"What did you do? What have you done to me?"

"I've given you back yourself," I said. "You're free now. Entirely normal."

"I didn't ask to be normal! I liked who I was! What I was! The pleasures and the hungers and the feeding ... I was a goddess, you bastard! Give it back! Give it back to me!"

She threw herself at me, launching herself off the bed like a wildcat, going for my eyes with her hands, my throat with her teeth. I jumped to one side, and she missed me, betrayed by her unfamiliar, limited body. She crashed against the wall by the door, started to move away and found she couldn't. The wall wouldn't let her go. Her skin was stuck to the rose-petal surface. And that was when I realised at last where the rosy light came from, and why there was still that faint trace of a presence on the air. You do magical crazy things in a room long enough, and you get a magical crazy room. I'd brought Sylvia back, but the room still remained. She cried out and hit the wall with her fist, and the fist stuck to the wall. Already she was sinking into it, as though into a rosy pool, her body being absorbed the same way she'd engulfed so many others. She didn't even have time to work up a proper scream before she was gone, and the sexual presence was suddenly that much stronger, like the eyes of a hungry predator suddenly turning in my direction.

I ran out of the room, and all the way back down the stairs.

I stopped at the foot of the stairs and concentrated on slowing my breathing. My heart was pounding like a hammer in my chest. There's always temptation in the Nightside, and one of the first lessons you learn is that when you've got away, you don't ever look back. Sylvia Sin was gone, and the room should starve to death soon enough. As long as some poor damned fool didn't start feeding it... I looked around for Grey. He was crouching huddled in a corner, shaking and shuddering and crying his eyes out. I looked at Dead Boy, leaning casually against the front door.

"What happened to him?" I said.

"He wanted to know what it was like, being dead," said Dead Boy. "So I told him."

I looked at Grey and shuddered. His eyes were very wide and utterly empty.

"So," said Dead Boy. "All finished with Sylvia, are you?"

"She's finished," I said. "The Cavendishes did something to her. Made her a monster. Maybe they've done something to Rossignol, too. I have to go see her again."

"Mind if I tag along?" said Dead Boy. "At least around you death's never boring."

"Sure," I said. "Just let me do all the talking, okay?"

Divas!

Like most cities, there's never anywhere to park in the Nightside when you need it. There are high- and low-rise tesseract car parks and protected areas, but they're never anywhere useful. And cars left unattended on Nightside streets tend to be suddenly stolen, or eaten, or even evolve into something else entirely while your back's turned. But Dead Boy pulled his car of the future in to the curb, just down the street from Caliban's Cavern, got out, and walked away without even a backward glance. I went with him, but couldn't help looking back uncertainly. The shining silver car looked distinctly out of place in the steaming sleazy streets of Uptown. Already certain eyes were studying it with thoughtful intent.

"It will take more than automatic locks to protect your car here," I pointed out.

"My car can take care of itself," Dead Boy said easily. "The onboard computers have access to all kinds of defensive weaponry, together with an exceedingly nasty sense of humour and no conscience at all."

We strolled up the rain-slick street, and the crowds parted in front of us to let us pass. The blazing neon was as sharp and sleazy as ever, and hot saxophone music and heavy bass beats drifted out of the clubs we passed. A small group were sacrificing a street mime to some lesser god, while tourists clustered round with camcorders. A teddy bear with his eyes and mouth