Something from the Nightside - By Simon R. Green Page 0,4

reassuring. She rummaged in her bag again, took out a completed cheque, and tossed it onto my desk. Apparently it was time for plan B.

"Fifty thousand pounds, Mr. Taylor. There will be another cheque just like it, when this is all over."

I kept a straight face, but inside I was grinning broadly. For a hundred grand, I'd find the crew of the Marie Celeste. It almost made going back into the Nightside worthwhile. Almost.

"There is ... a condition."

I smiled. "I thought there might be."

"I'm going with you."

I sat up straight again. "No. No way. No way in Hell."

"Mr. Taylor ..."

"You don't know what you're asking ..."

"She's been gone over a month! She's never been gone this long before. Anything could have happened to her by now. I have to be there ... when you find her."

I shook my head, but I already knew I was going to lose this one. I've always been a soft touch where family is concerned. It's what comes of never having known one. Joanna still wouldn't cry, but her eyes were bright and shining, and for the first time her voice was unsteady.

"Please." She didn't look comfortable saying the word, but she said it anyway. Not for herself, but for her daughter. "I have to come with you. I have to know. I can't just sit at home any more, waiting for the phone to ring. You know the Nightside. Take me there."

We stared at each other for a while, both of us perhaps seeing a little more of the other than we were used to showing the world. And in the end I nodded, as we both knew I would. But for her sake, I tried one more time to make her see reason.

"Let me tell you about the Nightside, Joanna. They call London the Smoke, and everyone knows there's no smoke without fire. The Nightside is a square mile of narrow streets and back alleys in the centre of city, linking slums and tenements that were old when the last century was new. That's if you believe the official maps. In practice, the Nightside is much bigger than that, as though space itself has reluctantly expanded to fit in all the darkness and evil and generally strange stuff that has set up home there. There are those who say the Nightside is actually bigger than the city that surrounds it, these days. Which says something very disturbing about human nature and appetites, if you think about it. Not to mention inhuman appetites. The Nightside has always been a cosmopolitan kind of place.

"It's always night in the Nightside. It's always three o'clock in the morning, and the dawn never comes. People are always coming and going, drawn by needs that dare not speak their names, searching for pleasures and services unforgivable in the sane, daylight world. You can buy or sell anything in the Nightside, and no-one asks questions. No-one cares. There's a nightclub, where you can pay to see a fallen

angel forever burning inside a pentacle drawn in baby's blood. Or a decapitated goat's head, that can tell the future in enigmatic verses of perfect iambic pentameter. There's a room where silence is caged, and colours are forbidden, and another where a dead nun will show you her stigmata, for the right price. She didn't rise again, after all, but she'll still let you stick your fingers in the blood-caked holes, if you want.

"Everything you ever feared or dreamed of is running loose somewhere in the shifting streets of the Nightside, or waiting patiently for you in the expensive private rooms of patrons-only clubs. You can find anything in the Nightside, if it doesn't find you first. It's a sick, magical, dangerous place. You still want to go there?"

"You're lecturing me again."

"Answer the question."

"How could such a place exist, right here in the heart of London, without everyone knowing?"

"It exists because it has always existed, and it stays a secret because the powers that be, the real powers, want it that way. You could die there. I could die there, and I know my way around. Or at least, I did. I haven't been back in years. Still want to do this?"

"I'll go wherever my daughter is," Joanna said firmly. "We haven't always been... as close as I

would have liked, but I'll go into Hell itself to get her back."

I smiled at her then, and there was little humour in that smile. "You may have to, Joanna. You might very well have to."

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