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The plastic face cracked as it cried out harshly, an inhuman squeal of static, and the whole form collapsed and fell apart as the pouring rain short-circuited it. The construct shattered as it hit the floor, scattering into a million harmless pieces. I sent the rain back where I found it, and all was calm and still in the conference room.
I looked around cautiously, but the feel of the invading presence was gone. The room was already warming up again, the hoarfrost running away in trickles from the walls and windows. I stepped outside the salt circle, kicked at a few metal pieces on the floor, then gestured for the Griffin to join me. We looked down at what was left of the construct. He didn’t seem too upset, or even impressed.
“One of your enemies?” I said.
“Not as far as I know,” he said. “One of yours, perhaps?”
That was when the Griffin’s security people finally charged into the room, shouting and carrying on and waving their guns about. The Griffin yelled right back at them, wanting to know where the hell they were while his life was in danger. The security people started backing up, under the sheer force of his anger, and he quickly drove them all away with instructions to check the rest of the Hall for possible incursions, and not to report back until they’d found or done something to justify their jobs and expensive salaries.
I let him get on with it, while I considered the matter. The appearance of such a powerful Being complicated matters. Not least because I couldn’t see where it fitted into a simple kidnapping. Or runaway. If I couldn’t use my Sight to find Melissa…I’d have to do it the old-fashioned way, by interrogating everyone involved, asking awkward and insightful questions, and hoping I was smart enough to know when someone was lying to me. I said as much to the Griffin, when we were finally alone again, and he nodded immediately.
“You have my authority to question all members of my family, my staff, and my businesspeople. Ask them anything you want, and if anyone gives you any trouble, refer them to me.” He smiled briefly. “Getting them to cooperate, and tell you what you need to know, is of course your problem.”
“Of course,” I said. “You realise I may have to ask…personal questions of your immediate family. Your wife, and your children.”
“Ask them anything. Feel free to slap them about, if you want. All that matters is finding Melissa, before it’s too late.”
“I’d be interested in hearing your impressions of your family,” I said. “Anything you think I ought to know…”
I already knew the basics. The Griffins were, after all, celebrities in the Nightside, their every word and move covered by the gossip rags. Which I have been known to read, on occasion. But I was interested to see what he would tell me, and perhaps more importantly, what he didn’t.
“Any one of them could be involved,” he said, scowling. “They could have hired people, I suppose…But none of them would have the guts to oppose me so openly. They’re only immortal because of me, but you can’t expect gratitude to last forever. My dear wife Mariah is loyal to me. Not too smart, but smart enough to know where her best interests lie. My son William, my eldest…is weak, spineless, and no businessman. Though God knows I tried hard enough to make him into an heir worth having. But he has always been a disappointment to me. Too much of his mother in him. He married Gloria, an ex-supermodel, against my wishes. Pretty enough, I suppose, but all the charm and personality of a magazine cover. She married money, not a man. Somehow, they managed to produce my wise and wonderful grand-daughter, Melissa.
“My daughter Eleanor has only ever been interested in indulging her various appetites. She only married Marcel because I made it clear she had to marry someone. Couldn’t have her running round the Nightside like a cat in heat all her life. I thought marriage would help her grow up. I should have known better. Marcel gambles. Badly. And thinks I don’t know, the fool. They have a son, my other grand-child Paul. He has always been a mystery to me and his parents. I’d say he was a changeling, if I hadn’t had him checked.”
And that was all he was prepared to say about what should have been his nearest and dearest. I picked up the briefcase, grunting with surprise at the weight, and nodded to the Griffin.
“I’ll let you know when I know something. Can I ask, who recommended me to you?”
“Walker,” he said, and I had to smile. Of course. Who else?
“One last question,” I said. “Why does an immortal feel the need to make a will, anyway?”
“Because not even immortality lasts forever,” said Jeremiah Griffin.
TWO -
Queen Bee
THREE -
All the Lost Children
I looked around cautiously, but the feel of the invading presence was gone. The room was already warming up again, the hoarfrost running away in trickles from the walls and windows. I stepped outside the salt circle, kicked at a few metal pieces on the floor, then gestured for the Griffin to join me. We looked down at what was left of the construct. He didn’t seem too upset, or even impressed.
“One of your enemies?” I said.
“Not as far as I know,” he said. “One of yours, perhaps?”
That was when the Griffin’s security people finally charged into the room, shouting and carrying on and waving their guns about. The Griffin yelled right back at them, wanting to know where the hell they were while his life was in danger. The security people started backing up, under the sheer force of his anger, and he quickly drove them all away with instructions to check the rest of the Hall for possible incursions, and not to report back until they’d found or done something to justify their jobs and expensive salaries.
I let him get on with it, while I considered the matter. The appearance of such a powerful Being complicated matters. Not least because I couldn’t see where it fitted into a simple kidnapping. Or runaway. If I couldn’t use my Sight to find Melissa…I’d have to do it the old-fashioned way, by interrogating everyone involved, asking awkward and insightful questions, and hoping I was smart enough to know when someone was lying to me. I said as much to the Griffin, when we were finally alone again, and he nodded immediately.
“You have my authority to question all members of my family, my staff, and my businesspeople. Ask them anything you want, and if anyone gives you any trouble, refer them to me.” He smiled briefly. “Getting them to cooperate, and tell you what you need to know, is of course your problem.”
“Of course,” I said. “You realise I may have to ask…personal questions of your immediate family. Your wife, and your children.”
“Ask them anything. Feel free to slap them about, if you want. All that matters is finding Melissa, before it’s too late.”
“I’d be interested in hearing your impressions of your family,” I said. “Anything you think I ought to know…”
I already knew the basics. The Griffins were, after all, celebrities in the Nightside, their every word and move covered by the gossip rags. Which I have been known to read, on occasion. But I was interested to see what he would tell me, and perhaps more importantly, what he didn’t.
“Any one of them could be involved,” he said, scowling. “They could have hired people, I suppose…But none of them would have the guts to oppose me so openly. They’re only immortal because of me, but you can’t expect gratitude to last forever. My dear wife Mariah is loyal to me. Not too smart, but smart enough to know where her best interests lie. My son William, my eldest…is weak, spineless, and no businessman. Though God knows I tried hard enough to make him into an heir worth having. But he has always been a disappointment to me. Too much of his mother in him. He married Gloria, an ex-supermodel, against my wishes. Pretty enough, I suppose, but all the charm and personality of a magazine cover. She married money, not a man. Somehow, they managed to produce my wise and wonderful grand-daughter, Melissa.
“My daughter Eleanor has only ever been interested in indulging her various appetites. She only married Marcel because I made it clear she had to marry someone. Couldn’t have her running round the Nightside like a cat in heat all her life. I thought marriage would help her grow up. I should have known better. Marcel gambles. Badly. And thinks I don’t know, the fool. They have a son, my other grand-child Paul. He has always been a mystery to me and his parents. I’d say he was a changeling, if I hadn’t had him checked.”
And that was all he was prepared to say about what should have been his nearest and dearest. I picked up the briefcase, grunting with surprise at the weight, and nodded to the Griffin.
“I’ll let you know when I know something. Can I ask, who recommended me to you?”
“Walker,” he said, and I had to smile. Of course. Who else?
“One last question,” I said. “Why does an immortal feel the need to make a will, anyway?”
“Because not even immortality lasts forever,” said Jeremiah Griffin.
TWO -
Queen Bee
When in doubt, as I so often am, start with the scene of the crime. Perhaps the criminals will have left behind something useful, like a business card with their names and addresses on it. Stranger things have happened in the Nightside. After I left the conference room, I turned to the butler Hobbes, and spoke to him firmly.
“I need to see Melissa’s room, Hobbes.”
“Of course you do, sir,” he said calmly. “But I’m afraid you won’t find anything there.”
Hobbes led me through another series of corridors and hallways. I was beginning to think I’d have to ask someone for a map if Hobbes ever decided to give me the slip. All the hallways and corridors seemed unnaturally still and quiet. For such a large Hall, surprisingly few people actually seemed to live there. The only people we passed were uniformed servants, and they all gave Hobbes and me a wide berth, scurrying past with bowed heads and lowered eyes. And for once, despite all my hard-earned reputation, I didn’t think it was me they were scared of.
We came at last to an old-fashioned elevator, with sliding doors made up of rococo brass stylings. Very art deco. Hobbes pulled back the heavy doors with casual strength, and we stepped inside. The cage was big enough to hold a fairly intimate party in, and the walls were works of art in stained glass. Hobbes pulled the doors shut and said Top floorin a loud and commanding voice. The elevator floor lurched briefly under my feet, and we were off. For such an old mechanism, the ride was remarkably smooth. I looked for the floor numbers and couldn’t help noticing there were no indicators or controls anywhere in the elevator.
“I can’t help noticing there aren’t any indicators or controls anywhere in this elevator, Hobbes.”
“Indeed, sir. All the elevators in Griffin Hall are programmed to respond only to authorised voices. A security measure…”
“Then how did Melissa’s abductors get to the top floor?”
“An excellent question, sir, and one I feel confident you will enlighten us on in due course.”
“Stop taking the piss, Hobbes.”
“Yes, sir.”
The elevator stopped, and Hobbes hauled the doors open. I stepped out into a long corridor with firmly shut doors lining both sides. The lighting was pleasantly subdued, the walls were bare of any decoration or ornamentation, and the carpeting was Persian. All the closed doors looked very solid. I wondered if the Griffins locked their doors at night. I would, in a place like this. And with a family like this. Hobbes closed the elevator doors with a flourish and came forward to stand uncomfortably close beside me. Invading someone’s personal space is a standard intimidation tactic, but in my time I’d faced down Beings on the Street of the Gods and made them cry like babies. It would take more than one severely up-himself butler to put me off my game.
“This is the top floor, sir. All the family bedrooms are here. Though of course not every member of the family is always in residence at the same time. Master William and Miss Eleanor have their own domiciles, in town. Master Paul and Miss Melissa do not. Mr. Griffin requires that they live here.”
I frowned. “He doesn’t let the children live with their own parents?”
“Again, a security measure, sir.”
“Show me Melissa’s room,” I said, to remind him who was in charge here.
He led the way down the corridor. It was a long corridor, with a lot of doors.
“Guest rooms?” I said, gesturing.
“Oh no, sir. Guests are never permitted to stay over, sir. Only the family sleep under this roof. Security, again. All these rooms are family bedrooms. So that every member can move back and forth, as the fancy takes them, when they get bored with the trappings of a particular room. I am given to understand that boredom can be a very real problem with immortals, sir.”
We walked on some more. “So,” I said. “What do you think happened to Melissa, Hobbes?”
He didn’t even look at me. “I really couldn’t say, sir.”
“But you must have an opinion?”
“I try very hard not to, sir. Opinions only get in the way of providing a proper service to the family.”
“What did you do before you came here, Hobbes?”
“Oh, I’ve always been in service, sir.”
I could believe that. No-one gets that supercilious without years of on-the-job training. “How about the rest of the staff? Did none of them see or hear anything suspicious, or out of the ordinary, before or after Melissa disappeared?”
“I did question every member of the staff most thoroughly, sir. They would have told me if they’d known anything. Anything at all.”
“On the evening Melissa vanished, did you admit any unusual or unexpected visitors to the Hall?”
“People are always coming and going, sir.”
I gave him one of my hard looks. “Are you always this evasive, Hobbes?”
“I do my best, sir. This is Miss Melissa’s room.”
We stopped before a door that looked no different from any of the others. Solid wood, sensibly closed. No obvious signs of attack or forced entry. I tried the brass handle, and it turned easily in my grasp. I pushed the door open and looked in. The room before me was completely empty. No boy band posters on the walls, no fluffy animals, no furniture. Just four bare walls, a bare bed, and an even barer wooden floor. Nothing to show a teenage girl had ever occupied this room. I glared at Hobbes.
“Tell me her room didn’t always look like this.”
“It didn’t always look like this, sir.”
“Did the Griffin order this room emptied?”
“No, sir. This is exactly how I found it.”
“Explain,” I said, just a little dangerously.
“Yes, sir. Miss Melissa was supposed to join the rest of the family for the evening meal. The Master and Mistress have always been very firm that all members of the family should dine together, when in residence. Master William and Miss Eleanor were present, and her son Master Paul, but Miss Melissa was late, which was most unlike her. When she didn’t appear, I was sent to summon her. When I got here, the door was ajar. I knocked, but received no reply. When I ventured to look inside, in case she was feeling unwell, I found the room as you see it now. Miss Melissa never was much of a one for comforts or trinkets, but even so, this seemed extreme. I immediately raised the alarm, and security searched the Hall from top to bottom, but there was no trace to be found of Miss Melissa.”
I looked at him for a long moment. “Are you saying,” I managed finally, “that not only did Melissa’s kidnappers remove her from this Hall without anyone noticing, but that they walked off with all her belongings as well? And no-one saw anything? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I have a major slap with your name on it in my pocket, Hobbes.”
“I feel I should also point out that no magics will function in Griffin Hall unless authorised by a member of the Griffin family, sir. So Miss Melissa could not have been magicked out of her room…”
“Not without her cooperation or that of someone in her family.”
“Which is of course quite impossible, sir.”
“No, Hobbes, nailing a live octopus to a wall is impossible, everything else is merely difficult.”
“I bow to your superior knowledge, sir.”
I was still thinking Inside job, but I wasn’t ready to say it out loud.
I peered into the empty room again and tried to call up my gift, hoping for at least a glimpse of what happened, but my inner eye wouldn’t open. Someone with a hell of a lot of power really didn’t want me using my gift in this case. I was beginning to wonder if perhaps Someone was playing games with me…
Footsteps sounded in the corridor behind me. I looked round just in time to see a uniformed maid come to a halt before Hobbes and curtsy respectfully. Damn, the servants moved quietly around here. She bobbed a quick curtsy to me, too, as an afterthought.
“Pardon me, Mr. Hobbes, sir,” said the maid, in a voice that was little more than a whisper. “But the Mistress said to tell you she wants a word with Mr. Taylor before he leaves.”
Hobbes looked at me and raised an eyebrow.
“Oh please teach me how to do that,” I said. “I’ve always wanted to be able to raise a single eyebrow like that.”
The maid got the giggles and had to turn away. Hobbes just looked at me.
“Oh what the hell,” I said. “Might as well talk to the Mistress. She might know something.”
“I wouldn’t bank on it, sir,” said Hobbes.
The maid hurried off on business of her own, and Hobbes led me all the way back up the corridor to Mariah Griffin’s room. I was curious as to why she would want to see me and what she might be prepared to tell me about her grand-daughter that Jeremiah wouldn’t, or couldn’t. Women often share secrets within a family that the men know nothing about. We finally came to a stop before another anonymous door.
“Mariah Griffin’s room, sir,” said Hobbes.
I looked at him thoughtfully. “Not Jeremiah and Mariah’s room? They have separate bedrooms?”
“Indeed, sir.”
I didn’t ask. He wouldn’t have told me anyway.
I nodded to him, and he knocked very politely on the door. A loud female voice said Enter!and Hobbes pushed the door open and stepped back so I could enter first. I sauntered in as though I was thinking of renting the place, then trashing it. Even though it was what passed for midafternoon in the Nightside, Mariah Griffin was still in bed. She was sitting up in a filmy white silk nightdress, propped up and supported by a whole bunch of puffy pink pillows. The walls were pink, too. In fact, the whole oversized room had a kind of pink ambience, like walking into a nursery. The bed was big enough for several people, if they were of a friendly inclination, and Mariah Griffin was surrounded by a small army of maids, advisors, and social secretaries. Some of them grudgingly made way as I took up a position at the foot of the bed.
The elaborate and no doubt very expensive counterpane was covered with the remains of several half-eaten meals, even more half-consumed boxes of chocolates, and dozens of scattered glossy gossip magazines. An open bottle of champagne stood chilling in an ice bucket, conveniently near at hand. Mariah conspicuously ignored me, apparently intent on all the people milling around her bed, competing noisily for her attention. So I stood at the foot of the bed and studied her openly.
Mariah Griffin was on the plump side of pretty, pleasantly rounded if not actually voluptuous, from the old school of beauty. The hair piled up thickly on top of her head was so pale a yellow as to be almost colourless, but her face made up for that with bright gaudy makeup. Scarlet bee-stung lips, rouged cheeks, dark purple eye-shadow, and eyelashes so thick it was a wonder she could see past them. Mariah looked to be in her early thirties, and had done for many centuries. Her strong bone structure gave her face what character it had, undermined by a vague manner and a pettishness in the voice. She looked more like an indulged mistress than a wife of long standing.
Various maids and flunkies clustered around her, attending to her every need almost before she could think of them; plumping up her pillows, offering her a new box of chocolates or freshening her glass of champagne, as necessary. Mariah ignored them all, giving her entire attention to the day’s correspondence and the updating of her social diary. It soon became clear that her default expression was a pout, and whenever events seemed to conspire against her, she would lash out feebly with a plump hand at whoever happened to be closest at that moment. The maids and flunkies took the blows without flinching. The fashion and social advisors were all careful to stay just out of arm’s reach, without being seen to do so. Those nearest to me studied me carefully out of the corners of their eyes, and after a few moments to raise their courage, began making pointed little remarks to each other, loud enough for me to hear.
“Well, well, look who it isn’t—the famous John Taylor.”
“Infamous, I would have said. I always thought he’d be taller. You know, more butch.”
“And that trench coat is so last year…I could run him up something really daring in mauve.”
“Ask for his measurements!”
“Oh, I don’t like to!”
There’s definitely something about the Nightside that brings out the stereotypical behavior in some people. Emboldened that I hadn’t taken offence, a large gentleman in chin-to-toe black leather glared at me openly.
“Well, lo and behold—the Nightside’s very own private dick…always trying to slip in where he isn’t wanted.”
“Lo andbehold?” I said. “I can behold all you want, but if loing is required, someone’s going to have to coach me. I’ve never been too clear on what loing actually involves…There ought to be an instructional booklet; Loing for Beginners, or A Bluffer’s Guide to Loing.”
“You start anything with me, John Taylor, and I’ll summon security, see if I don’t. And then there’ll be trouble!”
“Will there be loing as well?” I said hopefully.
“Why is this woman still writing to me?” Mariah Griffin said loudly, waving a letter in one plump hand to draw everyone’s attention back to her. “She knows very well I’m not talking to her! My rules are very clear: miss two of my parties, and you’re Out. I don’t care if her children had leprosy…”
She was looking at everyone in the room except me, but the whole performance was for my benefit. She carried on complaining about this and that to her various advisors, who all gave her their full attention if not their interest. Mariah desperately wanted to come across as regal, but she lacked the necessary concentration. She’d start off on one subject, switch to another, get sidetracked, then forget where she’d started. She fluttered from one topic to another like a butterfly, always attracted by something else that promised to be a little bit more interesting or colourful. I got bored waiting, so I started wandering round the room, looking at things, picking them up and putting them down in a deliberately careless way.
If that didn’t work, I’d start tossing them out the windows.
There were luxurious items as far as the eye could see, delicate china figures, antique dolls, glass animals, and porcelain so fragile it looked like it would shatter if you breathed on it too heavily. All carefully laid out and presented on antique furnishings of the highest order. Some deep-seated anarchist part of me longed to run amok with a sledgehammer, or perhaps a length of steel chain…I eased my inner barbarian by helping myself to chocolates from the opened boxes. All the soft centres were gone, but I made do.
Judging by the pile of still-unopened letters cascading across Mariah’s bedside table, she got a lot of correspondence. E-mail never really caught on in the Nightside—far too easy to hack or intercept. And there was always the problem of computers developing sentience, or getting possessed by forces from the outer dark…and techno-exorcists don’t come cheap. Handwritten letters are the done thing these days, especially in what some people like to think of as the Highest Circles. The immortal Griffins are the closest thing the Nightside has to its own aristocracy, which meant every social climber in the place was desperate to get close to them, in the hope that some of the Griffins’ standing and glamour would rub off on the more favoured supplicants. Snobbery is a terrible vice, as easy to get hooked on as heroin and as devastating to give up when you’re no longer In, and going through withdrawal symptoms.
Even royalty came to sit at the feet of the Griffins and beg discreetly for boons and favours. We get them all in the Nightside—kings and queens in exile, princes of This and lairds of That, and every rank and station you can think of. They arrive via Timeslips from other worlds and times and dimensions, cut off forever from their own people, power, and riches. Some buckle down and make something new of themselves. Most don’t. Because they don’t know how. They still expect to be treated as royalty just because they once were, and get really upset when the Nightside makes it clear it doesn’t give a damn. Mostly they hole up together in private little members-only clubs, where they can all address each other by their proper titles and spend most of their time angling for invitations to the Griffins’ latest ball or soiree. Because acceptance by the Griffins validates their special nature in the eyes of all. Unfortunately, there are so many aristos running around that the Griffins can pick and choose. And they do. You get one chance to prove yourself interesting or amusing, and then you’re Out. Zog, King of the Pixies, was notorious for continually trying to crash the Griffins’ parties, even after it was made clear to him that he was not welcome, and never would be, no matter with whom he arrived.
(He peed on the floor. Apparently where he came from, a servant used to follow him around with a bucket. And a mop.)
Mariah had always had pretensions to taste and style, but unfortunately possessed none herself, and so was dependent upon a series of fashion and social advisors to help her decide who was In and who was Out, and which fads and styles would be followed each Season. But it was Mariah alone who enforced these decisions, with a whim of iron. And so the advisors shoved and elbowed at each other to get closest to Mariah, and argued every point with loud and affected voices, accompanied by large, dramatic gestures. Which occasionally degenerated into blows or slapping matches. Advisors could make or break a social reputation with a word or a glance, and everyone knew it, which was why these poor unfortunates had many acquaintances but few real friends. If the truth were known, they were probably even more paranoid and insecure than the social climbers who hung on their every word.
In the end Mariah got bored or impatient pretending I wasn’t there and abruptly ordered everyone else out of the room. Including Hobbes, still lurking by the door. Everyone left, with varying degrees of reluctance, bowing and scraping and blowing kisses all the way, until finally the door closed behind the last of them, and Mariah Griffin and I were left looking at each other. She studied me coolly, trying to decide whether I was someone who could be commanded or someone she would have to flatter a little to get her way. In the end she smiled sweetly, batted her long eyelashes coquettishly, and patted the pink eiderdown beside her.
“Come here and sit with me, John Taylor. So I can get a proper look at you.”
I walked forward, pulled up a chair, and sat down facing her, careful to maintain a safe distance. She pouted at me and eased down the front of her nightdress a little more, so I could get a good look at her cleavage. She wasn’t upset by my caution. I could see it in her eyes. She always liked it better if the prey struggled a little first. Up close her scent was almost overpowering, the reek of crushed petals soaked in pure animal musk.
“I have some questions,” I said.
“Well of course you do…John. That is what you private investigators do, isn’t it? Interrogate your suspects? I don’t think I’ve ever met a real private eye before. So thrilling…”
“You don’t seem too upset over your grand-daughter’s disappearance,” I said, to get things started.
Mariah shrugged. “She’s simply being a nuisance, as always. Sanctimonious little dear. Never happy unless she’s interfering in the way I run my life, and upsetting all my plans…This is simply another plea for attention. Run away from home, get her grandfather’s undivided interest, then turn up safe and sound a few days later, happy and smiling and perfectly safe, looking like butter wouldn’t melt in her arse, the little minx. And Jeremiah will take her back in as though nothing has happened. She always could twist him round her little finger.”
“You don’t believe she was kidnapped?”
“Of course not! The security built into this house has kept this family safe for centuries. No-one could have got in or out without setting off all kinds of hidden alarms, unless someone in the know had deactivated them in advance. It’s another of her attention-getting schemes, the stuck-up little bitch.”
“Am I to take it you two don’t get on?”
Mariah snorted loudly, a very unladylike sound. “My children have always been disappointments to me. My grand-children even more so. Jeremiah is the only person in the world who has ever mattered to me, the only one who ever really cared about me. You don’t know who I was, what I used to be, before he found me and made me his wife, and made me immortal. Of course you don’t know. No-one does, anymore. I’ve seen to it, believe you me. But I remember, and so does he, and I will always love him for that.” She realised her voice was getting a bit loud and made a deliberate effort to regain her composure. “Melissa’s current whereabouts are a matter of complete indifference to me, John.”
“Even though she stands to inherit the whole family fortune, while you and your children get nothing?”
She smiled at me with her bee-stung lips, red as blood, and studied me hungrily with her dark, hooded eyes. “You’re younger than I thought you’d be. Even handsome, in a hard-used sort of way. You think I’m beautiful, don’t you, John? Of course you do. Everyone does. They have for centuries…I will never grow old, John, never lose my looks or vitality. I shall live lifetimes, and always be lovely. That’s what he promised me…Say you think I’m beautiful, John. Come closer, and say it to my face. Touch me, John. You’ve never felt anything like my skin, young and fresh and vital for centuries…”
My mouth was dry and my hands were trembling. Sex beat on the air between us, raw and potent as an elemental force. I didn’t like her, but just then, at that moment, I wanted her…I made myself sit very still, and the madness quickly passed. Perhaps because Mariah was already losing her concentration. When I didn’t immediately weaken, her butterfly mind moved on to other matters.
“Fashions come and go, but I remain, John, forever lovely as a summer’s day…That’s the one thing I do miss, you know. Eternal night may be very glamorous, but anything can get tiring when it goes on and on without changing…It’s been so long since I felt the warmth of sunlight on my face and the caress of a passing breeze…”
She prattled on, and I listened carefully, but I didn’t learn anything useful. Mariah had been a shallow creature before Jeremiah made her immortal, and centuries of living, if not experience, had done little to change that. Perhaps she was incapable of change, frozen the way she was when Jeremiah took her out of Time, like an insect trapped in amber. She was Queen of Nightside Society, and that was all she cared about. Other queens might arise to challenge her grip, but in the end she would always win because she was immortal, and they were not.
She stopped talking abruptly and studied me thoughtfully, as though she’d only just remembered I was still there. “So you’re the famous John Taylor. One does hear such stories about you…Was your mother really a Biblical myth? Did you really save us all from extinction during the recent War? They say you could have been king of the Nightside, if you’d wanted…Tell me about your glamorous assistants, Razor Eddie, Dead Boy, Shotgun Suzie.”
“ Glamorous?” I said, smiling despite myself. “Not quite the word I would have chosen.”
“I’ve read all about you, and them, in the tabloids,” said Mariah. “I live for gossip. Except when it’s about me. Some of those reporterscan be very cruel…I’ve been trying to get Jeremiah to buy up the Night Times, and that terrible rag the Unnatural Inquirer, for years, but he’s always got some silly answer why he can’t. He doesn’t care what they write about him. He only ever reads the financial pages. Wouldn’t know who anyone was in Society if I wasn’t there to tell him…”
“Tell me about your children,” I said, when she made the mistake of pausing for breath. “Tell me about William and Eleanor.”
She pouted again, looking around her for more chocolates and her champagne glass, and I had to ask her twice more before she finally answered.
“I had the twins back in the nineteen twenties, because it was the fashion. Absolutely everyone in Society was having babies, and I just couldn’t bear to be left out. All my friends assured me childbirth was the most divine, transcendent experience…” She snorted loudly. “And afterwards, my lovely babies grew up to be such disappointments. I can’t think why. I saw to it that they had the very best nannies, the very best tutors, and every toy they ever wanted. And I made it a point to spend some time with them every weekend, no matter how full my social diary was.”
“And Jeremiah?”
“Oh, he was furious at the time. Absolutely livid. Actually raised his voice to me, a thing he never does. He never wanted children.”
“So what happened?” I said.
“He had me sterilized, so I couldn’t have any more.” Her voice was entirely unaffected, matter-of-fact. “I didn’t care. The fashion was past, and they weren’t what I’d expected…And I certainly wasn’t going to go through all thatagain…”
“Didn’t you have any friends, any close friends, who could have helped you stand up to Jeremiah?”
Mariah smiled briefly, and her eyes were suddenly very cold. “I don’t have friends, John. Ordinary people don’t matter to me. Or to any of us Griffins. Because you see, John, you’re all so short-lived…Like mayflies. You come and go so quickly, and you never seem to be around long enough to make any real impression, and it doesn’t do to get too fond of those who do. They all die…It’s the same with pets. I used to adore my cats, back in the old days. But I can’t bear them around me anymore. Or flowers…I had the gardens laid out around the Hall back in the seventeen fifties, when landscaped gardens were all the rage, but once I had them…I didn’t know what to do with them. You can only walk through them so many times…In the end I let them run riot, just to see what would happen. I find the jungle much more interesting—always changing, always producing something new…Jeremiah keeps it going as our last line of defence. Just in case the barbarians ever rise up and try to take it all away from us.” She laughed briefly. It was an ugly sound. “Let them try! Let them try…No-one takes anything that belongs to us!”
“Someone may have taken your grand-daughter,” I said.
She gave me a long look from under her heavy eyelashes, and tried her seductive smile again. “Tell me, John, how much did my husband offer you to find Melissa?”
“Ten million pounds,” I said, a little hoarsely. I was still getting used to the idea.
“How much more would it take, from me, for you to simply…go through the motions and not find her? I could be very generous…And, of course, it would be our little secret. Jeremiah would never have to know.”
“You don’t want her back?” I said. “Your own granddaughter?”
The smile disappeared, and her eyes were cold, so cold. “She should never have been born,” said Mariah Griffin.
“I need to see Melissa’s room, Hobbes.”
“Of course you do, sir,” he said calmly. “But I’m afraid you won’t find anything there.”
Hobbes led me through another series of corridors and hallways. I was beginning to think I’d have to ask someone for a map if Hobbes ever decided to give me the slip. All the hallways and corridors seemed unnaturally still and quiet. For such a large Hall, surprisingly few people actually seemed to live there. The only people we passed were uniformed servants, and they all gave Hobbes and me a wide berth, scurrying past with bowed heads and lowered eyes. And for once, despite all my hard-earned reputation, I didn’t think it was me they were scared of.
We came at last to an old-fashioned elevator, with sliding doors made up of rococo brass stylings. Very art deco. Hobbes pulled back the heavy doors with casual strength, and we stepped inside. The cage was big enough to hold a fairly intimate party in, and the walls were works of art in stained glass. Hobbes pulled the doors shut and said Top floorin a loud and commanding voice. The elevator floor lurched briefly under my feet, and we were off. For such an old mechanism, the ride was remarkably smooth. I looked for the floor numbers and couldn’t help noticing there were no indicators or controls anywhere in the elevator.
“I can’t help noticing there aren’t any indicators or controls anywhere in this elevator, Hobbes.”
“Indeed, sir. All the elevators in Griffin Hall are programmed to respond only to authorised voices. A security measure…”
“Then how did Melissa’s abductors get to the top floor?”
“An excellent question, sir, and one I feel confident you will enlighten us on in due course.”
“Stop taking the piss, Hobbes.”
“Yes, sir.”
The elevator stopped, and Hobbes hauled the doors open. I stepped out into a long corridor with firmly shut doors lining both sides. The lighting was pleasantly subdued, the walls were bare of any decoration or ornamentation, and the carpeting was Persian. All the closed doors looked very solid. I wondered if the Griffins locked their doors at night. I would, in a place like this. And with a family like this. Hobbes closed the elevator doors with a flourish and came forward to stand uncomfortably close beside me. Invading someone’s personal space is a standard intimidation tactic, but in my time I’d faced down Beings on the Street of the Gods and made them cry like babies. It would take more than one severely up-himself butler to put me off my game.
“This is the top floor, sir. All the family bedrooms are here. Though of course not every member of the family is always in residence at the same time. Master William and Miss Eleanor have their own domiciles, in town. Master Paul and Miss Melissa do not. Mr. Griffin requires that they live here.”
I frowned. “He doesn’t let the children live with their own parents?”
“Again, a security measure, sir.”
“Show me Melissa’s room,” I said, to remind him who was in charge here.
He led the way down the corridor. It was a long corridor, with a lot of doors.
“Guest rooms?” I said, gesturing.
“Oh no, sir. Guests are never permitted to stay over, sir. Only the family sleep under this roof. Security, again. All these rooms are family bedrooms. So that every member can move back and forth, as the fancy takes them, when they get bored with the trappings of a particular room. I am given to understand that boredom can be a very real problem with immortals, sir.”
We walked on some more. “So,” I said. “What do you think happened to Melissa, Hobbes?”
He didn’t even look at me. “I really couldn’t say, sir.”
“But you must have an opinion?”
“I try very hard not to, sir. Opinions only get in the way of providing a proper service to the family.”
“What did you do before you came here, Hobbes?”
“Oh, I’ve always been in service, sir.”
I could believe that. No-one gets that supercilious without years of on-the-job training. “How about the rest of the staff? Did none of them see or hear anything suspicious, or out of the ordinary, before or after Melissa disappeared?”
“I did question every member of the staff most thoroughly, sir. They would have told me if they’d known anything. Anything at all.”
“On the evening Melissa vanished, did you admit any unusual or unexpected visitors to the Hall?”
“People are always coming and going, sir.”
I gave him one of my hard looks. “Are you always this evasive, Hobbes?”
“I do my best, sir. This is Miss Melissa’s room.”
We stopped before a door that looked no different from any of the others. Solid wood, sensibly closed. No obvious signs of attack or forced entry. I tried the brass handle, and it turned easily in my grasp. I pushed the door open and looked in. The room before me was completely empty. No boy band posters on the walls, no fluffy animals, no furniture. Just four bare walls, a bare bed, and an even barer wooden floor. Nothing to show a teenage girl had ever occupied this room. I glared at Hobbes.
“Tell me her room didn’t always look like this.”
“It didn’t always look like this, sir.”
“Did the Griffin order this room emptied?”
“No, sir. This is exactly how I found it.”
“Explain,” I said, just a little dangerously.
“Yes, sir. Miss Melissa was supposed to join the rest of the family for the evening meal. The Master and Mistress have always been very firm that all members of the family should dine together, when in residence. Master William and Miss Eleanor were present, and her son Master Paul, but Miss Melissa was late, which was most unlike her. When she didn’t appear, I was sent to summon her. When I got here, the door was ajar. I knocked, but received no reply. When I ventured to look inside, in case she was feeling unwell, I found the room as you see it now. Miss Melissa never was much of a one for comforts or trinkets, but even so, this seemed extreme. I immediately raised the alarm, and security searched the Hall from top to bottom, but there was no trace to be found of Miss Melissa.”
I looked at him for a long moment. “Are you saying,” I managed finally, “that not only did Melissa’s kidnappers remove her from this Hall without anyone noticing, but that they walked off with all her belongings as well? And no-one saw anything? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I have a major slap with your name on it in my pocket, Hobbes.”
“I feel I should also point out that no magics will function in Griffin Hall unless authorised by a member of the Griffin family, sir. So Miss Melissa could not have been magicked out of her room…”
“Not without her cooperation or that of someone in her family.”
“Which is of course quite impossible, sir.”
“No, Hobbes, nailing a live octopus to a wall is impossible, everything else is merely difficult.”
“I bow to your superior knowledge, sir.”
I was still thinking Inside job, but I wasn’t ready to say it out loud.
I peered into the empty room again and tried to call up my gift, hoping for at least a glimpse of what happened, but my inner eye wouldn’t open. Someone with a hell of a lot of power really didn’t want me using my gift in this case. I was beginning to wonder if perhaps Someone was playing games with me…
Footsteps sounded in the corridor behind me. I looked round just in time to see a uniformed maid come to a halt before Hobbes and curtsy respectfully. Damn, the servants moved quietly around here. She bobbed a quick curtsy to me, too, as an afterthought.
“Pardon me, Mr. Hobbes, sir,” said the maid, in a voice that was little more than a whisper. “But the Mistress said to tell you she wants a word with Mr. Taylor before he leaves.”
Hobbes looked at me and raised an eyebrow.
“Oh please teach me how to do that,” I said. “I’ve always wanted to be able to raise a single eyebrow like that.”
The maid got the giggles and had to turn away. Hobbes just looked at me.
“Oh what the hell,” I said. “Might as well talk to the Mistress. She might know something.”
“I wouldn’t bank on it, sir,” said Hobbes.
The maid hurried off on business of her own, and Hobbes led me all the way back up the corridor to Mariah Griffin’s room. I was curious as to why she would want to see me and what she might be prepared to tell me about her grand-daughter that Jeremiah wouldn’t, or couldn’t. Women often share secrets within a family that the men know nothing about. We finally came to a stop before another anonymous door.
“Mariah Griffin’s room, sir,” said Hobbes.
I looked at him thoughtfully. “Not Jeremiah and Mariah’s room? They have separate bedrooms?”
“Indeed, sir.”
I didn’t ask. He wouldn’t have told me anyway.
I nodded to him, and he knocked very politely on the door. A loud female voice said Enter!and Hobbes pushed the door open and stepped back so I could enter first. I sauntered in as though I was thinking of renting the place, then trashing it. Even though it was what passed for midafternoon in the Nightside, Mariah Griffin was still in bed. She was sitting up in a filmy white silk nightdress, propped up and supported by a whole bunch of puffy pink pillows. The walls were pink, too. In fact, the whole oversized room had a kind of pink ambience, like walking into a nursery. The bed was big enough for several people, if they were of a friendly inclination, and Mariah Griffin was surrounded by a small army of maids, advisors, and social secretaries. Some of them grudgingly made way as I took up a position at the foot of the bed.
The elaborate and no doubt very expensive counterpane was covered with the remains of several half-eaten meals, even more half-consumed boxes of chocolates, and dozens of scattered glossy gossip magazines. An open bottle of champagne stood chilling in an ice bucket, conveniently near at hand. Mariah conspicuously ignored me, apparently intent on all the people milling around her bed, competing noisily for her attention. So I stood at the foot of the bed and studied her openly.
Mariah Griffin was on the plump side of pretty, pleasantly rounded if not actually voluptuous, from the old school of beauty. The hair piled up thickly on top of her head was so pale a yellow as to be almost colourless, but her face made up for that with bright gaudy makeup. Scarlet bee-stung lips, rouged cheeks, dark purple eye-shadow, and eyelashes so thick it was a wonder she could see past them. Mariah looked to be in her early thirties, and had done for many centuries. Her strong bone structure gave her face what character it had, undermined by a vague manner and a pettishness in the voice. She looked more like an indulged mistress than a wife of long standing.
Various maids and flunkies clustered around her, attending to her every need almost before she could think of them; plumping up her pillows, offering her a new box of chocolates or freshening her glass of champagne, as necessary. Mariah ignored them all, giving her entire attention to the day’s correspondence and the updating of her social diary. It soon became clear that her default expression was a pout, and whenever events seemed to conspire against her, she would lash out feebly with a plump hand at whoever happened to be closest at that moment. The maids and flunkies took the blows without flinching. The fashion and social advisors were all careful to stay just out of arm’s reach, without being seen to do so. Those nearest to me studied me carefully out of the corners of their eyes, and after a few moments to raise their courage, began making pointed little remarks to each other, loud enough for me to hear.
“Well, well, look who it isn’t—the famous John Taylor.”
“Infamous, I would have said. I always thought he’d be taller. You know, more butch.”
“And that trench coat is so last year…I could run him up something really daring in mauve.”
“Ask for his measurements!”
“Oh, I don’t like to!”
There’s definitely something about the Nightside that brings out the stereotypical behavior in some people. Emboldened that I hadn’t taken offence, a large gentleman in chin-to-toe black leather glared at me openly.
“Well, lo and behold—the Nightside’s very own private dick…always trying to slip in where he isn’t wanted.”
“Lo andbehold?” I said. “I can behold all you want, but if loing is required, someone’s going to have to coach me. I’ve never been too clear on what loing actually involves…There ought to be an instructional booklet; Loing for Beginners, or A Bluffer’s Guide to Loing.”
“You start anything with me, John Taylor, and I’ll summon security, see if I don’t. And then there’ll be trouble!”
“Will there be loing as well?” I said hopefully.
“Why is this woman still writing to me?” Mariah Griffin said loudly, waving a letter in one plump hand to draw everyone’s attention back to her. “She knows very well I’m not talking to her! My rules are very clear: miss two of my parties, and you’re Out. I don’t care if her children had leprosy…”
She was looking at everyone in the room except me, but the whole performance was for my benefit. She carried on complaining about this and that to her various advisors, who all gave her their full attention if not their interest. Mariah desperately wanted to come across as regal, but she lacked the necessary concentration. She’d start off on one subject, switch to another, get sidetracked, then forget where she’d started. She fluttered from one topic to another like a butterfly, always attracted by something else that promised to be a little bit more interesting or colourful. I got bored waiting, so I started wandering round the room, looking at things, picking them up and putting them down in a deliberately careless way.
If that didn’t work, I’d start tossing them out the windows.
There were luxurious items as far as the eye could see, delicate china figures, antique dolls, glass animals, and porcelain so fragile it looked like it would shatter if you breathed on it too heavily. All carefully laid out and presented on antique furnishings of the highest order. Some deep-seated anarchist part of me longed to run amok with a sledgehammer, or perhaps a length of steel chain…I eased my inner barbarian by helping myself to chocolates from the opened boxes. All the soft centres were gone, but I made do.
Judging by the pile of still-unopened letters cascading across Mariah’s bedside table, she got a lot of correspondence. E-mail never really caught on in the Nightside—far too easy to hack or intercept. And there was always the problem of computers developing sentience, or getting possessed by forces from the outer dark…and techno-exorcists don’t come cheap. Handwritten letters are the done thing these days, especially in what some people like to think of as the Highest Circles. The immortal Griffins are the closest thing the Nightside has to its own aristocracy, which meant every social climber in the place was desperate to get close to them, in the hope that some of the Griffins’ standing and glamour would rub off on the more favoured supplicants. Snobbery is a terrible vice, as easy to get hooked on as heroin and as devastating to give up when you’re no longer In, and going through withdrawal symptoms.
Even royalty came to sit at the feet of the Griffins and beg discreetly for boons and favours. We get them all in the Nightside—kings and queens in exile, princes of This and lairds of That, and every rank and station you can think of. They arrive via Timeslips from other worlds and times and dimensions, cut off forever from their own people, power, and riches. Some buckle down and make something new of themselves. Most don’t. Because they don’t know how. They still expect to be treated as royalty just because they once were, and get really upset when the Nightside makes it clear it doesn’t give a damn. Mostly they hole up together in private little members-only clubs, where they can all address each other by their proper titles and spend most of their time angling for invitations to the Griffins’ latest ball or soiree. Because acceptance by the Griffins validates their special nature in the eyes of all. Unfortunately, there are so many aristos running around that the Griffins can pick and choose. And they do. You get one chance to prove yourself interesting or amusing, and then you’re Out. Zog, King of the Pixies, was notorious for continually trying to crash the Griffins’ parties, even after it was made clear to him that he was not welcome, and never would be, no matter with whom he arrived.
(He peed on the floor. Apparently where he came from, a servant used to follow him around with a bucket. And a mop.)
Mariah had always had pretensions to taste and style, but unfortunately possessed none herself, and so was dependent upon a series of fashion and social advisors to help her decide who was In and who was Out, and which fads and styles would be followed each Season. But it was Mariah alone who enforced these decisions, with a whim of iron. And so the advisors shoved and elbowed at each other to get closest to Mariah, and argued every point with loud and affected voices, accompanied by large, dramatic gestures. Which occasionally degenerated into blows or slapping matches. Advisors could make or break a social reputation with a word or a glance, and everyone knew it, which was why these poor unfortunates had many acquaintances but few real friends. If the truth were known, they were probably even more paranoid and insecure than the social climbers who hung on their every word.
In the end Mariah got bored or impatient pretending I wasn’t there and abruptly ordered everyone else out of the room. Including Hobbes, still lurking by the door. Everyone left, with varying degrees of reluctance, bowing and scraping and blowing kisses all the way, until finally the door closed behind the last of them, and Mariah Griffin and I were left looking at each other. She studied me coolly, trying to decide whether I was someone who could be commanded or someone she would have to flatter a little to get her way. In the end she smiled sweetly, batted her long eyelashes coquettishly, and patted the pink eiderdown beside her.
“Come here and sit with me, John Taylor. So I can get a proper look at you.”
I walked forward, pulled up a chair, and sat down facing her, careful to maintain a safe distance. She pouted at me and eased down the front of her nightdress a little more, so I could get a good look at her cleavage. She wasn’t upset by my caution. I could see it in her eyes. She always liked it better if the prey struggled a little first. Up close her scent was almost overpowering, the reek of crushed petals soaked in pure animal musk.
“I have some questions,” I said.
“Well of course you do…John. That is what you private investigators do, isn’t it? Interrogate your suspects? I don’t think I’ve ever met a real private eye before. So thrilling…”
“You don’t seem too upset over your grand-daughter’s disappearance,” I said, to get things started.
Mariah shrugged. “She’s simply being a nuisance, as always. Sanctimonious little dear. Never happy unless she’s interfering in the way I run my life, and upsetting all my plans…This is simply another plea for attention. Run away from home, get her grandfather’s undivided interest, then turn up safe and sound a few days later, happy and smiling and perfectly safe, looking like butter wouldn’t melt in her arse, the little minx. And Jeremiah will take her back in as though nothing has happened. She always could twist him round her little finger.”
“You don’t believe she was kidnapped?”
“Of course not! The security built into this house has kept this family safe for centuries. No-one could have got in or out without setting off all kinds of hidden alarms, unless someone in the know had deactivated them in advance. It’s another of her attention-getting schemes, the stuck-up little bitch.”
“Am I to take it you two don’t get on?”
Mariah snorted loudly, a very unladylike sound. “My children have always been disappointments to me. My grand-children even more so. Jeremiah is the only person in the world who has ever mattered to me, the only one who ever really cared about me. You don’t know who I was, what I used to be, before he found me and made me his wife, and made me immortal. Of course you don’t know. No-one does, anymore. I’ve seen to it, believe you me. But I remember, and so does he, and I will always love him for that.” She realised her voice was getting a bit loud and made a deliberate effort to regain her composure. “Melissa’s current whereabouts are a matter of complete indifference to me, John.”
“Even though she stands to inherit the whole family fortune, while you and your children get nothing?”
She smiled at me with her bee-stung lips, red as blood, and studied me hungrily with her dark, hooded eyes. “You’re younger than I thought you’d be. Even handsome, in a hard-used sort of way. You think I’m beautiful, don’t you, John? Of course you do. Everyone does. They have for centuries…I will never grow old, John, never lose my looks or vitality. I shall live lifetimes, and always be lovely. That’s what he promised me…Say you think I’m beautiful, John. Come closer, and say it to my face. Touch me, John. You’ve never felt anything like my skin, young and fresh and vital for centuries…”
My mouth was dry and my hands were trembling. Sex beat on the air between us, raw and potent as an elemental force. I didn’t like her, but just then, at that moment, I wanted her…I made myself sit very still, and the madness quickly passed. Perhaps because Mariah was already losing her concentration. When I didn’t immediately weaken, her butterfly mind moved on to other matters.
“Fashions come and go, but I remain, John, forever lovely as a summer’s day…That’s the one thing I do miss, you know. Eternal night may be very glamorous, but anything can get tiring when it goes on and on without changing…It’s been so long since I felt the warmth of sunlight on my face and the caress of a passing breeze…”
She prattled on, and I listened carefully, but I didn’t learn anything useful. Mariah had been a shallow creature before Jeremiah made her immortal, and centuries of living, if not experience, had done little to change that. Perhaps she was incapable of change, frozen the way she was when Jeremiah took her out of Time, like an insect trapped in amber. She was Queen of Nightside Society, and that was all she cared about. Other queens might arise to challenge her grip, but in the end she would always win because she was immortal, and they were not.
She stopped talking abruptly and studied me thoughtfully, as though she’d only just remembered I was still there. “So you’re the famous John Taylor. One does hear such stories about you…Was your mother really a Biblical myth? Did you really save us all from extinction during the recent War? They say you could have been king of the Nightside, if you’d wanted…Tell me about your glamorous assistants, Razor Eddie, Dead Boy, Shotgun Suzie.”
“ Glamorous?” I said, smiling despite myself. “Not quite the word I would have chosen.”
“I’ve read all about you, and them, in the tabloids,” said Mariah. “I live for gossip. Except when it’s about me. Some of those reporterscan be very cruel…I’ve been trying to get Jeremiah to buy up the Night Times, and that terrible rag the Unnatural Inquirer, for years, but he’s always got some silly answer why he can’t. He doesn’t care what they write about him. He only ever reads the financial pages. Wouldn’t know who anyone was in Society if I wasn’t there to tell him…”
“Tell me about your children,” I said, when she made the mistake of pausing for breath. “Tell me about William and Eleanor.”
She pouted again, looking around her for more chocolates and her champagne glass, and I had to ask her twice more before she finally answered.
“I had the twins back in the nineteen twenties, because it was the fashion. Absolutely everyone in Society was having babies, and I just couldn’t bear to be left out. All my friends assured me childbirth was the most divine, transcendent experience…” She snorted loudly. “And afterwards, my lovely babies grew up to be such disappointments. I can’t think why. I saw to it that they had the very best nannies, the very best tutors, and every toy they ever wanted. And I made it a point to spend some time with them every weekend, no matter how full my social diary was.”
“And Jeremiah?”
“Oh, he was furious at the time. Absolutely livid. Actually raised his voice to me, a thing he never does. He never wanted children.”
“So what happened?” I said.
“He had me sterilized, so I couldn’t have any more.” Her voice was entirely unaffected, matter-of-fact. “I didn’t care. The fashion was past, and they weren’t what I’d expected…And I certainly wasn’t going to go through all thatagain…”
“Didn’t you have any friends, any close friends, who could have helped you stand up to Jeremiah?”
Mariah smiled briefly, and her eyes were suddenly very cold. “I don’t have friends, John. Ordinary people don’t matter to me. Or to any of us Griffins. Because you see, John, you’re all so short-lived…Like mayflies. You come and go so quickly, and you never seem to be around long enough to make any real impression, and it doesn’t do to get too fond of those who do. They all die…It’s the same with pets. I used to adore my cats, back in the old days. But I can’t bear them around me anymore. Or flowers…I had the gardens laid out around the Hall back in the seventeen fifties, when landscaped gardens were all the rage, but once I had them…I didn’t know what to do with them. You can only walk through them so many times…In the end I let them run riot, just to see what would happen. I find the jungle much more interesting—always changing, always producing something new…Jeremiah keeps it going as our last line of defence. Just in case the barbarians ever rise up and try to take it all away from us.” She laughed briefly. It was an ugly sound. “Let them try! Let them try…No-one takes anything that belongs to us!”
“Someone may have taken your grand-daughter,” I said.
She gave me a long look from under her heavy eyelashes, and tried her seductive smile again. “Tell me, John, how much did my husband offer you to find Melissa?”
“Ten million pounds,” I said, a little hoarsely. I was still getting used to the idea.
“How much more would it take, from me, for you to simply…go through the motions and not find her? I could be very generous…And, of course, it would be our little secret. Jeremiah would never have to know.”
“You don’t want her back?” I said. “Your own granddaughter?”
The smile disappeared, and her eyes were cold, so cold. “She should never have been born,” said Mariah Griffin.
THREE -
All the Lost Children
I explained to Mariah Griffin, carefully and very diplomatically, that I couldn’t accept her kind offer because I only ever work for one client at a time. That was when she started throwing things. Basically, anything that came to hand. I decided this would probably be a good time to leave and retreated rapidly to the door with assorted missiles flying past my head. I had to scramble behind me for the door handle, because I didn’t dare take my eyes off the increasingly heavy objects coming my way, but I finally got the door open and departed with haste, if not dignity. I slammed the door shut against the hail of missiles and nodded politely to the waiting Hobbes. (First rule of the successful private eye—grace under pressure.) We both stood for a while and listened to the sound of weighty objects slamming against the other side of the door, then I decided it was time I was somewhere else.
“I need to talk to the Griffin’s children,” I said to Hobbes, as we walked away. “William and Eleanor. Are they both still in residence?”
“Indeed, sir. The Griffin made it very clear that he wished them to remain, along with their respective spouses, on the assumption that you would wish to question them. I have taken the liberty of having them wait in the Library. I trust this is acceptable.”
“I’ve always wanted to question a whole bunch of subjects in a Library,” I said wistfully. “If only I’d brought my meerschaum and my funny hat…”
“This way, sir.”
So back down in the elevator we went, then along more corridors and hallways, to the Library. I was so turned around by now I couldn’t have pointed to the way out if you’d put a gun to my head. I was seriously considering leaving a trail of bread-crumbs behind me, or unreeling a long thread. Or carving directional arrows in the polished woodwork. But that would have been uncouth, and I hate running out of couth in the middle of a case. So I strolled along beside Hobbes, admiring the marvellous works of art to every side and quietly hoping he wouldn’t suddenly start asking me to identify them. There still weren’t many people about, apart from the occasional uniformed servant hurrying past with their head bowed. The corridors were so quiet you could have heard a mouse fart.
“Just how big is this Hall anyway?” I said to Hobbes, as we walked and walked.
“As big as it needs to be, sir. A great man must have a great house. It’s expected of him.”
“Who lived here before the Griffins?”
“I believe the Griffin had the Hall constructed to his own designs, sir, some centuries ago. It’s my understanding he wished to make an impression…”
We came at last to the Library, and Hobbes opened the door and ushered me in. I shut the door firmly behind me, keeping Hobbes on the other side. The Library was large and old-fashioned, almost defiantly so. All four walls were nothing but shelves, packed with heavy bound books that clearly hadn’t been published anywhen recent. Comfortable chairs were scattered across the deep carpeting, and there was a single long table in the middle of the room, complete with extra reading lamps. This had to be the Griffin’s room; he came from a time when everyone who was anyone read. Many of the books on the shelves looked old enough to be seriously rare and expensive. The Griffin probably had every notable text from the past several centuries, everything from a Gutenberg Bible to an unexpurgated Necronomicon. This last in the original Arabic, of course. Probably marked with dog-eared corners, doodles in the margins, and all the best bits heavily underlined.
William and Eleanor Griffin were waiting for me, standing stiffly together to present a united front in the face of a common enemy. They didn’t strike me as the kind of people who’d spend much time in a Library by choice. Their respective spouses stood together in a far corner, observing the situation watchfully. I took my time looking the four of them over. The longer I kept them waiting, the more likely it was someone would say something they hadn’t meant to, just to break the silence.
William Griffin was tall and muscular, in that self-absorbed body-building way. He wore a black leather jacket over a white T-shirt and jeans. All of which looked utterly immaculate. Probably because he threw them out as soon as they got creased and put on new ones. He wore his blond hair close-cropped, had cold blue eyes, his father’s prominent nose, and his mother’s pouting mouth. He was doing his best to stand tall and proud, as befitted a Griffin, but his face refused to look anything but sullen and sulky. After all, his comfortable existence had been turned suddenly upside down, first by the revealing of the new will, then by his daughter’s disappearance. People of his high station resent the unexpected. Their wealth and power are supposed to protect them from such things.
Eleanor gave every impression of being made of stronger stuff. Even though she was wearing an outfit that even Madonna would have turned down as too trashy. Hooker chic, with added gaudy. She wore her long blonde hair in what were obviously artificial waves, and used heavy makeup to disguise only average features. She glared openly at me, as much irritated as angry, and chain-smoked all through the interview. She stubbed out her butts on the polished surface of the long table and ground them under foot into the priceless Persian carpet. I’ll bet she didn’t do that when her father was around.
Over in the far corner, as far away as she could get and still be in the same room, William’s wife Gloria, the ex-supermodel, was tall, thin, and so black her skin had a bluish sheen. She studied me thoughtfully with dark hooded eyes, her high-boned face showing no expression at all under her glistening bald skull. She wore a long white satin dress, to contrast with her night-dark skin. She had that intense, hungry look all professional models cultivate, and she still looked as though she could saunter successfully down any catwalk that took her fancy. Although she was standing right beside Eleanor’s husband Marcel, her body language made it clear she was only standing there because she’d been told to. I don’t think she looked at him once.
Marcel wore a good suit, but from the way it hung off him you could tell he was used to dressing more casually. Marcel was casual, in thought, word, and deed. You could tell, from the way he stood and the way he looked, and from the way he continued to look vague and shifty even when doing nothing at all. He gave the impression that he was only there under sufferance and couldn’t wait to get back to whatever it was he’d been doing. And that he didn’t care who knew it. I don’t think he looked directly at me once. He was handsome enough, in a weak and unfinished sort of way and, like Gloria, remained silent because he’d been told to.
I looked from Walker to Eleanor and back again, letting the tension build. I was in no hurry.
I knew all about the Griffin children and their many marriages. Everyone in the Nightside did. The gossip magazines couldn’t get enough of them and their various doings. I have been known to read the tabloids, on occasion, because they make the perfect light reading on long stakeouts. Because they don’t take up too much of my attention, and you can hide behind them when necessary. Which means I end up knowing a hell of a lot about people who otherwise wouldn’t interest me in the slightest. I knew, for example, that Gloria was William’s seventh wife, and that Marcel was Eleanor’s fourth husband. And that all Griffin spouses were immortal, too, but only as long as they remained married to a Griffin.
In fairness, Gloria and Marcel had lasted longer than most.
“I know you,” William said to me finally, trying to sound tough and aggressive but not quite pulling it off. (Though it was probably good enough for most of the people he had to deal with.) “John Taylor, the Nightside’s premiere private eye…Just another damned snoop, searching through the garbage of other people’s lives. Muckraker and troublemaker. Don’t tell him anything, Eleanor.”
“I wasn’t going to, you idiot.” Eleanor shot a glare at her brother that reduced him immediately to sulky silence again, then she turned the full force of her cold glare on me. I did my best to bear up under it. “You’re not welcome here, Mr. Taylor. None of us have anything to say to you.”
“Your father thinks otherwise,” I said calmly. “In fact, he’s paying me a hell of a lot of money to be here, and I have his personal authority to ask you any damned thing I feel like. And what Daddy wants, Daddy gets. Am I right?”
They both stared back at me defiantly. Any answers I got out of these two would not come easily or directly.
“Why are you both here?” I said, because you have to start somewhere. “I mean, in residence at the Hall as opposed to your own houses, out in the Nightside? That’s…unusual, isn’t it?”
More silence. I sighed heavily. “Am I going to have to send Hobbes off to bring your father here to spank the pair of you?”
“We’re here because of this nonsense about a new will,” said Eleanor. That was all she meant to say, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave it at that, not when she had so much spleen to vent and a ready listener at hand. “I can’t believe he’s prepared to disinherit us all, after all this time! He just can’t! And certainly not in favour of that holier-than-thou little cow, Melissa! She’s only gone missing because she knows what I’ll do to her when I get my hands on her! She’s poisoned our father’s mind against us.”
William snorted loudly. “Changing his will at this late stage? The old man’s finally going senile.”
“If only it were that simple,” said Eleanor, inhaling half her cigarette in one go. “No, he’s up to something. He’s always up to something…”
“What was Melissa’s state of mind, before she…went missing?” I said. “What did she have to say about the provisions of the new will?”
“Wouldn’t know,” William said shortly. “She wasn’t talking to me. Or Gloria. Locked herself away in her room and wouldn’t come out. Just like Paul.”
“You leave my Paul out of this!” Eleanor said immediately. “There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s just…sensitive.”
“Yeah,” William growled. “He’s sensitive, all right…”
“And what do you mean by that?” said Eleanor, rounding on her brother with the light of battle rising in her eyes.
I knew an old argument when I saw one and moved quickly to intervene. “What are you two planning to do about the new will?”
“Contest it, of course!” Eleanor snapped, turning her glare back on me. “Fight it, with every weapon at our disposal.”
“Even kidnapping?” I said.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Eleanor did her best to look down her nose at me, even though I was a few inches taller. “Daddy Dearest would have us both whipped within an inch of our lives if we so much as looked nastily at his precious grand-daughter. He’s always been soft on her. William wasn’t even allowed to chastise her as a child. If he had, she might not have grown up into such a contrary little bitch.”
“I say, steady on, Eleanor,” said William, but she talked right over him. I got the impression that happened a lot.
“Melissa hasn’t been kidnapped. She’s hiding out, hoping the storm will blow over. Well it won’t! I’ll see to that. What’s mine is mine, and no-one takes what’s mine. Especially not my sweet, smiling, treacherous niece!”
“Assume,” I said, “for the sake of argument and because I’ll hit you if you don’t, that Melissa really has been kidnapped. Who do you think might be behind it? Does your father have any serious enemies, or any recent ones who might choose to strike back at him through his grand-daughter?”
“I need to talk to the Griffin’s children,” I said to Hobbes, as we walked away. “William and Eleanor. Are they both still in residence?”
“Indeed, sir. The Griffin made it very clear that he wished them to remain, along with their respective spouses, on the assumption that you would wish to question them. I have taken the liberty of having them wait in the Library. I trust this is acceptable.”
“I’ve always wanted to question a whole bunch of subjects in a Library,” I said wistfully. “If only I’d brought my meerschaum and my funny hat…”
“This way, sir.”
So back down in the elevator we went, then along more corridors and hallways, to the Library. I was so turned around by now I couldn’t have pointed to the way out if you’d put a gun to my head. I was seriously considering leaving a trail of bread-crumbs behind me, or unreeling a long thread. Or carving directional arrows in the polished woodwork. But that would have been uncouth, and I hate running out of couth in the middle of a case. So I strolled along beside Hobbes, admiring the marvellous works of art to every side and quietly hoping he wouldn’t suddenly start asking me to identify them. There still weren’t many people about, apart from the occasional uniformed servant hurrying past with their head bowed. The corridors were so quiet you could have heard a mouse fart.
“Just how big is this Hall anyway?” I said to Hobbes, as we walked and walked.
“As big as it needs to be, sir. A great man must have a great house. It’s expected of him.”
“Who lived here before the Griffins?”
“I believe the Griffin had the Hall constructed to his own designs, sir, some centuries ago. It’s my understanding he wished to make an impression…”
We came at last to the Library, and Hobbes opened the door and ushered me in. I shut the door firmly behind me, keeping Hobbes on the other side. The Library was large and old-fashioned, almost defiantly so. All four walls were nothing but shelves, packed with heavy bound books that clearly hadn’t been published anywhen recent. Comfortable chairs were scattered across the deep carpeting, and there was a single long table in the middle of the room, complete with extra reading lamps. This had to be the Griffin’s room; he came from a time when everyone who was anyone read. Many of the books on the shelves looked old enough to be seriously rare and expensive. The Griffin probably had every notable text from the past several centuries, everything from a Gutenberg Bible to an unexpurgated Necronomicon. This last in the original Arabic, of course. Probably marked with dog-eared corners, doodles in the margins, and all the best bits heavily underlined.
William and Eleanor Griffin were waiting for me, standing stiffly together to present a united front in the face of a common enemy. They didn’t strike me as the kind of people who’d spend much time in a Library by choice. Their respective spouses stood together in a far corner, observing the situation watchfully. I took my time looking the four of them over. The longer I kept them waiting, the more likely it was someone would say something they hadn’t meant to, just to break the silence.
William Griffin was tall and muscular, in that self-absorbed body-building way. He wore a black leather jacket over a white T-shirt and jeans. All of which looked utterly immaculate. Probably because he threw them out as soon as they got creased and put on new ones. He wore his blond hair close-cropped, had cold blue eyes, his father’s prominent nose, and his mother’s pouting mouth. He was doing his best to stand tall and proud, as befitted a Griffin, but his face refused to look anything but sullen and sulky. After all, his comfortable existence had been turned suddenly upside down, first by the revealing of the new will, then by his daughter’s disappearance. People of his high station resent the unexpected. Their wealth and power are supposed to protect them from such things.
Eleanor gave every impression of being made of stronger stuff. Even though she was wearing an outfit that even Madonna would have turned down as too trashy. Hooker chic, with added gaudy. She wore her long blonde hair in what were obviously artificial waves, and used heavy makeup to disguise only average features. She glared openly at me, as much irritated as angry, and chain-smoked all through the interview. She stubbed out her butts on the polished surface of the long table and ground them under foot into the priceless Persian carpet. I’ll bet she didn’t do that when her father was around.
Over in the far corner, as far away as she could get and still be in the same room, William’s wife Gloria, the ex-supermodel, was tall, thin, and so black her skin had a bluish sheen. She studied me thoughtfully with dark hooded eyes, her high-boned face showing no expression at all under her glistening bald skull. She wore a long white satin dress, to contrast with her night-dark skin. She had that intense, hungry look all professional models cultivate, and she still looked as though she could saunter successfully down any catwalk that took her fancy. Although she was standing right beside Eleanor’s husband Marcel, her body language made it clear she was only standing there because she’d been told to. I don’t think she looked at him once.
Marcel wore a good suit, but from the way it hung off him you could tell he was used to dressing more casually. Marcel was casual, in thought, word, and deed. You could tell, from the way he stood and the way he looked, and from the way he continued to look vague and shifty even when doing nothing at all. He gave the impression that he was only there under sufferance and couldn’t wait to get back to whatever it was he’d been doing. And that he didn’t care who knew it. I don’t think he looked directly at me once. He was handsome enough, in a weak and unfinished sort of way and, like Gloria, remained silent because he’d been told to.
I looked from Walker to Eleanor and back again, letting the tension build. I was in no hurry.
I knew all about the Griffin children and their many marriages. Everyone in the Nightside did. The gossip magazines couldn’t get enough of them and their various doings. I have been known to read the tabloids, on occasion, because they make the perfect light reading on long stakeouts. Because they don’t take up too much of my attention, and you can hide behind them when necessary. Which means I end up knowing a hell of a lot about people who otherwise wouldn’t interest me in the slightest. I knew, for example, that Gloria was William’s seventh wife, and that Marcel was Eleanor’s fourth husband. And that all Griffin spouses were immortal, too, but only as long as they remained married to a Griffin.
In fairness, Gloria and Marcel had lasted longer than most.
“I know you,” William said to me finally, trying to sound tough and aggressive but not quite pulling it off. (Though it was probably good enough for most of the people he had to deal with.) “John Taylor, the Nightside’s premiere private eye…Just another damned snoop, searching through the garbage of other people’s lives. Muckraker and troublemaker. Don’t tell him anything, Eleanor.”
“I wasn’t going to, you idiot.” Eleanor shot a glare at her brother that reduced him immediately to sulky silence again, then she turned the full force of her cold glare on me. I did my best to bear up under it. “You’re not welcome here, Mr. Taylor. None of us have anything to say to you.”
“Your father thinks otherwise,” I said calmly. “In fact, he’s paying me a hell of a lot of money to be here, and I have his personal authority to ask you any damned thing I feel like. And what Daddy wants, Daddy gets. Am I right?”
They both stared back at me defiantly. Any answers I got out of these two would not come easily or directly.
“Why are you both here?” I said, because you have to start somewhere. “I mean, in residence at the Hall as opposed to your own houses, out in the Nightside? That’s…unusual, isn’t it?”
More silence. I sighed heavily. “Am I going to have to send Hobbes off to bring your father here to spank the pair of you?”
“We’re here because of this nonsense about a new will,” said Eleanor. That was all she meant to say, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave it at that, not when she had so much spleen to vent and a ready listener at hand. “I can’t believe he’s prepared to disinherit us all, after all this time! He just can’t! And certainly not in favour of that holier-than-thou little cow, Melissa! She’s only gone missing because she knows what I’ll do to her when I get my hands on her! She’s poisoned our father’s mind against us.”
William snorted loudly. “Changing his will at this late stage? The old man’s finally going senile.”
“If only it were that simple,” said Eleanor, inhaling half her cigarette in one go. “No, he’s up to something. He’s always up to something…”
“What was Melissa’s state of mind, before she…went missing?” I said. “What did she have to say about the provisions of the new will?”
“Wouldn’t know,” William said shortly. “She wasn’t talking to me. Or Gloria. Locked herself away in her room and wouldn’t come out. Just like Paul.”
“You leave my Paul out of this!” Eleanor said immediately. “There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s just…sensitive.”
“Yeah,” William growled. “He’s sensitive, all right…”
“And what do you mean by that?” said Eleanor, rounding on her brother with the light of battle rising in her eyes.
I knew an old argument when I saw one and moved quickly to intervene. “What are you two planning to do about the new will?”
“Contest it, of course!” Eleanor snapped, turning her glare back on me. “Fight it, with every weapon at our disposal.”
“Even kidnapping?” I said.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Eleanor did her best to look down her nose at me, even though I was a few inches taller. “Daddy Dearest would have us both whipped within an inch of our lives if we so much as looked nastily at his precious grand-daughter. He’s always been soft on her. William wasn’t even allowed to chastise her as a child. If he had, she might not have grown up into such a contrary little bitch.”
“I say, steady on, Eleanor,” said William, but she talked right over him. I got the impression that happened a lot.
“Melissa hasn’t been kidnapped. She’s hiding out, hoping the storm will blow over. Well it won’t! I’ll see to that. What’s mine is mine, and no-one takes what’s mine. Especially not my sweet, smiling, treacherous niece!”
“Assume,” I said, “for the sake of argument and because I’ll hit you if you don’t, that Melissa really has been kidnapped. Who do you think might be behind it? Does your father have any serious enemies, or any recent ones who might choose to strike back at him through his grand-daughter?”