Simon R. Green - Nightside 4 - Hex in the City

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Nightside 4

Hex In The City

by Simon R. Green

The Psychenauts

You can find anything in the Nightside, from the sacred to the

profane and back again, but I don't recommend attending the

auctions there unless you've got a strong stomach and nerves of

steel. I don't normally go to auctions any more, even though most

people are afraid to bid against me. I always end up saddled with a

crateful of junk, just to get the one thing I do want. One time I

accidentally acquired a Pookah, and for a few months I was

followed around the Nightside by a Playboy Bunny Girl invisible to

everyone except me. Fun, but distracting.

However, when you work as a private investigator in the Nightside,

that hidden magical heart of London, where gods and monsters walk

side by side, and sometimes attend the same self-help groups, some

cases almost in evitably lead you to the most unpleasant places. The

head auctioneer of the Night side's Great Auction Hall hired me to

stand watch over one particularly contentious auction, to keep the

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bidders in line. It sounded straight forward enough, which should

have been a warning. Nothing's ever straight forward in my life.

I turned up nice and early, so I could look the place over. It had

been several years since I was last there, and in between I'd left the

Nightside on the run, with a bullet in my back, and reluctantly

returned to stage a semi-triumphant comeback. The doorman at the

Hall took one look at me and didn't want to let me in, but I gave him

my name, and he turned satisfyingly pale and stepped back to wave

me in. A good, or rather bad, reputation will get you into places that

a battalion of troops wouldn't.

The head auctioneer stopped pacing nervously up and down and

came striding across the great empty Hall to greet me. She grudged

me a brief smile and crushed my hand in an over-firm handshake.

Lucretia Grave was a short, sturdy woman in an old-fashioned

tweedy outfit, surmounted by a monocle screwed firmly into one

dark, beady eye. She appeared to be in her early fifties, with a brutal

bulldog face and grey hair scraped back into a really severe bun on

the back of her head. She looked like she could punch her weight.

She glared at me like it was all my fault, and got stuck right in.

"About time you got here, Taylor, old thing. I haven't felt safe in me

own Hall since the damned thing arrived. I've had piles that gave me

less problems. I know we say we'll auction anything you can find,

capture, or manhandle through the doors, but some things are just

more trouble than they're worth. I wouldn't have anything to do with

the bloody thing, if I wasn't on commission. I've been playing the

doggies again, you know how it is. Rotten animals only have to hear

I've put good money on them and they immediately develop back

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problems and heart conditions. Still, you mark my words, old thing;

this particular item is going to go for serious money." She scowled

unhappily and sniffed loudly. "It's days like this I wish I was back at

me old job, at Christie's. I'd go back in a second if only I could be

sure the police weren't still looking for me."

I was about to ask, politely but very firmly, what the hell we were

talking about, when we were interrupted by a whole bunch of six-

foot-tall teddy bears, carrying in the various items up for auction

that session. The bears swept straight past us, carrying the items

carefully in their soft, padded arms, talking in low, growly voices.

The bears all looked like they'd seen a lot of rough handling, and as

they passed Lucretia Grave a few muttered loudly about the need to

get unionised. They set out each object in its own glass display case,

treating every item with great care and respect.

"I'd better check everything's where it's supposed to be," Grave said

heavily. "They all mean well, but they're bears of very little brain.

Typical bloody management, trying to save money again. You have

a look around, old thing, get the feel of the place, don't touch

anything."

And off she strode, like a tug-boat under full steam, to hector the

bears. I let her go. It was either that or throw her to the floor, tie her

up, and sit on her till I got some useful answers out of her; and I

couldn't be bothered. I looked around. The Great Auction Hall had

started out life as a thirteenth-century tithe barn, and had changed

remarkably little down the years. The walls were a creamy grey

stone, in large close-fitting blocks held together by artistry and

tradition rather than mortar, rising up to soaring wooden rafters that

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came together in a complex latticework half-hidden in shadows.

There were only slit windows in the walls, and the floor was

unpolished wood, covered in sawdust. Fluorescent rods provided

almost painfully bright light. There were no comforts or luxuries,

but then, people didn't come here to admire the scenery. The Great

Auction Hall was a place of serious business.

I walked past the rows of cheap wooden folding seats, set up to face

the no-frills auctioneer's stand, and looked over the various items in

their display cases. It was the usual mixture, the famous and the

infamous, of dubious value and debatable provenance. You could

buy anything in the Nightside, whatever your interests or pleasure,

but no-one guaranteed it was necessarily what it seemed to be. You

could get lucky, or you could get dead, with precious little room in

between. And just because you owned a thing, it didn't mean you

could always hang on to it...

The first item was a heavy thigh-bone, identified as the weapon

with which Cain slew Abel. There was a letter of confirmation from

the ancient city of Enoch, but you took such things with a pinch of

salt in the Nightside. Next in line were three different Maltese

Falcons (buyer beware), a cast-brass head of JFK that supposedly

spoke prophecy, Nostradamus's quill pen, one of Baron

Frankenstein's scalpels, a small lacquered wooden box that claimed

it held the ashes of Joan of Arc, and a Yeti's-foot umbrella stand.

The rest was just junk and tat, stuff only a collector could love.

Certainly nothing I'd give house-room.

I've never believed in acquiring objects of power. They always let

you down. Either the batteries run out at the worst possible moment,

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or you go blank on the activating word; and you can never find the

instruction manual when you need it. More trouble than they're

worth. And far too many of them turn out to be just bits and pieces

that have hung around long enough to acquire a reputation. Not

unlike me, I suppose.

I paused to study myself in a tall standing mirror in an ornate silver

frame. (It was labelled The Mirror of Dorian Gray; make of that

what you will.) The reflection didn't look anything special; though I

supposed I did at least look like a private eye. Tall, dark, and

interesting-looking, wrapped in a long white trench coat that hadn't

seen a laundry anywhen recent. A bit tired and battered round the

edges, maybe, but that's life in the Nightside for you. I tend to get

the cases no-one else wants, the kind other investigators have the

good sense to turn down, and I like it that way. I have a gift for

finding things, whether they want to be found or not, a hunger for

the truth, and a stubborn streak that keeps me in the game long after

anyone with any sense would have legged it for the horizon.

My father drank himself to death, after finding out my mother

wasn't human. No-one knows who or what my mother really was,

but everyone in the Nightside's got an opinion. There are those who

treat me like the Antichrist, and others who see me as a King in

waiting. And, an unknown group of enemies have been sending

agents to kill me ever since I was a small child.

I try not to let it go to my head.

Lucretia Grave came stomping back to join me. She was wearing

the monocle in the other eye now. I wondered whether I was

supposed to say something, but decided not to. Some conversations

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Simon R. Green - Nightside 4 - Hex in the City

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