"Missing, presumed dead," I said. "Last seen running through the streets with his skin ripped off, during the angel war."
Tommy shrugged. "You know the Nightside. People are always making comebacks. Just look at your good self."
"God, you people love to talk," said Eamonn 50. "I came here to fix this stupid, short-sighted version of myself, and nothing and no-one is going to stop me."
"Nothing you do here will change anything that matters," said Tommy. "Every version of you is as valid as any other. Every timetrack is just as real, and as certain. Changing or adapting this younger version won't make your existence any more or less likely. If anyone told you otherwise, they lied."
"I don't believe that," said Eamonn 60. "I can't believe that."
"You'd say anything, to try and stop us," said Eamonn 50.
Both men let fly with their wands, beams of probability magic crackling as they shot through the air. I dived out of the way, dragging Eamonn 40 along with me. Tommy ducked gracefully down behind the bar, still holding on to his drink. A change beam hit the oak bar and ricocheted harmlessly away. The bar's main furnishings and fittings were all protected by Merlin's magic. Both the new Ea-monns fired their wands furiously in all directions as I dodged back and forth across the bar, hauling Eamonn 40 along with me. A haze of change magic filled the air as the wands' beams transmuted everything they touched in arbitrary and unpredictable ways.
The vampire who'd been feeding on his bloody Mary got hit by a beam and swelled up like a tick, engorging with more and more blood as he drained Mary dry, before exploding messily and showering everyone around him with second-hand blood. The empty husk of Mary crumpled to the floor like a paper sack. Some of the newer chairs and tables fell apart as they were brushed by probability beams, reduced in a moment to their original component parts. So was one of Baron Frankenstein's creatures, as all his stitches came undone at once. Body parts rolled across the floor, while the head mouthed silent obscenities. Lightning bolts struck down out of nowhere, blackening bodies and starting fires all over. Bunches of hissing flowers blossomed from cracks in a stone wall. An old Victorian portrait began speaking in tongues. People collapsed from strokes and cerebral haemorrhages and epileptic fits. Some simply blinked out of existence, as the chances that created them were abruptly revoked.
A ghost girl was suddenly corporeal again, after years of haunting Strangefellows, and she sat at the bar crying tears of happy relief, touching everything within reach. Bottles stacked behind the bar changed shape and colour and contents. And a demon long kept imprisoned under the
floor-boards burst free from its pentacle, as its containing wards were suddenly undone. Burning with thick blue ec-toplasmic flames, it turned its horned head this way and that, cherishing centuries of hoarded frustrated rage, before lurching forward to kill everything within reach of its clawed hands. The bar's two muscular bouncers, Betty and Lucy Coltrane, jumped the demon from behind and wrestled it to the floor; but it was clear they wouldn't be able to hold it for long.
By then I'd dragged Eamonn 40 to safety behind the huge oak bar and was running through my options, which didn't take me nearly as long as I'd hoped. Alex glared at me.
"Do something, dammit! If Merlin has to manifest through me to sort out this mess, I can't speak for the safety of your client. You know Merlin's always favoured the scorched-earth policy when it comes to dealing with problems."
I nodded reluctantly. I know a few tricks, and more magic than I like to let on; but in the end it always comes down to my gift. I have a gift for finding things, a third eye in my mind, a private eye that can see where everything is, but I don't like to use it unless I have to. When I raise my gift, the sheer power involved means I blaze like a beacon in the dark, and my Enemies can see where I am. And then they send terrible agents like the Harrowing, to kill me. They've been trying to kill me for as long as I can remember.
But needs must, when the devil drives ...
Tommy leaned in beside me. "It's a paradox," he said urgently. "Just their being here, mutually exclusive futures in a time-line that couldn't possibly produce them. Use that against them."
So I reached deep inside my mind and powered up my gift, and found how unlikely it was that Eamonn 50 and Eamonn 60 should be there, in that place and in that time. And having found that tiny, precarious chance, it was the easiest thing in the world for me to blow it out like a
candle. Both men vanished in a moment, because it was impossible for them to be there.
I shut down my gift, and quickly re-established all my mental defences. My Enemies were usually wary of attacking me on Merlin's territory, but they'd been growing increasingly desperate of late. It was all very quiet in the bar. Patrons slowly emerged from their hiding places, looking around rather confusedly. Since the two older Eamonns had never been there, the attack had never happened, but all the changes enforced by the probability wands remained. Magic trumps logic every time. We all took turns kicking the crap out of the released demon, until Alex reactivated the old spell that put it back under the floor-boards again, then we set about extinguishing the various fires that were still burning. Betty and Lucy Coltrarie gathered up all the scattered parts of the Frankenstein creation and stacked them behind the bar, until one of the Baron's descendants should drop in for a drink again.
All in all, we'd got off pretty lightly. Playing around with probability magic is always dangerous. Time doesn't like being messed around with, and it plays dirty. That's why Time travel is so very carefully regulated.
Alex looked at what had been done to all the bottles behind his bar and tugged bitterly at tufts of his hair. "Those bastards! I'm going to have to check every bottle individually to find out what's in them now. Could be anything from demon's urine to designer water. And I could probably sell demon's urine ... You're a jinx, Taylor, you know that? If I had any sense, I'd have shot you on sight the moment you walked in."
Eamonn looked at me worriedly, but I smiled at him reassuringly. "Don't worry; that's just Alex being Alex. He doesn't really mean it."
"Yes I bloody do!"
"All right, he probably does really mean it, but he'll get over it. He's a friend."
"Then I'd hate to meet one of your enemies," muttered Eamonn.
"I think some of you already have," I said. "I think someone's using you, in all your many versions, to get at me."
"But why use me?" said Eamonn plaintively.
"Good question," I said.
I led him over to a table in the furthest corner of the bar, and we sat down. Tommy Oblivion sat down with us. I gave him a thoughtful look, and he laughed a little nervously.
"We did seem to work rather well together, old man. I thought perhaps I could help you out on this case of yours. It does seem to be my sort of thing. For a reasonable percentage of the fee, of course."
"Oh, of course," I said. "This is business, after all. Tell you what; you can have half of what I'm getting. How's that?"
"More than reasonable, my dear sir! Never let it be said that John Taylor is not a prince among men!"
Since I wasn't expecting to make a penny out of this case, I was quite happy to share the penny I wasn't getting with Tommy Oblivion. I could be existential, too, when it suited me. He smiled happily at me, and I smiled back.
"Look, is it over now?" said Eamonn. "Can I go home now? I really don't like it here."
"I'm afraid not," I said. "I could escort you safely out of the Nightside, but the odds are our mutual enemy would find some way to bring you back and start this up all over again."
"Oh God ..." Eamonn sat slumped in his chair, a small ordinary man struggling to cope with problems he should never have had to face. I felt sorry for him. The Nightside is hard enough to deal with when you choose to come here.