Everyone seemed to be getting on well enough, chatting politely and even pleasantly with one another. Drinking fine wines and comparing party nibbles, acquired absently from waiters and waitresses carrying them around on silver platters. The waiters looked like butlers, and the waitresses looked like French maids.
The Ball boasted a wide and varied selection of Very Important Personages, who would have been at each other’s throats anywhere else. But they all came together companionably enough to discuss the one thing they had in common. Their memories of the Lady Faire.
Music came from a small orchestra on a raised stage at the far end of the Ballroom. Fronted by a French singing sensation so famous even I’d heard of her-the inimitable Rossignol. She was singing some obscure French torch song, leaning heavily on the vowels and hitting the r sounds for all they were worth when I entered. But she broke off abruptly as a member of the hotel staff hurried onto the raised stage and murmured in her ear. She had a quick conference with the musicians, and then they launched into the old Petula Clark hit “Downtown.” Followed by “Always Something There to Remind Me.” Either it was Sixties Night at the Winter Palace or these were some of the Lady Faire’s favourites. Nothing comforts an old soul like the popular music of one’s youth. I knew the songs because Uncle Jack was always playing Sixties compilations in the Armoury.
I moved off to one side and put my back to a wall, the better to observe the guests. Some of them I knew immediately, because they knew me. As Shaman Bond, or Eddie Drood, or both.
Dead Boy was there, of course, imposing his appalling personality on anyone foolish enough to come within reach and not run away fast enough. He lurked beside a much-depleted buffet table, standing tall and Byronically dissolute in his deep purple greatcoat, with the usual black rose at the lapel. He always left the greatcoat hanging open at the front, so he could show off his autopsy scar. Apparently he saw it as a conversation piece.
For a returned soul possessing his own dead body, Dead Boy was a cheerful enough sort. And for a quite definitely deceased person, he was putting away a hell of a lot of party food, stuffing his mouth with one hand, and stuffing his coat pockets with the other, for later. A waitress passed by, bearing a tray of champagne glasses. Dead Boy took the tray away from her and drank the lot, one glass at a time.
Not far enough away, the Vodyanoi Brothers were putting on their usual obnoxious show. Two very large Russian gentlemen, in matching expensive black leather jackets and trousers, with shaven heads and nasty grins. Kicked out of the Moscow Mafiosi, for crimes far too unpleasant to discuss in civilised company, they travelled the world, hiring themselves out as shock troops and enforcers. They were werewolves, and complete arseholes. People stared at them in open disgust and repulsion, as the Vodyanoi Brothers did their best to command everyone’s attention.
“Greetings, everybody!” said Gregor, the older brother. “We are being Vodyanoi Brothers! Pirates and adventurers, and very dangerous people! Oh yes! Show them how dangerous, Sergei!”
The younger Vodyanoi Brother turned abruptly into a huge humanoid wolf, with silver grey fur and massive muscles bulging under his thick pelt. Guests fell back, coughing at the sudden rank, musky scent on the air. The wolf grinned widely, the better to show off his vicious yellow fangs.
“Highly dangerous, I think you will agree!” said Gregor, smiling a smile with no humour in it at all.
None of the other guests seemed particularly impressed. It took more than a simple shape-change to impress someone who’d slept with a ladything. Most of the guests’ expressions suggested that the Lady Faire must really have been slumming it when she lowered herself to sleep with those two. Or at the very least, in the mood for some seriously rough trade. Sergei noticed that being a really big wolf just wasn’t cutting it, and so he shrank back to human shape again. He glared sullenly about him, and then spotted Dead Boy.
He strode right up to Dead Boy, and started to say something aggressive, only to break off as Dead Boy grabbed him by the throat with one pale hand, pulled him close till they were face-to-face, and then bit off Sergei’s nose. The werewolf howled, struggled free of Dead Boy’s grip, and fell back several steps, both hands clasped over the part of his face where his nose used to be. Blood pumped thickly between his fingers. Dead Boy chewed carefully, considering the taste, and then smiled slowly. Sergei regarded him with wide eyes, and then lowered his hands to reveal a regrown nose. Dead Boy looked at him thoughtfully, and Sergei ran back to his big brother. Gregor growled at Dead Boy, who smiled happily back.
“I love Russian food!” he said loudly.
The Vodyanoi Brothers huddled together, and then fell back, disappearing into the crowd. Dead Boy picked something out of his teeth. I didn’t stay to see what. I moved on before he could spot me.
Jimmy Thunder, God for Hire, was trying to impress an elven princess with the size of his hammer, Mjolnir, and getting nowhere. Jimmy was a genuine descendent of the old Norse Gods, at a great many removes and on the wrong side of many blankets. A huge figure, with a great mane and beard of fiery red hair, he had a voice so low it seemed to rumble up from somewhere deep in his chest. He wore much-used biker leathers, with gleaming steel studs and hanging chains, and heavy boots with steel toe-caps. He had a chest like a barrel, and shoulders so broad he often had to turn sideways to get through a door. The elven princess turned up her nose at him and stalked away, and Jimmy fastened Mjolnir back on his belt. Just as well. The hammer had been a famous weapon in its day, but it was well past its prime now, and getting senile. Word was, Jimmy never threw the hammer any more, because he couldn’t be sure it would remember who it was supposed to come back to.
Jimmy Thunder was a private investigator, bounty hunter, and supernatural bail bondsman. When he felt like it.
And then there was the original Bride of Frankenstein, along with her current paramour, the latest incarnation of the Springheel Jack meme. The Bride was seven feet tall if she was an inch, and very well-fleshed. The Baron had to make his earliest creations somewhat oversized, to be sure of getting all the bits in. Her face was pale and taut, as if stretched by too much surgery, though I knew for a fact she’d never let anyone touch her with a scalpel since her creation. She had huge black eyes that didn’t blink nearly often enough, a prominent nose, and lips the colour of dried blood. She was striking rather than pretty, but quite definitely attractive, in a spooky and downright disturbing way. She wore her long black hair piled up in a beehive tall enough to put Amy Winehouse to shame, and she wasn’t bothering to dye out the long white streaks any more. Or using makeup to cover the heavy stitch marks at her throat and wrists. She wore a flouncy powder blue blouse, cut deep at the front to show off her magnificent cleavage, over navy blue slacks tucked into thigh-length riding boots with heavy silver spurs.
Up close, I knew she would smell of attar of roses and formaldehyde.
Springheel Jack stuck close at her side, bestowing cold, considering looks on anyone he thought was getting too near. He was tall and slim, cool and calm, and handsome enough in a sinister sort of way. Dark and dignified, he wore the traditional black opera cape, flowing about him like folded bat wings, and an old-fashioned top hat. The look came with his inheritance of the old Springheel Jack meme, the deadly assassin of Old London Town, who predated Jack the Ripper by some fifty years. Springheel Jack was a terrible idea given shape and form, jumping from one generation to another in the same cursed family. Cold blue eyes met mine, briefly, and they were old, old eyes. It was the burden of his inheritance that he carried in his head all the experiences of his many predecessors. I couldn’t see any sign of the long cut-throat razors that were the other part of his inheritance, but I had no doubt they were about his person somewhere, security checks be damned.