“True.”
“Why are you standing around, Taylor?” snapped Charlotte. “Why don’t you use your gift and find the killer!”
“Because it doesn’t work that way,” I said. “I have to ask my gift a specific question to get a specific answer.”
“A question occurs to me,” said Chang. “King of Skin was not a well-liked man. He knew things, and wasn’t loath to let people know it. So, which of his many secrets was a step too far? Which one was important enough to be worth killing over, to keep it secret?”
“Good point,” I said. “But he’s been hoarding secrets for years. He always knew how far he could push things . . . Wait. Hold everything. Something’s happening to the body.”
Chang and I both knelt beside King of Skin, while Charlotte shrieked for Dave to get a close-up. King of Skin’s deeply wrinkled face was twitching, rising and falling, as though something was moving underneath it. And then, as we all watched, his entire face peeled off and dropped away, revealing another face beneath it. A second, completely different set of features. And then it aged, too, shrivelling into a mess of wrinkles, before dropping off to reveal yet another face beneath. The process went on and on, face giving way to face, skin to skin, aging and slipping away to reveal another, like those Russian dolls that nest inside one another. As each face fell to the floor, it rotted quickly, decaying and falling to dust in a matter of seconds. Skin under skin, face under face, until the process finally stopped, with a face I recognised. I’d seen it once before, on the future King of Skin, who’d been a member of my Enemies, in the terrible possible future I’d visited. And then that face aged, too, and fell in upon itself, a mask of far too many years.
“It’s stopped,” said Chang. “Do you suppose that last one was his real face? His original face?”
“I think so,” I said. “Remember what Hadleigh said to him? He said King of Skin’s power was skin deep. He knew about this.”
“You think you can get Hadleigh to talk?” said Chang.
“Probably not,” I said. “It’s his job to know things like this, but he never talks about his job. Hell, I’m not even sure exactly what his job is. Stick to the point. Is this how King of Skin became immortal, by wrapping himself in other people’s skin? Stealing their skins, their lives, their life energies, to bolster and prolong his own?”
“I have heard of such measures,” said Chang. “But I never knew . . . His name! King of Skin! He was taunting us all with his name. His own greatest secret, right there in the open for everyone to see.”
He carried on talking, but I wasn’t listening. A thought had struck me. A very personal, very selfish thought. With King of Skin dead, the group of Enemies I’d seen in that potential future couldn’t happen. Which meant . . . that future couldn’t happen. Did this mean that, finally, the Nightside was safe from the terrible destiny I’d seen? The end of the world that I was supposed to bring about? Oh please God, let it be so. I could do with one less burden to carry. I realised Chang had stopped talking and was looking at me quizzically.
“Sorry,” I said. “King of Skin’s death has many repercussions, and I’m only starting to see some of them.”
“I was wondering . . . what’s become of the murder weapon?” said Brilliant Chang. “It isn’t in the victim, or anywhere near the body.”
I got down on my hands and knees and looked back and forth underneath the buffet tables. Dust bunnies, dropped food, and what looked very like rat turds, but nothing that could have killed King of Skin. I got back to my feet, brushing dust from my knees.
“The murderer must still have it on him,” I said.
“Do you have the authority to search everyone here?” said Chang.
“I could try,” I said. “But I think that might be a step too far for most of them. They’d see it as an affront to their dignity. Some of them would rather fight a duel or defy the Authorities than be physically man-handled in front of their peers. And anyway, the murderer’s had plenty of time to dispose of the weapon by now. It could be anywhere.”
“Anywhere inside this room,” said Charlotte ap Owen, chipping in to remind us she was still there and not being left out of anything.
“Excuse me! Hello, excuse me! I’ve got an idea!”
I looked round to see Bettie Divine bouncing on her feet and waving her hand in the air excitedly, like a child in class who knows the answer.
“What have you got, Bettie?” I said patiently.
“We all saw the different faces King of Skin was hiding behind. If they are the faces of people he killed, to take their life energies for his own. well, mightn’t they have friends or family who’d want to avenge their deaths? If someone had found out King of Skin was a serial killer, that could be your motive right there!”
“Good point,” I said. “Well done. Unfortunately, all the faces have rotted away to dust. I’ll see if the CSI guy can dig out some evidence from what’s left, when he finally gets here; but I’m not hopeful.”
“I got all the faces on camera,” said Dave. “Close-ups of each, before they rotted.”
“Good man,” I said. “We can study the coverage later.”
“For a price,” Charlotte said quickly.
“Don’t push it,” I said. I looked round at the crowd of assembled immortals, and sighed deeply. No easy fixes here. I was going to have to do this the old-fashioned way, by asking a lot of people a lot of questions they didn’t want to answer and trying to sort the truth from a pack of lies.
I said as much, and Bettie grinned. “You mean, establishing alibis! Where were you when the lights went out, and all that sort of thing! Can we watch?”
“No. Chang, you keep an eye on the body and make sure no-one interferes with it. Bettie, Charlotte, Dave . . . You can interview anyone you can get to talk to you but don’t get in my way, or I’ll have you arrested for something I may or may not make up on the spur of the moment.”
“You’re going to make a fine Walker,” Chang said solemnly.
“Now you’re just being nasty,” I said.
I went off to have a private word with Razor Eddie. He was still standing in his corner, quietly observing the drama. He nodded briefly to me.
“You’re right. I’m a suspect. No secret that King of Skin and I were enemies. But he was never powerful enough to take me on, or annoying enough to be worth my time.”
“He knew something about you,” I said. “What did he mean when he asked where you got your straight razor?”
Razor Eddie looked at me for a long moment with his cold cold eyes. “He knew things. But not enough to be worth killing over. My secrets . . . remain my secrets. You know too much about me as it is, John.”
“Then how can I be sure you didn’t kill him?”
Razor Eddie smiled slowly, showing ruined grey teeth. “Because if I had killed him, I’d have been a lot more thorough. You’d have found pieces of him all over the room.”
I had to nod. I’d seen the Punk God of the Straight Razor’s handiwork before, and it was always messy. He didn’t simply kill people; he made a statement.
“Don’t go anywhere,” I said. “Please.”
“Ah well,” said Razor Eddie. “As long as you’re saying please . . .”
I left him, and went over to join Dead Boy, who was still hovering at the other end of the buffet table and still eating. He looked at me a little guiltily, put down the plate of mushroom vol-au-vents, and wiped his fingers on the front of his greatcoat.
“Sorry. Bad timing, I know. Should show respect for the dead, and all that. But I’m already dead, and I get no respect. I want to enjoy as much of this as I can before the pills wear off.”
“Where does all the food . . . No, I don’t want to know.”
“Very wise,” said Dead Boy. “Why aren’t you questioning the butler? It’s always the butler who did it, on occasions like these. You saw him when we came in, very shifty-looking fellow.”
“It’s not him,” I said patiently. “On the grounds that he was on the other side of the door when the murder occurred.”