But still the tourists and the punters streamed this way and that, with eyes bigger than their wallets, on the prod and on the prowl, desperate to give away everything they had for everything on offer that was bad for them. The street was alive with noise and bustle and something very like glamour. Candy-coloured neon signs blazed like beacons, and everywhere you looked there was every kind of come-on. The damned leading the damned; the Nightside doing what it did best.
I stopped half-way along the street, trying to remember exactly where I saw Tommy Oblivion go down; first under a falling wall, then under the clawing hands of a maddened crowd. I always assumed he died here because I saw so many others die that day. Like Sister Morphine, the angel of the homeless. She'd died right in front of me, and there was nothing I could do to help her. There was a war on. I couldn't save everyone. I could still remember the bodies, piled up like refuse, while blood ran so thickly in the gutters it overflowed the storm drains. I could still hear the screams and pleas from the wounded and the dying… still see the mobs running wild, driven out of their minds by shock and horror, tearing apart everyone in their path. So many dead, and no memorial for any of them. Not even a plaque on a wall.
Because the Nightside doesn't look back.
I finally caught up with Larry Oblivion at the end of the street. He was standing in front of what had been one of the new business establishments, but was now just a smoking ruin, with broken, blackened walls surrounding a great pit in the earth. A sputtering neon sign had been driven half its length into the ground, like a Technicolor spike. A crowd of interested onlookers was carefully maintaining a discreet distance between them and the blast zone. Or possibly, between them and the heavily scowling Larry Oblivion. They were all cheerfully debating what had happened, how it had happened, why it had happened; and swapping theories on who might be next. Then they saw me approaching and went suddenly quiet. Not so much because they were impressed as because they didn't want to miss out on anything. Everyone knew about Larry and me. The Nightside does so love to gossip. I made a point of giving Larry my most friendly smile as I joined him, to spite everyone.
"Hadleigh's already been here," Larry said bluntly. "I've been talking to people. He scared the crap out of everybody and blew this place up just by looking at it. Typical Hadleigh. At least he only killed a bunch of bad guys this time, and no innocent bystanders. That's something."
"Does he do that, sometimes?" I said. "Kill innocent bystanders?"
"Who knows what he does, these days."
"Why single out this place?" I said, looking interestedly around the still-smoking ruins.
"He disapproved," said Larry.
"And what business was it of his?" said an angry voice from the crowd.
Larry and I took our time turning round to look. We didn't want to be thought of as the kind who could be hurried by an angry voice. I spotted the speaker immediately. I knew Augustus Grimm of old, always ready to appoint himself the spokesman for any aggrieved gathering, whip it into violence, then fade quietly into the background once the whole thing kicked off. A defrocked heretic accountant, Grimm had learned just enough mathemagics to be a nuisance, if not actually dangerous, and had been thrown out of the Accountants' Guild for unethical use of imaginary numbers. (Apparently Grimm could make certain numbers imagine they were in his client's bank accounts rather than where they were supposed to be. The Guild shut him down fast; no-one messes with business in the Nightside.)
"Shut up, Augustus," I said kindly. "Or I will come over there and kick the fractions out of you."
Larry and I waited politely, but Grimm didn't want to meet either of our eyes. We made a point of turning our backs on him.
"Hadleigh objected to the very existence of this place," said Larry. "Turnabout Inc. could swap a mind from one body to another, for the right price. An old man could live on in a young man's body as long as he kept up the payments. Do as much damage to the young body as he liked because he could always move on to another and walk away unconnected from all the evils he'd done. A very popular business; so popular, Turnabout had run out of paid volunteers and taken to snatching kids right off the street."
I nodded slowly. This was the third case of mind-swapping I'd heard about today. Was someone trying to tell me something? Or warn me about something?
"Hadleigh blasted the whole building into kindling with just a glance," said Larry. "Killed the owners and the staff, and all the customers who happened to be there. A handful of the possessed staggered out of the ruins, entirely unarmed, and back in their own bodies again. Not all of them were grateful. A few had gone in with their eyes open because they needed the money. When you've sold off everything you own to pay your debts, all you have left to sell is your body, one way or another. Hadleigh had nothing to say to them. It seems the Detective Inspectre is only interested in crime, not its victims."
The crowd was getting noisy. I looked back, and there was Augustus Grimm, with his pinched, vindictive face, whipping up grievances, pointing the finger at Larry and me. The crowd seemed bigger than before, full of angry faces and raised voices. A slow, cold anger moved through me as I remembered the maddened faces that had killed Sister Morphine, and maybe Tommy as well. No matter where you are in the Nightside, you're never far from an angry mob, eager to get their hands bloody for any good reason or none. Just for the thrill of it. It's in the nature of the Nightside to bring out the worst in us. It's what we come here for.
"You think I don't know you, dead man?" Grimm shouted at Larry. "You're his brother! Which makes you as guilty as him! Who are you, to judge us? To take our fun away? You'll pay for what he did!"
He gestured grandly with one hand, and a long, glowing blade manifested in his grip. I suppose it's only a short step from imaginary numbers to imaginary weapons. There was no substance to the blade he held; it was the concept of a sword. But that only made it stronger and sharper. The crowd growled its approval. Larry stepped forward to address them, and Grimm cut at him with his imaginary sword. The glowing edge sliced clean through Larry's jacket and shirt, and opened up a long thin cut in the grey flesh beneath. There was no blood, of course.
Larry looked down, then back at Grimm. "That was my best suit, you little turd!"
He whipped out his magic wand, and just like that Time slammed to a halt. Every sound was cut off; everyone stood still; everything was struck motionless. The very atmosphere seemed to hang in the balance, caught between one moment and the next. Even the impaled neon sign was caught in mid flicker. Larry put his wand away, then moved swiftly through the crowd, beating the crap out of every last one of them. His unfeeling dead hands rose and fell, dispensing brutal punishments. He punched heads and chests and sides, and the sound of breaking bone was crisp and sharp on the enforced quiet. No blood flowed-not yet. And no matter how hard he hit them, none of the bodies stirred or reacted, or even rocked in place.
I saw it all and heard it all, because even though I was frozen in place like everyone else… I could still think and observe. Perhaps my special gift protected me from the wand's magic, or maybe my unnatural bloodline. Like it or not, I am still my mother's son. Either way, I decided to keep this to myself. Larry didn't need to know.