“You’ve no memory at all of being killed?” Maggie said finally.
“No. I’m dead, but not yet departed. Murdered, but still walking around. Which puts me very much in your old territory, oh mistress of the mystic arts.”
“Oh please! So I used to know a little voodoo . . . Practically everyone in my family does. Where we come from, it’s no big thing. And I was never involved in anything like this . . . ”
“Can you help me, or not?”
She scowled. “All right. Let me run a few diagnostics on you.”
“Are we going to have to send out for a chicken?”
“Be quiet, heathen.”
She ran through a series of chants in Old French, lit up some incense, then took off all her clothes and danced around the room for a while. I’d probably have enjoyed it if I hadn’t been dead. The room grew darker, and there was a sense of unseen eyes watching. Shadows moved slowly across the walls, deep disturbing shapes, though there was nothing in the room to cast them. And then Maggie stopped dancing, and stood facing me, breathing hard, sweat running down her bare body.
“Did you feel anything then?” she said.
“No. Was I supposed to?”
Maggie shrugged briefly and put her clothes back on in a businesslike way. The shadows and the sense of being watched were gone.
“You’ve been dead for three days,” said Maggie. “Someone killed you, then held your spirit in your dead body. There’s a rider spell attached, to give you the appearance of normality, but inside you’re already rotting. Hence the maggots.”
“Can you undo the spell?” I said.
“Larry, you’re dead. The dead can be made to walk, but no one can bring them all the way back, not even in the Nightside. Whatever we decide to do, your story’s over, Larry.”
I thought about that for a while. I always thought I would have achieved more, before the end. All the things I meant to do, and kept putting off, because I was young and imagined I had all the time in the world. Larry Oblivion, who always dreamed of something better, but never had the guts to go after it. One ex-wife, one ex-lover, no kids, no legacy. No point and no purpose.
“When all else fails,” I said finally, “there’s always revenge. I need to find out who killed me and why, while I still can. While there’s still enough of me left to savor it.”
“Any ideas who it might have been?” said Maggie. “Anyone new you might have upset recently?”
I thought hard. “Prometheus Inc. weren’t at all happy over my handling of their poltergeist saboteur. Count Entropy didn’t like what I found out about his son, even though he paid me to dig it up. Big Max always said he’d put me in the ground someday . . . ”
“Max,” Maggie said immediately. “Has to be Max. You’ve been rivals for years, hurt his business and made him look a fool, more than once. He must have decided to put an end to the competition.”
“Why would he want to keep me around after killing me?”
“To gloat! He hated your guts, Larry; it has to be him!”
I thought about it. I’d rubbed Max’s nose in it before, and all he ever did was talk. Maybe . . . he’d got tired of talking.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s go see the big man and ask him a few pointed questions.”
“He’s got a lot of protection,” said Maggie. “Not at all an easy man to get to see.”
“Do I look like I care? Are you in or not?”
“Of course I’m in! I’m just pointing out that Big Max is known for surrounding himself with heavy-duty firepower.”
I smiled. “Baby, I’m dead. How are they going to stop me?”
We went out into the streets, and walked through the Nightside. The rain had stopped, and the air was sharp with new possibilities. Hot neon blazed on every side, advertising the kinds of love that might not have names, but certainly have prices. Heavy bass lines surged out of open club doors, reverberating in the ground and in my bones. All kinds of people swept past us, intent on their own business. Only some of them were human. Traffic roared constantly up and down the road, and everyone was careful to give it plenty of room. Not everything that looked like a car was a car, and some of them were hungry. In the Nightside, taxis can run on deconsecrated altar wine, and motorcycle messengers snort powdered virgin’s blood for that extra kick.
Max’s place wasn’t far. He holed up in an upmarket cocktail bar called the Spider’s Web. Word is he used to work there once. And that he had his old boss killed when he took it over, then had the man stuffed and mounted and put on display. Max never left the place anymore, and held court there from behind more layers of protection than some presidents can boast. The big man had a lot of enemies, and he gloried in it.
Along the way I kept getting quick flashes of déjà vu. Brief glimpses of my dream of running through the rain. Except I was pretty sure by now that it wasn’t a dream but a memory. I could feel the desperation as I ran, pursued by something without a face.
The only entrance to the Spider’s Web was covered by two large gentlemen with shoulder holsters, and several layers of defensive magics. I knew about the magics because a client had once hired me to find out exactly what Max was using. Come to think of it, no one had seen that client for some time. I murmured to Maggie to hang on to my arm, then drew my wand and activated it. It shone with a brilliant light, too bright to look at, and all around us the world seemed to slow down, and become flat and unreal. The roar of the traffic shut off, and the neon stopped flickering. Maggie and I were outside Time. We walked between the two bodyguards, and they didn’t even see us. I could feel the defensive magics straining, reaching out, unable to touch us.
We walked on through the club, threading our way through the frozen crowds. Deeper and deeper, into the lair of the beast. There were things going on that sickened even me, but I didn’t have the time to stop and do anything. I only had one shot at this. Maggie held my arm tightly. It would probably have hurt if I’d still been alive.
“Well,” she said, trying for a light tone and not even coming close. “A genuine wand of the Faerie. That explains a lot of things.”
“It always helps to have an unsuspected edge.”
“You could have told me. I am your partner.”
“You can never tell who’s listening, in the Nightside.” I probably would have told her, if she hadn’t ended our affair. “But I think I’m past the point of needing secrets anymore.”
We found the big man sitting behind a desk in a surprisingly modest inner office. He was playing solitaire with tarot cards, and cheating. Thick mats of ivy crawled across the walls, and the floor was covered with cabalistic symbols. I closed the door behind us so we wouldn’t be interrupted, and shut down the wand. Max looked up sharply as we appeared suddenly in front of him. His right hand reached for something, but Maggie already had her silver magnum derringer out and covering him. Max shrugged, sat back in his chair, and studied us curiously.
Max Maxwell, so big they named him twice. A giant of a man, huge and lowering even behind his oversized mahogany desk. Eight feet tall and impressively broad across the shoulders, with a harsh and craggy face, he looked like he was carved out of stone. A gargoyle in a Savile Row suit. Max traded in secrets, and stayed in business because he knew something about everyone. Or at least, everyone who mattered. Even if he hadn’t killed me, there was a damned good chance he knew who had.