“Yes,” I said. “I know that.”
“Are you all right, Edwin?” said the Matriarch. “You sound . . . tired. Do you require assistance?”
“No,” I said. “I need to do this myself.”
I shut down the contact before she could start asking me questions I had no intention of answering. I looked at Walker, who’d finished his phone call and was looking at me patiently.
“My family can’t help,” I said.
“I can,” said Walker.
“You know how to find the Independent Agent?” I said just a bit suspiciously.
“Not as such,” said Walker. “But I can get us there. It’s always been part of my job, to be able to go where I’m needed. Of course, this will mean travelling via the Nightside. And, Eddie, if I’m going to take you there, you’re going to have to promise me that you’ll behave. Droods are forbidden access to the Nightside for good reason. Do you give me your word you won’t start anything?”
“I’ll be good,” I said. “No matter what the provocation. I can do that, to get to Alexander and Peter. But how do we get to the Nightside from here?”
“I am about to reveal one of the great secrets of the Nightside,” said Walker. “And to a Drood, of all people. What is the world coming to? . . . Anyway, here it is. Timeslips don’t just happen. Well, actually, they do. Suddenly and violently and all over the place. Bloody things are always opening up, forming temporary gateways to the past, the future, and any number of alternate Earths. Apparently it’s the result of a major design flaw in the original creation of the Nightside . . . But you don’t really think the powers that be in the Nightside—the poor bastards who think they actually run the place—would let such a thing happen without trying to take advantage of the situation? No; they found a way to tap into the basic energies involved and made the energies work for them. The Authorities didn’t just gift me with my Voice, you know; they also gave me my very own Portable Timeslip so I could come and go as I please and be wherever I need to be, whenever I need to be there. And sometimes just a little before.”
He produced a large gold pocket watch on a reinforced gold chain from his waistcoat pocket. He hefted the watch thoughtfully, and then held it out for me to see. The watch cover had an engraving of the snake Oroborus, with its tail in its mouth, surrounding an hourglass. Walker flipped open the cover, and inside there was nothing but darkness. Like a bottomless hole, falling away forever. I pulled my head back with a snap to keep from being sucked in. Walker smiled faintly.
“If you look into the abyss long enough, the abyss looks back into you. And sometimes it knows your name. I’ve been told there is someone or something trapped at the bottom of the watch, powering the Portable Timeslip. I’ve never felt inclined to pursue the matter.”
“My family has something similar,” I said, for pride’s sake. “A portable door. We’ve been using them for years.”
“Makes you wonder who had the idea first, doesn’t it?” said Walker. “And who sold what to whom? Droods may be banned from the Nightside by long tradition, but the intelligence community has always had its connections on many unofficial levels. Your portable doors operate in space and local time; my Portable Timeslip is more ambitious. The Authorities, in their various incarnations, have spent centuries studying Timeslips and slowly learning how to influence and manipulate them. Not the Authorities personally, of course; they have people to do that kind of thing for them. But this little watch can take me anywhere I need to be, and once it’s been there it never forgets. Which means the exact coordinates of Alexander King’s lair are safely tucked away in the watch’s memory core.
“Unfortunately, it’s running very low on power. It has just enough metatemporal juice left to transport both of us to a prearranged setting in the Nightside, where I can get it recharged.”
“I’ve always wanted to visit the Nightside,” I said.
“You only say that because you’ve never seen it,” said Walker.
He turned the fob on the pocket watch back and forth like a combination lock, muttering under his breath as he did so. He made one final dramatic twist of the fob, and the darkness leapt up out of the watch to form itself into a door hanging on the air before us. A simple rectangle of impenetrable darkness, a patch of night sky with absolutely no stars that could lead anywhere. Walker gestured for me to walk through. Only a few days earlier I would have refused, knowing better than to turn my back on Walker . . . but I didn’t care anymore. I wanted justice and revenge, and if I had to make a deal with the Devil to get them, then so be it. I walked into the darkness and out the other side and found myself in the dingiest, sleaziest bar I’d ever seen. Walker appeared out of nowhere to stand beside me.
“Welcome to the oldest bar in the world,” he said grandly. “Welcome to Strangefellows.”
I have to say, I was not impressed. I’d heard about Strangefellows, of course; everyone in my line of work has. It’s the place to go if you want to make things happen. Dreams can come true, in the oldest bar in the world, whether you want them to or not. Miracles can happen, and deals can be made, and if you sit at a table long enough, everyone in the world who matters will pass by. And while you’re watching all this, someone will steal your wallet, your clothes, and quite possibly your soul. Strangefellows is where heroes and villains, gods and monsters, myths and legends go . . . to sulk in corners and cry into their drinks.
I much preferred the upmarket, brightly lit, and certainly more civilised ambience of the Wulfshead Club, which might have its share of disreputable customers but always knew where to draw the line. The Wulfshead believed in security, good cheer, and basic hygiene, all of which were ostentatiously lacking here. The lighting was not so much low as suppressed, probably so you couldn’t tell what a dive the place actually was, and the air was thick with a whole bunch of different illegal forms of smoke. Just by breathing it in, my lungs were slumming. No one paid any attention to my sudden appearance; in fact I rather got the impression that the regulars were quite used to strangers dropping in unannounced. A lot of people were watching Walker carefully out of the corners of their eyes. I was about to remark on that when I spotted a number of small scuttling things in the shadows where the walls met the floor. I pointed them out to Walker, who shrugged.
“Don’t mind them,” he said easily. “They provide character. And the occasional bar snack.”
I tried not to shudder too openly as I followed Walker through the crowded tables towards the long wooden bar at the back of the room. I passed among vampires and ghouls, mummies wrapped in yards and yards of rotting gauze, a party of female horned daemons out on the pull, and even a few gods in reduced circumstances who leaned over their drinks and muttered how they used to be a contender. They all ignored me with a thoroughness I could only admire. They didn’t know Shaman Bond, and with my shirt collar pulled as far up as it would go, they couldn’t see my torc and mark me for a Drood.
None of them looked like people I’d talk to by choice, unless I was pursuing a case. I do have my standards. I’ve known my share of dubious dives in London: sleazy back-alley establishments where you have to mug the doorman to get in—or out. I’ve strolled through my share of members-only clubs where the air of decadence and debauchery is so thick you can carve your initials on it. I’ve moved among spies and traitors, rogues and villains, friends and fiends and felons . . . and none of them had ever made my hackles stand up on end the way this place did.
Strangefellows is where you go when the rest of the world has thrown you out.
A larger-than-life male personage was standing on a small stage beneath a single spotlight, providing the live entertainment. He wore battered black leathers left hanging open to show off the many scars covering his unnaturally pale torso. One of the Baron Frankenstein’s creatures. He held on to the old-fashioned mike like he thought it might escape while murdering an old Janis Joplin standard, “Take Another Piece of My Heart.”