"When you take my money, you do as I say. You

find that spoilt little cow, you drag her out of whatever mess she's got herself into this time, and you bring her home to me. Then, and only then, will you get paid. Is that clear?"

I just sat there and smiled at her, entirely unimpressed. I'd seen a lot scarier than her, in my time. And compared to what was waiting for me back in the Nightside, her anger and implied threats were nothing. Besides, I was her last chance, and both of us knew it. No-one ever comes to me first, and it had nothing to do with what I charge. I have an earned reputation for doing things my own way, for tracking down the truth whatever it takes, and to hell with whoever gets hurt in the process. Including, sometimes, my clients. They always say they want the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but few of them really mean it. Not when a little white lie can be so much more comforting. But I don't deal in lies. Which is why I've never made the kind of money that would allow me to move in Mrs. Barrett's circles. People only come to me when they've tried absolutely everything else, including prayer and fortune-tellers. There was no-one else left for Joanna Barrett to turn to. She tried to stare me down for a while, and couldn't. She seemed to find that reassuring. She rummaged in her bag again, took out a completed cheque, and tossed it onto my desk. Apparently it was time for plan B.

"Fifty thousand pounds, Mr. Taylor. There will be another cheque just like it, when this is all over."

I kept a straight face, but inside I was grinning broadly. For a hundred grand, I'd find the crew of the Marie Celeste. It almost made going back into the Nightside worthwhile. Almost.

"There is ... a condition."

I smiled. "I thought there might be."

"I'm going with you."

I sat up straight again. "No. No way. No way in Hell."

"Mr. Taylor ..."

"You don't know what you're asking ..."

"She's been gone over a month! She's never been gone this long before. Anything could have happened to her by now. I have to be there ... when you find her."

I shook my head, but I already knew I was going to lose this one. I've always been a soft touch where family is concerned. It's what comes of never having known one. Joanna still wouldn't cry, but her eyes were bright and shining, and for the first time her voice was unsteady.

"Please." She didn't look comfortable saying the word, but she said it anyway. Not for herself, but for her daughter. "I have to come with you. I have to know. I can't just sit at home any more, waiting for the phone to ring. You know the Nightside. Take me there."

We stared at each other for a while, both of us perhaps seeing a little more of the other than we were used to showing the world. And in the end I nodded, as we both knew I would. But for her sake, I tried one more time to make her see reason.

"Let me tell you about the Nightside, Joanna. They call London the Smoke, and everyone knows there's no smoke without fire. The Nightside is a square mile of narrow streets and back alleys in the centre of city, linking slums and tenements that were old when the last century was new. That's if you believe the official maps. In practice, the Nightside is much bigger than that, as though space itself has reluctantly expanded to fit in all the darkness and evil and generally strange stuff that has set up home there. There are those who say the Nightside is actually bigger than the city that surrounds it, these days. Which says something very disturbing about human nature and appetites, if you think about it. Not to mention inhuman appetites. The Nightside has always been a cosmopolitan kind of place.

"It's always night in the Nightside. It's always three o'clock in the morning, and the dawn never comes. People are always coming and going, drawn by needs that dare not speak their names, searching for pleasures and services unforgivable in the sane, daylight world. You can buy or sell anything in the Nightside, and no-one asks questions. No-one cares. There's a nightclub, where you can pay to see a fallen

angel forever burning inside a pentacle drawn in baby's blood. Or a decapitated goat's head, that can tell the future in enigmatic verses of perfect iambic pentameter. There's a room where silence is caged, and colours are forbidden, and another where a dead nun will show you her stigmata, for the right price. She didn't rise again, after all, but she'll still let you stick your fingers in the blood-caked holes, if you want.

"Everything you ever feared or dreamed of is running loose somewhere in the shifting streets of the Nightside, or waiting patiently for you in the expensive private rooms of patrons-only clubs. You can find anything in the Nightside, if it doesn't find you first. It's a sick, magical, dangerous place. You still want to go there?"

"You're lecturing me again."

"Answer the question."

"How could such a place exist, right here in the heart of London, without everyone knowing?"

"It exists because it has always existed, and it stays a secret because the powers that be, the real powers, want it that way. You could die there. I could die there, and I know my way around. Or at least, I did. I haven't been back in years. Still want to do this?"

"I'll go wherever my daughter is," Joanna said firmly. "We haven't always been... as close as I

would have liked, but I'll go into Hell itself to get her back."

I smiled at her then, and there was little humour in that smile. "You may have to, Joanna. You might very well have to."

My name is John Taylor. Everyone in the Nightside knows that name.

I'd been living an ordinary life in the ordinary world, and as a reward no-one had tried to kill me in ages. I liked being anonymous. It took the pressure off. The pressure of recognition, of expectations and destiny. And no; I don't feel like explaining any of that just yet. I hit thirty a few months ago, but found it hard to give a damn. When you've been through as much bad fortune as I have in my time, you learn not to sweat the small stuff. But even the small problems of an everyday world can mount up, and so there I was, going back again, back to the Nightside, despite

all my better judgment. I left the Nightside five years ago, fleeing imminent death and the betrayal of friends, and swore through blood-flecked lips that I'd never go back, no matter what. I should have remembered; God does so love to make a man break a promise.

God, or Someone.

I was going back to a place where everyone knew me, or thought they did. I could have been a contender, if I'd cared enough. Or perhaps I cared too much, about all the little people I'd have had to step on, to get there. To tell the truth, which I try very hard not to do in public, I never was all that ambitious. And I was never what you'd call a joiner. So I went my own way, watched my own back, and tried to live by my own definition of honour. That I screwed up so badly wasn't all my fault. I saw myself as a knight-errant... but the damsel in distress stabbed me in the back, my sword shattered on the dragon's hide, and my grail turned out to be the bottom of a whiskey bottle. I was going back, to old faces and old haunts and old hurts; and all I could do was hope it would be worth it.

There was no point in hoping not to be noticed. John Taylor is a name to conjure with, in the Night-side. Five years' exile wouldn't have changed that. Not that any of them ever knew the real me, of course. Ask about me in a dozen different places, and you'd get a dozen different answers. I've been called

a warlock and a magus, a con man and a trickster, and an honest rogue. They're all wrong, of course. I'd never let anyone get that close. I've been a hero to some, a villain to others, and pretty much everything in between. I can do a few things, beside finding people, some of them quite impressive. When I ask a question, people usually answer. I used to be a dangerous man, even for the Nightside; but that was five years ago. Before the fates broke me, on the wheel of love. I didn't know if I still had it in me to be really dangerous, but I thought so. It's like knocking someone off a bike with a baseball bat; you never really lose the knack.