Simon Green - Property of a Lady Faire

“Highly dangerous, I think you will agree!” said Gregor, smiling a smile with no humour in it at all.

None of the other guests seemed particularly impressed. It took more than a simple shape-change to impress someone who’d slept with a ladything. Most of the guests’ expressions suggested that the Lady Faire must really have been slumming it when she lowered herself to sleep with those two. Or at the very least, in the mood for some seriously rough trade. Sergei noticed that being a really big wolf just wasn’t cutting it, and so he shrank back to human shape again. He glared sullenly about him, and then spotted Dead Boy.

He strode right up to Dead Boy, and started to say something aggressive, only to break off as Dead Boy grabbed him by the throat with one pale hand, pulled him close till they were face-to-face, and then bit off Sergei’s nose. The werewolf howled, struggled free of Dead Boy’s grip, and fell back several steps, both hands clasped over the part of his face where his nose used to be. Blood pumped thickly between his fingers. Dead Boy chewed carefully, considering the taste, and then smiled slowly. Sergei regarded him with wide eyes, and then lowered his hands to reveal a regrown nose. Dead Boy looked at him thoughtfully, and Sergei ran back to his big brother. Gregor growled at Dead Boy, who smiled happily back.

“I love Russian food!” he said loudly.

The Vodyanoi Brothers huddled together, and then fell back, disappearing into the crowd. Dead Boy picked something out of his teeth. I didn’t stay to see what. I moved on before he could spot me.

Jimmy Thunder, God for Hire, was trying to impress an elven princess with the size of his hammer, Mjolnir, and getting nowhere. Jimmy was a genuine descendent of the old Norse Gods, at a great many removes and on the wrong side of many blankets. A huge figure, with a great mane and beard of fiery red hair, he had a voice so low it seemed to rumble up from somewhere deep in his chest. He wore much-used biker leathers, with gleaming steel studs and hanging chains, and heavy boots with steel toe-caps. He had a chest like a barrel, and shoulders so broad he often had to turn sideways to get through a door. The elven princess turned up her nose at him and stalked away, and Jimmy fastened Mjolnir back on his belt. Just as well. The hammer had been a famous weapon in its day, but it was well past its prime now, and getting senile. Word was, Jimmy never threw the hammer any more, because he couldn’t be sure it would remember who it was supposed to come back to.

Jimmy Thunder was a private investigator, bounty hunter, and supernatural bail bondsman. When he felt like it.

And then there was the original Bride of Frankenstein, along with her current paramour, the latest incarnation of the Springheel Jack meme. The Bride was seven feet tall if she was an inch, and very well-fleshed. The Baron had to make his earliest creations somewhat oversized, to be sure of getting all the bits in. Her face was pale and taut, as if stretched by too much surgery, though I knew for a fact she’d never let anyone touch her with a scalpel since her creation. She had huge black eyes that didn’t blink nearly often enough, a prominent nose, and lips the colour of dried blood. She was striking rather than pretty, but quite definitely attractive, in a spooky and downright disturbing way. She wore her long black hair piled up in a beehive tall enough to put Amy Winehouse to shame, and she wasn’t bothering to dye out the long white streaks any more. Or using makeup to cover the heavy stitch marks at her throat and wrists. She wore a flouncy powder blue blouse, cut deep at the front to show off her magnificent cleavage, over navy blue slacks tucked into thigh-length riding boots with heavy silver spurs.

Up close, I knew she would smell of attar of roses and formaldehyde.

Springheel Jack stuck close at her side, bestowing cold, considering looks on anyone he thought was getting too near. He was tall and slim, cool and calm, and handsome enough in a sinister sort of way. Dark and dignified, he wore the traditional black opera cape, flowing about him like folded bat wings, and an old-fashioned top hat. The look came with his inheritance of the old Springheel Jack meme, the deadly assassin of Old London Town, who predated Jack the Ripper by some fifty years. Springheel Jack was a terrible idea given shape and form, jumping from one generation to another in the same cursed family. Cold blue eyes met mine, briefly, and they were old, old eyes. It was the burden of his inheritance that he carried in his head all the experiences of his many predecessors. I couldn’t see any sign of the long cut-throat razors that were the other part of his inheritance, but I had no doubt they were about his person somewhere, security checks be damned.

There were other guests I knew well, if only by reputation. The Replicated Meme of Saint Sebastian were swanning around in all their usual arrogant display. Six versions of the same personality, dwelling in six different bodies. Supposedly some kind of soul-share deal, one person inhabiting an endless series of bodies, co-opting new ones as the old ones wore out. They were all dressed in the same smart grey business suit, complete with the same Old School Tie. Their faces were hidden behind identical thinly beaten steel masks. Again, I was reminded unpleasantly of the masked blood-red men, but it was clear these were all very different body shapes. I watched them for a while, unobtrusively. There was something familiar about them . . . Even though I knew for a fact I’d never encountered the Replicated Meme of Saint Sebastian before.

According to the family files, they’d worked for us on occasion. Co-opting people we didn’t want around any longer.

The Living Shroud was just a long, grubby winding sheet, of the kind used to wrap the dead before they went into the grave. The usual cerements of the dead, thick with dust and cobwebs, except there didn’t seem to be anyone inside them. Certainly nothing I could see, and there aren’t many things that can hide from me. But something was giving the Shroud its human shape as it drifted slowly through the crowd. Apparently entirely unmoved by, or uninterested in, the other guests.

The Living Shroud made a living, if that’s the correct term, by haunting people for hire. Apparently you paid the Living Shroud to stalk people, at increasingly close quarters, until they gave up and paid what they owed. The current record for surviving the Living Shroud’s presence was seventeen hours. I had to wonder, if the Living Shroud really didn’t have a body, how could it be one of the Lady Faire’s ex-lovers? Maybe she knew it before it became . . . whatever it was now.

Next up on my radar was the Lady Alice Underground. Everyone had heard of her. An elderly but not in any way frail dowager dressed in dull black Victorian mourning clothes, the Lady Alice was an explorer of the Underverse. Those spatial dimensions that exist beneath our own, populated exclusively by symbols and icons and archetypes. Her face was a mass of wrinkles, her thin grey hair pulled back in a tight bun, but her eyes were sharp and fey and wild, almost feral. She had the look of someone who’d spent too much time among things and people that weren’t really people or things. The Lady Alice Underground was the last of the old school adventurers, the ones who went forth in a spirit of conquest.

And then there was the Last of Leng. Everyone had heard of that cruel and awful people, living in their ancient city on the Plateau of Leng. A vicious people, feared by all. Black Heir destroyed the entire city with a backpack nuke, some time back, and pretty much everyone in the world threw a party. Horrible place, horrible people. But one member of that appalling city survived, somehow. The Last of Leng. Walking alone in the world, because no one else wanted anything to do with it.