“The Roll a Dice,” Eleanor said coldly, “and step on it. I have things to be about.”
The messenger made a low, unhappy sound, and we pulled out into the traffic.
“I know it’s going to be one of those pokey little places, with sawdust on the floor and back rooms full of cigar smoke, where the cards are so crooked it’s a wonder the dealer can shuffle them,” said Eleanor. “Marcel must really be running out of bolt-holes if he’s been reduced to the likes of the Roll a Dice.”
“Hey,” protested the messenger, “it’s a good club. Got acoustics and everything.”
“Watch the road,” I said. “And anyway, it should be the Roll a Die. Dice is plural, die is singular.”
“What?”
“Oh shut up and drive,” I said.
The Nightside traffic flowed past us, including a lot of things that weren’t really traffic, driven by things that didn’t even look like people. There are no traffic lights in the Nightside and no speed limits. As a result, driving isn’t so much a journey as evolution in action. The bigger prey on the smaller, and only the strongest survive to reach their destination. Significantly, no-one bothered us. Which meant someone must have lashed out a fair amount of money for some decent protection magics for the car. The goon undid the collar and first few buttons of his messenger suit so he could concentrate better as he drove.
We soon left Uptown behind and quickly turned off into the darker, lesser-used streets, where sleaze and decay weren’t so much a style as a way of life. The Nightside has its own bottom feeders, and they’re nastier than most. The neon signs fell away because this wasn’t the kind of area where you wanted to advertise your presence. People might be looking for you. These were the kinds of clubs and bars you heard about by word of mouth, where everything was permitted because nobody cared. Enter at your own risk, mind your own business, and think yourself lucky if you came out even at the end of the game.
The car finally lurched to a halt before a row of dingy joints that were only a step up from hole-in-the-wall merchants. Blank doors and painted-out windows, with nothing to recommend them but the gaudy names they gave themselves. Rosie’s Repose, the Pink Pelican, the Roll a Dice. The messenger goon got out of the car, started towards the club, then remembered. He hurried back to open the back door for Eleanor. He wouldn’t have done it for me. Eleanor stalked past him to the club, not even deigning to look about her. The messenger hurried to get to the club door ahead of her, leaving me to get out of the car and close the door behind me. The goon made a real production out of his secret knock, and the door swung open to reveal a gorilla in a huge tuxedo. It was a real mountain gorilla, a silverback, with a long, pink scar across his forehead to show where the brain implants had gone in. It nodded familiarly to the messenger, looked Eleanor and me over carefully, and gave us both a sniff for good measure before turning abruptly to lead us into the club. The door slammed shut behind us with nobody touching it, but that probably came as standard in an area like this.
The room before us was silent and gloomy, closed down. Chairs had been put up on the tables, and the roulette wheel was covered with a cloth. The bar was sealed off behind a heavy metal grille. The floor was bare wood, no sawdust. The room stank of sweat and smoke and desperation. This wasn’t the kind of place where people gambled for pleasure. This was a place for addicts and junkies, for whom every card, every roll of the dice or spin of the wheel was a matter of life and death.
There weren’t any staff around. Not even a cleaner. The owner must have sent everybody home. Presumably Mr. Herbert Libby didn’t want any witnesses for whatever might happen now the Griffin’s daughter had arrived to join her erring husband. The gorilla led us through the room, out the back, and down a steep set of stairs. The messenger goon brought up the rear. We emerged into a bare stone cellar, a brightly lit space with bare walls, piles of crates and stacked boxes, and a handful of men standing around one man tied to a chair. The stone floor around the chair was splashed with blood. The man in the chair was, of course, Marcel, or what was left of him.
He raised his head slowly to look at Eleanor and me. He might have been glad to see us, but it was hard to tell past the mess they’d made of his face. His eyes were swollen shut, his nose had been broken and bent to one side, and his lips were cracked and bloody. They’d cut off his left ear. Blood soaked his left shoulder and all down the front of his shirt. Marcel’s breathing was slow and heavy, interspersed with low moans of pain and half-snoring noises through his ruined nose. Eleanor made a low, shocked noise and started forward, but I grabbed her arm and held her still. No point in giving these scumbags what they wanted this early in the game.
One of the thugs standing in the semicircle beyond the chair stepped forward, and it was easy to identify him as the boss, Herbert Libby. He was large and blocky, fat over muscle, with a square, brutal face and a shaven skull to hide the fact that he was going bald. He wore an expensive suit as though he’d just thrown it on, and his large hands were heavy with gold and silver rings. He had the look of a man who liked to indulge himself, preferably at someone else’s expense. There was blood on his hands, and his cuffs were soaked red. He smiled easily at Eleanor, but it was a cold thing that didn’t touch his eyes. He ignored me to glare at the goon in the messenger suit.
“Charlie, I told you to bring back Eleanor Griffin. What is John Taylor doing here? Did I ask you to bring back John Taylor?”
The messenger squirmed unhappily under his boss’s gaze. “Well, no, Mr. Libby, but…”
“Then what is he doing here, Charlie?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Libby! He sort of…invited himself.”
“We’ll talk about this later, Charlie.” Libby finally deigned to notice me. He nodded briefly, but didn’t smile. “Mr. John Taylor. Well, we are honoured. Welcome to my very own little den of iniquity. I’m afraid you’re not seeing us at our best, at the present. Me and the boys got a little carried away, expressing our displeasure with Marcel. I do like to think of myself as a hands-on kind of manager…And since I’m the owner of the Roll a Dice, I take it very personally when some aristocratic nonce comes strolling in here with the express purpose of cheating me out of my hard-earned…”
“My husband doesn’t cheat,” Eleanor said flatly. “He may be the worst gambler that ever lived, but he doesn’t cheat.”
“He came in here to play without the money to cover his bets, or the means to pay off his debts,” said Libby. “I call that cheating. And no-one cheats me and lives to boast of it. I do like to think of myself as a reasonable and understanding sort, but I can’t let anyone get away with cheating me. That would be bad for business and my reputation. Which is why we are using Marcel here to send a message to any and all who might think they can welch on a debt and get away with it. What are you doing here, Mr. Taylor, exactly?”
“I’m with Eleanor,” I said. “Her father asked me to see that she got home safely.”
“The Griffin himself! What a thrill it must be, to move in such exalted circles!” Libby smiled again, like a shark showing its teeth. “You and he have both made a name for yourself in the Nightside, as people it is very dangerous to cross. But you know what, Mr. Taylor? Uptown reputations don’t mean anything down here. Down here you can do anything you want if you can get away with it. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and I am top dog.”
“If I’d known, I’d have brought you some biscuits,” I said brightly. “I could throw something for you to fetch if you want.”
The other thugs stared blankly. People didn’t talk like that to Mr. Libby.
“Funny man,” Libby said dispassionately. “We get a lot of those in here. But I’m the one who ends up laughing.”
He grabbed Marcel’s bloody chin and forced the battered face up so I could see it more clearly. Marcel moaned softly, but didn’t struggle. All the resistance had been beaten out of him.
“We get all sorts in here,” said Libby, turning Marcel’s face back and forth so he could ad
mire his handiwork. “They come into my club, big and bold and full of themselves, and they throw all their money away at cards or dice or at the wheel, and when the time comes to make good, surprise surprise, they haven’t got the money on them. And they expect me to be reasonable. Well, reasonable is as reasonable does, Mr. Taylor. I extended Marcel here a longer-than-usual run of credit because he assured me his father-in-law would be good for his debts. However, when I take the quite reasonable precaution of contacting Mr. Griffin about this, he denies this. He is, in fact, quite rude to me. So, if Marcel can’t pay, and the Griffin won’t…where am I going to get my money?”
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “You have a plan.”
“Of course. I always have a plan. That’s why I’m top dog of this particular dung heap. I was going to show Eleanor what I’d done to her deadbeat husband, then send her home to Daddy with her husband’s ear in a box so she could plead for enough money to save him further pain. Fathers are often more indulgent with their daughters than they are with their sons-in-law; especially when the daughters are crying.”
“My father will have you skinned for this,” Eleanor said firmly. “Marcel is family.”
Libby just shrugged. “Let him send his heavies down here if he likes, and we’ll send them back to him in pieces. No-one bothers us on our own territory. Now where was I…Oh yes, the change in plans. I will keep you and Marcel here, while Mr. Taylor goes back to Griffin Hall to beg your father for enough money to ransom your miserable lives. And Mr. Taylor had better be very persuasive, because I’m pretty sure even an immortal will die if you cut them into enough small pieces…”
“You really think you can take on the Griffin?” I said.
“He could send a whole army in here.”
“Let him,” said Libby. “Him and his kind, they know nothing about life down here. We stand together, down here. It’s dog-eat-dog, but every man against the outsider. If the Griffin turns up here mob-handed, he’ll find a real army waiting to meet him. And no-one fights dirtier than us. I guarantee you, Mr. Taylor; if the Griffin makes a fight of this, I will take out my displeasure on Eleanor and Marcel, and he’ll be able to hear their screams all the way up on Griffin Hall. And what I’ll leave of them he wouldn’t want back. So, he’ll pay up, to save the expense of a war he can’t win. He is, after all, a businessman. Just like me.”
“My father is nothing like you,” said Eleanor, and her voice cut at him like a knife. “Marcel, can you hear me, darling?”
Somehow Marcel found the strength to jerk his chin out of Libby’s hand and turn his bloody face to look at Eleanor. His voice was slow and slurred and painful.
“You shouldn’t have come here, Eleanor. The service is terrible.”
“Why did you come here?”
“They wouldn’t take my bets anywhere else. Your father saw to that. So this is all his fault, really.”
“Hush, dear,” said Eleanor. “Mr. Taylor and I will get you out of here.”
“Good,” said Marcel. “The place really has gone to the dogs.”
Libby back-handed him across the face, hard enough to send fresh blood flying through the air. Eleanor made a shocked sound. She wasn’t used to such casual brutality. I looked at Libby.
“Don’t do that again.”
Libby automatically lifted his hand to hit Marcel again, only to hesitate as something in my gaze got through to him. He flushed briefly, lowering his hand. He wasn’t used to having his wishes thwarted. He looked at the messenger goon.
“Charlie, bring the lady over here so she can get a close-up look at what we’ve done to her better half.”
The messenger grabbed Eleanor’s arm. She produced a small silver canister from somewhere and sprayed its contents in the goon’s face. He howled horribly and crashed to the floor, clawing at his eyes with both hands. I looked at Eleanor, and she smiled sweetly.
“Mace, with added holy water. Mummy gave it to me. A girl should always be prepared, she said. After all, there are times when a girl just doesn’t feel like being molested.”
“Quite right,” I said.
Libby actually growled at us, like a dog before regaining his composure. “I saw you in action, Mr. Taylor, during the Lilith War. Most impressive. But that was then, and this is now, and this is my place. Due to the nature of my business, I have found it necessary to install all kinds of protective magics here. The best money can buy. Nothing happens here that I don’t want to. Down here, in my place, there’s no-one bigger than me.”
“A gambling den, soaked in hidden magics?” I said. “I am shocked, I tell you, shocked. You’ll be telling me next your games of chance aren’t entirely on the up and up.”
“Gamblers only come here when they’ve been thrown out of everywhere else,” said Libby. “They know the odds are bent in my favour, but they can’t afford to care. And there never was a gambler who didn’t know he was good enough to beat even a rigged game. But enough of this pleasant chit-chat, Mr. Taylor. It’s time to get down to business. You keep Eleanor under control while I carve a decent-sized piece off Marcel for you to take back to the Griffin. What do you think he’d be most easily able to identify, a finger or an eye?”
“Don’t touch him,” I said. “Or there will be…consequences.”
“You’re nothing down here,” Libby said savagely.
“And just for that, I think I’ll cut something off Eleanor, too, for you to take back to her father.”
He raised his right hand to show me the scalpel in it, and smiled. The other thugs grinned and elbowed each other, anticipating a show. And I raised my hand to show them the piece of human bone I’d shown in Hecate’s Tea Room. Everyone stood very still.
“This,” I said, “is an aboriginal pointing bone. Very old, very basic magic. I point, and you die. So, who goes first?”
“This is my place,” said Libby, still smiling. “I’m protected, and you’re bluffing, Taylor.”
I stabbed the bone at Libby and muttered the Words, and he fell dead to the floor.
“Not always,” I said.
The remaining thugs looked at the dead body of their erstwhile boss, looked at me, then looked at each other. One of them knelt beside Libby and tried to find a pulse. He looked up and shook his head, and the other thugs immediately knelt and started going through Libby’s pockets. They weren’t interested in us anymore. I still covered them with the pointing bone while Eleanor produced a delicate little ladies’ knife from somewhere and cut the ropes holding Marcel to his chair. He tried to stand up and fell forward into Eleanor’s waiting arms as his legs failed him. She held him up long enough for me to get there, and together we half led, half carried him out of the cellar and up into the main room of the Roll a Dice. Noone tried to follow us.
“So you weren’t bluffing in the Tea Room,” Eleanor said as we headed for the door.
“Sort of,” I said. “I’ve never actually used the bone before. I wasn’t entirely sure it was what I thought it was. I stole it from old blind Pew, years ago.”
Eleanor looked at me. “What would you have done if it hadn’t worked?”
“Improvised,” I said.
Eleanor drove the goon’s car back to Hecate’s Tea Room, where she called for a limousine to take Marcel back to Griffin Hall. I did suggest an ambulance might be more appropriate, but Eleanor wouldn’t hear of it. He’d be safer at the Hall, and that was all that mattered. Marcel was an immortal, so he couldn’t die, and he’d heal quicker in familiar surroundings.
“And besides,” said Eleanor, “the Griffin family keeps its secrets to itself.”
The limousine arrived in a few minutes and took Marcel away. The liveried chauffeur didn’t even raise an eyebrow at Marcel’s condition. Eleanor and I went back into the Tea Room and sat down again in our private booth. The storm of gossip over our reappearance was practically deafening.
“Thanks for the help,” said Eleanor. “I could have called Daddy, but he always favours the scorched earth policy whe
n it comes to threats against the family. And I’m not ready to lose Marcel, just yet.”
“So,” I said, “tell me about Melissa.”
Eleanor pulled a face. “You are persistent, aren’t you? I suppose I do owe you something…and unlike my dear husband, I always pay my debts. So, Melissa…I can’t tell you much about her because I don’t know much. I’m not sure anyone does, really. Melissa…is a very private, very quiet person. The kind who spends a lot of time living inside her own head. Reads a lot, studies…She does talk to Jeremiah, though don’t ask me about what. They spend a lot of time together, in private.
“I never cared much about her, to be honest. I was always more concerned with my Paul. I moved back into the Hall so I could be close to him. I wasn’t going to lose my son to the Griffin. What little I do know of Melissa is only because she and Paul have always been close. They spend a lot of time in each other’s rooms…Because they grew up together in the Hall, they see themselves as brother and sister. Though my Paul never took to Jeremiah the way Melissa did. I saw to that. I didn’t give up on my child, like William did.” She smiled wistfully. “Paul and I were very close when he was small. Now that he’s a teenager it’s all I can do to get him to come out of his room.”
“I didn’t get to meet him,” I said. “But I talked to him, through his bedroom door. He seemed…highly strung.”