For a moment something glistened in her eyes that might have been tears, but the moment passed. I leaned back in my chair, as though considering what I'd been told, but it all looked pretty straight forward to me. Tracking a runaway wasn't much of a case, but as it happened I was short on cases and cash, and there were bills that need paying. Urgently. It hadn't

been a good year—not for a long time. I leaned forward, resting my elbows in my desk, putting on my serious, committed face.

"So, Mrs. Barrett, essentially what we have here is a poor little rich girl who thinks she has everything but love. Probably begging for spare change down in the Underground, eating left-overs and stale bread, sleeping on park benches; hanging out with all the wrong sorts and kidding herself it's all one big adventure. Living life in the raw, with the real people. Secure in the knowledge that once again she's managed to secure her mother's full attention. I wouldn't worry about her too much. She'll come home, once it starts getting cold at nights."

Joanna Barrett was already shaking her expensively coiffured head. "Not this time. I've had experienced people looking for her for weeks now, and no-one's been able to find a trace of her. None of her previous ... associates have seen anything of her, even with the more than generous rewards I've been offering. It's as though she's vanished off the face of the earth. I've always been able to locate her before. My people have contacts everywhere. But this time, all I have for my efforts is a name I don't recognise. A name, given to me by the same person who supplied me with your name. He said I'd find my daughter... in the Nightside."

A cold hand clutched at my heart as I sat up straight. I should have known. I should have known

the past never leaves you alone, no matter how far you run from it. I looked her straight in the eye. "What do you know about the Nightside?"