There are many roads leading in and out of the Nightside, and wise people have nothing at all to do with them. The traffic that roars up and down our streets hardly ever stops, and it's better that way for everyone. There are cars and trucks, ambulance chasers and motorcycle messengers, horse-drawn equipages and futuristic vehicles that often don't have wheels or windows or any regard for the rules of the road. Every single one of them in a hell of a hurry to get where it's going, usually to somewhere even stranger and more dangerous than the Nightside.

Ambulances that run on distilled suffering, ice wagons that carry blocks of frozen holy water, and ghost trams that stop for no man. Articulated vehicles as long as city blocks carrying hazardous and forbidden materials, silent hearses carrying the kind of cargo that has to be fought back into its coffin at regular intervals; and not everything that looks like a car is a car. There are things in the traffic that feed on slower things. Sometimes I look at the main roads, and I don't see traffic; I see a jungle on wheels.

Which is why no-one with any sense uses the roads unless he absolutely has to.

I don't own a car. I have my own ways of getting places. But when I do need one, I throw myself on the kindness of strange friends. I got out my phone and called Dead Boy. An old friend and occasional partner in crime, Dead Boy owned a truly magnificent car that had strayed into the Nightside from some future time-line. It could beat up anything on four wheels, and had never even heard of road safety. But after I waited patiently through the dialling chant, all I got was Dead Boy's usual recorded message.

"Hi. I'm dead. Call back later."

So I frowned, tapped my foot thoughtfully, and considered who else might be available and up for a little motorised mayhem. It wasn't a terribly long list, and it didn't take me long to get to the bottom. I sighed and entered the number for Ms. Fate; the Nightside's very own transvestite crime-fighter. A man who dressed up as a super-heroine to kick the crap out of bad guys. She's actually very good at it; and she has a really remarkable car. It's just that I find her continual bright-eyed girl-guide enthusiasm somewhat trying…