Nightside 01 - Something From the Nightside

and
    there was a slow horror forming in her eyes that made me want to look away.
    "Why are you talking to her about me?" said Cathy.
    "Because I need your mother's help in this," I said.
    "But that's not my mother," said Cathy.
    The words seemed to resonate endlessly in the quiet room, their sudden awful significance driving all other thoughts out of my head. It never even occurred to me to doubt Cathy's word. I could hear the truth in her voice, even if I didn't want to. So many little things that hadn't made sense suddenly came together, in one terrible moment of insight. Joanna looked at me, and there was nothing in her eyes but a calm, resigned sadness. All the vitality had gone out of her. As though she didn't have to pretend any more.
    "I'm sorry, John," she said slowly. "But I think it's all over now. My purpose is over, now you're here. I think I did care for you ... but I don't think I'm who I thought I was ..." Her voice changed, and under it I heard the harsh alien voice that had briefly spoken through Cathy. "I'm just a Judas Goat, the perfect bait, designed and programmed specifically to lure you back into the Nightside, so that you could be ... dealt with."
    "Why?" I said, and my voice was little more than a whisper.
    "The house was provided with all the necessary details—the exact kind of client, the exact kind of case, the exact kind of woman who would most appeal to you. Someone who would slip past all your defences, make you disregard all your instincts, and lead you unresisting to your doom. There never was a Joanna Barrett—only a role to play, a function to perform. But they made me too well, John; and for a time I actually forgot what I was. I thought I was a real woman, with real feelings. There's enough left of me to be sorry about what's going to happen to you ... but not enough for me to stop it."
    "Was none of what we had real?" I said.
    "Only you were real, John. Only you."
    "And all... this?" I said. "Was all this set up just for me? Was the house invited into the Nightside, allowed to hunt and feed and kill, just to get me? Why? I'd left the Nightside! I was no threat to anyone any more! Why bring me back now?"
    "Ask your mother," said the thing with Joanna's voice. "It seems she's coming back. And you ... are a loose thread that could unravel everything."
    "Who did this?" I said. "Who's behind this?"
    "Can't you guess?" said Joanna. And her face slowly melted away, leaving behind only the perfect blank mask of the Harrowing.
    I think I cried out then; the sound of some small animal as the steel trap finally closes on it. Joanna leaned back into the living wall, and sank into it, the
    soft pulsing surface closing over her as the house re-absorbed the thing it had created, or birthed. In a moment she was gone, leaving only slow ripples behind, and soon they were gone too. I should have known. I should have remembered. You can't trust anyone, or anything, in the Nightside, to be what it appears to be. Walker had tried to warn me, but I didn't listen. I'd forgotten that here, love is just another weapon they can use to hurt you, and that the past never goes away. I felt the tears running down my cheek long before I knew I was crying.
    "Damn," said Suzie, glowering at the wall Joanna had disappeared into. "Guess I'm not going to get paid for this one after all."
    She looked at me, and sighed when I didn't react. The digestive juices were falling from the ceiling in a steady rain now, stinging and burning my bare face and hands, and I didn't care at all. Someone, or something, had just punched my heart out, and I didn't care about anything. Suzie came over and put a hand on my shoulder, staring right into my face. She wasn't very good with emotions, but she did her best.
    "John, you have to listen to me. You can mourn her later. Whatever she was, or might have been. You can't fall apart now. We have to get out of here."
    "Why?" I said. "Everyone wants me dead; and maybe I do too."
    She slapped me across the face, more professionally than angrily. "What about me, John?"
    "What about you?"
    "All right, maybe I deserved that. I never should have let you go running off to hide in London. And I wasn't always the best of friends to you; I don't seem to have the knack. But what about the kid, John? Cathy? Remember her? The one you came back into the Nightside to save? Are you going to let her down now? Are you going to let her die, just because you're feeling sorry for yourself?"
    I turned my