Nightside 03 - Nightingales Lament

ash disdainfully onto the floor. "Trouble on legs and twice as unfortunate. Everything was fine until you turned up. Then you show your face, and we get a suicide in the front row and a riot in the house. The Authorities should ban you, on general principles."
    "It's been tried," I said calmly. "And I'm still here. I need someone to take a message to Rossignol." 1 looked around, hoping for a sympathetic smile, but it was all glowering faces and curled lips. I couldn't really blame them. One of the problems of having a carefully cultivated bad reputation like mine is that I tend to get the blame for everything that goes wrong around me.
    "Who's your pale friend with no fashion sense?" said the blonde.
    "This is Dead Boy," I said, and the whole coffeehouse went suddenly quiet. Ian Auger pushed back his chair and stood up.
    "Let's talk outside," he said resignedly. "You mustn't mind the girls. They're never keen on anything that might put their jobs at risk." We moved over to stand in the doorway, while the other customers and staff studied us warily. Ian Auger looked at me, frowning. "I'm worried about Ross. The Cavendishes have been all over her since the suicide, telling her what to do, what to say, what to think. All they seem to care about is what spin they can put on the suicide for the music media. Ross is practically a prisoner at the moment, under armed guard. Are you still interested in helping her?"
    "Of course," I said. "Can you get a message to her?"
    "Maybe," said Ian. "At least, one of me might be able to."
    "Which one of them are you?" I said.
    "All of them," Ian Auger said cheerfully. "I'm a temporal triplet. One soul, three bodies, no waiting. Close-part harmonies a speciality. Me mum always said Destiny stuttered when I was born. Right now my other two selves are busy inside the club, putting the stage set back together again. They're listening to you through me. What's the message?"
    "Nothing good," I said. "The Cavendishes tried to make one of their singers into a superstar before. They had a young girl called Sylvia Sin magically augmented, to make her even more popular, and it turned her into a monster. Quite literally. I've seen what they did to her, what she became, and I don't want anything like that to happen to Ross. I need her to sneak out of the club and join me somewhere safe, so we can work out what to do for the best. I don't trust the Cavendishes to have her best interests at heart. It shouldn't be too difficult for Ross to get out. Bodyguards are usually more interested in watching for people trying to sneak in."
    Ian scowled fiercely. "Sylvia Sin. There's a name I haven't thought of in a while. Always wondered what
    happened to her. All right, one of me will talk to Ross. She might listen, now the Cavendishes have left the club. She always seems brighter and more independent when they're not around."
    "They do seem to have an unhealthy hold over her," I said. "Could they already have done something to her?"
    "I don't know," said Ian. "No-one's allowed to get too close when the Cavendishes are in private conference with Ross. And there's no denying she's not been acting like herself since she came to live in that room over the club. You think if the Cavendishes have done something, that's what's causing the suicides?"
    "Could be," I said.
    "All right," said Ian. "If I can get a message to her, and if I can get her out of the club, where do you want to meet? It has to be somewhere secure, somewhere she can feel safe, and somewhere she won't be noticed. She has got a pretty famous face now, you know."
    "I know the perfect place to hide a famous face," said Dead Boy. "Hide her in a whole crowd of famous faces. Tell Rossignol to meet us at Divas!"
    Divas! is one of the more famous, or possibly infamous, nightclubs in Uptown, where you can go to see and hear all the most famous female singers in the history of entertainment. Of course, none of them are real. They're not even female. The famous faces are in fact transvestites, men dressed up as the women they adore. But dressed in style and made up to the nines, the illusion is more than perfect, for these trannies have taken their obsession one step further than most - they have learned to channel the talents and sometimes the personalities of the divas concerned. Dead or alive, the greatest stars of show business all come to Divas!, in proxy at least.
    Dead Boy had clearly been there before. The doorman held the door to the club open and