Nightside 04 - Hex and the City

friendly kind, and there was much craning of necks to look at the butterfly, or spot rival bidders. Lucretia Grave stepped up behind her auctioneer's podium and gestured for silence with her gavel as Wilde stood proudly behind her butterfly's display case. I lurked at the back of the Hall, watching the crowd.
    And then everything stopped as a huge shaggy Yeti stomped into the Hall. It was a good eight feet tall, with vast, rolling muscles under its grubby white pelt. Everyone shrank back as the great creature lumbered down the aisle, grabbed the Yeti's-foot umbrella stand, glared menacingly at one and all, then stomped out again. No-one felt like trying to stop it. After a discreet pause, to be sure the Yeti was gone and wouldn't be coming back, the auction finally got under way.
    Grave started with the lesser items, and they all went fairly quickly under the hammer. Everyone was impatient to get to the star item. I concentrated on studying the more famous faces in the crowd. I wasn't surprised at Jackie Schadenfreud's presence, right in the middle of the crowd. Jackie was an emotion junkie, and I could see him savour ing and sucking up the various moods of the crowd as they washed around him. Jackie had insisted on making himself known to me when he arrived, shaking me by the hand and hanging on to it just that little bit too long. He was fat and sweaty, with a twitchy smile and watery eyes. He wore a Gestapo uniform, all black leather and silver insignia, along with a Star of David on a chain round his neck. Just so he could soak up the emotions those conflicting symbols evoked. To protect him from the many who might feel outraged, Jackie was always accompanied by an oversized Doberman that he'd had dyed pink.
    Sandra Chance, the consulting necromancer, had stalked into the Hall like she owned the place, but then she always did. Chance had raised arrogance to an art form. She commandeered a seat in the front row, right before the podium, as hers by right, and no-one challenged her. Few ever did. Chance was tall and slender, unhealthily pale under a mop of curly red hair, and wore nothing but crimson swirls of liquid latex, splashed all over her long body apparently at random. (Supposedly the liquid latex was mixed with holy water and other things, for protection.) She also had enough steel piercings in her face and body to make her a danger during thunderstorms. A simple leather belt covered in Druidic symbols hung loosely around her waist, carrying a series of tanned pouches that held the tools of her trade; grave dirt, powdered blood, eye of newt and toe of frog. The usual. I watched her very carefully. She ignored the lesser items as they went under the hammer. She was just there for the butterfly, and everyone knew it. Her face was all sharp angles, with cold intelligent eyes and a grim smile, and I knew her of old.
    Chance specialised in cases where someone had died, usually suddenly and violently and very unexpectedly. She could get you answers from beyond the grave, if you weren't too fussy about the methods involved. I worked a few cases with her, back in the day, but we didn't get along. She only cared about getting results, and bad luck to anyone who got in her way, I used to be like that, but I like to think I've moved on. To me, Chance was a reminder of bad times—and two people I wasn't very fond of. She looked round suddenly, and caught my gaze. She'd always had good instincts. She nodded frostily, and I nodded back, then we both looked away again.
    Chance currently had a relationship with one of the Nightside's more disturbing major players; that terrible old monster called the Lamentation. Sometimes known as the God of Suicides or the Saint of Suffering. Just saying its name aloud had been known to push people over the edge. No-one knew exactly what kind of relationship Chance had with the Lamentation, and most people with an imagination were afraid even to guess. Some things just aren't healthy, even for the Nightside. Chance had never shown any interest in auctions before, to my knowledge; so, could she be bidding on behalf of the Lamentation? Perhaps. But what would the God of Suicides want with the chaos butterfly? Nothing anyone else would want or approve of, certainly. I wondered if perhaps I ought to do something. After all, who'd be crazy enough to bid against an agent of the Lamentation? And then I looked around me and relaxed a little. There were more than enough major players here to