Nightside 06 - Sharper Than a Serpents Tooth

at her fondly. "I'll bet you even take that shotgun to bed with you, don't you?"
    She looked at me with her cold, calm expression. "Someday, you just might find out. My love."
    She blew me a kiss, then returned all her attention to her bottle of gin. Alex looked at me with a mixture of awe, horror, and utter astonishment, and seized the opportunity for a quiet chat while Suzie was preoccupied. He pulled me aside and lowered his voice to a whisper.
    "Did I just hear right, John? My love? Am I to take it you and the psycho bounty hunter from Hell are now an item?"
    "Looks like it," I said. "I'm as shocked and surprised as you are. Maybe I should have checked the wording in my Personals Ad more carefully."
    "But… Suzie? I mean, ten out of ten for courage, yes, but… she's crazy!"
    I had to smile. "You think anyone sane would hook up with me?"
    Alex considered the matter. "Well, there is that, yes. Good point. But John… her face…"
    "I know," I said quietly. "It happened in the Past. There was nothing I could do."
    "John, she's one step closer to becoming the future Suzie who tried to kill you. Shouldn't we tell her about that?"
    "I already know," said Suzie. I hadn't heard her approach, and from the way Alex jumped, he hadn't either.
    She was gracious enough not to smile. "I've known for some time. You can't keep secrets long in the Nightside, especially when they include bad news. You should know that, John. Don't worry about it. I never worry about the future. Mostly because I don't believe I'm going to live to see it. It's a very liberating attitude. Worry about the present me, John."
    "Oh I do," I assured her. "I do."
    I put my back against the bar and looked out over the place. Just another night in the oldest bar in the world. Alex's muscle-bound bouncers, Betty and Lucy Coltrane, were throwing out a bunch of burly masked Mexican wrestlers, and making them cry like little girls in the process. Never mess with the Coltranes. Especially when they're wearing their ROLLERBALL HELLCAT MUD-WRESTLING CHAMPIONS T-shirts. Not far away, a cyborg with glowing golden eyes ordered another bottle of neat ethanol from Alex, in a strange buzzing voice. He'd dropped in from a possible future via a Timeslip, and was currently trying to mend his left leg with a pair of pliers and a sonic screwdriver someone had left behind in the bar. I was actually pleased to see him. It was good to know that other futures, apart from the terrible devastated future I feared so much, were still possible.
    Not far enough away, half a dozen flower fairies in drooping petal outfits were singing a raucous Victorian drinking song, buzzed up on pollen. Soon they'd start getting nasty, and go looking for a Water Baby to beat up. Coming down the metal stairs into the bar proper was Kid Psychoses, in his tatterdemalion rags, doing his rounds and peddling his appalling wares. The Kid sold brief interludes of mental illness, for people who wanted to go really out of their heads. He once told me he started out selling mental health, but there was no market for it in the Nightside. I could have told him that.
    And the King and Queen of America were passing through, smiling and waving.
    "So," said Alex, freshening my glass, "what was the Nightside like, in the Past?"
    "Messy," said Suzie. "In every possible sense of the word."
    "Kill anyone interesting?"
    "You'd be surprised," I said. "But a gentleman doesn't kill and tell. Have you seen Tommy Oblivion recently?"
    "Not since he left here with you earlier. Was I supposed to?"
    Tommy Oblivion, the existential private eye, had gone back into the Past with Suzie and me, but we'd had a falling-out. He accused me of being cold and manipulative and more dangerous than the people I was trying to stop. I had to send him back to the Present. It was either that or kill him, and I'm trying to be one of the good guys, these days. But I had a feeling I might have missed the mark, just a bit. I could remember Tommy appearing in this bar quite suddenly, out of nowhere, some months back when I was working the Nightingale's Lament case. Back then, he'd threatened to hunt me down and kill me. I'd wondered why, but now I think I knew.
    I sighed and shrugged mentally. Tommy Oblivion could take a number and get in line. There was never any shortage of people trying to kill me, in the Nightside. There was a loud creaking of heavy leathers as Suzie moved in beside me, her back to the bar, gin bottle in hand. It was already