Nightside 07 - Hell to Pay

Mariah was already losing her concentration. When I didn’t immediately weaken, her butterfly mind moved on to other matters.
    “Fashions come and go, but I remain, John, forever lovely as a summer’s day…That’s the one thing I do miss, you know. Eternal night may be very glamorous, but anything can get tiring when it goes on and on without changing…It’s been so long since I felt the warmth of sunlight on my face and the caress of a passing breeze…”
    She prattled on, and I listened carefully, but I didn’t learn anything useful. Mariah had been a shallow creature before Jeremiah made her immortal, and centuries of living, if not experience, had done little to change that. Perhaps she was incapable of change, frozen the way she was when Jeremiah took her out of Time, like an insect trapped in amber. She was Queen of Nightside Society, and that was all she cared about. Other queens might arise to challenge her grip, but in the end she would always win because she was immortal, and they were not.
    She stopped talking abruptly and studied me thoughtfully, as though she’d only just remembered I was still there. “So you’re the famous John Taylor. One does hear such stories about you…Was your mother really a Biblical myth? Did you really save us all from extinction during the recent War? They say you could have been king of the Nightside, if you’d wanted…Tell me about your glamorous assistants, Razor Eddie, Dead Boy, Shotgun Suzie.”
    “ Glamorous? ” I said, smiling despite myself. “Not quite the word I would have chosen.”
    “I’ve read all about you, and them, in the tabloids,” said Mariah. “I live for gossip. Except when it’s about me. Some of those reporters can be very cruel…I’ve been trying to get Jeremiah to buy up the Night Times , and that terrible rag the Unnatural Inquirer , for years, but he’s always got some silly answer why he can’t. He doesn’t care what they write about him. He only ever reads the financial pages. Wouldn’t know who anyone was in Society if I wasn’t there to tell him…”
    “Tell me about your children,” I said, when she made the mistake of pausing for breath. “Tell me about William and Eleanor.”
    She pouted again, looking around her for more chocolates and her champagne glass, and I had to ask her twice more before she finally answered.
    “I had the twins back in the nineteen twenties, because it was the fashion. Absolutely everyone in Society was having babies, and I just couldn’t bear to be left out. All my friends assured me childbirth was the most divine, transcendent experience…” She snorted loudly. “And afterwards, my lovely babies grew up to be such disappointments. I can’t think why. I saw to it that they had the very best nannies, the very best tutors, and every toy they ever wanted. And I made it a point to spend some time with them every weekend, no matter how full my social diary was.”
    “And Jeremiah?”
    “Oh, he was furious at the time. Absolutely livid. Actually raised his voice to me, a thing he never does. He never wanted children.”
    “So what happened?” I said.
    “He had me sterilized, so I couldn’t have any more.” Her voice was entirely unaffected, matter-of-fact. “I didn’t care. The fashion was past, and they weren’t what I’d expected…And I certainly wasn’t going to go through all that again…”
    “Didn’t you have any friends, any close friends, who could have helped you stand up to Jeremiah?”
    Mariah smiled briefly, and her eyes were suddenly very cold. “I don’t have friends, John. Ordinary people don’t matter to me. Or to any of us Griffins. Because you see, John, you’re all so short-lived…Like mayflies. You come and go so quickly, and you never seem to be around long enough to make any real impression, and it doesn’t do to get too fond of those who do. They all die…It’s the same with pets. I used to adore my cats, back in the old days. But I can’t bear them around me anymore. Or flowers…I had the gardens laid out around the Hall back in the seventeen fifties, when landscaped gardens were all the rage, but once I had them…I didn’t know what to do with them. You can only walk through them so many times…In the end I let them run riot, just to see what would happen. I find the jungle much more interesting—always changing, always producing something new…Jeremiah keeps it going as our last line of defence. Just in case the barbarians ever