Nightside 08 - The Unnatural Inquirer

print, but Walker might. And he’d be more likely to come after you than me.”
    “Let him,” Bettie said airily. “The Unnatural Inquirer looks after its own. John, you’re frowning. Why are you frowning? Should we start running?”
    “If Pen Donavon had found a way to Listen In and got noticed,” I said slowly, “he might have attracted the attention of Heaven or Hell. Which is rarely a good thing. They might send agents to silence him, and destroy the Recording.”
    “Oh, dear,” said Bettie. “Are we talking angels? The Nightside’s still putting itself back together after the last angel war.”
    “I wish people would stop looking at me like the angel war was all my fault,” I said.
    “Well, it was; wasn’t it?”
    “Not as such, no!”
    “You can be such a disappointment, sometimes,” said Bettie Divine.

FOUR
    When Collectors Go Bad

    B ack in the Nightside proper, I headed for Uptown, that relatively refined area where the better class of establishments and members-only clubs gather together and circle the wagons, to keep out the riff-raff. People like me, and anyone I might know. I had a particular destination in mind, but I didn’t tell Bettie. Some subjects need to be sneaked up on, approached slowly and cautiously, so as not to freak out the easily upset. Bettie clearly thought she’d been around and seen it all, but there are some people and places that would make a snot demon puke, on general principles.
    “Where exactly are we going?” said Bettie, looking eagerly about her.
    “Well,” I said, “when you’re on the trail of something rare and unique, the place to start is with the Collector. He’s spent the best part of his life in pursuit of the extraordinary and the uncommon, often by disreputable, underhanded, and downright dishonest means. He’s a thief and a grave-robber, a despoiler of archaeological sites, and no museum or private cabinet of curiosities is safe from him. He’s even got his own collection of weird time machines, so he can loot and ransack the Past of all its choicest items. If there’s a gap in history where something important ought to be, you can bet the Collector’s been there. He’s bound to have heard about the Afterlife Recording by now, and, faced with the prospect of such a singular and significant item, you can bet he won’t rest till he’s tracked it down.”
    Bettie looked actually awe-struck. “The Collector…Oh, wow. The paper’s been trying to get an interview with him for years. Mind you, half the people you talk to swear he’s nothing more than an urban myth, something historians use to frighten their children. But you know him personally! That is so cool! Has he really got the Holy Grail? The Spear of Destiny? The Maltese Falcon?”
    “Given the sheer size of his collection, anything’s possible,” I said. “Except maybe that last one.”
    “There are those who say the two of you have a history,” Bettie said guilelessly.
    “If you’re fishing in your pocket for your mini tape recorder, forget it,” I said pleasantly. “I lifted it off you before we even left the Unnatural Inquirer offices. I don’t do on the record.”
    “Oh, poo,” said Bettie. And then she smiled dazzlingly. “Doesn’t matter. I have a quite remarkable memory. And what I can’t remember, I’ll make up. So, tell me all about the Collector. How did you meet?”
    “He was an old friend of my father’s,” I said.
    Bettie frowned. “But…some of the stories say he’s your mortal enemy?”
    “That, too,” I said. “That’s the Nightside for you.”
    “Where’s he based these days?” Bettie said casually.
    I grinned. “That really would be a scoop for you, wouldn’t it? Unfortunately, I have no idea, at present. He used to store his collection in a secret base up on the Moon, sunk deep under the Sea of Tranquility, but he moved it after I…dropped in, for a little visit.”
    “Couldn’t you have used your gift to find it again?”
    “The Collector is seriously protected. By Forces and Powers even I would think twice about messing with.”
    “Still…you’ve actually seen his collection! How cool is that? What did you see? What has he got? Did you take any photos?”
    I smiled. “I never betray a confidence.”
    “But he’s your mortal enemy!”
    “Not always,” I said. “It’s…complicated.”
    Bettie shrugged easily and slipped her arm through mine. My first impulse was to pull away, but I didn’t. Her arm felt good