The Bride Wore Black Leather

grey sprinkles to the floor. Hadleigh smiled and let the dead stem fall from his hand.
    “That’s nothing,” said Dead Boy, passing by. “You should see what I can do with a fart.”
    Hadleigh smiled easily at Charlotte, who looked like she wanted to be sick. She backed away into the crowd, taking Dave the camera-man with her. I gave Hadleigh a hard look.
    “Studying at the Deep School ruined you.”
    “No, it didn’t.”
    “Well, something did.”
    I went back to mingling. I listened in on a great many conversations because the immortals were too proud to stop talking even though I was there, but I didn’t learn anything important. Most of it was about who was having whom, and what someone else would do when they found out. Typical party chatter. No-one even mentioned the immortality serum I was supposed to be looking for. Short of grabbing people by their lapels and slamming them up against a wall, I didn’t see how I was going to persuade anyone to talk about it. And I don’t do things like that. Not any more.
    I bumped into the Lord Orlando, fresh from changing sex again. He’d come dressed in a chequered black-and-white Harlequin outfit, complete with a cute little domino mask and heavy stubble showing through his white face make-up. He was still boring for England, talking loudly and relentlessly at anyone who’d stand still long enough, and name-dropping all the famous people he claimed to have slept with, in one sex or another, down the ages. And still going on about how traumatised he was, from being kidnapped and briefly replaced by the Charnel Chimera, a few years back. I got the impression he was mostly upset that no-one could tell the difference between the bloodthirsty monster and the real thing. I could have said many things there, but didn’t. I must be mellowing.
    I pointed him in Bettie Divine’s direction, thus annoying two birds with one stone, and headed towards a couple of people I was actually looking forward to meeting; the Bride, and her current paramour, the latest incarnation of Springheel Jack. The Bride towered over both of us, a good seven feet tall and well fleshed. The Baron Frankenstein had made all his early creations oversized, so he had enough room to fit all the bits in. The Bride’s face was pale and taut, as though stretched by too much plastic surgery, but she’d always looked that way. The Baron might be a creative genius when it came to Life and Death, but his sewing skills left a lot to be desired.
    The Bride had huge dark eyes that didn’t blink often enough, a prominent nose, and lips red as sin itself. She would never be described as beautiful, but she was most definitely attractive, in a spooky, scary kind of way. She wore her long black hair piled up in an Amy Winehouse beehive, and she wasn’t bothering to dye out the white streaks any more. Or using make-up to cover the heavy stitching at her neck and wrists. She wore a flouncy white blouse, cut to show off her magnificent cleavage, midnight blue slacks, and knee-length riding boots with silver spurs. Up close, she smelled of attar of roses with a hint of formaldehyde.
    She crushed my hand in a powerful grip and smiled broadly. We’d never actually met before, but with reputations like ours, we knew of each other. The Bride had a lot of personality and didn’t mind spreading it around.
    “I’m here representing the Spawn of Frankenstein,” she said loudly. “All those dead but definitely not departed creations of the old Baron, bad cess to his soul. I did hear you’d killed him a while back, and I was going to send you a thank-you note; but it turned out to be another other-dimensional duplicate. I hate those. Still, thanks for the effort. It’s the thought that counts.”
    “Happy to do it,” I said, flexing my numbed fingers surreptitiously. The Bride was a big girl and didn’t know her own strength. “One less god of the living scalpel has to be a good thing.”
    “Do you know my new boy-friend?” said the Bride, draping a more than usually long arm across her companion’s shoulders. “He’s the current inheritor of the Springheel Jack inheritance; but don’t hold that against him.”
    We shook hands briefly. I couldn’t help but remember the time when a more than usually virulent Springheel Jack meme had invaded the Nightside through a Timeslip, overwriting everyone it touched and turning them into Springheel Jacks with nothing but bloodshed and slaughter on their minds. Suzie