The Bride Wore Black Leather

Bar & Grille?”
    I grinned. “I can try.”
    I gave silent thanks for Alex’s potent pick-me-up and raised my gift. I reached out in all directions at once, feeling for the familiar sights and sounds and smells of the Hawk’s Wind, and got nothing. My mind raced round and round the Nightside in ever-expanding circles; and it felt like groping in the dark for something I knew should be there but that I couldn’t quite put my hand on. I could feel the Bar’s presence, in a faint and distant way, but only right at the edge of my perceptions, in a direction I could sense but not look in. Hidden behind a corner in reality. I let my mind drop back inside my head and looked at Julien.
    “I’m sorry. It’s gone too far. I can sense the Bar, but I can’t reach it. I don’t think it’s even in our reality any more.”
    “There must be something you can do!”
    “There is,” I said. “And don’t you raise your voice to me! I’m not your butler!”
    “Of course not,” said Julien. “She does what she’s told.”
    I gave him a look, then carried on. “I can use my Sight to call up a vision of Time Past, and See what really happened when the Hawk’s Wind disappeared. Hopefully, that will give us some facts to work with.”
    Julien nodded stiffly, so I raised my Sight and looked back into the recent Past; and there was the Hawk’s Wind Bar & Grille, back again, right before me. The ghost of a ghost, a vision of a haunting so real you could walk around inside it and order drinks. The Bar now looked to me more ghostly than it ever had before: all shimmering pastel colours and fraying edges. But even in the tinted shapes and shadows of the Past, it was still a magnificent sight. I reached out and placed a hand on Julien’s shoulder, making contact, so he could See what I was Seeing. I heard him take a sudden sharp breath as he saw the Past through my eyes.
    A perfect monument to the swinging sixties, complete with rococo Day-Glo neon sign and a Hindu-latticed front door, the Hawk’s Wind Bar & Grille stood before us; but even as we watched, the whole structure began to shake and shudder, the walls fading in and out as the Bar lost all coherence. It began to fade away, then suddenly there was the English Assassin, standing in the doorway. He collapsed and fell forward onto the ground, and the whole scene vanished, and all that was left was the great hole in the ground.
    I let go of Julien’s shoulder, and the real world, Time Present, returned for both of us. The hole was still a hole.
    “Fascinating,” said Julien. “To see the Past unfold, all its secrets laid bare in a moment, living again before us . . . What I would give, to see the Nightside through your eyes, John.”
    “I have enough ghosts in my life without calling up more,” I said. “The Past should stay where it belongs.”
    “We’re not done yet,” said Julien. “We need to go further back, deeper into the Past, to see what happened inside the Bar before it disappeared. Can you do that, John?”
    “I can try,” I said. “But you should brace yourself; there’s a reason why we choose to forget the past and leave it behind.”
    I raised my gift and focused my Sight through it, to find exactly the section of Time Past I needed; and once again, the Hawk’s Wind Bar & Grille rose before me, faded and even more indistinct, the ghostly image of a ghost. I felt Julien’s hand drop onto my shoulder, the fingers closing tightly as the image filled his eyes again. I walked us towards the Hindu-latticed door, then right through it, and we walked into the memory of the Hawk’s Wind.
    It looked as it always had: big Day-Glo Pop-Art posters, with colours so rich and powerful they by-passed your retinas and seared themselves directly onto your brain. Stylised plastic tables and chairs, flaring lights, great swirls of primary colours splashed across the walls and ceiling and floor. But all of it somehow smaller and diminished. Another remainder of Time Past. Like an old photograph of an old friend. A juke-box the size of a Tardis jumped and shuddered happily in a corner, pumping out an endless stream of hits from the sixties. There was no sound in my vision. I could see people talking animatedly at their tables, but not one word of what they were saying came to me. But from far and far-away, it seemed to me that I could hear Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” . . . In the centre of the great open floor, two gorgeous go-go dancers