The Bride Wore Black Leather

for stories and parables. She lived with us, amongst us, as one of us. Sometimes we had to force her to eat, when what we could salvage from the Dumpsters and the back doors of restaurants wasn’t enough to go round. She always thought our needs were more important than hers.”
    I didn’t tell Julien that when I thought of Sister Morphine now, mostly I thought about her death. A mob killed her, during the Lilith War. I saw it happen. I could have saved her, but I had other people to protect that I thought needed saving more. Because their lives were more important than hers. War does things like that to you. I’m sure she would forgive me, but that didn’t matter. I didn’t forgive me.
    •  •  •
    As we entered the Hospice lobby, it quickly became apparent that this was yet another of those places that was bigger on the inside than the outside. It comes as standard in most of the Nightside, these days. The lobby was huge, breathtakingly so, stretching away before us. Julien and I stopped inside the doors to take a good look around. Everyone else ignored us, intent on their own problems.
    “I am moved to wonder,” said Julien. “Given all the pocket-dimension buildings we have these days, whether there is in fact an upper limit to how much Time and Space can be contained within the Nightside, without something . . .
giving
.”
    “We’d better hope not,” I said. “If all the containment spells were to let go at once, and all the space within the Nightside broke its barriers and rolled out into the standard three dimensions . . . the end result would probably cover most of London Proper. Always assuming, of course, that we’re actually contained within present-day London.”
    “You don’t think we are?” said Julien.
    “Look at the size of the moon,” I said.
    “I’ve got something more immediately worrying for you to think about,” said Julien. “Before we can get to see Dr. Benway, we have to get past the receptionist.”
    “Don’t worry,” I said. “I have a way with receptionists.”
    “You can’t kill her!” Julien said immediately. “It would make a very bad first impression.”
    “Oh ye of little faith,” I said.
    I took a little more time to look around while I considered the situation. The lobby was white-walled, brightly lit, and spotlessly clean. And actually quite peaceful. Probably the only place in the Nightside that was. Marble pillars broke up the open space, and there were rows of comfortable chairs and couches for patients and visitors to sit on. Food and drink dispensers seemed to be providing food and drink of a kind that people were actually happy to consume, and pleasant classical music issued from concealed speakers. The air smelled of freshly cut grass and the scent of new-mown hay, all the sweet scents of a summer’s day. A nice change from most hospitals’ use of heavy disinfectant. Though, of course, both sets of smells were only there to cover up the same things: namely, the underlying, ever-present smells of blood and sickness, misery and mortality. Large notice-boards contained a great many overlapping messages, pleas and demands, and stern reminders that anyone who overstayed their welcome in the car-park could end up with several of their more important inner organs clamped.
    The rows and rows of chairs were packed with people waiting to be seen. Men and women and children, and here and there some individuals who were none of the above and never would be. All of them troubled with wounds and fevers, exotic STDs and partial transmogrifications. A man with his hand stuck somewhere very embarrassing, a hunchback whose hump had slipped, a cyborg with Tourette’s who kept shouting out long strings of binary numbers, and someone whose grip on reality was so weak he kept fading in and out. Half a dozen winged monkeys dressed as cleaners pushed mops and buckets around, labouring to deal with the usual spills of blood, urine, and vomit, and one small but worrying pool of molecular acid.
    Typical night, in the Nightside A&E. I even overheard the traditional interplay between a nurse and a patient.
    Patient: Nurse, it hurts when I do this.
    Nurse: Then don’t do that.
    Patient: I am going to have to kill you now.
    Nurse: I quite understand.
    It’s good to know some people are still ready to keep up the old traditions.
    Right over to one side was a miraculous spring, a large pool of murky water contained within a low stone wall. It was supposed to