‘Well, it’s his office and he’s always in there,’ said Sacharissa. ‘Does the . . . magic light pick that up?’
‘Maybe,’ said Otto. ‘Ve know that vot is physically zere is not alvays vot is really zere. Look at zis vun.’
He handed her another picture.
‘Oh, that’s a good one of William,’ she said. ‘In the cellar. And . . . that’s Lord de Worde standing just behind him, isn’t it?’
‘Is it?’ said the vampire. ‘I don’t know zer man. I do know that he vas not in zer cellar ven I took the picture. But . . . you only have to talk to Mr Villiam for any length of time to see that, in a vay, his father is alvays looking over his shoulder–‘
‘That’s creepy.’
Sacharissa looked around the cellar. The stone walls were old and stained, but they certainly weren’t blackened.
‘I just saw . . . people. Men fighting. Flames. And . . . silver rain. How can it rain underground?’
‘I do not know. That’s vy I study dark light.’
Noises above suggested that William and Goodmountain had returned.
‘I wouldn’t mention this to anyone else,’ said Sacharissa, heading for the ladder. ‘We’ve got enough to deal with. That’s creepy.’
There was no name outside the bar, because those who knew what it was didn’t need one. Those who didn’t know what it was shouldn’t go in. Ankh-Morpork’s undead were, on the whole, a law-abiding bunch, if only because they knew the law paid them a certain amount of special attention, but if you walked into the
163
place known as Biers on a dark night and had no business there, who would ever know?
For the vampires*, it was a place to hang up. For the werewolves, it was where you let your hair down. For the bogeymen, it was a place to come out of the closet. For the ghouls, it did a decent meat pasty and chips.
All eyes, and that was not the same thing as the number of heads multiplied by two, turned to the door when it creaked open. The newcomers were surveyed from dark corners. They wore black, but that didn’t mean anything. Anyone could wear black.
They walked up to the bar and Mr Pin rapped on the stained wood.
The barman nodded. The important thing, he’d found, was to make sure ordinary people paid for their drinks as they bought them. It wasn’t good business to let them run a tab. That showed an unwarranted optimism about the future.
‘What can I–‘ he began, before Mr Tulip’s hand caught him around the back of the neck and rammed his head down hard on the bar.
‘I am not having a nice day,’ said Mr Pin, turning to the world in general, ‘and Mr Tulip here suffers from unresolved personality conflicts. Has anyone got any questions?’
An indistinct hand rose in the gloom.
‘What cook?’ said a voice.
Mr Pin opened his mouth to reply and then turned to his colleague, who was examining the bar’s array of very strange drinks. All cocktails are sticky; the ones in Biers tended to be stickier.
‘Says “Kill the Cook!!!”‘ said the voice.
Mr Tulip rammed two long kebab skewers into the bar, where they vibrated. ‘What cooks’ve you got?’ he said.
‘It’s a good apron,’ said the voice in the gloom.
‘It is the –ing envy of all my friends,’ Mr Tulip growled.
In the silence Mr Pin heard the unseen drinkers calculating the
* Those, that is, who weren’t gathered around the harmonium at the Temperance Mission nervously singing songs about how much they liked cocoa.
164
likely number of friends of Mr Tulip. It was not a calculation that would involve a simple thinker taking off their shoes.
‘Ah. Right,’ said someone.
‘Now, we don’t want any trouble with you people,’ said Mr Pin. ‘Not as such. We simply wish to meet a werewolf.’
Another voice in the gloom said: ‘Vy?’
‘Got a job for him,’ said Mr Pin.
There was some muffled laughter in the darkness and a figure shuffled forward. It was about the size of Mr Pin; it had pointy ears; it had a hairstyle that clearly continued to its ankles, inside its ragged clothes. Tufts of hair stuck out of holes in its shirt and densely thatched the backs of its hands.
“m part werewolf,’ it said.
‘Which part?’
That’s a funny joke.’
‘Can you talk to dogs?’
The self-confessed part-werewolf looked around at its unseen audience, and for the first time Mr Pin felt a twinge of disquiet. The sight of Mr Tulip’s slowly spinning eye and throbbing forehead were not having their usual effect. There were rustlings in the dark. He was sure he heard a snigger.
‘Yep,’ said the werewolf.
The hell with this, thought Mr Pin. He pulled out his pistol bow in one practised movement and held it an inch from the werewolf’s face.
This is tipped with silver,’ he said.
He was amazed at the speed of movement. Suddenly a hand was against his neck and five sharp points pressed into his skin.
These ain’t,’ said the werewolf. ‘Let’s see who finishes squeezin’ first, eh?’
‘Yeah, right,’ said Mr Tulip, who was also holding something.
That’s just a barbecue fork,’ said the werewolf, giving it barely a glance.
‘You want to see how –ing fast I can throw it?’ said Mr Tulip.
Mr Pin tried to swallow, but got only halfway. Dead people, he knew, didn’t squeeze that hard, but it was at least ten steps to the door and the space seemed to be getting wider by the heart beat.
165
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘There’s no need for this, right? Why don’t we all loosen up? And, hey, it would help me talk to you if you were your normal shape
‘No problem, my friend.’
The werewolf winced and shuddered, but without at any point letting go of Mr Pin’s neck. The face contorted so much, features flowing together, that even Mr Pin, who in other circumstances quite enjoyed that sort of thing, had to look away.
This allowed him to see the shadow on the wall. It was, contrary to expectations, growing. So were its ears.
‘Any qvestions?’ said the werewolf. Now its teeth seriously interfered with its speech. Its breath smelled even worse than Mr Tulip’s suit.
‘Ah . . .’ said Mr Pin, standing on tiptoe. ‘I think we’ve come to the wrong place.’
‘I think zat also.’
At the bar Mr Tulip bit the top off a bottle in a meaningful way.
Once again the room was filled with the ferocious silence of calculation and the personal mathematics of profit and loss.
Mr Tulip smashed a bottle against his forehead. At this point, he did not appear to be paying much attention to the room. He’d just happened to have a bottle in his hand which he did not need any more. Putting it on to the bar would have required an unnecessary expenditure of hand-eye co-ordination.
People recalculated.
‘Is he human?’ said the werewolf.
‘Well, of course, “human” is just a word,’ said Mr Pin.
He felt weight slowly press down on to his toes as he was lowered to the floor.
‘I think perhaps we’ll just be going,’ he said carefully.
‘Right,’ said the werewolf. Mr Tulip had smashed open a big jar of pickles, or at least things that were long, chubby and green, and was trying to insert one up his nose.
‘If we wanted to stay, we would,’ said Mr Pin.
‘Right. But you want to go. So does your . . . friend,’ said the werewolf.
Mr Pin backed towards the door. ‘Mr Tulip, we have business
166
elsewhere,’ he said. ‘Sheesh, take the damn pickle out of your nose, will you? We’re supposed to be professionals!’
That’s not a pickle,’ said a voice in the dark.
Mr Pin was uncharacteristically thankful when the door slammed behind them. To his surprise, he also heard the bolts shoot home.
‘Well, that could have gone better,’ he said, brushing dust and hair off his coat.
‘What now?’ said Mr Tulip.
‘Time to think of a plan B,’ said Pin.
‘Why don’t we just –ing hit people until someone tells us where the dog is?’ said Mr Tulip.
‘Tempting,’ said Mr Pin. ‘But we’ll leave that for plan C–‘
‘Bugrit.’
They both turned.
‘Bent treacle edges, I told ’em,’ said Foul Ole Ron, lurching across the street, a wad of Timeses under one arm and the string of his nondescript mongrel in his other hand. He caught sight of the New Firm.
‘Harglegarlyurp?’ he said. ‘LayamEnipl You gents want a paper?’
It seemed to Mr Pin that the last sentence, while in pretty much the same voice, had an intrusive, not-quite-right quality. Apart from anything else, it made sense.
‘You got some change?’ he said to Mr Tulip, patting his pockets.
‘You’re going to –ing buy one?’ said his partner.