"I'll carry the case," she said. "I'm more used to guns than you are."

"It isn't just a gun, Suzie."

She shrugged. "That angel. Do you think it was from Above or Below?"

It was my turn to shrug. "Does it matter, Suzie? When the Bedlam Boys had us, trapped in our fears, for a moment I saw what you saw..."

"We won't talk about that," Suzie said flatly. "Not now. Not ever. If you are my friend."

Sometimes being a friend means knowing when to let things go and shut the hell up. So I pushed myself away from the wall and headed for the nearest of the three remaining salt statues. Suzie followed after me. The scattered remains of the shattered statue crunched loudly under our feet. I looked at the three white faces, trapped in a moment of horror, forever. Sometimes I think the whole universe runs on irony.

"Well, there goes our chances of finding the Collector's location," said Suzie, her voice and face utterly calm and easy.

"Not necessarily," I said. "Remember the first rule of the private detective, when in doubt, check their pockets for clues."

"I thought the first rule was wait until the client's cheque has cleared?"

"Picky picky."

It took a while, but eventually we turned up a single embossed business card, proclaiming a performance by Nasty Jack Starlight at the old Styx Theatre, dated that very day. Or, more properly, night.

"So Starlight's back in town," I said. "Wouldn't have thought he was the Boys' cup of tea."

"Has to be a connection," said Suzie. "I know for a fact that Starlight's supposed to have supplied certain items to the Collector in the past."

"Let's go talk to the man," I said. "See what he knows."

"Let's," said Suzie. "I'm in the mood to talk forcibly to someone. Possibly even violently."

"Never knew a time when you weren't," I said generously.

We walked through the streets of the Nightside, through a city under siege. There were angels everywhere now, soaring across the night sky, plunging down to snatch victims right out of the street, spreading terror and destruction. There were screams and cries, fires and explosions. Dark plumes of smoke rose from burning buildings on all sides. People had been driven out into the streets, as homes and businesses and hiding places collapsed into rubble behind them. Everywhere I looked there were salt statues, and bodies impaled on lamp-posts. Burned and blackened corpses lay piled up in the gutters, and once I saw someone turned inside out, still horribly alive and suffering. Suzie put him out of his misery. Judgement Day had come to the Nightside, and it wasn't pretty. There was gun-fire all over the place, and fiery explosions, and now and again I felt the fabric of the world shake as some poor desperate fool levelled heavy-duty magics against the invading angels. Nothing stopped them, or even slowed them down. Grey men in grey suits stood unnaturally still in doorways, or looked out of alleyways, or walked untouched out of fire-gutted buildings. They were everywhere, and people ran howling before them, driven like cattle to the slaughter.