"We all liked Fennella. She was such good company.

"And then Charles finally discovered who and what his lovely wife really was. I don't know if there was ever a confrontation, but suddenly she was gone. She disappeared into the Nightside, and none of us ever saw her again, though we all searched for her in our various ways ... Charles retreated into his old obsession about the true beginnings of the Nightside and drank himself to death, despite everything Mark and I could do to help. We did try. I'm sure we did. But he shut us out; and all the time he watched his young son as though John was something that might turn on him. Mark and I kept an eye on John, from a distance, looking out for him when we could. We intercepted quite a few attacks from the Harrowing, until John was old enough to fend for himself."

"Does John know that?"

"I never asked him."

"But... what's bringing his mother back now?"

"No-one knows for sure. If we did, we'd do ... something ..."

"To stop her?"

"I'm not sure she can be stopped. Sophia, why are you so interested in all this?"

"Because I'm working with John to uncover the true origins of the Nightside. And the closer we get to the truth, the more it seems tied in to the identity of John's missing mother. Though everyone we meet has very different ideas on who she was, or is."

"If I cared about you," said Walker, "I'd tell you to get the hell away from John Taylor. For your own sake."

"You should stay away from us," said Pretty Poison. "I'd hate for you to get hurt, Henry."

Walker raised an eyebrow. "Would you? Really?"

"Perhaps. I'm still working on this whole love thing. Call off your people, Henry. For old times' sake."

"I can't. John's gone too far. Made himself too dangerous to the status quo. He must be stopped."

"You mean killed?"

"I'll take him alive if I can. For old times' sake."

"Oh, Henry ... what is it that makes him so dangerous? Who could his mother be, to terrify so many powerful people?"

"Haven't you been listening?" said Walker, almost angrily. "Whatever we called up and let loose through the Babalon Working, that was John's mother!" He turned his head abruptly to look right at me. "I know you're there, John, watching and listening. I should have told you all this long ago, but I still hoped to spare you the consequences of our sins. I'm sorry for how things turned out. But either you step back from the edge now, and give yourself up, or I'll have no choice but to have you killed. Just in case you are ... your mother's son."

The Wife

After all that, I felt I deserved a very large drink. In fact, I felt I deserved several very large drinks, followed by an extremely large drink, as a chaser. And then maybe I'd go and sit in a dark corner and twitch quietly for a while.