"I thought you were desperate to go Time travelling," I said.

"Not necessarily this desperate."

"I'm going, and so are you," Suzie said briskly. "Now shut your face, or I'll rip your nipples off." She turned her cold gaze on me. "He may be annoying, but he does have a point. Time travel really is a last resort. You sure there's no-one else in the Nightside you could talk to about your mother?"

"The only other person who knew my mother, and is still around, is Shock-Headed Peter," I said. "And he's crazy."

"How crazy?" said Tommy.

"Crazy as in, criminally insane. He murdered three

hundred and forty-seven people before the Authorities finally caught up with him. That's three hundred and forty-seven victims that they're sure of... Walker once told me, very much off the record, that the real number was probably in the thousands. That's a pretty respectable body count, even for the Nightside. They never did find any of the bodies. Or any trace of forensic evidence. Just the victims' clothes .. The Authorities have him locked up in the nastiest and most secure dungeon in the Nightside."

"Why didn't they execute him?" said Suzie, practical as ever.

"They tried. Several times. It didn't take. I'll talk to him when I've tried absolutely everything else first."

"I would," said Tommy.

And that was when the Shadow Men found us again. Somehow they'd tracked me half-way across the Nightside in a matter of minutes, without even a trail to follow. They came slipping and sliding across the open Square, great black shapes with long reaching arms, and the few people in the Square ran screaming from them. I would have liked to do the same, but once again they'd silently surrounded me, blocking me off from every exit. They'd even been careful to get between me and the Time Tower. They moved in slowly from all sides like a creeping black tide, taking their time. They wanted to savour this. And I had nothing left with which to fight them.

Suzie Shooter had her shotgun in her hands again. She blasted the nearest Shadow with both barrels, and the darkness absorbed the blast without even a ripple. Suzie swore dispassionately.

"I have silver bullets, blessed bullets, cursed bullets, and a couple of grenades I stole from some Satanic terrorists. Any of them do any good?"

"No," I said. I was having trouble breathing, and I could feel cold beads of swe# popping out on my forehead. I

didn't want to go out like this. Swallowed up by the dark, reduced to some broken, screaming thing. "Tommy?"

Give the man his due, he tried. He stepped forward and tried to reason with the Shadow Men. But his voice was uncertain, and I could feel his gift sputtering on and off. The Shadow Men oozed forward, taking their time, black lakes of evil intent. They didn't listen to Tommy. They didn't care about his logic, they didn't care about anything but dragging down the man who'd dared defy them. They had come for me, and not even Walker's orders would have turned them aside by then.