"Simon R. Green - Nightside 4 - Hex in the City" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Simon R)

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Nightside 4


Hex In The City


by Simon R. Green


The Psychenauts

You can find anything in the Nightside, from the sacred to the
profane and back again, but I don't recommend attending the
auctions there unless you've got a strong stomach and nerves of
steel. I don't normally go to auctions any more, even though most
people are afraid to bid against me. I always end up saddled with a
crateful of junk, just to get the one thing I do want. One time I
accidentally acquired a Pookah, and for a few months I was
followed around the Nightside by a Playboy Bunny Girl invisible to
everyone except me. Fun, but distracting.
However, when you work as a private investigator in the Nightside,
that hidden magical heart of London, where gods and monsters walk
side by side, and sometimes attend the same self-help groups, some
cases almost in evitably lead you to the most unpleasant places. The
head auctioneer of the Night side's Great Auction Hall hired me to
stand watch over one particularly contentious auction, to keep the

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bidders in line. It sounded straight forward enough, which should
have been a warning. Nothing's ever straight forward in my life.
I turned up nice and early, so I could look the place over. It had
been several years since I was last there, and in between I'd left the
Nightside on the run, with a bullet in my back, and reluctantly
returned to stage a semi-triumphant comeback. The doorman at the
Hall took one look at me and didn't want to let me in, but I gave him
my name, and he turned satisfyingly pale and stepped back to wave
me in. A good, or rather bad, reputation will get you into places that
a battalion of troops wouldn't.
The head auctioneer stopped pacing nervously up and down and
came striding across the great empty Hall to greet me. She grudged
me a brief smile and crushed my hand in an over-firm handshake.
Lucretia Grave was a short, sturdy woman in an old-fashioned