Hell To Pay

“I’m sorry,” I said. “There’s nothing I can do to help you. But I’m hoping there’s still time to help your cousin. I need you to tell me all you know about Melissa and her kidnapping.”

For the first time Polly looked away from me, his whole body language changing, becoming tense, stubborn, evasive. “She was kidnapped. Never doubt that, Mr. Taylor. But I can’t help you.”

“Don’t you have any idea who might have taken her, or why?”

“I can’t talk to you about that. I just can’t.”

“Can you at least tell me why they went after her and not any other member of the family?”

Polly looked back at me, and his eyes were desperate, pleading. As though begging me to come up with the answers myself so he wouldn’t have to tell me. He knew something, but it was up to me to trick or force it out of him.

“Melissa had a secret,” Polly said finally. “Just like me. Something about herself, her real self, that she kept from the rest of the family, and the rest of the world. Because they could never understand. And no, I won’t tell you what it is.”

“Is it anything to do with the story about your grandfather selling his soul to the Devil?” I said.

Polly just smiled sadly. “Melissa is the only one in our family who hasn’t sold their soul to the Devil, one way or another. Out of all of us, she alone is good and true and pure. You’d never know she was a Griffin at all.”

“And how did she manage that?” I said, honestly curious.

“She has the strength of ten because her heart is pure,” said Polly. “She always was the most strong-willed and stubborn member of our family. I think that’s why Grandfather always liked her best. Because in her own way, she was the most like him.”

I thought about that. Paul clearly idolized his cousin. Perhaps because she was the woman he could never be.

“Why do you lock yourself in your bedroom?” I said finally. “So you can dress up as Polly?”

“No,” he said immediately. “I’m only Polly when I’m here, or among friends I know I can trust. I’m Paul at the Hall. I wouldn’t dare dress up there. It isn’t safe, there. It always feels like I’m being watched. Hobbes seems to know everything. He always did, even when I was a child. You couldn’t get away with anything, when he was around…Nasty, creepy old man. Always watching and spying and reporting back to Grandfather. We all hate Hobbes, except for Grandfather…

“I lock myself in my room because my life is in danger, Mr. Taylor. You have to believe me! I haven’t dared sleep in my room for weeks, but I can’t stay away too much or it would look suspicious…They’d know for sure that I know…They have to kill me because I know the truth!”

“Which truth?” I said. “About Melissa? About the kidnapping?”

“No! The truth about Jeremiah Griffin! About what he did to become what he is!” Polly leaned forward across the table and grabbed my hand with masculine strength.

“Ask Jeremiah. Ask him why no-one is ever allowed to go down into the cellar under Griffin Hall. Ask him what he keeps down there. Ask him why the only door to that cellar is locked and protected by the most powerful magics in the Hall!”

Polly let go of my hand and sat back in his chair, breathing hard. There was something about him of a small animal in the wild, hunted and harried by wolves.

“Talk to me,” I said, as gently as I could. “Tell me what you know, and I’ll protect you. I’m John Taylor, remember? The scariest man in the Nightside?”

Polly smiled at me sadly, almost pityingly. “You can’t help me. No-one can. I should never have been born. I’m only safe here because I’m Polly, and no-one here would ever tell. Sisterhood is a wonderful thing.” She looked at me with sudden intensity. “You mustn’t tell either! You can’t tell anyone! How did you find me here?”

“Relax. I’m John Taylor, remember? Finding things and people is what I do.” It was a lie, but he didn’t need to know that. He didn’t need to know that his mother knew about Polly. “My only interest in you is what you can tell me about Melissa.”

Polly smiled, a little shamefacedly. “Sorry. When your whole life is a secret and a lie, you tend to forget the whole world doesn’t revolve around you. Grandfather tried to make me his heir, you know; when I was younger. He’d given up on Uncle William. But I was stubborn, even then. I never wanted anything to do with the family business. That’s why Grandfather finally turned to Melissa, because he saw so much more of himself in her. And because she was the only one left. All I ever wanted was to be me, and to sing every night at Divas!”

He stood up suddenly and strode away from the table, heading for the raised stage. He took the microphone from the departing Mary Hopkin, and there he was, standing tall and proud in the spotlight, singing “For Today I Am A Boy,” by Anthony and the Johnsons. He put his whole heart into the song, and it seemed like the whole room stopped to listen. He was good, he really was, and I have heard the Nightingale sing and lived to tell of it.

I sat and listened to Polly sing, and it occurred to me that Paul had found his own safe artificial world to hide away in, just like his Uncle William. All the Griffins had their own worlds, their own secrets…and it seemed to me that if I could only discover Melissa’s, I’d know the who and how and why of everything that had happened.

That was when a small army of heavily armed women in combat fatigues came abseiling down from the high ceiling, a dozen of them, firing short machine pistol bursts over the heads of the crowd below. The glittering disco ball exploded, and everyone on the ballroom floor jumped to their feet and ran screaming in all directions, like so many panicked birds of paradise. Some ducked down behind hastily overturned tabletops, while others scrambled for the nearest exit. Alone on the stage, Polly stood frozen where he was, staring in horror at the assault force that had invaded his private world. You can’t protect me, he’d said. No-one can. I plunged towards the stage, ignoring the flying bullets, fighting my way through the screaming crowd.

I vaulted up onto the stage, grabbed Polly, and threw him to the floor, covering him with my own body. I glanced out across the ballroom floor. The women in army fatigues were all touching down now, still firing their short, controlled bursts into the air at regular intervals. As far as I could see, they hadn’t actually hit anyone yet, but several bright young things had fallen and been trampled underfoot in the panic. The pattern for fire being laid down seemed designed to intimidate, for the moment. Which had to mean they’d come here with some definite purpose in mind.

By now the army women had moved to block all the exits and were herding the club members back into the middle of the ballroom floor. A lot of the tra

“Stay where you are and we won’t have to hurt you. We’re here for one man, and when we’ve got him, we’ll leave. We won’t leave without him. Anyone gives us any trouble, we’ll make an example of him. So, who’s in charge of this den of iniquity?”

The Angelina Jolie moved cautiously forward. Half a dozen guns moved to track her. She stopped before the army leader. “I’m the Management. How dare you do this? How dare you burst in here and…”

The army leader punched the Angelina in the mouth, and he staggered backwards under the force of the blow. Blood spilled down his chin from his ruined mouth. The army leader snarled at him.

“Shut your painted mouth, creature. U