My name is John Taylor. You can frighten people with that name, in certain places. I operate as a private eye, though Iโve never held a license or owned a gun. I wear a white trench coat, if thatโs any help. Iโm tall, dark of eye, and handsome enough to get by. I have a gift for finding things, whether they want to be found or not. I help people, when I can. I like to think Iโm one of the Good Guys. I operate in the Nightside, that sick magical city within a city, Londonโs best-kept secret. Itโs always night in the Nightside, always three oโclock in the morning, the hour of the wolf, when most people die and most babies are born. That part of the night where itโs always darkest just before the dawn, and the dawn never comes. Gods and monsters walk openly along rain-slick streets, basking in the sleazy glow of hot neon, and every temptation you ever lusted after in the darkest reaches of your heart is right there to be found, for a price. Most often your soul, or someone elseโs. You can find joy and horror in the Nightside, salvation and damnation, and the answer to every question you ever had. If the Nightside doesnโt kill you first. I have something of a reputation on those dark streets, and not in a good way. My father drank himself to death after finding out my mother wasnโt human after all. A mysterious group of Enemies have been trying to kill me ever since I was a small child. There are those in the Nightside who see me as a King in waiting, and others who have named me Abomination. To the Authorities, that faceless group who like to think they run things, Iโm just a rogue agent and an unrepentant pain in the arse. Only recently I found out my mother was a Biblical myth: Lilith, Adamโs first wife, driven out of Eden for refusing to accept any authority other than her own. She created the Nightside, thousands of years ago, to be the one place on Earth free from the eternal battle between Heaven and Hell. Sheโs been away; but now sheโs back. And everyoneโs waiting for the other shoe to drop. I once saw a possible future for the Nightside. In it everyone was dead, the whole world a wasteland. And all of it was my fault, because I went looking for my mother. I swore an oath to die rather than let that happen. But, of course, nothingโs ever that simple in the Nightside.