Mind the Gap

chapter Eighteen

deeper

Mayor Bromwell tipped sideways and struck the floor, his shattered face making a wet thunk as it

hit. Blood, fluids, and shreds of bone had spattered the floor, and more pulsed from the wounds. He moved

slowly, like a creature uncurl-ing from a long sleep, and made a terrible keening sound deep in his throat.

Then he was still.

Jazz looked up at Stevie, and he looked at her. There was a moment of doubt in her mind, an urge to

flee for her own safety, because Stevie still had the gun half raised. There was a blankness to his

expression, as though he was looking through her to what might happen beyond, and Jazz thought, He's

going to shoot me because I saw. But then his face fell slack, his mouth hung open, and life came into his

eyes once again.

They looked at each other for what felt like forever. And then the shouting began, and the footsteps,

and Stevie's mouth closed right.

"Jazz, we have to —"

"What the hell —"

"Later. Let's go."

Jazz turned around. A door burst open on the other side of the landing, across the hallway from her.

Philip and the other man came out, staring at her, and even though she thought she was disguised, the

recognition in the BMW man's eyes was instant and obvious. "You!"

Jazz entered the dead mayor's room and slammed the door behind her, turning the key. She skirted

around behind the corpse, keeping to the curved wall so that she did not tread in any blood, and Stevie

threw the door wide for her.

"Terence," Jazz said.

"He'll be okay."

"He didn't know?"

"Later." Stevie grabbed her arm hard and steered her along a small narrow corridor toward the rear

of the house. He was still carrying the gun in his other hand. "Go!"

Jazz ran, heart thumping, sweat chilling her back, and the implication of what she had just seen was

still very far away. There was no detail, though she felt it hovering around her, waiting to strike home. Her



mind was a haze, the only clear thing in that haze the image of her dead mother. So much blood. Such

murder.

"Turn right," Stevie said. He pushed her that way just in case she hadn't heard.

The house was coming to life. People shouted, footsteps pounded, doors burst open. She had thought

the building all but deserted as she sneaked around, looking for something she knew nothing about, but it

seemed that first impression had been wrong.

Voices came close, then moved away again. A door was smashed open to bang against a wall.

Someone shouted in shock, and another voice wailed in grief —a sound that chilled Jazz. She stopped, the

corridor before her ending in a sash window that was half open, and Stevie shoved her hard in the back.

"Through there and up!" he whispered.

"But —"

"Just f*cking go!"

Jazz lifted the sash higher and peered out. She looked out upon landscaped gardens, and below and to

her right was the roof of the large conservatory through which they had entered. That seemed like days ago

but probably wasn't more than fifteen minutes. Everything's changed, she thought, and someone appeared

in the conservatory. A tall thin man, standing beside the low table in there, partly visible to Jazz through the

glazed roof.

Stevie placed his hand on her ass and pushed, but she slapped back at him and held her hand upright:

wait!

The man looked around, scanning the garden, then he seemed to speak into his sleeve. He shook his

head and went back into the kitchen.

Stevie pushed again. Someone must be getting close. He still had that gun, and Jazz didn't want

anyone else dead. Not even Philip, that mad monster who'd battered and kicked Cadge to death. Not even

him.

Below the window a steel platform was bolted into the wall, and to the left a hoop ladder rose eight

feet to the roof. Jazz went for it, moving quickly when she felt Stevie press up close behind her, jumping up

the first few rungs and then climbing quickly. Surely we should be going down? she thought, but perhaps

that was the point. They'd be looking for people trying to escape, not those holing up on the roof.

But they'd be trapped up there.

Jazz reached the roof. There was a small platform and then the roof pitch, shallow enough to climb

but still dan-gerous if she happened to slip. Beyond the ridge, she did not know.

"Up," Stevie said. "We've got to get out of sight."

"They'll shut the building down," she said. "We'll be trapped up here."

"We've got a couple of minutes to get away, that's all."

"You planned this?"

"Over the ridge in the middle of the roof, there's a flat area for air-conditioning and heating

equipment. We turn right there, back up and down another pitched area, then there's a tree growing really

close —"

"A tree?" Jazz said, aghast. "And what, we jump?"

"Yeah." Stevie pushed past her and started climbing the sloping roof, crawling on hands and knees,

gun still clasped in his right hand.

"Stevie —"

"Later, Jazz! We don't get away, we're both dead."

She followed him up. They passed between two dormer windows. Jazz expected them to open at any

moment. Men would climb out and come for them, grab her ankles, tug just hard enough to set her sliding

and falling... She fell. How tragic. The police would believe them. They owned the police.

Stevie was right. They crested the ridge, dropped down the opposite slope, and stood on a large flat

section of roof hidden away from outside view by pitched areas all around. There were no dormer windows

on this side, but there were two doors, both of them closed. Various pieces of machinery sat on paving-slab

plinths, humming and buzzing away as they heated or cooled. Pipes lay everywhere.

"Over here," Stevie said. And then one of the doors opened.

Jazz froze. Her view was partially blocked by a big con-denser, but she saw the shape step quickly

through the door and close it. Terence! she thought. Let it be Terence!

The man stepped lightly across the roof between some equipment. He disappeared for a moment.

Stevie was crouched down several feet away, looking at her, eyebrows raised. Jazz shrugged.

The man emerged a few steps from her and smiled. "Little girl," he said.

Stevie stood up and aimed the gun, holding it with both hands as if he knew what he was doing.



"Don't f*cking move."

"Or what?" the man said. "You'll shoot me?" He was smart, short but strong-looking, and his

expression betrayed only confidence. He didn't seem to be carrying any weapons.

"I shot that bastard mayor."

"No you didn't," he said, frowning, and Jazz thought, Maybe some of them don't even know yet. But

then the frown turned into a sad smile. "He committed suicide. Tragic. But at least that means the police

won't be looking for anyone else in connection with his death."

Stevie shifted from one foot to the other, but the gun never wavered. "Kneel down," he said.

"No." The man shook his head.

"Turn around, kneel down, and put your hands —"

"F*ck you, shit for brains." The man's voice was soft and calm. He shifted his gaze from Stevie to

Jazz. "This turn you on?" he asked, nodding at Stevie. "This hard-man act?"

Stevie fired.

The man's eyes went wide in surprise, then his left leg folded and he went down.

To begin with, Jazz couldn't see where he'd been hit, and she looked frantically for the wound. Then

the man's trouser leg turned dark as blood pulsed from his thigh.

"Shit for brains," Stevie said.

The man smiled, a pained grimace.

"People will have heard that," Jazz said. "We need to go now!"

Stevie glared at the downed man, gun still pointing at him, and Jazz gave him a hard nudge. "Now!"

Jazz pushed past him, skirted around a piece of hum-ming machinery, and started climbing the slope.

Her foot slipped on a loose slate and she fell, the slate sliding down to the flat roof. She climbed again, more

careful this time, and she heard Stevie scrambling up the slope behind her.

"Here!" the wounded man started shouting. "On the roof!"

When she reached the ridge, she paused and took a careful peek over. The other side of the house

was mostly lawn, and there was the huge old oak tree that Stevie had mentioned. It grew very close to the

house, a thick branch pointing at the building like an old finger. It was a six-foot jump at least.

"You're kidding," Jazz said.

"Got a better idea?"

"On the roof!" the man screamed again, and they both heard a door burst open behind them.

"Go!" Stevie said.

Jazz swung one leg over the ridge and started sliding. She clawed at the slates, a fingernail snapping

back as it caught, but her weight pulled her down. She tried to gain her knees but she rolled instead, and

with each roll she saw the edge of the roof coming frighteningly closer.

A hand closed around her ankle. She gasped as Stevie clasped tight, and her left foot and hand

dipped into the gutter at the roofs edge. It was filled with dead leaves and slime, and it flexed and dipped

alarmingly beneath her weight.

Looking back, she saw Stevie stretched headfirst down the roof. He still held his gun, and his lips

were pressed to-gether, veins standing out on his forehead as he struggled to keep hold of her.

Jazz carefully knelt, then sat on the roof, leaning back so that her center of gravity was lower. Stevie

let go of her leg and gasped in relief.

"Thanks," Jazz said.

"Jump," Stevie said. "We have seconds."

She glanced at Stevie and the gun in his hand and wanted to say, Don't make things any worse, but

she realized they were as bad as they could get. If these men caught them, they'd be dead.

Jazz eyed the limb of the oak tree, balanced on her feet with her arms outstretched for balance, then

leaped. The branch punched her in the chest and she held on, legs swinging, hands scrabbling for purchase.

"Swing left!" Stevie called, and behind his voice were others, quieter and less panicked, more in

control.

Jazz swung her legs to the left and kicked a branch. One trainer caught and she heaved her other leg

up, swung both arms over the branch before her, and then lay across it, look-ing back to Stevie.

"Come on!" she said, but he had already turned to look up the slope of the roof. A shape appeared

above the ridge and he shot at it, aiming again even as Jazz saw that it was a diversion.

"Look out!" she shouted. Farther along the ridge a man rose up —Philip, a loose slate in each hand.

He flung them. The first bounced from the roof and shattered, shards flying over Stevie's head. The second

caught him square in the face.

He dropped the gun. It slid from the roof, caught in the gutter for a second, then spun down to the



ground below. Jazz watched. There was solid paving down there, a patio, and it was at least twenty-five

feet down.

"Stevie!" she shrieked.

He turned to her slowly, but he could not see. The slate had caught him across the bridge of the nose

and just be-neath his eyes, and the wound it had made was horrendous.

"Jump!" Jazz said, but it came out more like a sob.

Philip and another man were sliding down the roof toward him, taking their time because they knew

they had him. Philip grinned madly. They could see the blood, and the shiver that went through Stevie was

all too apparent.

Perhaps it was a final act of defiance. Maybe Stevie was already unconscious. Jazz would never

know. But she would never forget the sight of him falling forward from the edge of the roof and striking the

ground headfirst. Nor would she forget the sound his body made as it hit concrete, or the dis-appointed

expressions on the men's faces as they realized Stevie had denied them their revenge.

Jazz had no fear now; she was numb. There was little thought about where the best handholds were.

She reached the trunk of the tree and climbed down, finding another heavy limb that led out toward the

street. She walked along this one, ducking below other branches, holding on to what-ever she found above

her, until she could see the tall bound-ary wall below her. She lowered herself down, jumped from the wall,

and landed on the pavement, rolling to the left.

Hands grasped her shoulders.

"Come with me!" Terence said softly. He helped her stand and guided her across the road, and she

followed in mute acceptance. She knew that if there was any chance of escape, it would be with him. He

cursed as they ran, mutter-ing to himself and hauling Jazz as though she were a bit of baggage.

Terence ripped off her hat and glasses and buried them in a bin, ruffled her hair, tried to wipe her

tears away. Unable to stop herself, she cast one last glance at the mayor's house.

Mortimer Keating stood on the street corner, beside the open rear door of a black BMW. He seemed

calm, as though the events that had just unfolded —the sound of gunshots and the appearance of Jazz from

the branches of that tree— had been no surprise at all. Uncle Mort held something to his ear, a radio or a

phone. From that distance she and Terence could easily have outrun him, but he didn't make any move to

pursue them. Instead, he simply waved at Jazz and smiled, as though he had a secret.

"What the hell is that about?" she said.

Terence looked back as Uncle Mort slipped into the backseat of the BMW. The car pulled away.

"What's what about?" Terence said.

Jazz didn't reply. Her mind whirled. As she hurried along the street, she stole glances down alleys

and into parked cars, even looked up at the windows of houses. The back of her neck burned with the

feeling of being observed. Her mother had raised her to be paranoid, but she couldn't shake the idea that

this was more than her upbringing.

Why hadn't Mort chased her? Only two possibilities presented themselves to her: either he did not

want to, or he did not need to. Either way she felt confused and uneasy, even in the midst of her horror and

grief about what Stevie had done and how he had paid for it.

Jazz and Terence were walking along a tree-lined street now, the houses not as opulent as in the

mayor's district but still large and imposing. At the wail of a siren, they slipped into an alley to await the

passage of a speeding police car.

"Did you see it?" he asked, as they set out walking again.

"Yes," Jazz said. Her voice sounded empty and flat. "Shot him in the head."

"The battery!" Terence said. "Did you see the battery?"

Jazz frowned, thinking for a moment that perhaps Terence had lost it. But she could see the

knowledge of what had happened in his face. He knew. He was not stupid.

"The battery?"

"When you saw the mayor, before Stevie killed him, did you see the battery?" They'd stopped on the

street and Terence held both of her shoulders, ready to shake. If they'd wanted to attract more attention to

themselves, she supposed they could have stripped and started screwing on the pavement.

"Stevie's dead," Jazz whispered. "He fell. I watched him fall, and —"

"F*ck it!" Terence shouted. He looked around then, shook his head, and ran a hand over his ruffled

hair, as if flat-tening it down would smooth over the f*ckup this had be-come. "Come on."

As they started walking again, Jazz said, "Did you hear me? Stevie's dead."

"His fault," he said.

"What?"



"And Harry's. Harry's more than his, I suppose. That old bastard steered him."

They turned right into a narrow lane that led to the rear of the houses, passed several parked cars

—Audis, BMWs, sporty soft-tops—then Terence vaulted a fence and held out his hands for Jazz to follow.

She hesitated, looking around. The presence of the BMWs troubled her. In her mind she could still

see Mort's smile and that casual wave.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"Tube," he said. "I have a flat in Colliers Wood; we can hole up there for a while." He seemed

distracted, never quite meeting her eyes. He was fuming, and she sensed him ready to boil over.

"I don't know you," she said. Terence looked at her, then away again, straining over the fence.

"Come on!" he said. "I won't wait all day."

Tube, Jazz thought. Safest place for me right now. She was momentarily surprised at how she had

come to view the Underground as safe, but there were things down there she was starting to understand

more and more, and things up here she knew less and less. Her world seemed to be chang-ing with every

breath. She could fight those changes or follow.

"I believe you," she said. "I just don't know you any-more." She grasped his hands and he pulled her

over the fence.

As they walked, her legs hurt more and more. She had cut herself on the top of the security wall and

gashed her shin on a broken roof tile but barely been aware of the in-juries until now. In spots, her trousers

had turned dark with blood, but her injuries were not serious; nothing a few ban-dages and some antibiotic

cream wouldn't cure. They hurt when she walked, but she welcomed the pain, because Stevie could not

feel pain anymore, nor could Cadge or her mother. She was hurting because she was still alive, and even

though she had just seen two people die, she felt a moment of utter joy, a shocking euphoria. A bee buzzed

them, weeds bent beneath their feet and sprang up again, and when they reached a busy main street she

looked up at clouds, colorful window boxes, and the way life filled this place.

A police car cruised by, and Terence turned her to face a bookshop window. She saw his reflection,

and even there his eyes seemed dark.

"There was no battery," Jazz said.

"We didn't search the whole house."

"There was nothing in the mayor's room but the mayor."

"That means nothing. Damn it. So close!" She knew he wanted to shout, but he whispered instead.

She looked along the street and saw the familiar Tube symbol above the pavement. Almost there,

she thought. They walked on. Jazz thought about linking arms to give them the look of a couple, but

Terence was frowning at the ground as he walked now, arms swinging by his side and lips pursed in

concentration. When they reached the Tube station, he turned right and paused at the ticket machine,

buying two Travelcards for them. He handed one to Jazz, passed through the turnstile, and started down the

stairs. Jazz fol-lowed. He seemed to be moving without giving thought to where he was going, and right

now that suited her well. She'd happily get lost down here forever.

She wondered whether Harry knew what had happened. Probably not, but he had his ways and

means.

They waited on a crowded platform, Terence still star-ing down at his feet but no longer frowning.

His face now seemed blank.

When the train arrived, he got on without looking to see whether Jazz followed. She almost did not.

But as the doors started to slide shut she jumped on, eager to stay close to Terence simply because she still

felt vulnerable. They'd be searching for her, now more than ever before. The way Mort had smiled at her

—he'd seemed so confident he had her—worried her deeply. Had he really known they would break into

the mayor's? Had he known they were searching for the battery there? And what else did he know?

Terence might be ignoring her, but the last thing she wanted was to be alone.

He had sat down, and he swayed in time with the train's motion. Jazz hung on to a strap, and when

they stopped at the next station and there was a spare seat, she sat down beside him. He glanced at her,

then stared, and he smiled. It did not look good on his face. It was the smile of someone with nothing to live

for.

She leaned in close. "There was no battery," she said. "Just him in that room and —"

"There was no battery ever," Terence said. "Not in that house. Taken a while to figure that out.

That's not like me."

Jazz sat back and looked at the man across from her. He was about Harry's age, smart, and he

stared at her feet as the train shook and shimmied its way through the tunnels. No battery ever, she

thought, and she remembered Stevie aim-ing through the door at the mayor as the man tried magic. She'd



thought he was laughing for a moment, but Stevie had rarely had any laughter in him. So dour for a boy his

age. So serious.

"Harry," she said. "He set it all up."

Terence laughed, a little too loud for her liking. He drew a few stares. "Harry!" he said. "Yeah,

Harry." He leaned in close. "I hate being used," he said, quieter and in his real voice. She'd always thought

that beneath the out-ward veneer he could be dangerous, and those words were as threatening as any Jazz

had ever heard.

"He never meant for Stevie to die, though," she said.

Terence shrugged. "Bad luck, that's all."

"You don't care?" She turned to face him, smelling his breath and looking straight into his eyes.

Terence raised an eyebrow. "Really? No. In the scheme of things —"

"You're a machine. That's it for you, isn't it? The scheme of things."

"Yes," he said. "What I'm doing is serious, Jazz. I'm not playing games here. Not messing around

like your Harry and his precious United f*cking Kingdom." He kept his voice low, but he was more solemn

than she had ever seen him. No flirty smiles now, no calm assurance. This was Terence at his most basic.

She didn't like it one bit.

"People are dead," she said.

He shrugged again. "Everyone dies."

The train began to slow. Jazz didn't even know which station it was, but she knew she would be

getting off. And if Terence tried to stop her, she'd scream for help, and every-one on the carriage would be

on him.

"If that's the case, why still seek revenge for your dead father?" She stood and held on to a strap,

swaying left and right as the train ground to a halt. For a second she thought he was going to call her back.

But he was too proud for that, too angry.

As the train pulled away, Terence smiled at her, and Jazz knew that she would see him again.



****

She caught the next train, got off three stops along, and caught another, staggering her journey in an

effort to lose any potential pursuers. Mort's smile still lingered in her mind. And the sight of Stevie falling.

She felt alone and lost, shielded somewhat by the weight of the ground around her but assaulted by the

stares of a thousand strangers. Her cut legs were hurting like a bastard now that the shock was wearing

off, and more than once she thought about her journey through that oak tree to the wall. How she had made

it, she had no clue. Something must have guided her feet, steered her hands, breathed luck into every step

she took down through the tree and over the wall.

Every time she closed her eyes for more than a blink, she heard Stevie's head hitting the stone patio.

She had trouble acknowledging what had happened, though in reality it was startlingly, brutally simple:

Harry had used them all to get his revenge upon the mayor for Cadge's death. Terence's suggestion that the

battery could have been at the mayor's residence had seeded a plan in Harry's mind, and his offer to help

Terence steal it was the perfect cover. He'd done his walk-by, and whether or not he truly had the power

to sense magic, he'd likely felt nothing. Getting in had all been about Stevie and his gun. They couldn't have

done it without Terence's gadgets to disable the alarms, and Harry had known that Terence would not have

gone in without Jazz.

She'd almost died. If Stevie hadn't grabbed her as she rolled down that roof, it would have been her

head making that awful splitting sound as it struck the mayor's patio. It would have been her body resting in

some shallow grave, or being eaten by pigs, or however else the BMW men would get rid of Stevie's

remains. She would have been dead if it weren't for Stevie, and Harry was obviously prepared to have that

on his conscience.

She had nowhere else to go. She had to stay down here, away from the glare of the sun and the

searching men dressed in suits and ties. Away from Mort's knowing smile.

And besides, something was drawing her down. It was more than the sense of safety afforded her

when she was down in the Tube stations, more than the feeling of coming home, which she had tried to

deny for a long time but which resounded through her every cell. This was something as in-explicable as

magnetism.

When she came to a part of the Underground she rec-ognized, she waited until the platform was all

but deserted, then entered the tunnel. She walked quickly along to where she knew there would be an

opening, silently counting down to when the next train would come through. Blown tiles crumbled beneath

her feet like dried shed skin. Water dripped from a broken main in the ground above. It was warm as blood.

Rats squealed, and she wondered if they could smell her blood.



She shook her head and cursed, trying to drive down such morbid thoughts. She heard a sound in the

distance like a hundred people moaning in unison, and at first she froze, expecting an Hour of Screams. She

did not fear it. Old death was nothing to be afraid of. But it was a train, and she quickened her step until

she found the opening.

Through doors, along dank corridors, across unused lines, and through excavations long forgotten by

anyone else, Jazz made her way down. At one point she paused at a ruined door, suddenly feeling the need

to turn left where there was no opening. She stared at the curved wall there, closing her eyes and feeling

the draw even stronger than before, and when she looked again she could make out the different shades of

cement. Picking up a fallen brick from back along the corridor, she bashed at the wall a few times. Cement

came away, wet and rotten. She exposed two areas of contrasting brickwork, one old, the other even older,

and the oldest area seemed to describe the shape of a doorway.

"What's beyond?" she whispered. Her voice was very loud, and she realized that question must have

been asked down here a million times before. The Underground was an escape, never a home, and anyone

living down here was sim-ply borrowing the space from something else.

She went on, and at one point she heard a sound behind her, metal against stone. She stopped and

held her breath, hunkered down in the darkness and listening for a repeat of the sound. But there was

nothing. There were always strange noises down here, some of which could be ex-plained, many that could

not. She supposed such mysteries always came with ghosts.

She found one of the United Kingdom's torch stores and welcomed the light to guide her down. Upon

reaching the grand arched entrance to the Palace, she started crying, and try as she might she could not

hold back the tears. When amorphous shapes appeared before her, she dropped the torch and held out her

hands, welcoming them in, not knowing whether they were alive or dead and not really caring.



****

"Stevie's dead," she said. Her voice was cool and blank, de-spite the tears.

Harry stepped back as though she'd slapped him in the face. She heard gasps of shock from the

others —Hattie, Leela, Gob—and she tried not to look their way, because she knew she'd see her own

grief mirrored there.

"He did what you sent him to do, like a good little ser-vant, and then they chased us and killed him.

He saved me first...He stopped me from..." She held her face in her hands and cried some more, and when

Harry touched the back of her neck, she shrugged him off and walked across the subterranean room.

"I never meant for this," Harry said. "He went with a task, but I never meant for this." He was being

careful what he said, and Jazz realized he didn't want everyone else to know how he and Stevie had

conspired. It would taint the kids' opinion of him, knowing he was a murderer by inten-tion. At first she

closed her eyes and tried to judge how heavy that knowledge would be, unshared. Did she have the right to

shatter their illusions of their savior?

She looked at Harry, his wide watery eyes, the long coat, and she tried to imagine him walking past

the mayor's house and sensing nothing. Standing at the gates and chanting abuse. Knowing that Stevie,

Terence, and she were breaking into the wolves' den, and however much he told her now, he would have

known there was a good chance one of them would get hurt or killed. A very good chance.

And Jazz realized that, yes, she absolutely did have that right. Because the United Kingdom needed

to know who Harry really was.

"You sent him to kill the mayor. You sent him to mur-der."

Harry stepped back, looking for a moment like a startled dog. He looked around the big room at the

other kids and shook his head.

"Yes, Harry," she said sadly. "Yes."

"For Cadge," he said. "Poor little Cadge —now, don't you think he deserved something, Jazz girl?"

Jazz could not answer. Tears were threatening again, burning behind her face and filling her throat.

Hattie came to her and stood by her side.

"It was for him," Harry said.

"And what of Terence?"

Harry scoffed. "Him and his precious battery? Fool! He thinks he can do what his father before him

couldn't, and I've no time for such daftness, Jazz girl. Now listen —Leela will fetch the first-aid kit and

have a look at your legs," he said, gesturing toward her bloodied trousers, though Jazz could have told him

the bleeding had stopped. "And then we'll talk, you and I. Have a real good adult chat about—"

"Adult," Jazz said, laughing softly. "Stevie was barely that, Harry. I saw his head burst open when he

hit the ground." She stared at the tall figure of Harry Fowler and tried to see something in his eyes when

she said that, some-thing that would give her a shred of hope for his soul. Perhaps it was the poor light in



that place, or a blurring from her tears, but she saw nothing.

"Hour of Screams!" Faith said, dashing in from one of the other rooms. Her blue eyes were wide

with fear, and she knelt down, covered her ears, and started singing a song.

Harry glanced at Jazz. "Second time today," he said. "Something's happening." He stared at her for a

moment, so intensely that she thought he was going to run at her, strike her. Then he sighed and sat down,

singing his own sad song. Jazz stood and ran. She could not bear to share the expe-rience of London's pain

with this man or be in the same place as him when she felt the ethereal tendrils of the old town's ghosts

passing by. She went back into the tunnels, passing the place where she had hidden those photos. That

seemed like so long ago now, and she almost saw the form of her younger, more innocent self squatting

there, picking away broken glass and closing the dumbwaiter on the images of her father. She sat against

the wall opposite and felt the screams beginning deep within her bones. It always came that way first, a

feeling, before the true sounds came in. It was almost as if the ghosts came from within instead of without,

and Jazz wondered whether it was like this for everyone.

She hugged herself, eyes open, and sang softly as the Hour of Screams washed over, around, and

through her. The air in the corridor became opaque at first, and then the walls seemed to fade away to

welcome in a long column of marching people. At first she thought they were soldiers, but then she saw the

weary faces and sad eyes —none of them turned her way—and she recognized kindred spirits. These

were lost souls, wandering the Underground because day-light would not welcome them.

Jazz followed, gasping as a line of people walked right through her.

Out in the main tunnel, the figures had faded away, but there were others now, blurs of motion,

movement, and sen-sation that threatened to overwhelm her senses. Several of them turned to her as

though pleading that she continue watching. She kept singing softly as she followed them away from the

Palace. The tunnel turned a corner and merged with a connection route between two larger tunnels, and

here the images started fading.

Wait, she thought, because she had the pressing idea that they had something to tell her. Jazz stopped

singing, ready to shout at them to wait for her. But as she exhaled, her breath seemed to forge a clear

space through the fleeting shapes, as though they were made of little more than mist. They wa-vered in the

air before her. The screaming diminished and started to echo, retreating even as the ghosts dissipated. And

as the real screaming began behind her, a more solid shape swam through the fog of London's agonized

past to stand before her.

Mortimer Keating raised a pistol and pointed it at Jazz's face. Her breath caught in her throat. And

now she under-stood the smile on his face outside the mayor's house. They'd found Harry and the United

Kingdom once before, and now they'd found them again. He'd been in no rush to give chase, because he'd

already known where to find Jazz.

"You've led us a merry chase, Jasmine. Your old man would've been proud," Uncle Mort said.

Hatred gave her courage. "I'm sure he'd be pleased you murdered his wife. Now you'll kill his

daughter too? What a friend.

The man's grim facade faltered a moment. "Tragic, that. But it couldn't be avoided. Your mum knew

all along that you were the very thing we were hunting for. We tried to do right by the two of you, for the

sake of your father's memory. But your mum hid the truth. When we figured out you were the battery, we

came for you. If she hadn't fought us, she'd still be alive."

Jazz stared at him, eyes wide and mouth agape.

Mort frowned. "Christ, you didn't know?"

Shouts reverberated through the tunnel. Beyond Mort, she saw other Uncles and their thugs fighting

with the kids of the United Kingdom. Gob kicked one of the BMW men in the balls and caught a blow to

the face for his troubles. A dark-suited man struck Leela with a hard backhand, but then Marco leaped on

his back, giving her a chance to run.

Jazz felt sick and hollow inside.

"The battery's inside me?" she asked, turning her gaze upon Mort.

"Not inside you, Jazz. You are the bloody battery. Took us forever to figure it out, but —"

She strode toward him. Mort frowned and started to back up.

"Then you won't kill me," she said.

He shot out a hand and grabbed a fistful of her hair. "Doesn't mean I won't hurt you. Oh, and thanks

for sorting out the mayor, by the way. He'd become a liability lately. You've done us quite a favor."

Jazz punched him in the throat as hard as she could. The gun fired, bullet ricocheting off down the

tunnel, the shot incredibly loud. Mort dropped to his knees, choking, and reached for his throat.

"F*ck off," Jazz said.



A roar erupted down the tunnel and she looked over the kneeling Uncle Mort to see Philip

—one-eyed and half mad from exposure to the Hour of Screams—running at her. Mort might not kill her,

but Philip certainly would.

She'd started to flee when a shadow rushed past her. She blinked, startled when she saw Harry

Fowler brandishing a cricket bat. He swung. Philip raised his forearm to block the attack, and both bat and

arm snapped.

As Philip cried out in pain, Harry spun on Jazz, and she saw the knowing in his eyes.

"Jesus," she said. "You knew!"

Of course he'd known. He could sense magic, couldn't he? He'd helped Terence locate the other

pieces of the appa-ratus. It all came tumbling over her now. If she truly was the battery, Harry must have

known from the moment he met her and never said a word. When it came time to break into the mayor's

house, he had known that they wouldn't find ' anything. He'd manipulated them all just to get his revenge,

and that had cost Stevie his life.

Philip shouted in fury and used his good hand to knock the shattered bat from Harry's grasp. They

faced off against each other, an old thief and a madman.

"Just go, Jazz girl," Harry said. "Find a place where no-body knows who or what you are. Not Terry

and not Josephine Blackwood. The world'll be better off if they all just leave it alone, let things happen in

their own time."

Clutching his injured throat, Mortimer Keating began to rise to his feet, shaking. "Philip," he rasped,

"kill him."

Philip grinned.

"Harry —"Jazz began.

"Run!" the thief screamed.

Two other BMW men rushed up then, joining Philip, and they fell upon Harry, beating him with their

fists and kicking him once he'd dropped to the ground.

Uncle Mort looked around for his pistol. Jazz saw some-one else move from the corner of her eye.

At first glance she saw the spectral shimmer of a ghost, a familiar jacket and top hat, a flower in the

phantom magician's lapel. But the ghost vanished and in his place was Terence Whitcomb.

He held Mort's pistol in his hand.

"Mr. Keating," he said.

Uncle Mort sneered. "Whitcomb."

Terence shot him through the left eye, the back of Mort's head bursting like rotten fruit. The chaos in

the tun-nel continued. It wasn't the first gunshot to echo around them all, and the Uncles and BMW men

who'd come with Mort kept at their task —all save the two who were helping Philip. They looked up and

fixed their attention on Jazz, re-alizing they'd found their target.

Jazz hesitated, wanting to save Gob and Leela and the others. But if she was the cause of all this, the

only way to make her friends safe was to get these bastards away from here. She had to surrender

herself.

As if plucking the thought from her mind, Terence reached out and grabbed her wrist. "No. We can

lead them away."

"But —"

"You can't do anything for them, Jazz! And the Blackwood Club can't have you." He held her arms

and spoke into her face, their noses touching, and she could smell the fear on him. His lips touched hers as

he spoke, but there was nothing more than words. "We have to leave. Now!"

"But where? Nowhere's safe anymore."

"Down," Terence said. "Deeper." And he pulled, hold-ing her arm as if he might never let go.