Mind the Gap

chapter Fifteen

lessons in art

Terence's home was not what Jazz had expected. She'd been thinking of an apartment in the

Docklands, a posh flat in Chelsea, or a maisonette in Kensington. Or if not that, then perhaps a big pad

somewhere in the country, an easy com-mute into London but remote enough to be set within a dozen

acres, with its own private woodland and lake and a keeper's house rented out to one of the locals. The

country-squire look wouldn't suit him, but Jazz knew there would be much more to his choice of home than

style and location. He had his profession to think about. Wherever he lived would be a big part of his

cover.

When they got off the Tube in Tooting and began weav-ing through a maze of streets, Jazz thought

perhaps he was teasing her. Maybe he'd just left his car here (a Porsche? No, too tacky. Mercedes,

perhaps). They passed the police station, turned left, and Terence approached a paint-peeled front door.

"Welcome to my humble abode," he said, slipping in his key and opening the door. An alarm buzzed

inside, and he fumbled in his pocket, switching it off with some remote device.

Jazz looked either way along the street. At one end, a white transit van sat on two wheels, the

missing two with con-crete blocks in their place. At the other end, children played football in the street,

shouting and laughing, screeching in startled delight whenever a car came along.

"This isn't you," Jazz said, instantly regretting her words.

"Oh?" he asked. "And what exactly is me?"

Jazz shrugged.

Terence sighed and looked around. "So are you going to come in? We don't want my neighbors to

think I'm forcing you inside, do we?"

Keep your cool, Jazz, she thought. She glanced up at the second floor of the house and saw a

woman looking down at her, hands resting on the window jambs, net curtains hang-ing on either side of her

face like a funeral veil. The woman did not seem to blink.

"It's a maisonette," Terence said. "Mine's the ground floor."

Jazz nodded and walked through the door. "Who lives upstairs?" she asked. No one, she expected to

hear. Young woman lived there a year ago, but she disappeared and no ones ever seen her since.

"That's Janine," he said. "Did you see her?"

Jazz nodded.

Terence smiled. "She does that. Scares people. Spends hours at that window."

"She didn't scare me," Jazz said, a little too hastily.

"Right." Terence closed the front door behind him and put his array of carrier bags down in the

hallway. "Look, Jasmine, this is my home, and I want you to feel welcome here. You're on edge. I'm going

to cook you a nice meal, and while I do that maybe you'd like to use the bath? I have spare shirts and jeans

you can borrow."

"You want me to have a bath in your place?"

"No..." he said, drawing out the word. "I'm offering you a bath if you want one."

Jazz relaxed then, a loosening of her tensed shoulders that brought a sigh and then a yawn.

Terence breezed by her, passing two doors on his left before entering a small dining room along the

corridor. "Bathroom's back here," he said. "Shall I start a bath run-ning?"

"Can do," Jazz said, noncommittal.

She stood in Terence's hallway, looking at the simple decor —tasteful rugs on the quarry-tiled floor

and the pic-tures on the walls. There was a landscape of somewhere that looked like Cornwall, then a

series of prints that reminded her of Leonardo da Vinci's sketches of mechanical devices, all cogs and

wheels, struts and engines. There was some-thing almost animal-like about them, as if each image was an

X-ray vision through something living.

Jazz slipped the bag from her shoulder and set it down at her feet.

"I have some wine," Terence called.

"No thanks."

He appeared at the end of the corridor and offered her a gentle smile. "Look... let's eat. Be at home,



really. I promise you, I'm a good guy. No date-rape drugs here, no ulterior motives. And after you've rested,

and you believe that, it'll be time for us to talk."

"Talk about what?"

Terence glanced down at Jazz's bag, then back at her face. "Lots of things."



****

The bath was sumptuous —hot, bubbling with foam that gave off the scent of pine and

lavender—and the bathroom filled with steam, clouding the mirrors and condensing on tiles and window.

Jazz stood at its center for a moment, looking around at the small, sparse space and wondering

whether she really knew anything about Terence at all. He was involved, that much was certain, and he

had spoken of some "apparatus" as though Jazz should know about it. Her mother had taught her never to

believe in coincidences; there was something about that blade, Mort's house, and Harry's involvement with

the Blackwood woman that Terence must know.

She looked at the door. There was no lock on it, and that made her anxious, but she also felt a thrill,

because she knew what this was. "Another test," she whispered, and the steam swirled before her like

dancing ghosts. So she stripped off the new clothes she'd nicked that morning, dropped them in a pile beside

the bath, and stepped in.

Jazz sank down into the hot water and bubbles, sighing as she was enveloped in pure luxury. How

long since she'd had a bath? She'd almost lost track. She lay there for a while with her eyes closed and

mouth slightly open, leaning her head back against the bath and hearing the whisper of bub-bles bursting all

around her. She imagined each bubble hav-ing a story, all trying to tell her their tales.

From along the corridor she heard the steady sound of Terence chopping ingredients for their meal.

He started whistling, then broke into a song, immediately cutting off after two lines. Maybe he'd forgotten

she was here.

"You can carry on!" she called.

She heard him laugh. "I'm no Pavarotti."

"Sing me a song."

He was silent for a while but for the chop and scrape of his meal preparation. A saucepan lid rattled,

she heard the click-roar of a gas flame being lit, and then water ran into a metal container.

"I really can't sing," he said at last.

Jazz felt strangely disappointed. But as she drifted into a light doze, buoyed by the beautifully warm

water, there was something comfortable about the continuing silence.



****

"Men," her mother said. She stared at her daughter, sitting across from her in the restaurant. Jazz

was fourteen at the time. She picked at her food. She'd never been a fan of pasta, but her mother loved

Italian, so Jazz never complained.

"What about them?" Jazz asked after a while. Her mother had muttered the word and left it hanging

there, as though it would expound on itself.

Her mum sighed. "I suppose I need to talk to you about them."

Jazz laughed. She couldn't help it.

"Mum," she said, "I know all about that!"

Her mother ate another mouthful of lasagna. As she chewed she looked at Jazz, examining her face,

her hair, her mouth and neck. "You're such a beauty," she said.

Jazz posed prettily and fluttered her eyelashes. "Follow my mum."

"Of course you do." Her mum put her fork down and glanced around, her expression neutral. It was

like a nervous tic her mother had developed. Jazz hoped she never ended up that paranoid, that afraid.

"You may know about that, but not what leads to it. There's sex and there's seduction. One is an act

and one an art, and you need to be able to identify and deal with the artist."

"Okay," Jazz said. "Let me have a guess. A Dali would woo me with his intellect, a Picasso would

make me see things in a different way, and a Warhol would just show me his dick."

"Jasmine!" her mum said, but she was smiling.

"I have an appreciation of art, Mother."

"You've done it at school, you mean. There's lots more to it, sweetie. You can learn about geography

sitting in the classroom, but there's nothing like actually going places to get a true understanding."

"Fine. So...men?"

Her mother sighed, and for an instant her eyes were taken with that wretched look of sadness that

filled them from time to time. She truly scared Jazz then, because she thought her mother was seeing the

future, visualizing where this strange life of theirs would someday lead. "Trust is hard to come by," she



said.

"You tell me that all the —"

"I mean it! Trust no one, Jazz!"

"What, ever?"

"Never! You can't, sweetie. They'll tell you you're beau-tiful and buy you such things, sing to you and

take you places. But you can't put your fate in anyone else's hands. That's especially true of men. And

more so when the men are trying to seduce you."



****

Terence knocked on the bathroom door. "You awake in there?"

"Am now." Jazz sat up, startled, and her eyes flicked to the unlocked door.

"Dinner's bubbling away nicely. You've got about fifteen minutes."

"Right." She wiped her hands across her face. Damn, that was stupid of me!

As she climbed from the bath, dried, and dressed in the clothes Terence had laid out for her, Jazz

smelled the mouthwatering scents of dinner drifting under the door. Cooking meat, spices, and baking bread.

She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. With the United Kingdom she usu-ally ate food that could be

cooked in a microwave. On rare occasions, Harry fried sausages or steaks under a vent. They never went

hungry, but when Harry was in one of his more paranoid moments, he made them eat cold, afraid that the

smells of cooking would give them away to someone higher up. Meal times had been quiet, the food eaten

quickly and from necessity rather than any real desire.

She guessed that now things would be different.

Dried and dressed, she exited the bathroom and walked through into the kitchen. Terence was at the

cooker, stirring something in a large frying pan and whistling softly again.

"Nice bath?"

"Very, thank you."

"No problem." He glanced up at her and smiled, look-ing her fleetingly up and down, taking in the

rolled-up jeans and shirtsleeves. "They look better on you."

"More my sort of clothes anyway. I don't usually dress up. What's the apparatus?"

"Oh," he said. He continued stirring, bobbing pieces of meat beneath the surface of the thick,

aromatic sauce. "I had rather thought we could chat over dinner."

"Okay," Jazz said. "I'll help you serve it up. I've done everything you wanted today, and I think I've

passed the tests pretty well."

"Tests?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Don't piss me around, Terence."

He blinked. "I hoped you would emerge from the bath calmed and laid back."

"I am calm. But ever since meeting you, I've felt like I'm in the middle of something huge, and it's all

rotating around me. Does that make sense?"

Terence nodded and sighed, a sad sound that reminded Jazz of her mother. "It does. Pass me that

spoon, would you?"

Jazz removed two plates that had been warming in the oven and watched Terence serve their meal.

He did it with-out any arty flourishes, yet he had created a dish that would not have looked out of place in

any restaurant Jazz had ever been to. Bowls of saffron rice, ladles of curried lamb, its sauce containing red

peppers and roughly chopped shallots, and on the side, dishes of onion bhajis splashed with mint sauce. Jazz

helped him carry the plates to the table, then he returned to the kitchen and emerged with several jars of

chutneys.

"You don't make your own?" Jazz asked, making a big point of examining the label on one of the

jars.

Terence shook his head. "I know my limitations. Mak-ing chutney is an art, and no artist is good at

every disci-pline."

"What's your art?"

"I would have thought that was obvious." He forked in the first mouthful and sighed in genuine

appreciation of his own cooking.

"Stealing is an art?"

Terence paused with the next mouthful raised halfway. "You seriously ask me that?"

Jazz shook her head. "Doesn't matter."

He pointed at her plate with his fork. "You're not going to try?"

She collected up some lamb and rice, made sure it was liberally coated in the sauce, and popped it in

her mouth. It tasted heavenly. She half-closed her eyes as she chewed, making approving noises, using the



side of her fork to slice off a portion of the bhaji and ready it for her next mouthful. That was equally

superb.

"Is there anything you're not good at?" She hated her-self for asking, but damn him, he'd prepared a

feast in the time it took her to have a bath.

"Chutney."

Jazz smiled. "So," she said, resisting talking through an-other mouthful. "The apparatus."

"Hmm." Terence chewed and looked up into the corner of the dining room, thoughtful and

contemplative. "Well... that blade you stole is part of it."

"Right. So it's a weapon."

"Oh no, not a weapon! And that's not really a blade. It's a gear."

"So what does it do?"

Terence ate some more, chewing slowly and taking a sip of wine. He had not asked her again

whether she wanted any, and Jazz was beginning to regret saying no. He exam-ined her frankly, staring as

though trying to see past her outer self to the real Jazz beneath. This is the real me, she thought. She

wondered whether he heard.

"I'm going to trust you. Partly because I like you and I think you're trustworthy, but mostly because

you have se-crets too, Jazz. Lots of secrets. And something tells me that once we start talking, we'll be

helping each other a great deal. We both hold pieces of a puzzle, I suspect. Perhaps this evening we can

make it whole."

"Perhaps," she said. "But you know nothing of my se-crets."

"Of course not," he said, eyes glittering. "Which is why they're secrets. But Pooh was right: some

secrets are heavy, and a burden shared is easier to carry. And some are dark. And a friend can shed much

light."

"So now we're friends?" Jazz asked.

Terence shrugged and ate some more of his meal. He left the word hanging, and it seemed to echo

around the small dining room.

Jazz laughed a little, looking around again. "This really doesn't seem like you," she said.

Terence held his hands up, mock-offended. "It's home!"

Home, Jazz thought. Maybe that's my first dark secret be can brighten for me. I never really

had a home.

"My father always wanted to be a magician," Terence said. He put down his knife and fork, took

another sip of wine, and rested his elbows on the table. "But when he found out the price of magic,

everything changed. He couldn't gain the knowledge he wanted if it meant visiting pain on others. So

instead of a magician, he tried to become a savior. But the Blackwood Club killed him."

"They killed your father," Jazz said in a monotone.

Terence nodded.

"Why?"

"Because the cause of the Blackwood Club —their rea-son for being, from the day of their inception

right up until today—has been the acquisition of magic." He took another sip of wine, then without asking

poured some into Jazz's glass as well as refilling his own.

"Go on," Jazz said.

"You know some of this," he said. "Don't you?"

She took a drink. It was cool and refreshing, but she heard her mother's warning voice at the back of

her mind. Drink too much, and you'll lose your way so badly you might never get back. You need

your wits about you all the time, Jazz. Jazz sighed, half-lowered the glass, then took another mouthful.

"Tell me your story," she said. "Then I'll tell you what I know. And if we meet somewhere in the

middle —"

"We will. We do!"

Jazz stared at her host.

"The spirit of London," Terence said. He waited for a reaction, but when Jazz gave him none he

continued.

"There are ghosts down there in the Underground —the Tube lines, the shelters, the sewers and

storage places, and places far deeper too. The souls of London past, played out again and again; the spirit

of the ancient city itself. All big cities have a hidden soul, do you know that? London has al-ways been a

turbulent place, a place of learning and mystery. There were plenty of people who lived here long ago who

had a much better grasp of arcane knowledge than most people do now. Now, a child's mind is polluted

from an early age with the wrong kind of input, made so that it can't be taught the things that many were



taught two hundred, six hundred, a thousand years ago."

"Polluted by what?" Jazz asked.

"TV. The cult of celebrity. Society nowadays places im-portance on the wrong things and often the

wrong people. Three hundred years ago, it was the learned types of London who held most respect, and

many of those men and women had their fingers on the pulse of the city. Now... someone sells a movie of

their ex-girlfriend fellating them, and they're both instant superstars. Where's the magic in that?"

"I have no heroes," Jazz said.

Terence became animated, pointing at Jazz with his fork. "Yes, but you're unique!"

Jazz ate her final mouthful of food and followed it with more wine. Terence looked off into the

corner of the room again, tapping his wineglass with the signet ring on his right hand, almost lost in his own

world.

"Your father?" Jazz said.

"My father. Alan Whitcomb. A magician who tried to become a savior. He knew what the spirit of

London was, you see. He knew there was true magic there, down beneath the streets, just waiting to be

picked up and learned by who-ever had the desire. But sometimes that spirit screams, and when he first

heard that he recognized its true state: tor-tured."

Jazz paled and Terence stared at her, but she said noth-ing. Let him finish his story, she thought.

Then I'II decide whether I should talk to him. ..or run.

"My father was a very clever man. A genius, from a long line of geniuses. All my life, I've aspired to

his greatness. The more he knew about the tortured spirit of the old city, the more he wanted to help it. He

researched old London, looking through books and records. There are places in London designed to keep

secrets, which keep them still, but my father found his way in. He spent fifteen years gathering knowledge,

and at the end of that time he started building."

"The apparatus," Jazz said.

"Yes, the apparatus. The Blackwood Club knew of him already, of course. You can't investigate the

hidden secrets of London without them eventually knowing your name. But where his genius came in was

making them think he was no threat. He started building an apparatus made from arcane segments and

parts, which, when finished, would put the spirit of old London to rest."

"And the magic?"

"The magic would go down with it. The time of magic and magicians is dead, Jazz. Humanity has

moved on. The past weighs on society like Marley's chains. A people, a cul-ture, a city like London must

molt from age to age, like a snake shedding its skin."

Jazz frowned. "Sorry. I don't understand."

Terence gave it a moment's thought, then forged on. "The direction of my life has been totally

defined by the murder of my father. But it's common for people to be forged by their past, even shackled by

it. Until we put the past to rest, we can't move on. We might as well be carrying our dead ancestors on our

backs."

Jazz shivered, thinking of her mother's murder and the death of her father so long ago.

"Think of a deposed king who cannot accept a world in which no one bows to him anymore,"

Terence continued. "Even ordinary people are often affected by the memory of their glory days. Now

extend that idea to an entire city. Once, London was the heart of an empire. Magic thrived here. The

collective consciousness of London had an image of itself not unlike that king. But the king is dead, Jazz.

It's a world of technology and celebrity now. The future is here, and London can't let go of its past. That

collective con-sciousness? It's dead, and it haunts the modern city, weighs London down, just as my need to

finish my father's work weighs me down.

"Rid London of its connections to the magic of another age, put its ghosts to rest, and the city can

finally shed the skin of its past and become something new. Not an empire maybe, but a thriving, vibrant

piece of the future."

Jazz arched an eyebrow. "That's a beautiful sentiment, but it's all a bit metaphysical for me. How do

you know this isn't all a load of shit?"

Terence leaned back and studied her. "You can feel it, Jazz, down there in the tunnels. Don't tell me

you can't. You must. As for the restless spirits of old London, they're all too real. There's little enough

magic left, but it isn't entirely gone. What's left could be collected and harnessed. My fa-ther knew that if

the Blackwood Club eventually gained such magic, everything would change."

"Are you sure that would be such a terrible thing? " Jazz asked.

"The city would remain a relic, antiquated, forever a part of the past. London would go the way of

Babylon. If the Blackwood Club even allowed it to survive that long. Don't you see? The magic is of



another age. These men are not real sorcerers. They're old, bitter, corrupt, and they could never use it for

good. Worse still, they're amateurs. Allowing them to pull together the lingering occult energies of the past

could only lead to catastrophe. The entire city might go mad, or sleeping evils be wakened. Even if they

managed to control the magic for a time, they'd be cor-rupted by power. Anarchy would tear London apart,

hasten-ing its fall into ruin. The only way to assure the safety and the future of London is to gather the

magic, destroy it, and set free the city's old ghosts."

He drank more wine, and for the first time Jazz saw a break in his composure and confidence. His

eyes were wa-tery and his cheeks flushed, but she thought it was more than simply the alcohol causing it.

"All right. I understand," she said. "Go on with your story."

Terence nodded. "What happened next showed how right my father was."

"What happened?"

"Somehow they found out what he was doing. Until then, the club had apparently been a peaceful

group. Gathering knowledge, translating more magical information every time the spirit of London

screamed. Sometimes years passed be-tween the screams; other times they happened every few weeks."

"Hour of Screams," Jazz said. "That's what it's called."

Terence nodded, focusing intently on Jazz in the hope that she would say more. But she looked back

at him, blink-ing slowly, waiting for him to continue.

"When they murdered my father, everything changed. Their thirst for knowledge had become a

greed for power. They dismantled the incomplete apparatus and spread its component parts about London.

And ever since, I've been stealing them back."

"Why not destroy it? If they wanted the opposite of what your father wanted, why did they just break

down the apparatus and hide it?"

Terence smiled grimly. "If only it were that simple. But he made something that accessed the magic

in order to put it down. And they saw that as the fast route to what they'd been gathering, piece by piece,

for decades. My father built that thing to help London move on, but the apparatus has to gather the city's

magic before it can be destroyed. The Blackwood Club didn't want the machine destroyed. They wanted to

use it to achieve their own ends, to gather the magic for themselves."

"And that blade I took from you is part of the appa-ratus."

Terence nodded. "They've been moving the parts around, of course, trying to keep them from me.

But I always find them. That gear you have is almost the last part."

"So what's left?"

Terence poured more wine, stood, and took another bottle from the fridge. He still moved gracefully,

but there was a tiredness about him now, which Jazz was certain had to do with his murdered father. "Your

turn," he said.

They killed my mother too, she wanted to say. And my fa-ther, I think, a long time ago. But to

tell him that would be too revealing, and beneath his cultured exterior there was a def-inite streak of danger.

Sometimes he seemed to be her friend, and occasionally something more, but she knew that he was a man

intent on his own needs and desires. She could be far more involved in this than he could ever guess —and

she was not sure that now was the time for such a revelation.

"So you chose your course in life," Jazz said.

"Strong people do."

"Not always. Sometimes it's forced upon you. Strong or weak, sometimes it can't be helped."

"Okay," Terence said cautiously. "So... ?"

"My mother died. I had to go belowground. And when J was down there..." She trailed off, confused

now, not sure how much to say and how much to hold back. "You met Harry Fowler."

She stared at him, the impact of what he was saying sinking in. Her mind was hazed with confusion.

She drank wine to give herself more time, closing her eyes, swilling it around her mouth and swallowing. He

knows Harry!

"He took me in," she said.

"He does that."

Her mind was spinning. Terence knew Harry, Harry was the photographer for the Blackwood Club,

and they had both been trying to rob Mortimer Keating's house. Had Harry known about the gear for the

apparatus contained in that place? He had not seemed interested in anything in particular, choosing the

house ostensibly because it would hit back at the mayor and his cronies, a weak form of ven-geance over

what had happened to Cadge. If he'd been after the gear, surely he'd have told Jazz what to look for?

"Were you in the Blackwood Club?" she asked.

Terence frowned and sat up straight. "No," he said. "I've told you about them and what they did. I



haven't lied."

"How do you know Harry?"

"We used to work together."

"He was a photographer." Jazz watched closely, looking for any trace of a lie in Terence's response.

"Did he tell you that?" he asked.

"No. I found out."

Terence nodded, frowned, tapped his ring against the wineglass again. "In Keating's house?"

"Yes. There were photos on the wall upstairs. I knocked one off when I was hiding from you, it

smashed, and I saw his name on the back. I thought the reasons why Harry wanted us to rob Mort's house

were clear, but —"

"Mort?"

"Mortimer Keating."

"Knew him well, did you?"

Jazz thought of Mort leaning from her bedroom win-dow, watching for her return to the house where

her mother already lay murdered. Call me Mort, he'd said to her when she was a little girl, and she'd never

spoken a word to him. Just another Uncle.

"It's what Harry called him," Jazz said.

Terence shook his head. Stared at her. Poured more wine. "I've been open and honest with you," he

said.

"You've told me nothing," Jazz responded. "I still don't know anything about you. You're trying to

build a machine that'll lay old ghosts to rest, keep magic out of the wrong hands —or any hands, really—but

that doesn't tell me who you are, where you come from, or what you're all about." She waved around at the

small dining room. "This isn't you. You come across as someone who likes the good things in life, and when

you say you'll take me home, I find myself... somewhere else."

"Do you have a home, Jazz?" "I used to."

"Until your mother died and for some reason you had to go underground? And you talk about me not

saying any-thing." He stood from the table, smoothed his shirt, and picked up the plates. Jazz sat in silence

for a while, watching him wash the plates in the sink before piling them beside it, clearing the cooker, each

movement deliberate and bal-anced. If the several glasses of wine he had already con-sumed had gone to

his head, he was not showing it. The only chink in his armor she had seen was when he men-tioned his

father, and she was sure now that behind that chink was more strength and determination than he would

ever betray.

"You're driven," Jazz said.

"Yes," he said, without turning. He leaned on the work-top and looked down at his hands.

"Absolutely, resolutely driven. And that's why I never let anyone come close." "What about me?"

"What about you?" He turned around and looked at her, as though she had all the answers.

"Am I close?"

"Are you?"

"Stop f*cking with me, Terence!" She stood from the table, knocking it with one leg and setting her

wineglass swaying. A splash of rose hit the tablecloth, spreading like thin blood.

"Help me steal the battery," he said. He looked suddenly exposed, his expression betraying the risk he

must believe he was taking.

"Last part of the apparatus?"

"Yes. And I'm thinking, my dear Jasmine, that you have issues with the Blackwood Club that are as

intense and per-sonal as my own. Help me steal this last piece, and between us we can destroy everything

they've been striving for."

"Issues," Jazz said. She nodded slowly, not looking at Terence, because she was sure he'd read in her

eyes what she was thinking. Mum, she thought. Dad. Cadge. "Yes, I have issues."

"So help me."

"Why?"

"Because you're very good. And because I can give you back your life. Harry Fowler is a gentleman

who has turned into a rat. And now he lives with them."

Jazz bristled and stood up straighter, pressing her lips together.

Terence crossed his arms and leaned back against the worktop.

"Where's the apparatus?" Jazz asked.

He smiled. That assured man had returned, suave and confident and forever posing questions. "That,"

he said, "is a secret."



Jazz finished her wine in one gulp. "I'll sleep on it," she said. "If you'll show me to my room, Terence,

I'd be most grateful."

He smiled, bowed, and waved his hand at the door. "After you."

She walked by him and started along the corridor, aware that he was following a few steps behind.

"By the way," she said, "fantastic meal."



****

Jazz had never believed that she could kill someone.

During those dark weeks following her mother's death, she had mentally put herself in the position

where murder was possible: holding the Blackwood woman down with a knife at her throat, perhaps the

very same knife used to kill her mother. Kneeling on the woman's chest. Pressing down on the handle.

Seeing the first dark dribble of blood when the skin was pierced, the woman's eyes opening wider as

dreaded realization hit home, then slashing hard right to left, pushing forward at the same time to open her

throat to the spine.

She had imagined the scenario, but each time she be-came more and more certain that she could

never do it.

Yet revenge was not exclusively about murder. There were other ways to destroy people than killing

them. As Jazz closed the bedroom door behind her and surveyed the room, she wondered whether Terence

had offered the best chance for revenge she would ever have.

At first glance, the room looked as sparse and unassum-ing as the downstairs, but after a quick look

around, Jazz saw that this was far from the case. The rug on the polished oak floor was of a very fine

weave, and when she lifted one cor-ner she found a cloth tag imprinted in a language she did not know. The

double bed sat on carved hardwood legs, columns of wood with snakes and other creatures curled around

them. The bed's headboard was inlaid with a com-plex leather design —a series of symbols that perhaps

meant something in another unknown language. Maybe it's the lan-guage of magic, she thought. The idea

appealed to her.

The room was small but beautifully decorated, with sev-eral delicately framed photographs hanging

on two of the four walls. Any one of them could have been a prizewinner. There was a morning scene with

sun burning through mist, a street scene from New Orleans, a bee buzzing a flower, and an old, rusted car

in a field, home to a spread of flowers and shrubs.

Beside the bed was a bedside table, with a glass half full of water and a book open and facedown.

The book was Dickens's Great Expectations. Jazz realized that Terence had given her his bedroom.

Behind the book and glass sat a tabletop picture frame. In that frame, a ghost.

Jazz clasped her hands to her mouth, holding herself steady as the world seemed to spin around her.

The eyes are the same, she thought. The man in the picture did not wear a top hat or white gloves, but the

eyes were the same.

"The magician," she whispered, watching the photo-graph for any sign of movement. She had seen

him three times belowground, and each time he appeared, he seemed more and more real. She'd thought he

was a random mani-festation among the many wraiths she had witnessed, but seeing him here made her

feel even more a part of some-thing over which she had no real control. The magician, and I'm so bloody

stupid became I didn't recognize those eyes.

The photograph was black and white —of course, be-cause it was maybe a hundred years old—but

the similarity between the man in the frame and the man who had just guided her along the corridor to his

own bedroom was star-tling.

She sat on the edge of the bed for some time, attempting to piece together the extra pieces to the

puzzle. Maybe it was shock, or maybe the quantity of food and wine she had con-sumed, but the disparate

pieces refused to fit. She could con-centrate on one point at a time —Terence's murdered father, or the

apparatus, or the Blackwood Club and the corrupt or-ganization they had turned into—but any attempt to

see her place in all of this led only to confusion. Her eyelids were drooping. She was not sure whether she

wanted to laugh, cry, or sleep.

"Shouldn't have had so much to drink, eh, Mum?" she said, laughing quietly. She looked at the door,

crossed the room, and pushed it gently until the latch closed. There was no lock. Those piercing eyes stared

at her from the picture on the bedside cabinet. No, not quite the same as Terence's. Very similar, but this

man had something missing from his gaze that Terence, in those dark moments when his guard came down,

could not help displaying: hatred.

He hated the Blackwood Club.

"That makes him my ally, Mum," she said. She laughed again nervously, because talking to herself

was the first sign of madness. But she was not mad. Lost maybe, and confused, and floundering in a stormy



sea of secrets that seemed to get deeper and stormier the more she found out.

She lay on the bed and picked up the book. It was strange reading from where Terence had ended,

as though she had for a moment taken over his life. She read four sen-tences before sleep took her.

That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any

life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been.

Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or

flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memo-rable

day.

She dreamed of invisible stains of blood binding her mother to Josephine Blackwood, and daisy chains

in the park.



****

She woke several times and stared at the door, and every time it remained closed. She had left the

curtains half open so street light bathed the room yellow, a false dawn when-ever she opened her eyes.

When the true dawn came, ac-companied by the sounds of early-morning bustle from the street outside and

Terence moving around in the kitchen, Jazz pulled the duvet up to her chin and sighed. She felt warm and

cosseted, but she knew she had a decision to make.

Terence did not only want her help because he thought she was talented. That was part of it, she

was sure, and. she felt an unavoidable pride in thinking that. But he was also aware that she had secrets.

What better way to reveal them than to keep her close and work with her?

But there were Harry and the others: Stevie, Hattie, Gob... She owed them a lot. They had taken her

in when she most needed help, given her their food, let her stay with them in their secret underground lair,

taught her their ways, and they had lived through the grief of losing Cadge to-gether. They trusted her, and

now she had betrayed them by trying to change. Because that's what she had been doing, hadn't she?

Accepting those shoes from Terence, letting him pay for her haircut, accompanying him to Harrods? He

of-fered her protection and a new life, but in truth she sought far more than that from him. She had been

lured with things she had never seen while living with the United Kingdom. All the good things in life are

in your mind, her mother had once told her, sitting in their small backyard and staring at the fence that

badly needed painting. She had stared for a long time.

The United Kingdom seemed a million miles away from her right now. But there was someone much

closer who could help her avenge her mother's death, and Cadge's death too.

"Maybe we can work together," she whispered. Her voice was startlingly loud, and she glanced at

the old framed photo beside the bed, afraid that the dead magician would be staring at her. He was, but

with the same expression he had worn the night before. Daylight changed nothing.

She sat up in bed, stretching. Then she shook her head. The idea of Terence and Harry working

together seemed foolish —a waking thought that lost all clarity when the dregs of sleep melted away. We

worked together, Terence had said, but she could not imagine that now. The men were just too different,

and it had little to do with the places they chose to live.

There was a knock at the door. "Breakfast?" Terence asked.

"I'll be out in a minute." Jazz sat on the edge of the bed and listened, and for a moment she was

certain that he was still standing outside the door, listening, hand on the handle. She stared at it, waiting for

it to dip, as if she were a doomed twenty-something in some trashy horror movie. Then she heard a kettle

boiling and Terence whistling in the kitchen. She sighed.

After dressing quickly, she walked along to the kitchen and watched him preparing breakfast. He

must have known she was there, but he gave no sign, setting the table carefully, placing the full cafetiére in

the center along with croissants and honey, grapefruit juice, and a selection of cold meats and cheeses.

He looked up at last and smiled. "So, did you sleep on it?"

Jazz frowned, images of thorns and flowers flashing across her mind. She nodded. "I just need a bit

of fresh air," she said. "Do you mind if... ?" She nodded at the breakfast table.

"Not at all. But fresh air in London?"

She shrugged. "Just a walk. Stretch my limbs."

"I'll just lockup —"

"I'll be fine, Terence. Fifteen minutes, and when I re-turn we'll have breakfast. Just want to clear my

head."

He nodded, his stance tense as though he had so much more to say. But he must have seen

something in Jazz's expression that silenced him, because he walked past her to open the front door.

"Coffee's getting cold," was all he said as she breezed by.

Jazz turned, stretched up, and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Even early in the morning, he smelled



fresh and clean. "Thank you."

"Left here," he said. "Around the block. Some nice an-tique shops, but watch out for pavement

pizzas."

She laughed at his use of such an unrefined term and de-cided not to look back. That would be too

keen, too eager.

The main street was bustling. People of all shapes, sizes, and colors weaved around one another on

their way to work, many of them jabbering into mobile phones, others lost in their own private iPod worlds.

A shop owner swept broken glass from the pavement, while two young men hammered boards across his

smashed shop window. A policeman stood with his arms crossed, face set in stone as he was subjected to

the shopkeeper's wife's fury. The policeman caught her eye and watched her pass by, and Jazz looked

down at her feet. If that doesn't look guilty, I don't know what does.

She turned left, following Terence's directions, walking slowly so that she could think. She was not

sure exactly what he was offering. He was twice her age, but sometimes there was a tension between

them that she was certain was not only in her imagination. But he was a clever man, aware of his looks and

confident of his abilities to play with percep-tions and emotions. He had proved that only too well in

Harrods, and the more she thought about that nick yester-day afternoon, the more she realized how

complex a test it had been.

Someone shouted on her right, a woman calling a good-natured greeting. Jazz looked up. Across the

street, a tall black woman was waving with both hands, and Jazz turned to see who she was waving to.

Farther along the street, out-side a butcher's shop, a man waved back. He was smiling.

As Jazz went to turn back and start walking again, some-one stepped out in front of her. A

policeman.

I don't look the same, she thought. New haircut, darker hair, new clothes I nicked only

yesterday.. .It's all about appear-ance, confidence, style. She gave her dazzling smile up at him — he

was very tall—and stepped sideways to move around.

"Excuse me," she said.

His arm closed around her wrist. "Hang on, miss."

"What is it, Shane?" his partner asked, emerging from a shop.

Jazz glanced sidelong at the second policeman, and there was nothing like recognition in his eyes.

"Bit of business," Shane said. Then he leaned down so that he could whisper into her ear. "Come

with me." He punctuated the words with a quick, harsh squeeze that made her wince.

They walked along the street until an alley opened up between shops.

This could be something else, Jazz thought, but already she knew it was not. Maybe the copper

recognized her from some CCTV footage from a shop the United Kingdom had done —careful though they

always were, chance dictated that some of them would be filmed at some point.

"My mum's expecting me home," Jazz said, wide-eyed, innocent, and scared. The scared part didn't

take much acting.

"Yeah, right," Shane said. He dug a mobile from his trousers, eschewing the radio clipped to his

pocket, and flipped it open. "Mayor's offering a nice little reward for you, my love."

Nice little reward...

She had no choice.

Jazz mustered every bit of her strength and kicked Shane the policeman in the balls. She twisted her

upper torso to follow through, adding weight and power, and the copper went down like a sack of shit,

barely even able to gasp. His eyes were wide and glazed.

Jazz took a second to stamp on his dropped phone, then she ran.

"Hey!" Shane's partner called.

Don't look back! Jazz thought. Concentrate, run, focus!

The end of the street was ten seconds away. If she turned left she'd be heading back toward

Terence's house, where she'd left the gear. But she'd give him away. She might not even reach his house

before they caught her. Right, and three hundred yards along the road was Tooting Tube station, and a

world she already knew so well.

She heard the sounds of pursuit —pounding footsteps, people shouting in surprise as they were

shoved roughly aside.

Someone pushed a huge fruit-laden trolley from a shop doorway in front of her. She skipped right,

stepped from the pavement, and ran across the street without looking back.

Decision made for her, she sprinted for the Tube station. The morning sun broke through the light

cloud cover, and the heat on the side of her face seemed like a final good-bye.