Mind the Gap

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 fucking 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.