Mind the Gap

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.

"Fuck 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.

Chapter Nineteen

daddy's girl

Jazz ran ahead of him, fleeing into the darker shadows of the Underground. They left the Palace behind, but not without being seen. Shouts followed, and then footfalls, and as Jazz emerged into a wider tunnel where the distant sound of modern Tube trains could be heard, she knew there would be no escape.

There were too many Uncles, too many BMW men. Her mother had told her to hide forever, but there was nowhere left to hide.

Deeper, Terence had said.

Fuck that. Deeper only meant a dead end.

Jazz raced along the tunnel. The only light was the barest illumination coming from a couple of vents that were still open to the surface, not nearly enough by which to watch her footing. Yet she threw aside caution and simply ran.

"Damn it, Jasmine!" Terence shouted after her.

It felt fine. Wonderful, in fact. For too long she had al-lowed herself to be guided by the assertiveness of others. No longer. A hundred yards ahead, she knew of a passageway that separated this tunnel from another, abandoned but more recently in use. It still had rails, and there was a plat-form there whose many exits had long since been boarded over. But Stevie had shown her a way up, an emergency exit. It was the nearest path up from the Underground.

Her eyes were wide, trying to pick up any source of light, peering at the wall on the right in search of that pas-sageway. More shouts came along the tunnel. Light from torches bobbed dimly behind her, helping to show the way. Then she saw it —a patch of shadow even darker than the rest of the tunnel—and Jazz ran for it. At the wall she paused, taking ragged gasps of air, and reached out with her hands to make sure she wasn't going to run into anything.