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.
A hand clamped her shoulder, spun her around, and in the darkness she could just make out the
shape of Terence's face. His scent was warm and comforting, sweat and cinna-mon and rich earth. But
she didn't want his brand of com-fort anymore.
"Let me go!" she hissed.
More voices shouting. She glanced back the way she'd come and saw a dozen points of searching,
bobbing light from the torches of the Blackwood Club and their minions.
"Go where? You don't think they'll find you up there?" Terence snapped. "There's only two ways this
can end. One of them is with you dead, and I won't see that."
"I'm supposed to trust you?"
"You're supposed to want to put an end to them. Take power from the people who murdered your
mother. Prevent them gaining the magic that'll change them, corrupt them. Jazz, it could turn them into
monsters!"
Jazz glanced into the passageway, swore, and shot him a hard look, hoping the darkness did not
prevent him from seeing it.
"Deeper it is,
| | |
|