then."
Terence sighed and took her hand, and they ran on to-gether. Their pursuers had drawn closer during
the pause. Bright torchlight swept around them.
"I see them!" a voice cried.
"Shoot fucking Whitcomb!" a man ordered.
"Don't hurt the girl!" a woman said.
A woman, Jazz thought. And she knew of only one woman who could give instructions to these men.
Josephine Blackwood herself had descended into the Underground.
A gunshot echoed along the tunnel, and Jazz flinched. Terence just kept running. They darted to the
left and the torch beams danced around them, trying to pinpoint them again. A short way ahead the tunnel
forked, though the nar-row left fork had been closed off and bricked over a couple of generations past.
Jazz's breath hitched and she stared at the dark brick, feeling a tug on her gut and her heart. She'd felt
something similar before, but never this strongly.
She started for the wall, but Terence pulled her along the open fork.
"No. We're supposed to go that way," she said.
"I'm glad you know that. Glad you feel it."
He drew her to a stop just a few yards beyond the split, and she realized there was a heavy wooden
door set into the wall, separating one of the fork's tunnels from the other.
Terence turned the handle and it opened easily. He stepped through and crouched down, searching
for something in the dark. Jazz heard a click, and light blossomed from a torch in Terence's hand. Just like
Harry and the United Kingdom, he must have had them stored in various locations under-ground. What Jazz
wanted to know was why.
"Where are you taking me?"
Terence narrowed his eyes. "Hurry."
It was good advice. The Blackwood Club was closing in. Someone called her name, as if they knew
her, and it turned her stomach to realize that they probably did. Some of those men —the Uncles—had
known her since she was an infant.
She started to follow Terence through the door and froze, seized by the lure of whatever lay beyond
it. Jazz threw back her head, inhaling sharply as a wave of bliss passed through her. Then Terence took her
by the hand, and for a moment it was as though the temptation that lay beyond the door was Terence
himself.
Jazz broke the contact with him.
"Come on!" he snapped.
She glanced toward their pursuers. They were close enough that she could make out the silhouettes
of the Uncles and the BMW men by the gloomy light of their torches. One figure was that of a woman.
Josephine Blackwood seemed to float along the floor of the tunnel, long hair framing her face, catching the
glint of the lights as though she was more a specter than the ghosts of old London.
Someone laughed, a booming thunder that rolled across the tunnel, and her skin crawled with
revulsion. Philip, the half-mad. By now perhaps entirely mad.
"Jazz!" Terence shouted.
But she was no longer paying any attention to him, or to the Blackwood Club. The wind had started
blowing along the tunnel, tousling Jazz's hair, and she could hear the ban-shee cry of the city's ghosts rising.
"Again?" she whispered.
The Hour of Screams had returned once more. The in-tervals between them were growing shorter
and shorter. Harry had been unnerved by them coming so close together, but Jazz breathed deeply and let
the breeze wash over her, let the screams come. The ghosts of old London were cry-ing out to be heard.
Harry might have seen the phantom im-ages of the city's past, but he had never listened to their cries...
their pleas. The time had come for someone to listen.
"Oh, Christ," Terence muttered. "Cover your ears, Jasmine. Find a song!"
Jazz shook her head. "Not this time."
The Uncles and their hired thugs began to shout in alarm. Philip howled like a wolf. Josephine
Blackwood snapped off orders to those who had gathered in her name.
The Hour of Screams roared in, and all around Jazz the ghosts of old London began to rise again.
****
At first, the parade of echoes seemed familiar. There were visions from the days when bombs rained
down over London, images of chaos and heartbreak, but the stream of ghosts soon produced
more-mundane memories, which vividly revealed the life and laughter of the city, along with its tragedies.
There were music halls and couples dancing, actors on a stage, streets filled with early-model cars giving
way to brougham carriages. The ghosts of London swept around her like a rushing river, and Jazz stood in
the midst of the current and let it wash over her.
She looked up, and the magician was there in his top hat and tails. From one sleeve he produced a
bouquet of flowers, and from within his jacket a white
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