by the apparatus, fixing a bloodied — perhaps bewitched—gear into place.
Her father's ghost stood among the burning candles and the spatters of Whitcomb's blood, and he
drew a curved dagger from his coat, moving within the shifting shadows toward the other man.
Jazz stared, eyes wide.
The specters weren't layered. The vision unfolding be-fore her was not some odd combination of
events but a sin-gle moment from London's past.
Her father spoke, though she couldn't hear his voice. Whitcomb spun, hands up instantly, ready to
defend his infer-nal machine. James Towne gestured with the blade, which Jazz now saw had been marked
with strange symbols not unlike those on the apparatus itself. He tried to force Alan Whitcomb away from
his invention, but the man's face contorted with ha-tred and fury. Her father brandished the blade, a
warning, a threat, and the two men began to shout at each other.
All Jazz heard was the wailing of the Hour of Screams, but she didn't need to hear the words spoken.
She saw the story playing out on their faces. Her father wanted Whitcomb to back away from the
apparatus, intending to either destroy it or use it somehow. Whitcomb had a zealot's eyes.
When her father made a move toward the apparatus, Whitcomb lunged at him, yet it seemed to Jazz
very little like an attack. The inventor leaped upon her father, who tried to back away, tried to pull back his
blade. The curved tip of that wicked dagger punctured Whitcomb's abdomen. Her father tried to push the
man away, and then Whitcomb did something entirely mad. He wrapped his hands around her father's
throat and began to throttle him, pushing him backward and down even as he dropped himself down onto
that blade.
Blood flowed from his belly, soaking her father's shirt.
Her father pushed Whitcomb off. He clamped his hands on the sides of his head, staring at the
inventor in an-guish. He shook his head and began to shout. Jazz could read the cursing on his lips. The
gruesome pantomime be-came even more bizarre as her father, panicking, raced to the apparatus and
studied it for a moment before rushing to the table Jazz had seen Whitcomb seated at before.
He was frantic. Though that ritual dagger still jutted from Whitcomb's belly, it seemed obvious he
hadn't meant to kill the man. In a frenzy, her father began to gather items from the laboratory, lining them
up just outside the circle of candles Whitcomb had left on the floor. Then he grabbed hold of the bleeding,
barely conscious inventor and dragged him in a swath of blood across the floor into the midst of those
candles, leaving a crimson streak behind.
Alan Whitcomb's mouth opened, half a sneer and half a smile. He laughed and blood bubbled on his
lips. When he spoke, even with the Hour of Screams around her, she un-derstood every word. In that
moment it seemed almost as though all the ghosts of old London were speaking with him, whispering the
words into her ears.
Without a battery, it's just rubbish. Damn fool. Without me, it's useless.
The inventor laughed again, choking on his own blood. Jazz's father ignored him, relighting
extinguished candles and unrolling a scroll that seemed ancient at first glance, un-til the designs and writing
were revealed. These were plans for the apparatus. Her father tossed the scroll aside and grabbed another,
and another still, until finally he had be-fore him a pattern of symbols.
He had piled small dishes of dye or paint nearby, and now he plunged his fingers into one filled with
ochre and daubed it at his temples, then inscribed circles upon his cheeks. Tearing off his shirt, he painted
his chest with the symbols on Whitcomb's scroll, flecks of ochre flying like spittle. Even as he did this, his
mouth was moving and his body rocked to some repetition of words, some spell or chant.
Then he knocked the ink pots aside and slid over beside the dying Whitcomb. He tore open the man's
shirt and there, laid bare, were the same symbols he had just painted upon himself. His eyes were filled with
regret and he hesi-tated, shaking his head in frustration.
Jazz watched her father place both hands onto the han-dle of the dagger.
"No," she said, the word both a plea and a denial.
Chanting, he withdrew the curved dagger from Whitcomb's abdomen, raised it, and drove the blade
into the man's chest, stabbing him in the heart. Jagged lances of bright silver light crackled around the blade
and raced up James Towne's arms. His hair stood on end, and the sigils he'd daubed on his flesh with ochre
ink flashed with a bril-liant light. As though electrified, her father shook,