time. Jazz let him lead her along the tunnel, careful with her
footing and try-ing to pick up the pace. She had to make sense of what she'd seen, had to decide what it
would mean for her.
"Faster!" Terence said.
His grip tightened on her hand. Jazz shook her head to clear it and matched him step for step.
"What happened to you back there? What did you see?"
She took a deep breath and cast a sidelong glance at him. All along she'd held her secrets close. Her
mother had taught her never to share too much of herself. A dreadfully sad lesson, now that she considered
it, but Terence had done the same, and Harry as well. All of them with their secrets. If only they'd been
truthful with one another, things might have turned out much differently.
"You know about the ghosts," she said, and it wasn't a question. Of course he did.
"Harry sees them," Terence said. "I had an idea early on that you see them too. Now I know."
A loud crash behind them signaled the arrival of the Blackwood Club. The Uncles and the BMW
men would be pouring through the door between tunnels now. A glance back showed her the wavering
glow of a trio of bright torches, but there would be more.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"I told you. Deeper."
Jazz gave a soft, sickened laugh. Still more secrets.
"I know the story now. How this all began," she said. And then she told him, as succinctly as she
could, the tale of their two fathers and their shared tragedy.
"I've never been much of a believer in destiny," she whispered, breathing heavily now with the
exertion of their flight. "But this is all so tied together, it can't just be coinci-dence."
Terence could only nod.
They were still holding hands and Jazz felt the contact acutely.
"So what am I supposed to do? It's magic, isn't it?"
Terence darted abruptly to the left, hauling her with him and nearly colliding with the stone wall. She
put out a hand and leaned against it, feeling the rough surface under her fingers. He held his torch pointed
at the ground, and the yellow gloom it cast made them both look like ghosts.
"That's not why we're here," Terence said, his gaze grim. "We're here to move on from magic, not to
grow stronger from it. If you have a destiny, it's to finish the job my father started —the job your father
interrupted."
She felt his grief and relented. Whether he was right or wrong, Jazz wasn't sure it mattered. All of
the tales she had heard about magic —Terence's and Harry's and her own— they were all tragedies. Had
her mother known the truth of what her baby had become all along or only learned it in the end?
It no longer mattered. She'd tried to run away from the part she had been meant to play. Her mother
had tried so hard to prepare her for that. But she could never have run far enough or hidden deep enough.
Terence shone his torch on a rectangular metal hatch about four feet high and two wide. He pushed
it open, and once more Jazz felt that tugging, a fishhook set deeply into her chest, pulling her through and
downward. A narrow curving stone staircase lay before them, and they quickly de-scended.
"Quiet," Jazz said, concerned about the sounds of their footsteps.
"It doesn't matter. Josie Blackwood's got a little magic of her own. The whole club dabbles, fancying
themselves as true sorcerers. They want to take the old magic of the city into themselves, have the kind of
power no one's seen for centuries. But for now she's got enough to follow our trail. How do you think they
found you? It took a while, but they found you every time. And she's come too close to lose us now."
The stairs continued winding downward. Jazz had not thought to count them, but just when she began
to think they must have descended two hundred or more —and the shouts of their pursuers started to follow
them down—they reached another iron door. Terence swung it open on thick, squealing hinges and flashed
the torchlight into the cham-ber ahead.
Shadows retreated, strange silhouettes scattering into the deeper darkness. Jazz might have asked
what they were, but Terence pulled her through into the chamber and then they were running again. What
she saw of the floor and walls in the torchlight unnerved her. The stones that had been built into the
foundations and arches of these subter-ranean caverns were ancient things, dating back at least to Roman
control of London, perhaps further. These were the halls of old kings or the churches
| | |
|