were cracked and broken, the gears bent and
rusted. How the thing had ever worked, she could not imagine. She slid out between the pipes and jumped
to the floor of the chamber.
In the flickering of firelight, Terence Whitcomb and the members of the Blackwood Club lay
sprawled across the stony ground. Slowly, groaning, most of them began to rise. Two men lay still, either
unconscious or dead. Terence stag-gered toward her, a weary smile on his face, yet there also seemed to
be an air of sadness around him. He had dedi-cated his life to this moment, and now that it had arrived,
what would he do?
Josephine Blackwood and the Uncles seemed shriveled and diminished. The woman raised her
hands, malice etched upon her face, but she looked foolish sketching the air as she tried to cast some kind
of spell. The realization shattered her. Jazz saw it fill her eyes, watched as her body went slack. She was
just a sad old woman now. All of the power she'd lusted after, like youth, was a lost dream, for-ever beyond
her grasp.
As Jazz looked on, they all seemed to be growing older. One by one, heads hung in despair, they
turned away and began to shamble back the way they had come.
All save for Josephine.
She crouched and picked up a fallen pistol.
"Josie, no!" Terence shouted, scanning the ground for his own gun.
The crone pointed the gun at Jazz and fired. As Josephine pulled the trigger, Jazz felt her gorge rise
as though she might vomit. Instead, what burst from her was a human figure —a gray shimmering form in a
top hat and tails with a simple prestidigitator's wand. He waved it even as the bullet passed through him, but
what struck Jazz was a wilted daisy.
The gun in Josephine Blackwood's hand had become a bouquet of flowers.
The old woman crumbled to the ground and began to weep quietly.
Terence stared at Jazz and then at the ghost of the magi-cian. "It can't be."
The magician reached toward him, spectral fingers pass-ing through Terence's cheek and reaching
behind his ear to produce a silver coin. Then he bowed deeply, stepped back-ward into Jazz, and vanished
within her.
The stories and secrets of old London had not disap-peared or been destroyed; they had found a new
home.
Jazz reached for Terence and pulled him close. He winced at the pain from the wound in his
shoulder. She drew his face down to hers and brushed her lips against his in a gentle kiss, then kissed him
more deeply, a maelstrom of emotions rushing through her.
"Jasmine," he said.
She shook her head, gave him a final glance, and then turned from him. When she walked past
Josephine Blackwood, the old woman didn't even look up. Terence called after her once, but Jazz did not
falter. She had de-scended so far into the underneath that the journey upward would take time, and she was
keen to get started.
London awaited.
****
On a Tuesday in the last week of October, Jazz sat on a low wall in Regent's Park, away from the
zoo and the rose garden and the major pedestrian traffic. A man with a guitar strummed and sang on a
nearby footpath, instrument case open but for the moment filled only with the hope of future generosity.
A small group had begun to gather around her, an odd coterie that included a tidy young professional,
a couple of aging homeless, and a dark-eyed junkie thief unused to be-ing as exposed as the park required.
The thief's eyes were skittish, but Jazz often found that she loved them best of all.
Tuesday. Jazz had discovered that she liked knowing what day it was. That had taken some getting
used to once she had returned topside and become part of the city again. But she liked the feeling. It made
the day hers, in a way
London was enjoying an Indian summer, and the sun felt warm on her arms, now turned a rich
bronze from many such days. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail and she wore a spaghetti-strap tank top,
cutoff shorts, and a cute pair of sandals she'd retrieved from the closet in her old bedroom. After all she
had been through, robbing her own house be-fore the bank finally sold it off hadn't been difficult.
A few others approached cautiously, seeing her there on the wall. Among them she saw Aaron, a
nouveau punk, maybe twenty, sauntering toward her with his usual arro-gance. When he reached the small,
strange group sitting on the grass in front of the wall, his entire demeanor changed. He stood up straight and
even smiled. The green hair must have seemed out of place elsewhere in the
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