a short, skinny kid,
maybe fourteen, with an unruly mop of bright ginger hair, baggy jeans, and a denim jacket studded with
button badges. He wore a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, which seemed too delicate for his face. He glanced
back once —Jazz held her breath—then he slipped the rucksack from his shoulders and went to sit close to
Mr. F. From the brief glimpse of his face lit up by the lights, Jazz was sure she had seen no lenses in his
glasses.
The children gathered around Mr. F., sitting on blan-kets, mattresses, or bare concrete. They all took
off ruck-sacks or duffels and placed them beside them on the floor, and the tall man looked around with a
warm smile. "Good day, my pets?"
"Best I've 'ad in a while," one boy said.
"Ah!" Mr. F. clapped his hands. "If Stevie Sharpe tells me he's had a good day, I know we'll be
eating well tonight."
Stevie Sharpe smiled tightly, the expression hardly changing his face. He tipped up his rucksack, and
Jazz gasped. Dozens of wallets and purses fell from it, pattering to the floor like dead birds. "American bus
trip broke down," the boy said. "They had to catch the Tube to meet up with a new bus." He picked up one
wallet and flipped it through the air.
Mr. F. caught it and put it to his nose. "Real leather, of course," he said. Then he opened the wallet
and flipped through the contents. He smiled. "Yes, eating very well tonight. That's if you all don't mind fillet
steak bought with honestly earned money?"
The children laughed and started offering their own hauls to the man sitting in their midst.
What the hell is this? Jazz thought. And as she watched the strange display before her —more loot,
more celebrat-ing, more banter, and plenty of laughter—another realiza-tion struck her: she needed to pee.
Wallets and purses were the main hauls, handed to Mr. F. as though he were some ancient god to
which the kids had to pay tribute. Jazz guessed that the youngest was maybe twelve , the oldest eighteen. A
couple of them were about her age —seventeen—and old enough to pass as adults.
She closed her eyes and tried not to concentrate on her bladder. However desperate her situation,
she was too proud to piss herself while shut away in some cupboard. Some smelly cupboard, she realized.
The coats and jackets com-pressed beneath her seemed to be exuding an old, musty odor, a mixture of
damp and sweat and something more spicy and exotic.
When she looked again, several of the children were gathering their haul and starting to store it
away. They shoved it seemingly at random into cupboards and cabinets, but they worked in a way that
convinced Jazz there was some sort of system here.
No coats today, she thought. No jackets, no coats or jackets, please, not today.
But remaining undiscovered was simply delaying the in-evitable. Unless she could stay here until
these people went out again, what hope did she have?
Mr. F. stood and strolled to the other end of the shelter, opening the fridge cabinets and taking out a
bottle of beer. He popped the top and drank deep, turning around to watch his kids hide away their stolen
goods.
Bunch of thieves. Nothing more, nothing less. Jazz ac-tually felt disappointed. Discovering this
subterranean place had instilled a sense of mystery in her, distracting to some small degree from the
seriousness of her situation. The hope-lessness. She had been thinking only minutes, maybe hours ahead
—avoid capture by the Uncles, maybe plan forward to where and when she could go back up to the
surface. And then the ghosts—
(though she had not really seen them, had she? Not really. The stress, the strain, the trauma had
thrust visions at her from the darkness, that was all)
—and the discovery of this strange place had combined to help remove her even more from the
world. She had not only come deeper, she had come farther away. That had felt good.
"Just bloody thieves," she whispered.
"Mr. F.?" One of the girls walked to the tall man, hold-ing something in her hand.
Jazz held her breath. What had she left? What had she forgotten?
"So who's the litterbug?" Mr. F. asked. "Cadge?"
"Not me, Mr. F. I'm clean an' tidy."
Mr. F. smiled and held up the half-empty biscuit wrap-per. "Someone craving bourbons? It's hardly
surprising. They are, after all, members of the biscuit royalty, though I'd only bestow a princehood on them.
The king being... ?"
"Chocolate Hobnobs," a tall boy said, rubbing his stomach and sighing.
"Right. So...?"
A chorus of no's and shaken heads, and then the strange group went back to tidying their haul.
"As ever, I believe you all,"
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