as a nice linen jacket, a small
sack of groceries, and a plastic bag from Waterstone's with a few suspense novels inside. All stolen. Cadge
carried a small duffel bag he'd brought upside with him that was now stuffed with fruit, drinks, and a heavy
in-dustrial torch he'd grabbed when some workmen had wan-dered off for lunch and left their tools
unattended.
They'd had a very successful day.
"I think I'm doing all right," she said.
"More than all right," Cadge said, with such warmth in his voice that Jazz looked at him. Face a bit
flushed, he glanced away.
On the train platform, Jazz scanned the waiting com-muters. Her constant lookout for the Uncles and
their BMW men had become almost unconscious by now. Half the time she caught herself looking around
warily and only then realized what precisely she'd been looking for. Yet she felt more at ease in the Tube
station than she did above-ground, and the deeper she went, the more comfortable she became.
She worried that she was becoming too comfortable, down there in the dark. But the upside world
held only dan-ger for her, and up there she would be on her own. Better by far to be safe and in the
company of friends. And if she had ever had any real friends, certainly Cadge fit the bill.
The train slid into the station. The exhilaration of thiev-ing and the threat of capture still prickled her
skin as she stepped on and took a seat, setting the bag on the floor be-tween her feet. Cadge sat beside her,
and they kept silent for the brief ride to Holborn.
They stepped out onto the platform. Before the rush of disgorged passengers could subside, they
slipped over the rail at the end of the platform and down to the shadows be-side the tracks. When the train
left the station, they ven-tured into the dark.
"What about that torch?" Jazz asked.
Cadge grinned like it was Christmas morning. She knew he'd been itching to try it out, but he waited
until they'd left the main track, following an abandoned branch out of sight of anyone who might be in
Holborn station, and then un-zipped the duffel. When he clicked the torch on, the light sent rats scurrying
and picked out some of the rust and scabrous growth that covered old piping along the walls and ceiling.
"Maybe less light is better," Jazz said.
Cadge laughed. "Be it ever so humble..."
Jazz flinched. The down-below had become her sanctu-ary, a hiding place, and the United Kingdom
behaved like a family, but no matter how long she remained there she re-fused to think of it as home. Once,
on the day of her first topside nick, the word had come unbidden into her mind, and she'd vowed to herself
that it wouldn't happen again.
Cadge paused and glanced at her. "Hear that?"
She realized she did hear something —had been hearing it for a couple of minutes already. A
susurrus of low voices like the hush of a flowing river ran nearby. Now that she paid attention to it, the
noise grew louder.
"A crowd, sounds like," Cadge said.
Jazz nodded. They both knew it couldn't really be a crowd —not down here. Which meant it had to
be phantoms.
The ghosts seemed to blossom to life around her. In the darkness they were shadows with a hint of
ethereal illumina-tion, but in the glow of Cadge's torch they were revealed as true specters.
A Victorian carriage rattled by, drawn by a single horse, a lantern swinging from a hook beside the
driver's high seat. Cadge stepped quickly away from the startling sound of horses' hooves but glanced
around as though blinded. He heard the phantom near him but could not see it.
A couple of weeks ago such a vision would have terrified Jazz, but now she caught her breath in
wonder. There was something almost comforting about them. The Underground was a forgotten home to
lost people, and it seemed only right that it would echo with forgotten moments, the dreaming memories of
London itself.
A sweet aroma reached her, a mélange of different scents that made her inhale deeply. She
shuddered with the delicious odors, closed her eyes tightly to shut off all but her sense of smell. When she
opened them again, she stood in a marketplace sprawled across cobblestones. There were carts full of
vegetables and stacks of wooden crates overflowing with fruit. A little girl sold fresh flowers from a basket
to specters who strolled about investigating the wares of the vendors. The smells were invigorating and
such a wonderful change in the damp tunnels whose ordinary odors were rust and sewage.
A man rode by on a creaky antique bicycle with wheels so large and unwieldy
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