comfort. His
legs shifted and he tried to sit up but couldn't. Stevie reached them and dropped down next to Hattie. Jazz
had been frozen with in-decision, not knowing where her life would go from here. But for the moment, at
least, such thoughts would have to wait. Harry had been kind to her. Cadge might be dead, but Harry was
alive.
Jazz ran to them. She stood behind Stevie, looking down at the bruised, bloody face of Harry Fowler.
"I thought..." she said.
"The worst," Harry said. "I thought the same, love. But I'll be all right. Need some rest. Cracked
some bones, I think. But a few weeks and I'll be right as rain."
"Think they'll be back?" Stevie asked.
Harry nodded. "Might be."
"So what do we do?" Hattie asked, her voice a desperate whine.
At that, Harry beamed, though he winced with the pain the smile caused him. "Why, Hattie, dear,
what do you sup-pose we do? When the big bad wolf blows down the house, the smart little pig moves
somewhere safer."
Hattie and Stevie nodded, but Jazz felt a darkness en-veloping her, a grim hopelessness that she
feared she could never escape.
"They caught Cadge," she said.
Harry frowned deeply. "Is he bad off?"
"He's dead."
At those words Harry —who'd made himself both monarch and jester of the
Underground—began to cry.
And Jazz thought she loved the old man, just a little.
****
"What is this rendezvous point, anyway?" Jazz asked. "Nobody ever mentioned it to me."
Hattie led the way. Jazz and Stevie helped Harry as best they could, the old thief's arms around them
for support. At first he'd had to lean on them quite a bit, but as the minutes passed and some of his stiffness
retreated, he seemed to need them more for balance than anything else. Jazz stretched her own neck and
arms, glad to have his weight off her.
"Couldn't be sure about you at first, Jazz girl." Harry coughed, spat a wad of bloody spittle, and kept
walking. "If you were just passing through, it wouldn't do to give up all our secrets."
"And now? You're sure I'm not just passing through?"
"I'm not sure of anything except that those bastards at-tacked my family in my home, killed one of
my children, and are going to pay for it."
Harry stepped on a loose stone that shifted beneath him, and he stumbled a bit. Jazz and Stevie
caught him, but she saw the pain in his face and wondered how many bones were cracked or broken and
whether he had damage inside him that none of them could see. Losing Cadge had gutted her. She
wondered what would happen to the United Kingdom if Harry died as well and decided not to think about
it.
"As to the rendezvous, here we are. You'll see for your-self."
Jazz narrowed her eyes. Hattie had gone down into the bomb shelter and fetched one of the
heavy-duty torches. Its illumination shone into the tunnel ahead, but the dark-ness seemed to swallow it up.
There were no shafts here to bring light down from the surface. Jazz couldn't have said how long they'd
been wandering through the various tun-nels and corridors that made up the labyrinth of London's true
Underground, but she thought nearly an hour had passed.
The torchlight glinted on the tracks —there were still rails here—and on the walls and roof of the
tunnel. But after a few more steps, the darkness seemed to yawn before them and they stepped into what
had to be a vast subterranean cavern.
"What the hell?" Jazz whispered.
"Stevie, get the lights," Harry said.
The old thief released both of them, moving gingerly ahead. Stevie slipped off to the left, and Hattie
aimed the torch just ahead of him. Jazz saw a platform. She and Hattie kept up with Harry as they came to
a set of steps that led up-ward. At the top of those stairs, they stopped and waited.
"Stevie!" Harry called, one hand pressed against his side. "Let's have those lights."
"Give us a minute," Stevie replied, his voice floating to them from the darkness.
As promised, a moment later there came a loud clank and the hum of electricity, and lights began to
flicker on high above their heads. Jazz turned slowly, mouth open in amazement. She had never seen a
Tube station so beautiful. The pillars were marble and chandeliers hung from the ceil-ing high above.
Frescoes had been painted on that vaulted surface. It seemed to her more like a cathedral than a train stop
on the Underground.
"You've got to he joking," she said. "Who builds some-thing like this and then abandons it?"
Hattie laughed and pirouetted in the middle of the sta-tion. "Isn't it lovely, though? Wish we could live
here in-stead of just using
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