ass.
When she sat up, breath hitching, shaking in confusion, the ghost had gone. For what else could it
have been? Hal-lucination or phantom: those were really the only choices, and she feared madness more
than haunting.
The music and whispering had stopped.
Jazz stood and stepped carefully back between the tracks. With a quick glance at the spot where
she'd seen the darkness form its lines and shadows into a shape, she hurried on, wondering if the whole day
might be some kind of breakdown, a series of waking nightmares. What if she was sitting in her bedroom
right now, or in a hospital, and none of what she had seen was real?
The thought brought the threat of tears, and she bit her lower lip. The rail glistened with weak light
that filtered down the vent shaft ahead. The dripping noise remained, and from far above she could hear car
horns and the roar of engines. She moved into the pool of daylight, and it made her wonder just how dark it
would become down here when night fell.
She glanced around, searching for an exit. Again, as she had back on the station platform, she felt the
burden of strangers' eyes upon her. Twisting, she peered back the way she'd come, but there were no signs
of anyone there.
Taking a breath, she started into the darkness again, hur-rying toward the next shaft of light.
Focusing only on her footing, she stepped from sleeper to sleeper, catching the glint of the rails just enough
to avoid stumbling over them.
The key's in adapting, her mother's voice muttered in her head. Remember, they can't find you if
you can't find yourself.
That particular comment had been made while out shopping for a winter coat, the day Mum had
bought her the red one with the fur-fringed hood. It hung in her closet now, and would forever, until
someone packed it up with the rest of her things and it vanished into another closet or some charity shop.
Jazz swallowed but found that her throat had gone dry. Mum spoke to her from the surface world,
from the life that had ended just an hour ago. How much might be memory and how much her own
imagination, she did not want to know.
Perhaps she'd become just another ghost in the Underground.
"How'm I doing, Mum? Lost enough?" Jazz said aloud, her voice quavering, the echo soft.
Halfway to the next splash of light, the whispers began again. The Churchill hater spoke up, so
close. Too close. Jazz spun around, crouched down, and now the walls she had built to keep out the fear
gave way and it crashed in around her, drowning her. Her eyes searched the tunnel for ghosts.
"Where are you? What the hell are you doing here?" she cried into the darkness.
A horn beeped loudly behind her.
Jazz spun and saw the car coming at her along the tracks. On instinct, she threw herself to one side.
But the car existed only as a shade —a pale, translucent image. As it passed, she heard the engine buzz in
her ears, but the tunnel did not echo the sound.
A cacophony of sound erupted around her. Voices, Cars. The music started up again, crackling radio
static. "Pennies from Heaven" this time. The newsboy hawked papers. And as she spun, eyes wide, body
shaking with the influx of the impossible, the tunnel came alive with faded images. Gas lamps burned on
street corners, and she saw the city unfold around her. London —but not the London she knew. The
clothes were of another era. The Churchill hater stood out-side a pub, blustering drunkenly at another man;
couples walked arm in arm, the men in suits and the ladies in dresses.
The ghosts of London.
All she could do to escape was close her eyes, but when she squeezed them shut, an all too earthly
image slashed across her mind instead.
No escape.
Jazz screamed, and when she ran out of breath, she in-haled and screamed again. And when she
finally opened her eyes, the ghosts were still there. On one corner stood a man in an elegant tuxedo, top hat,
and white gloves. He fanned a deck of cards to an unseen audience the way the newsboy had offered his
papers to invisible passersby. With his right hand he drew out a single card, and her eyes followed that card
for only an instant but long enough for the rest of the deck to vanish. He opened his arms as if to welcome
ap-plause, and doves appeared in his hands, spectral wings tak-ing flight. The birds vanished when they
reached the roof of the tunnel, passing through as if by some other illusion.
She kept screaming, turning. Nowhere to run
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