them, not looking up. "I saw broken glass on the floor in the corridor upstairs, just
below the door to the old service lift. I've walked that way dozens of times; would've seen it if it had been
there before. So I had a look. Careless of you, really. But when I found these inside, I knew we'd be talking
soon. There are things I wished you would never have to know. But it's too late for that."
Jazz uttered a small noise that sounded almost like a laugh. It was anything but.
"Who are you, exactly, to decide what I should and shouldn't know?"
Harry began to reply, but she waved him to silence.
"No. It's a rhetorical question. I've had a think, and I figure you can't be working for the Blackwood
Club or the mayor, 'cause they'd never have beat you like that, and you'd have served me up to them by
now. Maybe you think that makes you some kind of hero. Well, I hate to shatter your il-lusions, but you're
not. You're an old man who's run away from something. I know plenty about hiding, Harry. And you can
keep it up, for all I care. But this concerns me. My family's all wrapped up in it, tangled in fucking barbed
wire, and I want to know what you know. How you and Terence know each other, how you ended up
photographing the Blackwood Club, what you know about the damn apparatus and London's ghosts —all of
it."
She leaned over the table. "But the first question is this: was it all a setup, me finding you? We're
connected, Harry. You, me, Terence, and the damn Blackwood Club. But you didn't find me. I came upon
the old shelter by chance. Fucking stumbled into it. Seemed that way, at least, but I can't believe in a
coincidence like that, Harry. So tell me, how did you do it?"
For the first time since she'd entered the Palace this morning, Harry's face lit up with a smile of real
humor and mischief —the smile of the Harry Fowler she'd known.
"I didn't do a thing, pet. Not a blessed thing. It's magic, isn't it? The entire history of England is
constructed on the fates and destinies of people. Some of them were extraordi-nary, and some ordinary.
Once upon a time, magic influ-enced everything. And with magic, there's no such thing as coincidence."
****
Harry had been fascinated by magic his entire life, but not the sleight of hand that Terence
Whitcomb's father had enjoyed. He claimed to have had numerous encounters with magic during his
childhood, and it had scarred him, both physically and emotionally.
"How did you meet Terence?" Jazz asked.
"Magic again. And thievery. The twin stories of my life," Harry said. He wouldn't look at her now.
His gaze was fixed at some distant point, as though simply by speaking of these events he could see into the
past.
"In another age, the Fowlers were fairly well-to-do. My father taught university, though his family
had left him enough money that he could've retired at thirty. Instead, he taught until the day he died, at the
age of sixty-four. I was just shy of forty when I returned home for his funeral. My sister, Anna, awaited me
there. Hadn't seen her in five years or more. Afterward, we went back to my father's house to find that
someone had broken in during the service. Oh, there was no damage. But there were things missing,
includ-ing my mother's wedding ring. She'd been dead five years by then, and the ring had been on my
father's nightstand ever since.
"It gutted Anna, losing that ring. Some of Mum's other jewelry had been taken as well. My father
had nothing of value for himself, save a library of antique books. While he lived, nothing had mattered to
him but my mother's things. A queer desperation struck me then. I felt he wouldn't rest until I got them
back. Anna was distraught. For her, and for my father, I did something I'd sworn to myself I never would
do." His eyes grew dark as he spoke, and his nostrils flared with self-loathing.
Jazz studied him a moment, and she knew. "You used magic to find the thief."
Harry put his hands over his mouth and nose. His gaze seemed lost. "Yes."
"But... magic. It's all storybook stuff to me. You and Terence talk about it like it's... like you could
just reach out and touch it."
"Not so simple as that, love. Oh, it's here now, all around us. And some people —you and I
included—can sense it at times. Those who dare, those who know the right words or gestures or symbols,
can tap into it. But
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