magic has faded, the same way the stories about it have."
Jazz rolled that around in her brain for a few seconds. Once it would have seemed completely absurd
to her, but she had witnessed the ghosts of old London and heard the Hour of Screams, and she knew there
was more to the world than what the worker bees rushing around the city could see.
"And the thief? It was Terence?"
Harry clapped his hands together. "Precisely. One of my father's students, in fact. Twenty years my
junior. Yes, I'm afraid I'm not quite as old as I appear. Time has not been kind to me.
"As you surmise, I located the thief, but his reaction was not what I would have expected at such a
discovery. Terence was so pleased that I'd been able to track him down that he gave me back everything
he'd taken from the house without my even asking. He wanted to know how I'd done it, of course. Such
things fascinated him. Thought there must be some trick to it and wanted to learn. I ought to have turned
him in to the police, but I did not. I told Anna that I'd found a bag tossed aside in the garden and there
would be no way to catch the thief. I said we ought to be content just to have gotten our things back.
"Terence and I crossed paths again a few days later. Anna and I had been packing up my father's
things to vacate the house —university property, you understand—when he appeared at the door and
insisted I tell him how I'd found him. The mystery had been driving him mad, he said. We made a bargain.
Simple enough. He'd show me some of the tricks of his trade if I'd tell him the truth. I was sure he wouldn't
believe me, you see. But, then, I didn't know about his father or the apparatus he was building. You see
what I mean about fate, Jazz girl? It seemed like more than serendipity that the two of us had come
together."
Harry paused then, and at last his gaze seemed to focus on their present circumstances. He looked at
Jazz.
"How much did Terence tell you?"
Jazz considered a moment, then said, "Not everything, I'm sure. I know they killed his father. They
wanted the ap-paratus for themselves, to gather up all the city's old magic. But they didn't have the battery,
so the apparatus was useless to them. Terence said they took it apart, scattered the parts about, so nobody
else could use it."
Harry nodded. "And they've been looking for the bat-tery ever since. So has Terence. I looked with
him for the longest time. We spent years stealing back pieces of the ap-paratus. These —" He gestured to
the photos on the table. "I created an elaborate ruse, even set up a photographer's shop with family money
and used all of the connections my late father's status would allow to manipulate myself into the good
graces of the Blackwood Club. I needed to know the identity of each member, so we would know where to
look."
Jazz held up a hand to halt him. "All right, I get it. Now, suppose for a moment that I believe all this.
How did you get from there to here? You had money, status, and a pur-pose. Terence is still topside, still on
his crusade. But you're down here in the dark."
Harry let his gaze drop, a rueful smile on his face. "Terence tried to teach me as best he could, but
the shame-ful truth, my dear, is that old Harry never became half the thief Mr. Whitcomb was. Nor half the
actor. They found me out, tried to make me tell them who else I worked with. Didn't speak a word about
Terence. Not a word. I thought they'd kill me. But they weren't always as hard as they are now. They
knew me, yeah? Knew my family. They told me to disappear, to vanish myself forever. That if any of them
ever saw me again, they'd kill Anna. Couldn't have any con-tact with her. Not ever."
Shamed, he hung his head, but after a moment he glanced up, eyes damp with tears. "The worst of it
is that Anna died last year. Cancer took her. I went to the hospital, tried to say good-bye, but she didn't
know me by then. Barely conscious. She's dead and they've got nothing over me now, but I'm still down
here." His laugh was bitter.
"Wouldn't know what to do with myself topside any-more. I don't know how to live in that world.
And I've got the young ones to look after, don't I? Who knows what would
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