it, but I suspect your breakfast has gotten
cold."
"But you've got. the gear!" she blurted.
He raised an eyebrow, shrugged. "Hmm."
Harry crossed his arms and stared at Terence for a mo-ment before glancing past him.
"Well done, Stevie. Smart lad."
Stevie spit blood onto the floor. "Hattie's guitar'll have to wait. Thought I'd keep an eye on the tunnel,
see if any rats came down after the cheese."
Jazz stared at the small pistol in his hand. "Where the hell did you get a gun?"
His smile was bitter. "You don't know everything, you know? We were doing just fine before you
came along. Would've been better off if you'd stayed gone."
His tone belied the words. Her staying out all night had stung him. Stevie was angry, which stunned
her. All the time she had fancied him, she'd never been sure how he felt. But none of that mattered now. If
they'd ever been on a path that could have led to some shared future, Jazz had left that path, and there
could be no going back.
"Hello, Harry," Terence said.
"Terry. Nice of you to pay us a visit. We were just rumi-nating on the little web that seems to have
entangled us all. Apparently you didn't think enough of her to tell her the whole story."
Despite his struggle with Stevie and the gun pressed against his back, Terence still managed a
roguish smile. But Jazz had seen the look before and knew it was a mask.
"I meant to continue the conversation over breakfast, but I found myself eating alone."
His gaze penetrated deeply. She did not want to trust him, did not even want to think well of him. But
at the same time, the idea that she had hurt him troubled her in ways that Stevie's feelings of betrayal never
would.
"It wasn't by choice," Jazz said. "I really did just go for a walk to clear my head. But a copper spotted
me. He got hold of me but didn't try to arrest me. He got on his mobile, said something about the mayor
giving him a reward if he brought me in. If I hadn't gotten away..."
She let the words trail off, hating that she was making excuses.
Terence and Harry exchanged a dark look.
"Stevie, the time for bullets has passed," Harry said.
Reluctantly, Stevie made the pistol disappear inside his jacket. Terence gave him a nod, as though the
boy had just done him a courtesy.
"Jazz," Terence said, "did your mother ever say anything at all about the apparatus or about the
battery? Anything at all? It's vital that you try to remember."
Harry snorted. "Honestly, do you think they'd have left the woman alive all those years if they
thought she knew anything?"
"I don't know what to think," Terence said, his eyes never leaving Jazz. "They must have decided she
did know, after all, or else they wouldn't have killed her. And if they want to get their hands on Jasmine this
badly, there's only one reason I can think of —they think she knows where the battery is."
Harry tilted his head to one side as though in thought. "Perhaps."
"You bastard," Jazz whispered, staring at Terence.
He flinched, narrowing his eyes. "Excuse me?"
"You knew who I was all along. I must have 'issues' with the Blackwood Club, that's what you said.
But you knew what my bloody issues were."
Terence opened his hands in surrender. "I just wanted it to come out in its own time. I was afraid
you'd think I was involved with them somehow."
"Aren't you?"
Harry and Terence both started arguing with her at once. Jazz waved them silent.
"Oh, shut up. You are involved. I know you didn't have anything to do with killing her, but you're
connected to all of this down to the roots, the both of you." She glared at Harry. "You still want to tell me
this is all coincidence? All fucking destiny?"
Harry shrugged. "I'm afraid it is. Unless there's some-thing you're not telling us."
Jazz quieted at that. There were things she hadn't told them. Harry knew she saw and heard the
ghosts of old London —hell, he saw them as well—and Terence had hinted that he suspected as much. But
she hadn't shared with them the vividness of her visions of the ghosts or men-tioned the way the magician's
wraith had seemed to notice her in a way the other specters were incapable of doing. She hadn't told them
about the impulse she felt from time to time to descend even deeper underground, to go through certain
doors.
They had kept their secrets from her well, these two old disenchanted friends. Through one part
spite, one part cau-tion, and one part sheer stubbornness, she determined to keep what
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