Mind the Gap (25 page)

“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 apparatus 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 battery ever since. So has Terence. I looked with him for the longest time. We spent years stealing back pieces of the apparatus. 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 purpose. 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 shameful 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 contact 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 anymore. 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 happen to them without me?”

Jazz studied him. Despite her natural suspicion, everything Harry had said had the ring of truth. His grief was painful to see. But looking at him, she was certain he had not told her everything.

“You knew my father.”

Harry frowned. “Only to photograph him.”

A niggling thought worked at the back of her mind, puzzle pieces attempting to fit together. “The Blackwood Club killed Terence’s father and threatened to kill your sister. You see where I’m going?”

“You want to know if your father fell victim to his friends. The Senate burying their knives in Caesar.”

“Caesar?” she said, and a ripple of revulsion went through her as she realized what he meant. “My father was…what? Club president?”

Harry got up and walked to a cabinet, poured himself a snifter of scotch, and leaned against the wall. “I don’t think they have such titles,” he said, taking a sip. “Not so far as I know, anyway. And, yes. James Towne ran the Blackwood Club, at least back in those days. The club goes back a long way, you see. More than two hundred years. But Josephine—the ice queen in that photo—thought that, as the only living Blackwood, she ought to lead them.”

“She murdered him?” Jazz heard how small her own voice had become.

“Nothing of the sort. Your old man tried a bit of magic that was too big for him. Something dark and ugly, from what the whispers said at the time. Cost him his life. Right after that was when they found me out, drove me off.”

“And my mother?”

“Never met the woman.”

Images of her mother’s corpse sprawled halfway off her bed and the words smeared in blood on the wall filled her mind. Jazz blinked hard, holding back tears, but she knew that when she spoke, the quaver in her voice would reveal her anguish.

“All those years, why did the Uncles—the Blackwood Club, I mean—why did they look after us like that?”

Harry threw back the scotch in his glass and squeezed his eyes closed. When he opened them, his gaze was intense. “They were obsessed and ambitious. Nasty, greedy bastards. But they had a loyalty to the club. I can’t know for sure, you understand. Just a theory, but from what little I knew of them, I expect it was just them taking care of their own. You were James Towne’s family, so they looked out for you. And maybe they wanted to make sure you didn’t know anything that could hurt them.”

Jazz’s throat felt dry. She wouldn’t have minded a scotch herself. “Then why did they kill her?”

“That, I haven’t the faintest idea.”

His expression was blank, not a trace of a smile or frown, and Jazz knew he was lying. Her pulse fluttered and she searched his eyes.

“Harry, don’t—” she started to say.

A gunshot interrupted her, echoing down to the Palace from the stairwell and muffled by the doors. Jazz stood, knocking over her chair, and took two steps away from the door.

“Christ!” Harry said.

She turned and reached out a beckoning hand. “Come on,” she whispered. “We’ve got to go out the back. It’s got to be them.”

Harry stared at the door. “I’m not sure about that.”

He set his glass down on the table and went to the door. Jazz wanted to shout at him, ask him what the hell he was doing, but making noise didn’t seem like the smartest idea. She took a step toward the rear exit. Even if they came through, she could still make it out as long as she reached that back door and locked it from the other side.

She held her breath.

A knock came on the door, slow and methodical. Jazz flinched. She hadn’t heard footsteps or voices, just that one shot and now the knocking. Harry stared at the door a second, but then he turned the handle and swung it wide open.

A figure stood framed in the doorway. For a moment all she could make out were the eyes, and they were familiar enough to make her shiver.
The magician,
she thought. But then she saw that he had no hat, and the clothes were different. This was no Victorian ghost but a flesh-and-blood man, and when he took a step into the light she blinked in surprise. How could she have mistaken Terence for a ghost?

Stevie Sharpe followed behind him, pressing a gun against Terence’s back. Stevie’s lower lip had been split and blood trickled down his chin. He wiped it away with his free hand, keeping the gun on Terence.

“Fuck’s sake, Stevie!”

But he didn’t even glance at her, his face grim and sullen.

“Hello, Jazz,” Terence said, smiling at her. “I’m sorry to say 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 moment 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 ruminating 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 something
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 mentioned 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 caution, and one part sheer stubbornness, she determined to keep what secrets she had left from them.

Terence looked at her strangely, but Jazz ignored him.

“Now what?” she asked.

“I’ve asked Jazz to help me steal the battery,” Terence told Harry.

Stevie moved around to the table, eyeing him with great suspicion. He took Harry’s glass and poured himself a shot of scotch, knocked it back, and grimaced as it went down. Then he crossed his arms.

Harry raised his eyebrows. “You know where it is?” he asked, but it was clear he didn’t believe it.

“Not precisely. I’ve got all of the other pieces, save the battery. I’ve been inside the homes of every member of the Blackwood Club. To say they’re displeased would be understating it quite a bit. I’d planned to come and see you once I had all the pieces of the apparatus. Jasmine moved my plans up by a day or so.”

He smiled softly at her. Jazz smiled back, unable to help herself.

Stevie gave a derisive sniff.

“I need your help, Harry,” Terence said.

Harry glanced at Jazz. Something about the way he looked at her made her skin crawl, as though he was evaluating her somehow.

“That’s all in the past for me. You know that.”

“Why?” Jazz asked.

All three of them looked at her in surprise.

She shrugged. “Your sister’s dead, Harry. There’s nothing to stop you helping Terence now.”

Harry shook his head in obvious disappointment. “Your memory is short, Jazz girl. Have you forgotten our Cadge so quickly? These people murdered him. I won’t risk the lives of the others.”

“Shouldn’t that be up to them?” Jazz said.

Throwing up his hands, Harry crossed over to the table and sat down. “It doesn’t matter, anyway,” he said, poking a cold bit of sausage with a fork. “I looked before, remember? Nowhere left to search. And the Blackwood pricks never had the battery to begin with.”

“Maybe not back then,” Terence said, all humor leaving him. “Last couple of years, they’ve been after me harder than ever. I’ve had to give up on two houses in the past twelve months because they almost found me, they were moving the few bits of the apparatus I hadn’t already lifted more and more often…and the only reason I can think of is that they were close to finding the battery and afraid I was too.”