Mind the Gap (22 page)

“I’m going to trust you. Partly because I like you and I think you’re trustworthy, but mostly because you have secrets too, Jazz. Lots of secrets. And something tells me that once we start talking, we’ll be helping each other a great deal. We both hold pieces of a puzzle, I suspect. Perhaps this evening we can make it whole.”

“Perhaps,” she said. “But you know nothing of my secrets.”

“Of course not,” he said, eyes glittering. “Which is why they’re secrets. But Pooh was right: some secrets are heavy, and a burden shared is easier to carry. And some are dark. And a friend can shed much light.”

“So now we’re friends?” Jazz asked.

Terence shrugged and ate some more of his meal. He left the word hanging, and it seemed to echo around the small dining room.

Jazz laughed a little, looking around again. “This really doesn’t seem like you,” she said.

Terence held his hands up, mock-offended. “It’s home!”

Home,
Jazz thought.
Maybe that’s my first dark secret he can brighten for me. I never really had a home.

“My father always wanted to be a magician,” Terence said. He put down his knife and fork, took another sip of wine, and rested his elbows on the table. “But when he found out the price of magic, everything changed. He couldn’t gain the knowledge he wanted if it meant visiting pain on others. So instead of a magician, he tried to become a savior. But the Blackwood Club killed him.”

“They killed your father,” Jazz said in a monotone.

Terence nodded.

“Why?”

“Because the cause of the Blackwood Club—their reason for being, from the day of their inception right up until today—has been the acquisition of magic.” He took another sip of wine, then without asking poured some into Jazz’s glass as well as refilling his own.

“Go on,” Jazz said.

“You know some of this,” he said. “Don’t you?”

She took a drink. It was cool and refreshing, but she heard her mother’s warning voice at the back of her mind.
Drink too much, and you’ll lose your way so badly you might never get back. You need your wits about you all the time, Jazz.
Jazz sighed, half-lowered the glass, then took another mouthful.

“Tell me your story,” she said. “Then I’ll tell you what I know. And if we meet somewhere in the middle—”

“We will. We
do
!”

Jazz stared at her host.

“The spirit of London,” Terence said. He waited for a reaction, but when Jazz gave him none he continued. “There are ghosts down there in the Underground—the Tube lines, the shelters, the sewers and storage places, and places far deeper too. The souls of London past, played out again and again; the spirit of the ancient city itself. All big cities have a hidden soul, do you know that? London has always been a turbulent place, a place of learning and mystery. There were plenty of people who lived here long ago who had a much better grasp of arcane knowledge than most people do now. Now, a child’s mind is polluted from an early age with the wrong kind of input, made so that it can’t be taught the things that many were taught two hundred, six hundred, a thousand years ago.”

“Polluted by what?” Jazz asked.

“TV. The cult of celebrity. Society nowadays places importance on the wrong things and often the wrong people. Three hundred years ago, it was the learned types of London who held most respect, and many of those men and women had their fingers on the pulse of the city. Now…someone sells a movie of their ex-girlfriend fellating them, and they’re both instant superstars. Where’s the magic in that?”

“I have no heroes,” Jazz said.

Terence became animated, pointing at Jazz with his fork. “Yes, but you’re unique!”

Jazz ate her final mouthful of food and followed it with more wine. Terence looked off into the corner of the room again, tapping his wineglass with the signet ring on his right hand, almost lost in his own world.

“Your father?” Jazz said.

“My father. Alan Whitcomb. A magician who tried to become a savior. He knew what the spirit of London was, you see. He knew there was true
magic
there, down beneath the streets, just waiting to be picked up and learned by whoever had the desire. But sometimes that spirit screams, and when he first heard that he recognized its true state: tortured.”

Jazz paled and Terence stared at her, but she said nothing.
Let him finish his story,
she thought.
Then I’ll decide whether I should talk to him…or run.

“My father was a very clever man. A genius, from a long line of geniuses. All my life, I’ve aspired to his greatness. The more he knew about the tortured spirit of the old city, the more he wanted to help it. He researched old London, looking through books and records. There are places in London designed to keep secrets, which keep them still, but my father found his way in. He spent fifteen years gathering knowledge, and at the end of that time he started building.”

“The apparatus,” Jazz said.

“Yes, the apparatus. The Blackwood Club knew of him already, of course. You can’t investigate the hidden secrets of London without them eventually knowing your name. But where his genius came in was making them think he was no threat. He started building an apparatus made from arcane segments and parts, which, when finished, would put the spirit of old London to rest.”

“And the magic?”

“The magic would go down with it. The time of magic and magicians is dead, Jazz. Humanity has moved on. The past weighs on society like Marley’s chains. A people, a culture, a city like London must molt from age to age, like a snake shedding its skin.”

Jazz frowned. “Sorry. I don’t understand.”

Terence gave it a moment’s thought, then forged on. “The direction of my life has been totally defined by the murder of my father. But it’s common for people to be forged by their past, even shackled by it. Until we put the past to rest, we can’t move on. We might as well be carrying our dead ancestors on our backs.”

Jazz shivered, thinking of her mother’s murder and the death of her father so long ago.

“Think of a deposed king who cannot accept a world in which no one bows to him anymore,” Terence continued. “Even ordinary people are often affected by the memory of their glory days. Now extend that idea to an entire city. Once, London was the heart of an empire. Magic thrived here. The collective consciousness of London had an image of itself not unlike that king. But the king is dead, Jazz. It’s a world of technology and celebrity now. The future is here, and London can’t let go of its past. That collective consciousness? It’s dead, and it haunts the modern city, weighs London down, just as my need to finish my father’s work weighs
me
down.

“Rid London of its connections to the magic of another age, put its ghosts to rest, and the city can finally shed the skin of its past and become something new. Not an empire maybe, but a thriving, vibrant piece of the future.”

Jazz arched an eyebrow. “That’s a beautiful sentiment, but it’s all a bit metaphysical for me. How do you know this isn’t all a load of shit?”

Terence leaned back and studied her. “You can feel it, Jazz, down there in the tunnels. Don’t tell me you can’t. You must. As for the restless spirits of old London, they’re all too real. There’s little enough magic left, but it isn’t entirely gone. What’s left could be collected and harnessed. My father knew that if the Blackwood Club eventually gained such magic, everything would change.”

“Are you sure that would be such a terrible thing?” Jazz asked.

“The city would remain a relic, antiquated, forever a part of the past. London would go the way of Babylon. If the Blackwood Club even allowed it to survive that long. Don’t you see? The magic is of another age. These men are not real sorcerers. They’re old, bitter, corrupt, and they could never use it for good. Worse still, they’re amateurs. Allowing them to pull together the lingering occult energies of the past could only lead to catastrophe. The entire city might go mad, or sleeping evils be wakened. Even if they managed to control the magic for a time, they’d be corrupted by power. Anarchy would tear London apart, hastening its fall into ruin. The only way to assure the safety and the future of London is to gather the magic, destroy it, and set free the city’s old ghosts.”

He drank more wine, and for the first time Jazz saw a break in his composure and confidence. His eyes were watery and his cheeks flushed, but she thought it was more than simply the alcohol causing it.

“All right. I understand,” she said. “Go on with your story.”

Terence nodded. “What happened next showed how right my father was.”

“
What
happened?”

“Somehow they found out what he was doing. Until then, the club had apparently been a peaceful group. Gathering knowledge, translating more magical information every time the spirit of London screamed. Sometimes years passed between the screams; other times they happened every few weeks.”

“Hour of Screams,” Jazz said. “That’s what it’s called.”

Terence nodded, focusing intently on Jazz in the hope that she would say more. But she looked back at him, blinking slowly, waiting for him to continue.

“When they murdered my father, everything changed. Their thirst for knowledge had become a greed for power. They dismantled the incomplete apparatus and spread its component parts about London. And ever since, I’ve been stealing them back.”

“Why not destroy it? If they wanted the opposite of what your father wanted, why did they just break down the apparatus and hide it?”

Terence smiled grimly. “If only it were that simple. But he made something that accessed the magic in order to put it down. And they saw that as the fast route to what they’d been gathering, piece by piece, for decades. My father built that thing to help London move on, but the apparatus has to gather the city’s magic before it can be destroyed. The Blackwood Club didn’t
want
the machine destroyed. They wanted to use it to achieve their own ends, to gather the magic for themselves.”

“And that blade I took from you is part of the apparatus.”

Terence nodded. “They’ve been moving the parts around, of course, trying to keep them from me. But I always find them. That gear you have is almost the last part.”

“So what’s left?”

Terence poured more wine, stood, and took another bottle from the fridge. He still moved gracefully, but there was a tiredness about him now, which Jazz was certain had to do with his murdered father. “Your turn,” he said.

They killed my mother too,
she wanted to say.
And my father, I think, a long time ago.
But to tell him that would be too revealing, and beneath his cultured exterior there was a definite streak of danger. Sometimes he seemed to be her friend, and occasionally something more, but she knew that he was a man intent on his own needs and desires. She could be far more involved in this than he could ever guess—and she was not sure that now was the time for such a revelation.

“So you chose your course in life,” Jazz said.

“Strong people do.”

“Not always. Sometimes it’s forced upon you. Strong or weak, sometimes it can’t be helped.”

“Okay,” Terence said cautiously. “So…?”

“My mother died. I had to go belowground. And when I was down there…” She trailed off, confused now, not sure how much to say and how much to hold back.

“You met Harry Fowler.”

She stared at him, the impact of what he was saying sinking in. Her mind was hazed with confusion. She drank wine to give herself more time, closing her eyes, swilling it around her mouth and swallowing.
He knows Harry!

“He took me in,” she said.

“He does that.”

Her mind was spinning. Terence knew Harry, Harry was the photographer for the Blackwood Club, and they had both been trying to rob Mortimer Keating’s house. Had Harry known about the gear for the apparatus contained in that place? He had not seemed interested in anything in particular, choosing the house ostensibly because it would hit back at the mayor and his cronies, a weak form of vengeance over what had happened to Cadge. If he’d been after the gear, surely he’d have told Jazz what to look for?

“Were you in the Blackwood Club?” she asked.

Terence frowned and sat up straight. “No,” he said. “I’ve told you about them and what they did. I haven’t lied.”

“How do you know Harry?”

“We used to work together.”

“He was a photographer.” Jazz watched closely, looking for any trace of a lie in Terence’s response.

“Did he tell you that?” he asked.

“No. I found out.”

Terence nodded, frowned, tapped his ring against the wineglass again. “In Keating’s house?”

“Yes. There were photos on the wall upstairs. I knocked one off when I was hiding from you, it smashed, and I saw his name on the back. I thought the reasons why Harry wanted us to rob Mort’s house were clear, but—”

“Mort?”

“Mortimer Keating.”

“Knew him well, did you?”

Jazz thought of Mort leaning from her bedroom window, watching for her return to the house where her mother already lay murdered.
Call me Mort,
he’d said to her when she was a little girl, and she’d never spoken a word to him. Just another Uncle.

“It’s what Harry called him,” Jazz said.

Terence shook his head. Stared at her. Poured more wine. “I’ve been open and honest with you,” he said.

“You’ve told me nothing,” Jazz responded. “I still don’t know anything about you. You’re trying to build a machine that’ll lay old ghosts to rest, keep magic out of the wrong hands—or any hands, really—but that doesn’t tell me who you are, where you come from, or what you’re all about.” She waved around at the small dining room. “This isn’t you. You come across as someone who likes the good things in life, and when you say you’ll take me home, I find myself…somewhere else.”

“Do you have a home, Jazz?”

“I used to.”

“Until your mother died and for some reason you had to go underground? And you talk about
me
not saying anything.” He stood from the table, smoothed his shirt, and picked up the plates. Jazz sat in silence for a while, watching him wash the plates in the sink before piling them beside it, clearing the cooker, each movement deliberate and balanced. If the several glasses of wine he had already consumed had gone to his head, he was not showing it. The only chink in his armor she had seen was when he mentioned his father, and she was sure now that behind that chink was more strength and determination than he would ever betray.