Mind the Gap
He flung them. The first bounced from the roof and shattered, shards flying over Stevie's head. The second caught him square in the face.
He dropped the gun. It slid from the roof, caught in the gutter for a second, then spun down to the ground below. Jazz watched. There was solid paving down there, a patio, and it was at least twenty-five feet down.
"Stevie!" she shrieked.
He turned to her slowly, but he could not see. The slate had caught him across the bridge of the nose and just be-neath his eyes, and the wound it had made was horrendous.
"Jump!" Jazz said, but it came out more like a sob.
Philip and another man were sliding down the roof toward him, taking their time because they knew they had him. Philip grinned madly. They could see the blood, and the shiver that went through Stevie was all too apparent.
Perhaps it was a final act of defiance. Maybe Stevie was already unconscious. Jazz would never know. But she would never forget the sight of him falling forward from the edge of the roof and striking the ground headfirst. Nor would she forget the sound his body made as it hit concrete, or the dis-appointed expressions on the men's faces as they realized Stevie had denied them their revenge.
Jazz had no fear now; she was numb. There was little thought about where the best handholds were.
She reached the trunk of the tree and climbed down, finding another heavy limb that led out toward the street. She walked along this one, ducking below other branches, holding on to what-ever she found above her, until she could see the tall bound-ary wall below her. She lowered herself down, jumped from the wall, and landed on the pavement, rolling to the left.
Hands grasped her shoulders.
"Come with me!" Terence said softly. He helped her stand and guided her across the road, and she followed in mute acceptance. She knew that if there was any chance of escape, it would be with him. He cursed as they ran, mutter-ing to himself and hauling Jazz as though she were a bit of baggage.
Terence ripped off her hat and glasses and buried them in a bin, ruffled her hair, tried to wipe her tears away. Unable to stop herself, she cast one last glance at the mayor's house.
Mortimer Keating stood on the street corner, beside the open rear door of a black BMW. He seemed calm, as though the events that had just unfolded —the sound of gunshots and the appearance of Jazz from the branches of that tree— had been no surprise at all. Uncle Mort held something to his ear, a radio or a phone. From that distance she and Terence could easily have outrun him, but he didn't make any move to pursue them. Instead, he simply waved at Jazz and smiled, as though he had a secret.
"What the hell is that about?" she said.
Terence looked back as Uncle Mort slipped into the backseat of the BMW. The car pulled away.
"What's what about?" Terence said.
Jazz didn't reply. Her mind whirled. As she hurried along the street, she stole glances down alleys and into parked cars, even looked up at the windows of houses. The back of her neck burned with the feeling of being observed. Her mother had raised her to be paranoid, but she couldn't shake the idea that this was more than her upbringing.
Why hadn't Mort chased her? Only two possibilities presented themselves to her: either he did not want to, or he did not need to. Either way she felt confused and uneasy, even in the midst of her horror and grief about what Stevie had done and how he had paid for it.
Jazz and Terence were walking along a tree-lined street now, the houses not as opulent as in the mayor's district but still large and imposing. At the wail of a siren, they slipped into an alley to await the passage of a speeding police car.
"Did you see it?" he asked, as they set out walking again.
"Yes," Jazz said. Her voice sounded empty and flat. "Shot him in the head."
Jazz frowned, thinking for a moment that perhaps Terence had lost it. But she could see the knowledge of what had happened in his face. He knew. He was not stupid.
"The battery?"
"When you saw the mayor, before Stevie killed him, did you see the battery?" They'd stopped on the street and Terence held both of her shoulders, ready to shake. If they'd wanted to attract more attention to themselves, she supposed they could have stripped and started screwing on the pavement.
"Stevie's dead," Jazz whispered. "He fell. I watched him fall, and —"
"Fuck it!" Terence shouted. He looked around then, shook his head, and ran a hand over his ruffled hair, as if flat-tening it down would smooth over the fuckup this had be-come. "Come on."
As they started walking again, Jazz said, "Did you hear me? Stevie's dead."
"His fault," he said.
"What?"
"And Harry's. Harry's more than his, I suppose. That old bastard steered him."
They turned right into a narrow lane that led to the rear of the houses, passed several parked cars —Audis, BMWs, sporty soft-tops—then Terence vaulted a fence and held out his hands for Jazz to follow.
She hesitated, looking around. The presence of the BMWs troubled her. In her mind she could still see Mort's smile and that casual wave.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"Tube," he said. "I have a flat in Colliers Wood; we can hole up there for a while." He seemed distracted, never quite meeting her eyes. He was fuming, and she sensed him ready to boil over.
"I don't know you," she said. Terence looked at her, then away again, straining over the fence.
"Come on!" he said. "I won't wait all day."
Tube, Jazz thought. Safest place for me right now. She was momentarily surprised at how she had come to view the Underground as safe, but there were things down there she was starting to understand more and more, and things up here she knew less and less. Her world seemed to be chang-ing with every breath. She could fight those changes or follow.
"I believe you," she said. "I just don't know you any-more." She grasped his hands and he pulled her over the fence.
As they walked, her legs hurt more and more. She had cut herself on the top of the security wall and gashed her shin on a broken roof tile but barely been aware of the in-juries until now. In spots, her trousers had turned dark with blood, but her injuries were not serious; nothing a few ban-dages and some antibiotic cream wouldn't cure. They hurt when she walked, but she welcomed the pain, because Stevie could not feel pain anymore, nor could Cadge or her mother. She was hurting because she was still alive, and even though she had just seen two people die, she felt a moment of utter joy, a shocking euphoria. A bee buzzed them, weeds bent beneath their feet and sprang up again, and when they reached a busy main street she looked up at clouds, colorful window boxes, and the way life filled this place.
A police car cruised by, and Terence turned her to face a bookshop window. She saw his reflection, and even there his eyes seemed dark.
"There was no battery," Jazz said.
"There was nothing in the mayor's room but the mayor."
"That means nothing. Damn it. So close!" She knew he wanted to shout, but he whispered instead.
She looked along the street and saw the familiar Tube symbol above the pavement. Almost there, she thought. They walked on. Jazz thought about linking arms to give them the look of a couple, but Terence was frowning at the ground as he walked now, arms swinging by his side and lips pursed in concentration. When they reached the Tube station, he turned right and paused at the ticket machine, buying two Travelcards for them. He handed one to Jazz, passed through the turnstile, and started down the stairs. Jazz fol-lowed. He seemed to be moving without giving thought to where he was going, and right now that suited her well. She'd happily get lost down here forever.
She wondered whether Harry knew what had happened. Probably not, but he had his ways and means.
They waited on a crowded platform, Terence still star-ing down at his feet but no longer frowning.
His face now seemed blank.
When the train arrived, he got on without looking to see whether Jazz followed. She almost did not.
But as the doors started to slide shut she jumped on, eager to stay close to Terence simply because she still felt vulnerable. They'd be searching for her, now more than ever before. The way Mort had smiled at her —he'd seemed so confident he had her—worried her deeply. Had he really known they would break into the mayor's? Had he known they were searching for the battery there? And what else did he know?
Terence might be ignoring her, but the last thing she wanted was to be alone.
He had sat down, and he swayed in time with the train's motion. Jazz hung on to a strap, and when they stopped at the next station and there was a spare seat, she sat down beside him. He glanced at her, then stared, and he smiled. It did not look good on his face. It was the smile of someone with nothing to live for.
She leaned in close. "There was no battery," she said. "Just him in that room and —"
"There was no battery ever," Terence said. "Not in that house. Taken a while to figure that out.
That's not like me."
Jazz sat back and looked at the man across from her. He was about Harry's age, smart, and he stared at her feet as the train shook and shimmied its way through the tunnels. No battery ever, she thought, and she remembered Stevie aim-ing through the door at the mayor as the man tried magic. She'd thought he was laughing for a moment, but Stevie had rarely had any laughter in him. So dour for a boy his age. So serious.
"Harry," she said. "He set it all up."
Terence laughed, a little too loud for her liking. He drew a few stares. "Harry!" he said. "Yeah, Harry." He leaned in close. "I hate being used," he said, quieter and in his real voice. She'd always thought that beneath the out-ward veneer he could be dangerous, and those words were as threatening as any Jazz had ever heard.
"He never meant for Stevie to die, though," she said.
Terence shrugged. "Bad luck, that's all."
"You don't care?" She turned to face him, smelling his breath and looking straight into his eyes.
Terence raised an eyebrow. "Really? No. In the scheme of things —"
"Yes," he said. "What I'm doing is serious, Jazz. I'm not playing games here. Not messing around like your Harry and his precious United fucking Kingdom." He kept his voice low, but he was more solemn than she had ever seen him. No flirty smiles now, no calm assurance. This was Terence at his most basic.
She didn't like it one bit.
"People are dead," she said.
He shrugged again. "Everyone dies."
The train began to slow. Jazz didn't even know which station it was, but she knew she would be getting off. And if Terence tried to stop her, she'd scream for help, and every-one on the carriage would be on him.
"If that's the case, why still seek revenge for your dead father?" She stood and held on to a strap, swaying left and right as the train ground to a halt. For a second she thought he was going to call her back.
But he was too proud for that, too angry.
As the train pulled away, Terence smiled at her, and Jazz knew that she would see him again.
****
She caught the next train, got off three stops along, and caught another, staggering her journey in an effort to lose any potential pursuers. Mort's smile still lingered in her mind. And the sight of Stevie falling.
She felt alone and lost, shielded somewhat by the weight of the ground around her but assaulted by the stares of a thousand strangers. Her cut legs were hurting like a bastard now that the shock was wearing off, and more than once she thought about her journey through that oak tree to the wall. How she had made it, she had no clue. Something must have guided her feet, steered her hands, breathed luck into every step she took down through the tree and over the wall.
Every time she closed her eyes for more than a blink, she heard Stevie's head hitting the stone patio.
She had trouble acknowledging what had happened, though in reality it was startlingly, brutally simple:
Harry had used them all to get his revenge upon the mayor for Cadge's death. Terence's suggestion that the battery could have been at the mayor's residence had seeded a plan in Harry's mind, and his offer to help Terence steal it was the perfect cover. He'd done his walk-by, and whether or not he truly had the power to sense magic, he'd likely felt nothing. Getting in had all been about Stevie and his gun. They couldn't have done it without Terence's gadgets to disable the alarms, and Harry had known that Terence would not have gone in without Jazz.
She'd almost died. If Stevie hadn't grabbed her as she rolled down that roof, it would have been her head making that awful splitting sound as it struck the mayor's patio. It would have been her body resting in some shallow grave, or being eaten by pigs, or however else the BMW men would get rid of Stevie's remains. She would have been dead if it weren't for Stevie, and Harry was obviously prepared to have that on his conscience.
She had nowhere else to go. She had to stay down here, away from the glare of the sun and the searching men dressed in suits and ties. Away from Mort's knowing smile.
And besides, something was drawing her down. It was more than the sense of safety afforded her when she was down in the Tube stations, more than the feeling of coming home, which she had tried to deny for a long time but which resounded through her every cell. This was something as in-explicable as magnetism.
When she came to a part of the Underground she rec-ognized, she waited until the platform was all but deserted, then entered the tunnel. She walked quickly along to where she knew there would be an opening, silently counting down to when the next train would come through. Blown tiles crumbled beneath her feet like dried shed skin. Water dripped from a broken main in the ground above. It was warm as blood.
Rats squealed, and she wondered if they could smell her blood.
She shook her head and cursed, trying to drive down such morbid thoughts. She heard a sound in the distance like a hundred people moaning in unison, and at first she froze, expecting an Hour of Screams. She did not fear it. Old death was nothing to be afraid of. But it was a train, and she quickened her step until she found the opening.