"Silly girl," she whispered, and swept across the street.
The trees of Green Park cast long fingers of shade across the lawns. She spied an empty bench and recalled sit-ting with Stevie yesterday, pretending to be more than just his mate. Pretending to be a normal seventeen-year-old girl who fancied an entirely ordinary boy. Much as the upside world had its terrors for her, the memory of those hours made her strangely sad.
Without another glance at the trees, she grabbed the rail-ing and hurried down the stairs into Green Park Tube station. The bag over her shoulder felt heavier with every step and she shifted to accommodate it. Jazz moved past a cluster of tourists trying to figure out the map of the Underground and reached into her pocket for her Travelcard. Her flight from Willow Square to Green Park had taken less than four min-utes; her heart still raced. She cast a quick look around but saw no familiar faces —neither friend nor foe. Then she slipped through the turnstile and hurried down a tiled corri-dor toward the platform.
From the tunnels came the rumble of an approaching train and the squeal as it began to brake. Jazz held the bag against her, still feeling the weight of that strange blade, and picked up her pace. The train arrived as she joined the crowd on the platform. Out of habit and the instinct Harry had worked to instill in her, she plunged into the thickest part of the crowd as though heading for a door in the center, then cut across toward the next car. She stepped onto the train and immediately began walking. Jazz unzipped the bag, stuffed the pink hat into it, then zipped it closed again, moving as unobtrusively as possible.
People jostled one another, a few taking the open seats but most standing, holding on wherever they could. Jazz stood beside the doors between cars and put her back to the wall. She kept her head forward so her hair veiled her face. The train pulled away and she exhaled, willing herself to calm down.
Like some amusement-park ride, the cars rattled over the tracks, twisted through the Underground, and soon be-gan to slow for the next stop. Just before they pulled into the illuminated area of the station, she glanced out the window and saw the flicker of motion, the luminescent outline of one of the ghosts of old London. Jazz blinked, startled to see a specter beyond the limits of the abandoned parts of the Underground. But then she saw the top hat and the way the magician shot his cuffs just before a trick. She bent to peer out the window, and just before she lost sight of him, he pro-duced a phantom dove from thin air. It flapped white silk wings and flew up into the darkness of the tunnel.
The train hissed as it slowed, crawling into the station.
"Piccadilly Circus," a recorded voice said. "Next stop, Leicester Square."
The doors slid open.
"Mind the gap," said the voice.
People flooded off the train. Piccadilly was a major stop. Jazz took an empty seat in the corner and kept her head down. Someone settled into the next seat, bumping her, and another crowd began to fill the car.
The man beside her set down his shoulder bag.
"You're very good, you know," he said. "Stealthy and quick, with a deft touch. I'd no idea anyone else was in the house."
Jazz froze. The doors closed and the train began to pull out of the station. Leicester Square seemed a thousand miles away. The other people in the car loomed up around her. To them, she might as well have been invisible. She'd done that much correctly. No one had noticed her —or the well-dressed man seated beside her. But with the people packed in, she had nowhere to run.
"On the street, though, you could use some work," he went on. "You were watching for pursuit by foot, never con-sidering an alternative. The taxi that nearly struck your little friend and me? I hired it. Once you came out of the alley and crossed to that arcade, it was obvious you were headed for Green Park. Had you hired a taxi of your own, it would have made things difficult. And I suppose if I'd been unfamiliar with this part of the city, you might have lost me when you first entered the alley. That much was intuition on my part, I confess. Where else could you have gone so quickly? A shop or restaurant wouldn't guarantee you a rear exit unless you'd planned that in advance, and your friends' clumsiness made clear that you had not considered your retreat care-fully enough. So, the alley.
"From there, it was easier than you'd imagine to avoid detection while following you down into the Tube station. And so, here we are."
Jazz gripped the strap of her bag so tightly that she felt her fingernails cutting crescents into the flesh of her palm.* She forced herself to lift her head and look at the man. Only inches separated his face from hers. She inhaled slowly, steadying her nerves, and when she did she breathed in the warmth of his own exhaled breath. The intimacy of the mo-ment startled her.
She closed her eyes and cleared her head. When she opened them, she thought she would find anger on his face. She'd thought his words were mockery. But he stud-ied her with open fascination, his eyes an intense icy blue that she could not turn away from. He carried himself like an older man, but could not have been more than thirty-five. The game of cat and mouse that had begun back in that house in Willow Square had just come to a conclusion. For a moment, she nearly apologized for stealing the trea-sure he had gone there seeking. To her it was nothing more than an artifact, something to sell, or for Harry Fowler to put on a shelf or in a box with his collection of trinkets and oddities the others had brought home for him over the years. Jazz had stolen it on a whim, but it had been this man's only goal.
But she would not apologize. She would simply deny it, play the encounter as coyly as possible, and look for an op-portunity to flee. With Stevie, she'd rehearsed a number of things a young woman might scream to make onlookers think she was being accosted.
But she said none of those things.
"You're not angry anymore," Jazz said. "Why?"
"The day has taken a curious and unexpected turn," said the thief, "but an interesting one."
The train began to slow. Jazz glanced at the doors, tried to determine if she would be able to push through the crowd and get out before him, and if there was anything she could do to slow him down. No way would she lead him back to Harry and the others, not when they'd just had to relocate. Well dressed he might be, but she had a feeling this man would follow her —and the contents of her bag—anywhere.
So how could she escape him?
The answer troubled her. She would have to hurt him, because otherwise there was every chance that he would hurt her. No way in hell was this bloke going to let her walk away with what she'd stolen.
When she glanced at him again, he must have seen dark thoughts in her eyes.
"Ah, that's a shame, then. I'd hoped to avoid ugliness."
"How?"
The speakers on the train crackled. "Leicester Square," said the electronic voice. "Next stop, Covent Garden."
The thief gave her a charming, beguiling smile. "Con-tinue on with me one stop. There's a lovely cafe that re-minds me a great deal of Paris. Let me buy you a coffee and we'll have a chat. We experienced a remarkable coincidence today, and I can't imagine you aren't at least a tiny bit curi-ous about how we happened to come together. For my part, I'm certainly curious about you."
The doors hissed open.
Jazz tensed, ready to plunge through the people jammed onto the train to get off. The thief only watched her, making no move to keep her there.
The moment went on for several beats and then the doors closed again.
They sat side by side in silence. When the train pulled* into Covent Garden station the thief rose, threaded through commuters, and stepped off onto the platform. He started walking away, then paused and looked back.
Jazz got off the train and followed.