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"Your hair looks lovely," he said, wiping his mouth with a napkin "Bit of makeup, that expensive cut, you could be a television presenter or so, up in the world Is that it, then? You think you can still return to the illusion they paint as normality? Steady pay, a husband, and a couple of kids? Probably want a dog too"

She lost her appetite, let the fork fall to the plate, and pushed back fro at hihed "And you think Terence can give you those? Poor girl Bloke takes you to a posh salon, and in spite of everything you've learned about the way the world really works, you still think you can be a princess, live hap-pily ever after"

Jazz stared at him The words cut her, and a part of her wanted to scream at him, tell hie had been undone

"How could you know that? Were you following us?"

"I didn't have to follow you, pet When you described the thief you 's house, there was only one ht, which created two possibilities The cops had you, or you'd seen Terence again From the new hairstyle, the s, I surht behind bars"

He waited for a response As she stared at him, the idea of Harry Fowler as parent and herself as errant, prodigal child began to fester

"You knohat? That'll be enough of that," she said, pushing her plate away She jabbed an accusing finger toward hi You're the one with all the lies and secrets, Harry, and it's time I had an-swers You act like you're this benevolent creature, so your flock of lost lambs But you're not so innocent, are you? And itsheep"

Slowly, leaning back in his chair, Harry began to ap-plaud

"Bravo," he said, rising to his feet and striding toward a cabinet set against the far wall "Truly A little ferocity will take you far, Jazz girl Could keep you alive as well Might be you'll need it soon"

Harry opened a drawer and began to slide so about?" she demanded

He returned to the table and she sahat he held in his hands, and for a raphs The one of the Blackwood Club, whose fra the stolen piece of the apparatus, he placed on top Her fa-ther's face stared up at her froroup photo, and for the first tied so that her father was the focal point The Uncles were all there --Mort and the rest of theet those?" she asked

Harry studied thelass on the floor in the corridor upstairs, just below the door to the old service lift I've walked that way dozens of times; would've seen it if it had been there before So I had a look Careless of you, really But when I found these inside, I knee'd be talking soon There are things I wished you would never have to know But it's too late for that"

Jazz uttered a s but

"Who are you, exactly, to decide what I should and shouldn't know?"

Harry began to reply, but she waved him to silence

"No It's a rhetorical question I've had a think, and I figure you can't be working for the Blackwood Club or the mayor, 'cause they'd never have beat you like that, and you'd have served me up to them by now Maybe you think that makes you some kind of hero Well, I hate to shatter your il-lusions, but you're not You're an old , Harry And you can keep it up, for all I care But this concernsbarbed wire, and I want to knohat you kno you and Terence know each other, how you ended up photographing the Blackwood Club, what you know about the dahosts --all of it"

She leaned over the table "But the first question is this: was it all a setup,you? We're connected, Harry You, me, Terence, and the damn Blackwood Club But you didn't findstumbled into it Seemed that way, at least, but I can't believe in a coincidence like that, Harry So tell me, how did you do it?"

For the first ti, Harry's face lit up with a smile of real humor and mischief --the s, pet Not a blessed thing It's land is constructed on the fates and destinies of people Some of them were extraordi-nary, and so And withas coincidence"

Harry had been fascinated by ht of hand that Terence Whitcomb's father had enjoyed He clai his childhood, and it had scarred him, both physically and eic again And thievery The twin stories of aze was fixed at so of these events he could see into the past

"In another age, the Fowlers were fairly well-to-do My father taught university, though his fah ht until the day he died, at the age of sixty-four I was just shy of forty when I returned home for his funeral My sister, Anna, awaited me there Hadn't seen her in five years or more Afterward, ent back tothe service Oh, there was no daShe'd been dead five years by then, and the ring had been onthat ring Some of Mum's other jewelry had been taken as well My father had nothing of value for himself, save a library of antique books While he lived, nothing had s A queer desperation struck ot theht For her, and forI'd sworn to rew dark as he spoke, and his nostrils flared with self-loathing

Jazz studied hiic to find the thief"

Harry put his hands over his ic It's all storybook stuff to me You and Terence talk about it like it's like you could just reach out and touch it"

"Not so simple as that, love Oh, it's here now, all around us And some people --you and I included--can sense it at tiestures or syic has faded, the same way the stories about it have"

Jazz rolled that around in her brain for a few seconds Once it would have seehosts of old London and heard the Hour of Screams, and she knew there wasaround the city could see

"And the thief? It was Terence?"