The little girl sighed and then stepped away. For some reason, the act of obedience made everything worse. If Alice had fought to leave the house, Maya would have twisted the child’s arms back and forced her onto the floor. But Alice obeyed, just like Maya had obeyed Thorn all those years ago. And the memories pushed into Maya’s thoughts, almost overpowering her-the brutal slaps and shouting, the betrayal in the underground when her father had set her up to fight three grown men. Perhaps the Harlequins defended the Travelers, but they also defended their own arrogant pride.

Ignoring the others, she faced Linden. “Alice isn’t staying here. She’s going with me.”

“That’s not possible, Maya. I’ve already made the decision.”

Linden’s right hand touched his sword case and then dropped to his side. Maya was the only other person in the room who understood that gesture. Harlequins never made empty threats. If they ended up fighting, he would try to kill her.

“Do you think you can intimidate me?” Maya said. “I’m Thorn’s daughter. Damned by the flesh. Saved by the blood.”

“What the bloody hell is going on?” Mr. Stillwell asked.

“Be quiet,” Linden said.

“I will not be quiet! You just made an agreement for a thousand quid a month. There might not be a written contract, but I know my rights as an Englishman!”

Without warning, Linden crossed the room, grabbed Stillwell’s throat with one hand, and began to squeeze. Mrs. Stillwell didn’t rush to help her husband. Her mouth opened and shut as if she were swallowing air.

“Now, ducks,” she murmured. “Ducks…Ducks…”

“On certain occasions, I let a taint like you speak to me,” Linden said. “That permission has been withdrawn. Do you understand? Show me you understand!”

Stillwell’s face was bright red. He managed to nod slightly, his eyes jerking back and forth. Linden let go and the old man collapsed onto the floor.

“You know our obligation,” Linden said to Maya. “There’s no way you can fulfill that promise and keep this child.”

“Alice saved me when I was in New York. I was in a dangerous place and she risked her life to grab a pair of night-vision goggles. I have an obligation to her as well.”

Linden’s face was frozen, and his entire body was tense. His fingers touched the sword case a second time. Directly behind the Harlequin, a silent television showed images of happy children eating breakfast cereal.

“I’ll watch Alice,” Vicki said. “I promise. I’ll do everything…”

Linden pulled a wallet out of his coat pocket, took out some fifty-pound notes, and tossed them onto the floor like pieces of trash.

“You have no idea what pain is-real pain,” he told the Stillwells. “Mention this to anyone and you’ll find out.”

“Yes, sir,” Mrs. Stillwell babbled. “We understand, sir.”

Linden marched from the room. The Stillwells were on their hands and knees, scrambling for the money, when the rest of the group walked out.

Clutching a straight razor, Jugger scowled and slashed the air near Gabriel’s head. “The Ripper has returned to London and he’s hungry for blood!”

Sebastian was sitting in a lawn chair next to the portable electric heater. He looked up from his paperback copy of Dante’s Inferno and frowned. “Stop playing the fool, Jugger. Just finish the job.”

“I’m finishing. In fact, this is one of my better efforts.”

Jugger squirted some shaving cream on the tips of his fingers, dabbed it on the skin near Gabriel’s ears, and then used the razor to cut off the American’s sideburns. When he was done, he wiped off the residue with his shirtsleeve and grinned. “There you go, mate. You’re a new man.”

Gabriel got up from the stool and walked over to the cast-off mirror hanging on the wall near the door. The cracked glass cut a jagged line through his body, but he could see that Jugger had given him a very short military haircut. His new appearance wasn’t on the level of Maya’s special contact lenses and finger shields, but it was better than nothing.

“Isn’t Roland supposed to be back by now?” Gabriel asked.

Jugger checked the time on his mobile phone. “It’s his turn for dinner tonight, so he’s buying food. You helping him cook?”

“I don’t think so. Not after I burned the spaghetti sauce last night. I asked him to check something out for me. That’s all.”

“He’ll handle it, mate. Roland’s good at simple tasks.”

“Unbelievable! Dante just fainted again.” Disgusted, Sebastian threw the book onto the floor. “Virgil should have guided a Free Runner through hell.”

Gabriel left what used to be a front parlor and climbed up the narrow wooden staircase to his room. Frost decorated the upper walls and he could see his breath. For the last ten days, he had been living with Jugger, Sebastian, and Roland in a squat called the Vine House on the south bank of the Thames. The ramshackle three-story building had once been a farmhouse in the middle of the vineyards and vegetable gardens that supplied London.

Gabriel had learned one thing about eighteenth-century Englishmen-they were smaller than the current inhabitants of London. When he reached the top floor, he ducked his head down to pass through the doorway and enter the garret. It was a tiny, bare room with a low ceiling and plaster walls. The floorboards creaked when he crossed the room and peered out through the bull’s-eye window.

Gabriel’s bed was a mattress placed on four plywood pallets taken from a loading dock. His few clothes were dumped into a cardboard box. The only decoration in the room was a framed photo of a young woman from New Zealand named “Our Trudy.” Wearing a tool belt and holding a sledgehammer, she faced the camera with a cocky smile. A generation ago, Trudy and a small army of squatters had taken over the abandoned houses around Bonnington Square. That time had passed and now the Lambeth Council licensed most of the buildings. But Trudy still smiled in the photograph and the Vine House remained-illegal, collapsing, and free.

WHEN JUGGER AND his crew caught up with Gabriel after the race across Smithfield Market, they had immediately offered him food, friendship-and a new name.

“How did you do that?” Jugger asked as they walked south toward the river.

“I took a chance coming down the drainpipe.”

“You ever done it before?” Jugger asked. “A move like that takes confidence.”

Gabriel mentioned the HALO parachute jumps he had taken back in California. The high-altitude, low-opening jumps forced you to leap out of a plane and free-fall for over a minute without opening your chute.

Jugger nodded as if this experience explained everything. “Listen up,” he told the others. “We got a new member of our crew. Halo, welcome to the Free Runners.”

Gabriel woke up the next morning in Vine House and immediately returned to Tyburn Convent. This was the only way he knew to find his father; he needed to climb down the metal stairs to the crypt and figure out what sign his father had left among the bones and tarnished crosses.

For three hours, he sat on a bench across the street from the convent and watched who opened the door for the convent’s few visitors. That morning the visitors were greeted either by Sister Ann, the elderly nun who had refused to answer his questions, or Sister Bridget, the younger nun who had looked frightened when he mentioned his father. Gabriel returned to the convent two more times, but the same two women were minding the door. His only option was to wait until Sister Bridget was replaced by someone who didn’t recognize him.

When Gabriel wasn’t watching the convent, he spent his afternoons aimlessly searching for his father in the suburbs of outer London. There were thousands of surveillance cameras in the city, but he minimized his risk by avoiding public transportation and the busy streets north of the river.