Neverwhere

"Maybe," Richard said, persisting, "we're thinking of different things. The angels I have in mind are all wings, haloes, trumpets, peace-on-earth-goodwill-unto-men."

"That's right," said Door. "You got it. Angels." They went through the door. Richard shut his eyes, involuntarily, at the sudden flood of light: it stabbed into his head like a migraine. As his eyes became used to the light, Richard found, to his surprise, that he knew where he was: they were in the long pedestrian tu

"Who are we looking for again, then?" he asked, more or less i

They were passing a Tube map. The marquis tapped Angel Station with one long dark finger: Islington.

Richard had passed through Angel Station hundreds of times. It was in trendy Islington, a district filled with antique shops and places to eat. He knew very little about angels, but he was almost certain that Islington's tube stop was named after a pub, or a landmark. He changed the subject. "You know, when I tried to get on a Tube train a couple of days ago, it wouldn't let me."

"You just have to let them know who's boss, that's all," said Hunter, softly, from behind him.

Door chewed her lower lip. "This train we're looking for will let us on," she said. "If we can find it." Her words were almost drowned out by music coming from somewhere nearby. They went down a handful of steps and turned a corner.

The saxophone player had his coat in front of him, on the floor of the tu

The saxophone player was extremely tall; he had shoulder-length dark hair and a long, forked dark beard, which framed deep-set eyes and a serious nose. He wore a ragged T-shirt and oil-stained blue jeans. As the travelers reached him, he stopped playing, shook the spit from the saxophone mouthpiece, replaced it, and sounded the first notes the old Julie London song, "Cry Me A River."

Now, you say you're sorry . . .

Richard realized, with surprise, that the man could see them—and also that he was doing his best to pretend that he couldn't. The marquis stopped in front of him. The wail of the saxophone trailed off in a nervous squeak. The marquis flashed a cold grin. "It's Lear, isn't it?" he asked.

The man nodded, warily. His fingers stroked the keys of his saxophone. "We're looking for Earl's Court," continued the marquis. "Would you happen to have such a thing as a train schedule about your person?"

Richard was begi

The marquis thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his coat. Then he smiled, like a cat who had just been entrusted with the keys to a home for wayward but plump canaries. "They say," he said, idly, as if he were simply passing the time, "that Merlin's master Blaise once wrote a reel so beguiling that it would charm the coins from the pockets of anyone who heard it."

Lear's eyes narrowed. "That'd be worth more than just a train schedule," he said. "If you actually had it."

The marquis did a perfectly good impression of someone realizing, my, it would, wouldn't it? "Well, then," he said, magnanimously, "I suppose you would have to owe me, wouldn't you?"

Lear nodded, reluctantly. He fumbled in his back pocket, pulled out a much-folded scrap of paper, and held it up. The marquis reached for it. Lear moved his hand away. "Let me hear the reel first, you old trickster," he said. "And it had better work."

The marquis raised an eyebrow. He darted a hand into, one of the inside pockets of his coat; when he pulled it out again it was holding a pe

A handful of coins chinked onto Lear's coat, thrown by passers-by, who walked on with a smile on their faces and a spring in their step. The marquis lowered his pe

"Yes. You do." The marquis took the paper—the train schedule—from Lear, and sca

And the four of them walked away, down the long corridor, surrounded by posters advertising films and underwear, and the occasional official-looking notices warning musicians playing for coins to move away from the station, listening to the sob of the saxophone, and to the sound of money landing on a coat.

The marquis led them to a Central Line platform. Richard walked over to the edge of the platform and looked down. He wondered, as he always did, which one the live rail was; and decided, as he always did, that it was the one farthest from the platform, with the large whitish porcelain insulators, between it and the ground; and then he found himself smiling, involuntarily, at a tiny dark gray mouse who was bravely prowling the tracks, three feet below him, in a mousy, quest for abandoned sandwiches and dropped potato chips.

A voice came over the loudspeaker, that formal, disembodied male voice that warned "Mind the Gap." It was intended to keep unwary passengers from stepping into the space between the train and the platform. Richard, like most Londoners, barely heard it anymore—it was like aural wallpaper. But suddenly, Hunter's hand was on his arm. "Mind the Gap," she said urgently, to Richard. "Stand back over there. By the wall."

"What?" said Richard.

"I said," said Hunter, "mind the—"

And then it erupted over the side of the platform. It was diaphanous, dreamlike, a ghost-thing, the color of black smoke, and it welled up like silk under water, and, moving astonishingly fast while still seeming to drift almost in slow motion, it wrapped itself tightly around Richard's ankle. It stung, even through the fabric of his Levi's. The thing pulled him toward the edge of the platform, and he staggered.

He realized, as if from a distance, that Hunter had pulled out her staff and was smacking the tentacle of smoke with it, hard, repeatedly.

There was a faraway screaming noise, thin and mindless, like an idiot child deprived of its toy. The smoke-tentacle let go of Richard's ankle and slid back over the edge of the platform, and it was gone. Hunter took Richard by the scruff of the neck and pulled him toward the back wall, where Richard slumped against it. He was trembling, and the world seemed suddenly utterly unreal. The color had been sucked from his jeans wherever the thing had touched him, making them look as if they'd been ineptly bleached. He pulled up the trouser leg: tiny purple welts were coming up on the skin of his ankle and calf. "What . . . " he tried to say, but nothing came out. He swallowed, and tried again. "What was that?"