What the jouncing, jarring ride was doing to Ianira Cassondra, folded up like last week's laundry and nestled inside an enormous steamer trunk, Jenna didn't even want to consider. They'd cushioned her with blankets and fitted her with a mask for the oxygen canisters supplied in every hotel room in Shangri-La, in case of a station fire. Every hotel room stocked them, since TT-86 stood high in the Himalayas' rarified air. Ianira had clung briefly to Marcus, both their faces white with terror, had kissed her little girls and whispered to them in Greek, then she'd climbed into the trunk, folded herself down into the makeshift nest, and slipped on the oxygen mask.

Noah had been the one to close and latch the lid.

Jenna couldn't bring herself to do it, to lock her in, like that.

She'd wanted to call in a doctor, to look at the nasty bruise and swelling along Ianira's brow where the Prophetess had struck her head on the concrete floor. But risking even a doctor's visit, where questions would be asked, meant risking Ianira's life, as well as risking her whole family. And Noah and Jenna's lives, too... She clenched down her eyelids. Please, Goddess, there's been enough killing, let it stop... .

Jenna refused to let herself recall too acutely those ghastly seconds on the platform high above the Commons floor, when Ianira's trunk had teetered and nearly fallen straight off the edge. Jenna's insides still shook, just remembering. She'd have blamed the baggage handler for being a member of the death squad on their trail if the man hadn't obviously been a long-time station resident. And the guy had gone back to the station, too, in a state of churlish rage, which he wouldn't have done, if he'd been sent to murder Jenna and Ianira. No, it'd just been one of those nightmarish, freakish near-accidents that probably happened every time a gate opened and too many people with too much luggage tried to cram themselves through a hole of finite dimensions and duration.

Don't think about it, Jenna, she didn't fall, so don't think about it. There's about a million other things to worry about, instead. Like, where to find refuge in this sprawling, sooty, foul-smelling city on the Thames. She was supposed to stay at the Piccadilly Hotel tonight, in her persona as Mr. Benny Catlin, up-time student doing post-doctoral work in sociology. "Benny" was supposed to be filming his graduate work, as part of the plan she and Carl had come up with, a lifetime ago, when the worst terror she'd had to face was having her infamous father find out she planned to go time touring.

Carl should've been the one playing "Benny Catlin," not Jenna. If Noah'd been able to go with her, the detective would've played the role of the non-existent Mr. Catlin. But they had to split up, so Jenna had exchanged identification with Noah. That way, the female "tourist" using the persona she and Carl had bought from that underworld identity seller in New York would cash in her Britannia Gate ticket, then buy one for Denver, instead, leading the Ansar Majlis on a merry chase down the wrong gate from the one Jenna and Ianira had really gone through. With any luck, Jenna and the Prophetess would reach the Picadilly Hotel without incident.

But they wouldn't be staying in the Piccadilly Hotel for long, not with the probability that they'd been followed through the Britannia Gate by someone topping out somewhere around a hundred ten percent. Jenna knew she'd have to come up with some other place to stay, to keep them both safe. Maybe she should check into the Piccadilly Hotel as scheduled, then simply leave in the middle of the night? Haul their luggage down the back stairs to the hotel livery stable and take off with a wagon. Maybe vanish into the East End somewhere for a while. It was the least likely place any searchers would think to look for them, not with Jack the Ripper stalking those dismal streets.

Jenna finally came up out of her dark and miserable thoughts to realize that the carriage driver—a long-term Time Tours employee—was talking steadily to someone who hadn't been listening. The man was pattering on about the city having taken out a whole triangular-shaped city block three years previously. "Demolished the entire length of Glasshouse Street, to cut Shaftesbury Avenue from Bloomsbury to Piccadilly Circus. Piccadilly hasn't been a true circus since, y'see, left it mighty ugly, most folks are saying, but that new Shaftesbury Avenue, now, it's right convenient, so it is..."

Not that Jenna cared a damn what streets were brand new, but she tried to pay more attention, because she was going to have to get used to living here, maybe for a long time. Longer than she wanted to think about, anyway. The carriage with its heavy load of luggage passed through the apparently blighted Piccadilly Circus, which looked perfectly fine to Jenna, then jolted at last to a halt in front of the Piccadilly Hotel, with its ornate wrought-iron dome rising like the bare ribs of Cinderella's pumpkin coach. The whole open-work affair was topped by a rampant team of horses drawing a chariot. Wet streets stood puddled with the recent rain. As Jenna climbed cautiously down, not wanting to fall and break a bone, for God's sake, thunder rumbled overhead, an ominous warning of more rain squalls to come.

The driver started hauling trunks and cases off the luggage shelf at the back of the carriage while Jenna trudged into the hotel's typically fussy Victorian lobby. The room was dark with heavy, ornately carved wood and busy, dark-hued wallpaper, crowded with breakables and ornate ornamentation in wrought iron. Jenna went through the motions of signing the guest register, acquiring her key, and climbing the stairs to her room, all in a daze of exhaustion. She'd been running ever since Luigi's in New York, didn't even want to think about how many people had died between then and now. The driver arrived on Jenna's heels and waited with a heavy load of luggage while Jenna unlocked her stuffy, overly-warm room. A coal fire blazed in a hearth along one wall. The driver, puffing from his exertions, was followed in by a bellman who'd assisted the driver in lugging up the immense trunk where Ianira Cassondra lay safely hidden. At least, Jenna hoped she was safe inside that horrible cocoon of leather and brass fittings. When the bellman nearly dropped one end, Jenna's ragged temper exploded again.

"Careful with that!" It came out far more sharply than she'd meant it to, sharp and raggedly frightened. So she gulped and tried to explain her entirely-too-forceful concern. "It has valuable equipment inside. Photographic equipment."

"Beggin' your pardon, sir," the uniformed bellman huffed, gingerly setting down his end, "no wonder it's so heavy, cameras are big things, and all those glass plates and suchlike."

"Yes, well, I don't want anything in that trunk damaged."

The Time Tours driver gave Jenna a sour look. Clearly he'd been on the receiving end of too many tourists' cutting tongues. Driver and bellman vanished downstairs to fetch up the rest of the baggage, making short work of it. Jenna tipped the hotel employee, who left with a polite bow, closing the door after himself. The driver showed her how the gas lights worked, lighting them, then turning one of them out again, the proper way. "If you just blow it out, gas'll still come flooding out of the open valve. They haven't started putting in the smelly stuff yet, so you'd never even notice it. Just asphyxiate yourself in your sleep, if you didn't accidentally strike a spark and blow yourself out of this room."

Jenna was too tired for lectures on how the whole Victorian world operated, but she made a valiant effort to pay attention. The Time Tours driver was explaining how to summon a servant and how to find "Benny Catlin's" rented flat in Cheapside, across the Holborn Viaduct—whatever that was. Jenna didn't know enough about London and hadn't been given a chance to finish her library research for the trip she and Carl had planned to make. "We'll send an express wagon round in the morning, Mr. Catlin, help you shift to your permanent lodgings. Couldn't have you arriving at the flat this late in the evening, of course, the landlady would have a cultured fit of apoplexy, having us clatter about and disturb her seances or whatever she'll have there tonight, it's always something new..."