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trying to hear and be heard above the uncanny shriek of the gale.
    “Follow me!” he shouted. “Stay close! You don’t want to get lost.”
    He started running to get out of the rain and felt the ground give beneath him in a fluid, shifty way—like jogging on the floor of a bouncy castle. In the same instant, his vision blurred and he felt himself falling: no great distance, as it turned out, merely the space between a stair tread and the floor.
    Dashing water from his eyes with the heels of his hands, he shouted. “Over here!”
    Receiving no reply, he turned to the alley behind him. Wilhelmina was nowhere to be seen.

CHAPTER 4

In Which Unwanted Attention Is Roused
    T he storm howled away into the heavens, leaving Kit wet, nauseated, and with a head that felt two sizes too big. He wiped drool from his chin with a sodden sleeve and waited, listening to the sound of the rapidly diminishing storm.
    “Mina!” he called after a moment.
    No answer.
    He called her name again and started walking back the way he had come, searching for a doorway, an alcove, any cubbyhole however small where she might have sought shelter. He found nothing but blank brick walls on either side and, upon reaching the end of the alley, was forced to conclude that she was not there.
    Of all the things that might have happened, this was one he had not anticipated: that he would make the jump to the other place, as he now thought of it, and she would remain in the real world. The thought of her wending her soggy way home, cursing his name aloud to the four winds, made him frustrated and angry—almost as angry as he had been before, when she didn’t believe him. She believed him now, perhaps. Having seen him vanish before her eyes, what else could she think but that he had been telling the truth all along?
    On the other hand, he had abandoned her in a filthy alley in King’s Cross. That could cancel out whatever he might have gained in the truth-telling stakes. Who knew? With Wilhelmina, one could never tell.
    But it came to him that the remedy was perfectly obvious: he would go back.
    Taking a deep breath, he braced himself and gathered his feet under him for another run. Just as he was about to launch himself into the deep-shadowed darkness of the alley, he heard someone call his name. Turning once more toward the alley entrance, he saw the now familiar figure of the old man who claimed to be his great-grandfather.
    “Hello, Kit,” called Cosimo, hastening to meet him. He was dressed, as before, in a long dark coat and a broad-brimmed felt hat pulled low on his head. “I knew you’d come back,” he said as he came to stand before his great-grandson. “Am I to take it that you’ve changed your mind? Settled your affairs, made your farewells, and now you’re ready to lend a willing hand to a most vital enterprise that requires your particular good self ?”
    “Okay, okay,” conceded the younger man. “Whatever.”
    “Stop evading the question. Are you ready to join me?”
    “Yeah, well there’s a little problem with that. This girl I know—my girlfriend, Mina—is waiting for me back home. In Stane Way, actually. We were supposed to come here together and—”
    “What?”
    “I was just going to show her, but she didn’t make the jump.”
    “Make the jump?” echoed Cosimo, his brows lowering in a scowl. “What did you do, Kit?”
    “Nothing!” protested Kit. “I was just going to show her. She didn’t believe me, so I wanted to show her the ley line, you know. Well, the same thing happened as last time, and I ended up here, but she got left on the other side.”
    “Stupid boy!” roared Cosimo. “How could you do something so utterly asinine?”
    “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” replied Kit lamely. “Anyway, there’s no reason to assume the worst. Nothing happened.”
    “You’d better hope so.”
    “She’ll take the tube home. Big deal. She’ll be royally annoyed at me, but she’ll be