Praise for MIND THE GAP
“A pitch-perfect blend of fantasy and realism. Golden and Lebbon craft a riveting tale of adventure that is both gritty and magical.”
—KELLEY ARMSTRONG,
New York Times bestselling author of Frostbitten
“Super-fast pacing and creepy touches [give this] adventure plenty of character.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A dark urban fantasy that posits a world of multiple Londons, some real and some ghostly, an ancient legacy of magic, and a secret war between those who seek power to control it and those who seek to free it.… Filled with action yet much more than a simple adventure, this tale of the clash between the worlds of magic and science is a standout.… Highly recommended.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“Reminiscent of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere and the classic Dickens’ Oliver Twist, this book gives the dark fantasy genre a gothic twist with Jazz’s adventure.”
—The Parkersburg News and Sentinel
“Magical realism at its finest … a light-speed read with mystery, magic, ghosts and a fascinating subterranean world. Great stuff.”
—SFRevu
“Golden and Lebbon do a wonderful job with this book, pulling you in with a strong opening and a likable protagonist in Jazz, and then maintaining the story with an array of mysteries and puzzles, and a cast of engaging characters.”
—Fantasy & Science Fiction
“Golden and Lebbon’s skills are unquestionable, and the two working together have managed to create a vibrant world just on the outside of ours.”
—Dread Central.com
“Part fantasy, part mystery, and part suspense story. The authors have done a great job balancing the three elements and braiding them together into one exciting read.”
—Blogcritics
“A contemporary mystery thriller with elements of Oliver Twist, a caper story, and a dash of the supernatural—namely ghosts, Victorian magic, and steam-punk … spectacular.”
—Fantasy Book Critic
“A modern, supernatural take on Oliver Twist… Golden and Lebbon paint an evocative portrait of London, present and past.”
—Fangoria
“Mind the Gap starts off with a bang, throwing you right into the story, and once it takes off running, it doesn’t let up.… It’s moody, highly atmospheric, and pulls no punches in involving the senses as it creates the hidden world of a forgotten, decaying, buried London.… A series worth watching.”
—SF Site
Praise for THE MAP OF MOMENTS
“Urban realism meets dark fantasy in this spine-tingling second collaboration between authors Golden and Lebbon … as they merge the repercussions of Hurricane Katrina with New Orleans’ terrifying ghostly past.… Golden and Lebbon have far outstripped their past efforts with this wonderfully creepy thriller of a ghost story.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Golden and Lebbon vividly evoke the rich, enduring character of New Orleans, as well as spinning a compelling fantasy yarn.”
—Booklist
“Draws from the aftermath of a tragic moment in recent history, telling a dark, gripping story set in a shattered but unbeaten New Orleans … Part ghost story, part thriller, it doesn’t pull any punches along the way, putting the hero through a physical, mental and spiritual ordeal even as it paints an honest, stark picture of a city just starting to recover from a near-fatal blow.… A hell of a harrowing tale [and] a great read, illuminating a time and place in American history that should not be ignored or forgotten.”
—SF Site
“The Map of Moments is set in post-Katrina New Orleans, and it’s as much a love letter to the city and its people as it is a lamentation for what has been, perhaps irrevocably, lost.… Not an easy, comforting read, but it is an alluring, engrossing one, and a wiser, truer book than something simpler could have been.”
—The Green Man Review
“Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon have crafted a love letter to New Orleans in The Map of Moments.… Fans of unconventional urban fantasy will enjoy following this map into some very interesting places indeed.”
—SFRevu
“The Map of Moments is a truly haunting look at the dark history and magic to the underside of New Orleans and the ghosts they hide.”
—The Mad Hatter
“Golden and Lebbon do a masterful job of presenting the chase and the discovery of the darkness lurking in New Orleans’s history. I ended up reading much of the book at night when the house was quiet, and I think that really lent itself to the overall experience. So if you can get somewhere quiet, with darkness all around, except for your reading lamp, The Map of Moments is a wonderfully creepy experience down streets littered with dead and dark things.”
—Blogcritics
Also by Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon
The Map of Moments
Mind the Gap
Also by Christopher Golden
The Lost Ones: Book Three of the Veil
The Borderkind: Book Two of the Veil
The Myth Hunters: Book
One of the Veil
Wildwood Road
The Boys Are Back in Town
The Ferryman
Straight on ‘Til Morning
Strangewood
The Shadow Saga
Of Saints and Shadows
Angel Souls and Devil Hearts
Of Masques and Martyrs
The Gathering Dark
With Mike Mignola
Baltimore, or, The Steadfast
Tin Soldier and the Vampire
Also by Tim Lebbon
Novels
The Island
Fallen
30 Days of Night
Dawn
The Everlasting
Dusk
Hellboy: Unnatural Selection
Mesmer
The Nature of Balance
Hush (with Gavin Williams)
Face
Until She Sleeps
Desolation
Berserk
Bar None
Novellas
A Whisper of Southern Lights
White
Naming of Parts
Changing of Faces
Exorcising Angels (with Simon Clark)
Dead Man’s Hand
Pieces of Hate
The Reach of Children
Collections
Last Exit for the Lost
Faith in the Flesh
As the Sun Goes Down
White and Other Tales of Ruin
Fears Unnamed
After the War
In memory of Bonnie Moore
Contents
Other Books by this Author
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Copyright
Therefore I tell my sorrows to the stones;
Who, though they cannot answer my distress,
Yet in some sort they are better than the tribunes,
For that they will not intercept my tale:
When I do weep, they humbly at my feet
Receive my tears and seem to weep with me.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPE
ARE,
Titus Andronicus, Act 3, Scene 1
I
GEENA HODGE stood on the bow of the water taxi as it chugged toward San Marco, the colors of the Doge’s Palace brought to life by the sun, and wondered how much longer Venice would survive before it crumbled into the sea. Though the Italian government had committed to a seven-billion-dollar project to install a complex system of flood gates to hold back storm surges and seasonal high tides, it was already over budget and behind schedule. Sometimes it seemed hopeless.
But even the most optimistic Venetians were fooling themselves. The city had been built on top of wooden pilings sunk into a salt marsh, with sediment and clay beneath that, which was little better than raising palaces on top of a sponge. Venice bore down, squeezing a little more water out of its foundations every year, and sinking just a bit farther. Between that and the rising global sea level, Venice was screwed. Maybe the new tidal gate system, MOSE, would work well enough—fouling up the Venetian lagoon’s ecosystem in the meantime—and maybe it wouldn’t. Even with the best-case scenario, they would only manage to buy themselves a century.
La Serenissima, they called it—the most serene—and Venice remained a city of serenity and beauty. She was still Queen of the Adriatic, steeped in history and scholarship and art, unique in all the world. There was nowhere like it, and the world would never see its like again. But much of the population had fled the routine flooding and the absurd tourism-driven cost of living in the city, and those who remained were like the curators of a living museum.
Geena’s own project, approved by the Italian and Venetian authorities, was evidence that some people in the city understood that ruin could be slowed but not prevented.
“As lovely as ever,” said the man beside her. “She’s a gem, Venice.” Howard Finch, a television producer from the BBC, had come to her in search of a story. And though she had one to give him—as extraordinary a story of archaeology and history as he was ever likely to encounter—she wished he would go away. Reporters were bad enough, always armed with just enough research to get the story wrong. But producers could be much worse. They didn’t even try to convince you they weren’t full of shit.
“Haven’t been here in nearly twenty years,” Finch continued. “Hard to believe some of the things I’ve heard.”
“Such as?” Geena asked, and immediately regretted it.
He puffed himself up in that way that was universal among the very pompous and very rich in every culture. Geena had been born and raised in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. She had met plenty of arrogant men in her thirty-six years, but as bad as Americans could be, the Brits had had much more time to perfect the art of pompousness. Pomposity. Whatever.
“Talked to a bloke last week who said nobody lives on the ground floor at all anymore. Got all the windows bricked up, just letting it go to ruin. Surrendering. And those walkways in the Piazza San Marco—”
“Passarelle.”
“They’re out all the time now, so people can get through when the canal water floods in.”
The water taxi’s engine shifted from a purr to a groan as it began to slow, gliding toward a dock not far from the trees of the Giardini ex Reali. They still had an excellent view of the Doge’s Palace, but behind his façade Finch seemed uninterested in anything except the sound of his own voice.
Geena smiled at him. She had pulled her hair back in a neat blond ponytail and had actually put on makeup this morning, asked pleadingly by Tonio Schiavo, the head of the archaeology department at Ca’Foscari University, to “come smart.” The smile had been part of her marching orders as well. Usually Geena did not have to be told to smile—most days she loved her life—but she wanted to be working, getting her hands dirty, not playing tour guide.
“Mr. Finch, not too long ago the low-lying areas of the city flooded maybe eight or ten times in a year. Now that number averages closer to one hundred. A third of the time, the Piazza San Marco is full of water from the canals, which includes raw sewage, among other unpleasant things. Everyone has Wellington boots in Venice, or they wrap plastic around their shoes, even to use the walkways put out for just that purpose.”
Finch nodded in fascination. “Christ, it’s like something out of one of those crap sci-fi apocalypse films, isn’t it?” he asked, without looking to her for confirmation. “But they’ve really abandoned the ground floors?”
“Sadly, yes. The bricks are wearing away on the outside. On the inside—what would you do if your first floor was flooded four months out of the year? They’re sealed off, left to the water.”
“And then what? It keeps rising, they move up another floor?”
“I’ve wondered the same thing myself,” she admitted, but didn’t dare comment further. Nothing negative, Tonio had instructed, and Geena had no wish to jeopardize her stewardship of this project.
Besides, they had other things to talk about.
Finch had come to Venice on a scouting trip to find out if the Biblioteca project might be worth some air time on the BBC, or if the whole thing would amount to as much hot air as Geraldo Rivera opening Al Capone’s vault. Geena didn’t mind the idea of a film crew coming in to do a short documentary on the Biblioteca, especially if it would mean some attention would be paid to the broader aspects of her project.
As Venice sank, history was being sucked down into the lagoon. Even the oldest buildings in the city were built on top of the foundations of more ancient structures. The sinking was nothing new. Once upon a time, Venetians had simply raised the ground floors of their buildings every so often to combat the rising water. But with every inch that the weight of Venice dragged it down, and every inch that the sea level rose, more of that ancient architecture was being lost forever.
There were frescoes on walls, secret chambers, and artifacts in long-abandoned rooms and buildings across the city that were being eroded away by salt and sewage and prolonged exposure to the water. Her team—which for a time had mainly been herself and a group of graduate students—had been rescuing what they could and documenting whatever they couldn’t in some of the oldest buildings in the city. And then one day, tearing away a crumbling brick and mortar wall in a semi-hidden alcove at the back of the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana—the National Library of St. Mark’s—Geena herself had noticed that the salt from constant flooding had worn tracks in the original wall. But the tracks weren’t consistent, and upon closer inspection, she discovered that they marked the seams around a secret door, long since sealed but now being undone by salt and time.
Behind the door, they had found a hidden staircase. Some of the graduate students had been amazed, but Geena had taken it in stride. In centuries past—perhaps in Italy more than anywhere else in the world—secrecy, betrayal, and paranoia had been the order of the day, and hidden passages and chambers had been commonplace. The trope of the secret room existed in fiction because it had so many real-life examples. But people loved that crap, and if it helped to continue to get her work funded, Geena was all for having the media make a big deal out of the city’s secret history and mysteries.
The water taxi pulled up to the dock and they waited while a crewman hauled the boat snug against the bumpers before disembarking. Normally Geena used the vaporetti—the boats that functioned as buses in this streetless city—but the university would reimburse her for the additional cost of the taxi.
They set off along a tree-lined path toward the wide cobblestoned entrance to the Piazza San Marco. Small waves from passing boats rolled up onto the stones, but the plaza was not flooded today. The Doge’s Palace loomed ahead. Over the tops of buildings she could see just the tip of one of the domes of St. Mark’s Basilica. But they did not have even that far to walk.
“Before we get there,” Finch said, “I must ask … do you really believe what you’ve found is Petrarch’s library?”
They walked alongside the Biblioteca, its wall visible through the trees. When they reached the cobblestones, Geena turned left and p
ulled Finch along in her wake. On such a perfect day the Piazza San Marco was breathtakingly beautiful, the sun making it all seem almost pristine. An illusion, Geena knew, but a lovely one.
She stopped twenty feet from the Biblioteca’s front door.
“How much of the history do you know, Mr. Finch?”
He smiled, and a flicker of hidden intelligence shone in his eyes. “Call me Howard,” he said. “And I’ve done my research, Dr. Hodge. Petrarch had what was essentially a circus train of wagons that traveled around with him so he could keep his library close at all times. But eventually he realized how impractical that was. Inspired by ancient stories of public libraries like the one at Alexandria, he arranged to set one up in Venice. In—what was the year?—1362, I think, the poet moved his entire library here, hundreds of volumes of writing, much of it from antiquity, detailing philosophies and histories and the lives of the ancients, not to mention poetry, of course. Priceless works, many of which modern scholars consider lost, or even pure myth. The Venetians set him up with a posh house—”
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