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.