Read Online The Madness Underneath: Book 2 (THE SHADES OF LONDON) by Maureen Johnson - Free Book Online

waist, holding me steady, pulling me back into a seated position.
    “You’re all right,” Stephen said. “You’re all right. She came up behind you. She grabbed you. She was too fast. I couldn’t stop her.”
    Thorpe hurried up to us.
    “Did something happen?” he asked.
    In reply, I got down on my knees on the bumpy yellow section at the very edge of the platform, leaned over the side, and began to throw up on the tracks. Someone—Stephen, I guessed—held me from behind to make sure I didn’t lose my balance. The sickness didn’t last long, and it cleared my head instantly. I pushed back and sat on my heels and wiped my mouth.
    “I didn’t do it,” I said, once I caught my breath.
    “What?” Thorpe asked.
    “It happened,” Stephen said. “The woman touched Rory, not the other way around. That’s what she means.”
    “But you are sure.”
    “There’s no mistaking it,” Stephen said, a little sharply. “It’s not subtle.”
    “Then get her back to her school and make sure she’s all right.”
    “Come on,” Stephen said to me softly. “Can you stand?”
    I didn’t answer, and when he tried to help me, I pushed hishands away and walked down the platform. I knew Stephen was a few steps behind me, quiet, nervous. I saw several mice dash along the edges of the corridors or along the steps as we approached, put out by our appearance. The Tube belonged to them at night.
    I stood outside Charing Cross station for a minute, taking deep, heavy breaths of cold air. The policewoman watched me from a distance—impassive. She couldn’t have had any idea why I was here or what I’d just done. I was trying to figure out what I was feeling. It wasn’t anger, but it was something related to it. Was it exhaustion? Maybe even relief? It was all those feelings, maybe, and I didn’t feel like having any of them, so I decided to ignore them all and concentrate on breathing nice and slow.
    Stephen exited the station a minute later. He went right to the car and held the passenger’s door open for me.
    “Don’t we have to wait for Thorpe?” I asked. There was a bit of a growl in my voice, mostly from the vomiting. It made me sound very angry. I was fine with that.
    “He can ride with the other officer. He said I should take you.”
    I got into the car, and Stephen shut the door. He turned on the engine and turned the heat on full blast. Gusts of warm air roared out of the vents and directly into my face. I reached over and turned it down.
    “I thought you might be cold,” he said.
    “I am. It feels good. I just threw up.”
    “She was too fast for me to stop her,” he said. “Sometimes they move quickly, more quickly than us. I couldn’t stop her.”
    I’d seen it. I knew that was true. There was nothing he couldhave done to stop her if she’d been moving as fast as she really wanted to go. Ghosts are quick when they want to be.
    Still, I wasn’t letting him off the hook that easy. I maintained a steely silence for a few moments.
    “Be mad at me if you want,” he said. “But everything I’ve done has been for good reasons.”
    “Like what?”
    He took off his black glasses and rubbed them on his leg. His leg bounced a little with tension.
    “Rory, I just…it’s…it’s very complicated.”
    “Try me.”
    “Rory…”
    “What’s Thorpe doing?” I said. “Over there, by the door?”
    Thorpe wasn’t over by the door. I’d just said that to distract him. I yanked the keys out of the ignition.
    “Tell me,” I said, shoving them down my shirt and holding them against my chest. “Tell me, or we go nowhere. Tell me or I’ll start screaming. Do you want me to draw lots of attention to what’s going on here? I’ll totally do it.”
    A deep sigh from Stephen. He banged his head gently against his headrest and stared up at the car ceiling.
    “They were going to shut us down. They were happy with the results of the Ripper case, but without a terminus, they didn’t know how we could still