The Madness Underneath: Book 2 (THE SHADES OF LONDON)

by Johnson, Maureen

  “Who runs a cult,” I said. “She said they were going to defeat death.”

  “So these people wanted you because you’re a terminus?” Boo said. “Did they say why, or what they planned on doing?”

  “Just defeating death. And, I don’t know, killing everyone I know if I didn’t come with them. They know where my parents are.”

  “We’ll get a car on their house,” Stephen said. “Could one of you call Thorpe? Make sure that happens?”

  He got up and went to the bedroom. Callum fished the phone out of the coat pocket.

  “You would think he’d want to make this call,” Callum said. “He always does the talking when it comes to Thorpe.”

  “Maybe he’s finally delegating,” Boo said. Then, turning to me, she explained, “We’ve been working on his control issues.”

  “So many issues,” Callum said, going through the phone to find the number.

  I got up and followed Stephen. He was staring into the closet at a selection of three largely identical shirts. He had removed his own bloody dress shirt. Stephen had a chest. That should not have been a shock to me, but there it was. It wasn’t as bulky as Callum’s, but it had a shape. And it had hair on it—a thin, dark line of it, right at the top, making a V that thinned out about two-thirds of the way to his waist. He immediately slipped the old shirt on, but left it unbuttoned. There was something goofily gallant about that. Like it mattered if I saw him with his shirt off.

  A car alarm went off outside. Stephen tightened the curtains, making sure there was no view of us from outside, though it was hardly possible to close them more than he already had.

  “Can you really do all those things you said to Jane?” I asked. “Make cameras turn around when she walks down the street, stuff like that?”

  “Maybe half of it. But your parents will be all right, I promise. And so will Charlotte. Our business can be unpredictable, but the police are good at preventing crime and finding kidnap victims. Their house is being turned over as we speak. She’ll be found.”

  “Why didn’t you arrest them?”

  “Arresting them meant reporting you. And I’d just deliberately crashed into their car. We have to lay low until that mess is taken care of. I wish I could have come up with a more elegant solution, but there was no time. Thorpe already thinks I take too many risks…”

  He sat on the end of the bed. I sat next to him. I meant to sit a bit further away, but the way I landed, I was right up against him. I expected him to shift over, but he didn’t.

  “I know you’re angry at me,” he said. “About what I said at Dawn’s flat.”

  “Whatever,” I said.

  “No, not whatever. I want to explain. I don’t want you to think it’s because I think you can’t do it, or that I’m upset that you can do more than I can. It’s not that I don’t think you’re capable…I wasn’t just going to let you sign up for this because your exams weren’t going well and you had nothing else to do.”

  He shook his head.

  “I didn’t put that the way I wanted to,” he said. “If you joined us, your family could never know what you were doing. Your relationship with them would be severed in many ways. I do this because I have nowhere else to go. My sister was my family, and I barely knew her. I had nothing. I’ve heard you talk about your family, your home. You have somewhere else to go. How would you really feel if you couldn’t go home again?”

  “I could go home…”

  “No. You couldn’t. Not easily. And everything your family knew about you would be a lie. You would never be able to tell them what was going on in your life. If I enlist you, if people higher up than Thorpe actually realize what you are and what you might be able to do, I don’t think you would just be treated like a member of an agency. You’d be treated like an asset. And assets don’t get to have lives.”

  “I never said I wanted to join,” I pointed out. “But if I did, at least I’d be with you guys.”

  “And if something happened to us, you’d get whatever sad weirdos they managed to recruit after us. Or you’d have no one. If we were disbanded, this whole part of your life would be a big, blank space. You still have a chance to get out and do something else. I do this because it keeps me sane. I don’t know if I could do anything else. But it’s not easy. A big part of me wishes that I’d been given some other option, but I wasn’t. I’m not saying that’s easy. I’m not even saying that’s what I want. I’m saying you have a chance to have some other kind of life.”

  “Maybe I need this life,” I said.

  “Has it really gone that well for you so far?”

  I shrugged. “I’ve seen worse,” I said.

  That got a little smile from him.

  “There you go,” I said, elbowing him. “A little smile. I knew you could do it.”

  “I’m such a miserable sod.”

  “You’re not that bad.”

  “I know I am. I don’t want you to end up like me.”

  “Trust me,” I said. “I am not going to end up like you.”

  His neck was long, and there was just a bit of stubble on it. His mouth, which was so often set in an expressionless straight line, there was a shape to that too. His nose had just a bit of a tiny downward turn. And his eyes, deep set, very tired, were fixed firmly on me.

  “Everything is so messed up,” I said. “My parents…I need to call them.”

  “That’s not advisable right now. Just wait until we’ve gotten this mess cleared up, at least until morning.”

  “Why did I do it? Why did I listen to her?” I hung my head and rubbed my eyes, then pulled myself upright again. “They gave me some drugs. They put it in the food. No wonder the therapy always seemed so intense.”

  “Drugs make people suggestible,” Stephen said.

  “These people—they’re a cult. I’m telling you. They were talking to me about these El…these mystery things in ancient Greece. Something about Demeter and Persephone and…”

  “The Eleusinian Mysteries?” he said.

  “That’s the one. Of course you know it.”

  “Five years of Latin, four of Greek.”

  “God, what am I going to do? Do I go home?”

  “We decide nothing tonight, all right? It will all be fine, I promise you. We’ll make it fine.”

  He put his arm over my shoulders, which was understandable, because I was upset. But it also seemed very…

  I wasn’t sure what it was.

  “How can you promise to make it fine?” I asked.

  “You’re alive. You’re safe and with us. It’s already fine. The rest is window dressing.”

  “You say that.”

  “Because it is.”

  The hand that rested on my shoulder rubbed it a bit, comfortingly. Then it gave my shoulder a little squeeze. I leaned into him.

  Maybe it was that I was broken. Maybe it was just that I was out of my mind. But it occurred to me that I was going to kiss him. The thought just arrived, certain knowledge, delivered from some greater, more knowledgeable place. I was going to kiss him. Stephen would not want to kiss me. He would back up in horror. And yet, I was still going to do it. I reached over, and I put my hand against his chest, then I moved closer. I could feel just the very tips of the gentle stubble on his cheek brushing against my skin.

  “Rory,” he said. But it was a quiet protest, and it went nowhere.

  For the first few seconds, he didn’t move—he accepted the kiss like you might accept a spoonful of medicine. Then I heard it, a sigh, like he had finally set down a heavy weight.

  I was pretty sure we were both kind of terrified, but I was completely sure that we were both doing this. We kissed slowly, very deliberately, coming together and then pulling apart and looking at each other. Then each kiss got longer, and then it didn’t stop. Stephen put his hand just under the edge of my shirt, holding it on the spot where the scar was. Sometimes the skin around the scar got cold—now it was warm. Now it was alive.

  “So Thor
pe says that—Seriously?”

  Callum was in the doorway.

  Stephen mumbled what I think was a very obscene word right against my mouth.

  “You realize I now owe Boo five pounds?” Callum said. “Boo! I owe you five pounds!”

  “What?” Boo yelled. “In the toilet.”

  “She’s in the toilet,” Callum explained. “Can you not mention this? She said this would happen. She’s going to lord this over me.”

  Stephen and I separated politely. I stared at my shoes, and Stephen buttoned his shirt.

  “You were saying about Thorpe?”

  “The freaks have cleared out of the house in Chelsea. Thorpe is having people pull records and look at CCTV. No hit on the house in the West Country yet. And someone’s being dispatched to Rory’s parents. Rory’s parents have registered her as missing.”

  “Right,” Stephen said. “It sounds like there’s little we can do right now. We should try to rest. Tomorrow could be a very long day.”

  Boo had joined us by then.

  “What were you yelling?” she asked Callum.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Just telling them what Thorpe said.”

  “And I said we should try to get some rest,” Stephen replied.

  Boo and I were given the bedroom. Neither of us was very tired. We flopped there, staring at the ceiling.

  “My life is a mess,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Boo agreed. “It is.”

  “Stephen says it’s going to be fine.”

  “Probably will be.”

  She sounded less convinced.

  “I broke up with Jerome. I left Jazza…I feel like I should…”

  “Stay here and do nothing?” she suggested.

  “I’m not going to call. I need to do something. Maybe…maybe I could write them letters? And then send them when it’s okay?”

  “That’s all right,” Boo said. “You could do that. But don’t send them until things are fixed.”

  So Boo watched TV, and I found some paper in the desk drawer. I’d only ever written a letter once or twice in my life. I kept changing what I wanted to say and starting over. In the end, Boo was asleep, and I had two very short letters.

  Jazzy,

  You’re mad at me for running away. Running away is stupid. I know. And nothing I can tell you is going to make what I did seem any less awful or nuts, so let me just say this…you’re one of the best friends I’ve ever had. And if I could tell you all the messed up reasons I had to do this, I would. Just try to believe me when I say it was the best idea at the time. And that I miss you. And that I’m sorry I seem like such a freak and a liar and a weirdo. I think you knew all that and were friends with me anyway.

  You’re better than I am. You will not fail German. And you’ll see me again, and I’ll try to explain it all.

  You can have whatever you want from my side of the room, including my alligator ashtray.

  —Rory

  Jerome’s was shorter:

  Jerome,

  It wasn’t you. It was me. I’m sorry. You deserve a better girlfriend, and you’ll find one. And I promise to be jealous and know that it’s all my fault.

  I still think you are disgusting. You know what I mean. Maybe someday you’ll come to America and see my town and then you’ll realize what a narrow escape you made.

  I crumpled that one up. It was too maudlin, and I didn’t even know if I meant it. Because in my mind, I was still kissing Stephen.

  That night, I had a dream I went home. Our house was flooded with sunlight, and all my family was there. Even our cat, Pow Pow, who died three years ago, and my aunt Sal, who died when I was twelve.

  I’m home, I kept thinking. But I can’t stay. I need to tell them I can’t stay. So I went to each and every member of my family and started to explain to them the nature of life and love. I can’t remember what I said, but I know it was awesome. I understood everything. The sight—it had given me knowledge as well, and I was able to reassure them all. “We’re going to defeat death,” I said.

  I think I knew on some level I was parroting what Jane had said to me earlier, but I meant it. There was no death, which was why Aunt Sal and Pow Pow were there, and that was why it was so sunny. I told them about the sight, and everyone was so happy. Especially Cousin Diane, who went around telling everyone that she’d been right all along with her Healing Angel Ministry. And for some reason my cousin Diane also kept trying to give me some ham the whole time. I was having all of these meaningful conversations, and she kept popping up with this package of lunch meat, trying to force me to take slices of the stuff. So I took them to shut her up and flushed them down the toilet, one by one, and she kept turning up with more. It ruined an otherwise very deep and poignant dream. Everything had been so close to perfect except for all of that sliced ham.

  I don’t know what time it was when I felt the shaking.

  “I don’t want ham,” I said.

  “Rory.”

  There was light coming through the window, but not much. It was a weak and diluted sky, and Boo was standing over me. The look on her face was very odd, and she had no ham.

  “What?” I asked, snorting awake.

  “It’s Stephen.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t wake him up,” she said.

  25

  OF THE MANY THINGS THAT HAD HAPPENED TO ME IN those last few weeks, the wait for that ambulance was the most surreal.

  It had turned into morning—very early morning from the looks of it, because the sky still had a pale cast. Stephen must have fallen asleep sitting on the sofa. His head was tipped back, one hand holding the makeshift bandage in place, the other hanging limply at his side. A fine coating of stubble had blossomed during the night, shadowing his chin. Without his glasses, without his look of constant worry…he looked happy, almost. There was panic at the edge of everything—in Callum and Boo’s voices, in their eyes, in the air itself.

  “He was fine,” Boo said, her voice shaking. “He was fine earlier. I just woke up and came in and both of them were asleep, and I tried to wake them, and…Stephen didn’t wake up.”

  “Siren,” Callum said, hurrying to the window. “Hear it?”

  I did. It was far off, but coming closer fast.

  “I’ll go to the gate,” Boo said. “Let them in. What was that code? Do you need that code? What was it?”

  “I think there’s someone out there now,” Callum said. “I see someone. You wait for them by the front door. I’ll find the fire stairs, they’ll never be able to get him into the lift. Rory, stay with him?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I will.”

  Then it was just me and Stephen. I grabbed his hand. I pinched his arm.

  “Wake up,” I said. “Please wake up. Please.”

  He continued to rest there, his breath low and shallow, the rest of him unmoving. A few minutes later a male and female paramedic came clomping up the stairs and into the flat. They went right to work, setting down a heavy box of supplies and a backboard. The man checked Stephen’s neck for a pulse and listened to his chest with a stethoscope.

  “What happened to him?” the woman asked. “You found him like this this morning?”

  “I found him,” Boo said. “He just didn’t wake up.”

  “Does he take drugs? Drink? Any medical conditions?”

  “There was a car accident,” Callum said. “He hit his head, but he was fine…”

  “When?”

  “Last night.”

  “Airway clear,” the man said. “Pulse is forty-six. Pupils are uneven.”

  The blood pressure cuff went on. I listened to the pump and slow, disturbing hiss of the blood pressure cuff. The EMT ripped it off loudly.

  “One eighty over sixty. How long ago did you find him like this?” the woman asked.

  “I think, I don’t know…” Boo looked to Callum for confirmation. “Fifteen minutes?”

  She moved around Stephen, lifting his eyelids and shining a light into t
hem, then she got on her radio.

  “St. Mary’s, I’ve got an unresponsive head trauma, GCS four. Pulse is forty-three and dropping.”

  There was an electronic hiss and a moment of silence.

  “Team will be on standby,” a voice crackled back.

  “What does that mean?” I asked her. “What’s a GCS?”

  “Coma scale,” she said.

  “Coma scale? Is he in a coma? Is he…”

  “Time to move,” the woman said.

  They were moving fast, but nothing seemed fast enough. The coffee table had to be moved. Stephen’s neck was cuffed and secured, then he was moved to the board on the floor.

  “Count of three. One, two, three…”

  They lifted him up and carried him out, managing the stairs expertly. I followed as they carried him down and put him into the ambulance.

  Another blur of activity as Stephen was expertly carried out of the apartment we had come to only hours before. He was put in the ambulance and we followed in a cab. Once at the hospital, we had to separate, with the ambulance going in its entrance. We were dropped off on the street by the A&E waiting room. Inside, there were people with bandages, bloody wounds, slings…all the usual emergency room nonsense. Just broken arms and broken noses and Stephen, unconscious, somewhere.

  A man at a desk told us someone would come and speak to us and that we had to wait, so we stood in the waiting area, confused, staring between the desk, the television bolted to the wall, and the vending machine full of chocolate bars and bags of crisps.

  “Thorpe,” Boo finally said. “We should phone him. I’ll do it. Give me your phone.”

  So she did that, and Callum and I continued to stand around, pacing the tiled floor. About a half an hour later, a young, red haired doctor with a carefully trimmed beard came out into the waiting area and asked who was here with Stephen Dene. We got up and hurried over.

  “You’re his friends?” he asked. “You found him un- responsive?”

  We said that was us.

  “We’re going to need to speak to his relatives. Do you have contact information for his parents, or…”

  “His parents are dead,” Callum said quickly.

  This surprised Boo and I, but we didn’t contradict him.