The Shadow Cabinet

by Maureen Johnson

  “Callum? Boo?”

  “They’re all at Marble Arch,” Jerome said. “Freddie said everyone went to Marble Arch.”

  “How did you get here? Do you have a car?”

  “Tube.”

  “We need to leave before the police come,” Stephen said.

  “You go,” Thorpe said. “Take the stone. I’ll find her. My car—keys.” He patted his pockets, but his keys were not in them. “Look for the keys.”

  “Clothes,” Stephen said to me. “You need clothes.”

  I found my clothes folded and sitting on the piano. I pulled the pants on under the sheet, then quickly turned my back to get the shirt on. It did cross my mind that I was doing this in the presence of two guys who were already somewhat familiar with this part of me, but it was habit. Stephen walked right past me and into the kitchen, where I heard lots of banging and the rattle of cutlery as drawers were quickly opened. I pulled the plastic sneakers on without any socks. I didn’t bother to look for the coat. I happened to look up on the piano, where there was a low bowl with a few things in it, including some keys.

  “Keys!” I shouted.

  Thorpe was gone. I could hear him moving around upstairs, looking for Marigold. But Stephen returned from the kitchen and took the keys from my hand.

  “Good,” he said. He looked them over for a moment. “These aren’t for Thorpe’s car. Probably hers. Doesn’t matter. We’re taking it. Come on.”

  Jerome was still frozen in the middle of the room, arms wrapped around himself, looking at the scene. Stephen pushed Jane’s body off the stone.

  “Get that cloth from the table,” he said.

  I pulled the dark cloth that had been covering the coffee table, and we used it to wrap the bloody stone.

  “We’re going to need your help,” he said to Jerome. “I don’t expect you to understand, but this is important. It’s the most important thing you’ll ever do. You’re Jerome, correct?”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “You’ve seen me before. I’m with the police. I was at the Ripper scene. I’m telling you the truth. I know this is . . .”

  “I’ll do it,” Jerome said. He blinked a few times, which is something he often did right before we kissed, at least when we first met. It meant he was nervous. He was blinking like mad.

  “There’s a back door,” Stephen said. “Come on.”

  Right as we were about to go, I remembered something very important. I went to Jane’s body. Her neck was—barely a neck at this point. It was a thickening mess of dark blood and hair. I steadied myself as best I could, thanking whatever was still in my system numbing me, and felt around until I came upon her locket.

  “She’s got two of them around her neck,” I said. “Two termini.”

  I couldn’t get it unhooked, so I snapped the chain with my hands. I was covered in blood now. I wiped my hands on the carpet, but it barely helped. I thought about using her dress. I could already hear the sirens. It seemed like there were a lot of sirens. All this blood—on my skin, under my nails.

  It was Jerome who handed me the white cloth from the table and helped me get some of it off. He held my hand and pulled the cloth along, finger by finger. He looked nauseous all the while.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He nodded, lips pursed against the smell and the sight.

  “We need to move,” Stephen said.

  27

  THERE WAS A SMALL WALLED GARDEN AT THE BACK OF Marigold’s house. I would never have known it, but there was a door in the back of it, almost entirely covered in creeping vines. These were clearly tended to do this. There were nails around the door frame where they’d been wrapped and tamed. We pushed through into a small alley between the houses and other walled gardens, holding the wrapped stone between us. Stephen walked a bit unsteadily, occasionally touching his free hand against one of the walls as he walked. He pressed the Unlock button on the key fob, and there was a friendly toot somewhere on the street.

  “That dark green Jaguar,” he said. “That’s hers. Come on.”

  “Hang on,” Jerome said. “Are you all right to drive? I have no idea what happened to you, but you look high.”

  Stephen wavered a bit.

  “You drive?” he asked Jerome.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you drive fast?”

  “Fast enough.”

  “Right. Set the stone down. Careful.”

  We all lowered the stone to the ground as one.

  “Get the car,” Stephen said, wiping his brow. He was sweating, and when I noticed that he was, I realized I was too. “Bring it here.”

  Jerome took the keys, looked at me, then jogged toward the car. Stephen leaned against one of the walls and closed his eyes.

  “Does he drive well?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe I should drive.”

  “You should not drive,” I said.

  We didn’t need to go over what happened the last time Stephen drove.

  “We can’t risk getting pulled over,” he said, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands before opening them. “All right. He drives.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I have no idea what I am,” he said. “Except here.”

  He touched his hairline, pulling the bandage off. There was no mark underneath. This made me well up at once, but it was no time for crying. He clearly noticed this.

  “What’s happening at Marble Arch?” I asked. “How bad is this?”

  “Very bad,” Stephen said. “Far worse than anything we’ve ever seen.”

  “That could mean anything. What’s happening?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not sure it’s ever happened before. Imagine this stone is a dam, holding back a flood. Well, there’s no dam now. Anything could come through. It’s a question of what’s under there. But I think we can reasonably assume that whatever it is, it’s not going to be good.”

  “Okay,” I said, blinking and trying to take this in. “And what about them, Sid and Sadie. What the hell are they?”

  “That,” he said, “I have no idea. There are no instructions for anything that’s happening right now. We just have to get this stone back to where it belongs.”

  “Why did he tell us not to put it back where it had been?”

  “Rory, I don’t know.” He sounded exhausted. “But he was telling the truth about the sewer. That’s where the River Westbourne was diverted. If we can get it into there, close enough to the point of the breach . . .”

  Jerome pulled the car up to the opening of the alley, and we loaded the stone in the back. I sat with it, and Stephen took the front seat.

  “We need to get to Marble Arch,” he said. “I’ll tell you the route. Drive slow and steady through here. Avoid Oxford Street. Use New Cavendish.”

  I heard the sound of sirens—many sirens, possibly all the sirens—caterwauling in the near distance.

  “The police are going to be at the house,” Jerome said. “We’re going to be—”

  “The police aren’t going to get into that house. It’s owned by someone in the security service, and she will never allow them in. Those sirens are coming from somewhere else.”

  What became clear pretty quickly was that we were not going to be able to get to Marble Arch. Traffic was at a standstill. Cars were practically parked. Stephen kept directing Jerome to turn down smaller streets, looping around, cutting through all kinds of passages, but everything was blocked up.

  “Are you some kind of human sat nav?” Jerome finally asked him.

  “I did the Knowledge.”

  “Right,” Jerome said. He eyed me through the rearview mirror. “Of course you did.”

  Stephen put his head against the car window. I wanted to sleep as well. It was taking everything I had in me to keep
my eyes open. I stretched out over the cloth-covered stone. It was surprisingly soothing. I could rest here, maybe just for a minute.

  “What the hell is that?” Jerome asked.

  Both Stephen and I sat back upright. Ahead of us, maybe a half mile down the road, was a solid wall of white—like a cloud sitting on top of part of the city. It was like over there was its own place with its own weather, and its own weather was a solid white mass. Every car was stopping.

  “Turn around,” Stephen said, craning around in his seat. “Now. Right here. Turn.”

  “I can’t—”

  Stephen made to grab for the wheel, and Jerome elbowed him off.

  “Fine!”

  Jerome made a frustrated grunt and ground through the gears, turning the car in the middle of the street and heading the opposite direction. Stephen turned on the radio and scanned through the stations quickly until he got to the news.

  . . . unconfirmed reports of a possible explosion at Lancaster Gate Tube station. The area has been cordoned off and . . .

  “Lancaster Gate,” Stephen said. “Right next to Marble Arch. This is not good. We won’t get into Marble Arch this way.”

  Stephen continued giving directions, leading Jerome down an endless sequence of smaller roads and paths. Every time the traffic was blocked, we turned again. After ten minutes of this, Stephen let out a weird half yell of frustration. I’d never heard anything quite like this come from him.

  “What the hell is going on?” Jerome yelled.

  “You just need to drive.”

  “I need to know.”

  “Jerome,” I said, “please. I promise. We’ll tell you. Please.”

  I reached up and put my hand on Jerome’s shoulder. I felt his muscles tensing as he drove. His expression was grim, and he looked a bit terrified, but I think he got the message. Stephen pulled off his glasses and pinched the space between his eyes. This was maybe too much for him. The news report droned on, and the story only got worse. Reports of smoke, people being evacuated from the area, the Tube being shut down.

  “Pull over,” Stephen said to Jerome.

  Jerome did this, but from the way he was holding his head and the stiffening of his shoulders, I knew he didn’t like being ordered around like this.

  “We’re going to need to get in some other way,” Stephen said.

  “We’re not getting in if the whole area is blocked off,” Jerome said.

  “We don’t have a choice.” Stephen put his glasses back on and exhaled loudly. “Right. This is what we do. We go to the Athenaeum Club on Pall Mall. We’ll cut north and go around.”

  “Why there?” Jerome said.

  “Because that’s the way in.”

  • • •

  We got there eventually, though it took much longer than it should have. The fog wasn’t quite as bad in Pall Mall, which was a wide stretch of what were clearly critically important buildings, all white, all large, all stinking of Queen and Empire and that kind of thing. The road ended pretty much at the club, where it butted up against a set of steps that led down to a park. Jerome pulled up where Stephen directed. Stephen had already unclicked his belt and was halfway out of the car before it was in park.

  “You need to stay here with the stone,” he said to Jerome. “Rory, with me.”

  “We’ll be back,” I said to Jerome. “Promise. It’s . . .”

  I hurried after to Stephen. The building was large, with a cream-white façade. Some kind of classical scene cut into marble ran along the roofline. A statue of some kind of goddess sat on the top like a proud pigeon. I guessed this was Athena, judging from the name—and it made me uneasy. I didn’t really want to see any Greek gods or goddesses right now.

  Stephen went into the foyer, which was quiet and cold and marble. A man in a perfect gray suit stood by a desk and took one look at us, dressed in our scrappy clothes, no coats.

  “I’m sorry—”

  “I need to leave a message for the timekeeper,” he said. “Give me a piece of paper.”

  The suited man looked a bit surprised, but immediately produced a piece of letterhead and a pen. Stephen began to write something. When he’d said “timekeeper,” I’d happened to look up and notice a large clock in the middle of the landing straight ahead of us. The clock was weird. It took me a moment to work out what was so strange about it: it had two number sevens and no number eight.

  “That clock,” I said. “It has two sevens.”

  Stephen glanced over at it, and something very uncomfortable passed over his expression.

  “I’m already here,” said a voice. “Step outside.”

  A woman had appeared behind us. She looked to be about fifty, maybe sixty. She was sizable and wore very practicallooking high-waisted pants and a stiff white blouse. Her hair was buzzed neatly and utterly flat on top.

  “A moment, sir,” the porter said.

  “No,” Stephen replied, folding the paper and shoving it in his pocket. “It’s fine. It’s fine.”

  The porter hadn’t seen her, and judging from her aspect, it was obvious what she was—though she looked so firm and clear. She grabbed Stephen’s arm and gave it a shake.

  “The reports of your death seem premature,” she said. “We’ll discuss that later. Do you know what’s transpired?”

  “I have the stone,” he said. “It’s in the car.”

  “How did you get the stone? Never mind. We’ll discuss that later as well. The important thing is getting it back in place. And you’ve brought her. I suppose that might be useful.”

  The woman gave me a curious, yet dismissive look.

  “Neither of us is very strong right now.”

  “Well, you’ll need to buck up, dear boy. It’s started. We’ve mustered everyone we could to try to hold it back, but we won’t be able to contain it much longer.”

  Jerome was leaning over the wheel, staring at Stephen talking to the air. This was bad. So bad. I angled around so he couldn’t see me speaking.

  “What is it?” I asked her.

  The woman regarded me with arched eyebrows.

  “My dear girl,” she said, “it is the breach. It will envelop and extinguish life. It is the end of order. You must assist. The stone must be replaced. You can’t go over the land. They’ve shut down everything all around, especially around the palace. But you can go under. I will open the doors. You must get it through.”

  Stephen started walking to the car and waved me over to do the same. He opened the back door of the car to get the stone. Jerome opened the driver’s door and stepped out.

  “Who the hell were you talking to?” he asked.

  “I was on the phone,” Stephen said. “Headset.”

  “Then why did you take my phone?”

  Poor Jerome was clearly getting nervous about all these strange people taking his phone. Stephen was carefully pulling the stone from the backseat, but he was having a hard time.

  “We’re going to need your help,” he said to Jerome. “Rory and I are weak. Too weak to get it that far. We need to get this into Hyde Park, and we need to carry it. Will you help us?”

  “Will you tell me what’s going on?”

  “When it’s over,” Stephen said.

  Jerome looked to Stephen, then to me.

  “Can I talk to you a minute?” he said.

  Stephen closed his eyes, probably in a kind of agony that this was taking so long. The woman had come over to us and was looking at Jerome.

  “Why are you all playing sillybuggers?” she asked. “This is no time—”

  “Let me talk to Jerome a second,” I said, for everyone’s benefit.

  Jerome and I walked far enough away not to be heard.

  “This is insane,” he said. “I can see there’s something going on. I saw someone dead, on the floor. I think we just ran from
the police? You’re being guarded by some security services people who don’t seem to be doing a good job. And now we’ve got some kind of rock that can make the explosion stop?”

  “Trust me,” I said, holding out my hands. “I know how bad this is, how weird.”

  He shook his head and looked up at the sky. And in that moment, I’d kind of had it. It was time to release anything and everything inside.

  “You think I’m not sick of it?” I said. “It’s been weird for me since I got here. Jerome, it’s been one unending river of weird shit.”

  Jerome looked back at me and seemed to be about to say something, but I held up my hands.

  “No,” I said. “No, I’m not looking for that. I don’t want you to say you know how bad it’s been. I know how bad it’s been. All this stuff I couldn’t say, well, it’s all coming out. There won’t be any secrets. And it’s not all bad—there’s stuff that actually makes sense too. There’s good stuff too. But you know what? We need to do that later. People need us now. I know you don’t like being in the dark—no one likes that. Sometimes you have to go with it. This is one of those times. I need you to trust me. I know that’s kind of crazy to ask, considering, but you just have to do it, because—look around.”

  The street was really, really quiet. Everyone could hear me.

  Jerome was still standing there, bobbing the car key nervously. It was time for something more decisive. I was going to have to do this, even though I wasn’t sure what it meant, even with Stephen behind me. I walked right up to Jerome, got right up against his chest, and took the lapels of his coat. Our faces were inches apart.

  “Us breaking up,” I said. “It was all this stuff. You think I didn’t want to say?”

  He swallowed hard. I was close enough to smell his breath. Jerome had very sweet breath. And I was lying to him—well, I wasn’t being entirely truthful. But I was doing this for a very good reason. I leaned in more, so we were almost mouth to mouth. He tipped his head down to look at me.