The Shadow Cabinet

by Maureen Johnson

  Boo got up on her knees to face me.

  “Morning. How do you feel?”

  “Okay. Just thirsty. Really thirsty. What time is it?”

  “It’s tomorrow. You’ve been asleep for almost twenty-four hours.”

  “I have?”

  I sat up. My head was cottony, but in the way you’d expect after sleeping for an entire day. I was still in my clothes. I didn’t have to sniff myself to know I smelled. I hadn’t showered for days.

  “We have some new clothes for you,” Boo said. “And soap, a brush, things like that. We thought you might need that first.”

  “Where’s Stephen?”

  “He’s upstairs,” Thorpe said. “Asleep.”

  “Asleep?”

  “He’s fine.”

  “And the doctor?”

  Thorpe nodded.

  “We’re all fine, Rory. Why don’t you get yourself together? Callum brought some food. You need to eat something. Then we’ll all talk.”

  I took the shopping bags Boo handed me and went upstairs. As soon as I was gone, I could hear the others talking in low voices. I moved quietly to the bedroom and pushed open the door—softly, softly . . .

  I’d just done this. My life was looping around on me.

  Stephen was there, stretched out on his side, his back facing me. The blankets were twisted around him and half falling off the bed. I couldn’t see his face, just the back of his hair against the pillow. His glasses were the only object on the bedside table. What I wanted to do was climb into the bed with him and hold him tight. What I actually did was get close enough that I could see his chest rise and fall at least three times before I backed out of the room and gently shut the door.

  There was one hall window, and it revealed a pinkish sky, much lighter than normal. I went to the bathroom, where the light was harsh and brought some realities into sharp focus. The person I saw in the mirror was a wreck. My chopped-up hair was in all directions. My eyes were bloodshot. When I went to get undressed, I found that there was some brown, dried blood under my fingernails and encrusted on the nails themselves. I rubbed this off under the running water, then I took a shower that never got very hot and tried to wash everything away. I washed my stiff, short hair, which smelled like cat food when I got it wet. When I brushed it after the shower, it made scraping noises against the brush. I would need to cut more of it off—not just a bob. Cut it short. Let this terrible dye job grow out.

  Boo had clearly been doing the shopping again, and this time, the clothes had more of her personality—a black sweater with plasticky-leather bits on the shoulders, slightly better-fitting jeans, some red flats. There was even a little bag of makeup in there, which I didn’t use. It was nice that she’d thought of me.

  I returned downstairs, where a small feast of prepared convenience foods was spread out on the coffee table. Thorpe was right—I needed to eat. I worked my way through two ham and pickle sandwiches, a banana, some kind of date and nut cookie, a bag of cheddar and onion crisps, and a piece of ginger cake. I washed it all down with two bottles of apple and elderflower drink and a Coke.

  “It’s going to snow tonight,” Freddie said. The remark met no reply—it just floated into the room, and we all looked at the window for a second.

  “I’ve never been in snow,” I said. “We don’t get it where I live.”

  As I said it, I had some memory of snow, but I couldn’t place it. We didn’t get snow at home, so where had I been? Somewhere. It would come to me.

  “Are people okay?” I said. “The people in the fog?”

  “Only a few people were harmed, mostly by debris and glass,” Thorpe said. “What’s more disturbing is that they have no recollection of what happened to them. The news is saying it was a nerve agent.”

  There was a creak on the floorboards upstairs. Then footsteps, the sound of someone walking toward the bathroom. Water running.

  “He’s awake,” Boo said.

  Callum could sit no longer and hopped out of his seat, pacing by the foot of the stairs. Thorpe closed his computer and rested his head on his chin and stared at the floor, deep in thought. Freddie looked like she wanted to say something but had no idea what, so she tidied the piles of paperwork around her.

  “Maybe we can be normal,” I said.

  Sometimes I say stupid things.

  Stephen came down about fifteen minutes later. He had changed his clothes as well, but was wearing his own—a familiar black sweater and pair of jeans, and a pair of sneakers. Someone must have gone back to the flat and gotten more of his things. He was unshaven, and there was a surprising amount of dark stubble along his chin, which stirred something in me. He came into the room quietly and tucked his hands into his pockets. He looked at the spread on the coffee table.

  “May I?” he asked. “I’m famished.”

  We watched him take two egg and cress sandwiches and sit on the arm of the sofa to eat them. Some things are so big, you can’t even react to them. You almost have to act like they never even happened, because they don’t fit in any kind of reality you know.

  So we watched Stephen eat, and Stephen watched us watching him eat.

  “Someone should probably say something,” he finally said, “because I’m going to be eating for a few more minutes.”

  “How do you feel?” Callum said. “You seem all right. Do you feel all right?”

  He chewed for a moment and nodded before answering. “I feel fine. Which is fairly remarkable, considering.”

  “Oh, God,” Boo said. She went right for him and grabbed him, holding him in a long, somewhat awkward crouching hug. He held his sandwich at arm’s length to keep egg salad off of her and looked at the opposite wall a bit bashfully.

  “All right,” Boo said. “Callum, now you. Come on.”

  Callum did the same, but a bit shorter.

  “Since we’re all doing it!” Freddie gave him a quick embrace. Thorpe settled on a nod.

  I was too nervous to move. I had no idea what I’d do. So I smiled a weird, sloppy smile and shoved another cookie in my mouth.

  “Do you have any recollection of what happened to you?” Thorpe asked.

  “Very little. I remember the car accident, and I remember going to the flat and going to sleep in the chair. I think Rory might know more.”

  “Not a lot,” I said. “They had me do some kind of ceremony, and I drank something, but I don’t remember anything after that.”

  “Nothing?” he said.

  “Nope.”

  He watched me curiously for a moment.

  “It’s possible we’ll never really know the mechanics of it,” he said. “But why was I at Marigold’s house?”

  “She got to the hospital morgue before I did,” Thorpe said. “She was there to get your body, and what she found was that you hadn’t exactly died. You were removed, and all records of your being there were wiped clean. I did meet a very agitated pathologist who had been forced to sign the Official Secrets Act.”

  “You’re an Official Secret,” Boo said to Stephen.

  “Congratulations,” I said, trying the smile again, and again it came out super weird. No smiling. Smiling not working right now.

  “So who is Marigold?” I asked.

  “We got this explanation when you were out cold,” Boo said. “She works with Thorpe.”

  “To a limited extent,” Thorpe said. “She’s a medical officer who works on very sensitive matters. She was instrumental in initial recruitment and in trying to determine what it is about you that makes you different.”

  “So she wanted to do my autopsy,” Stephen said.

  “I believe that was her hope.”

  “Glad she checked, then.” He reached for a bag of chips. “That could have been awkward.”

  This tiny joke lightened the mood in the room, and Callum broke int
o a smile.

  “Mate . . .” he said. “Mate.”

  “We’re all here,” Boo said. “We survived. We’re back.”

  I felt a moment dawning, a moment when we were all taking this in—that we were together and happy. This is when Freddie, who had clearly been looking for a chance to chime in, accidentally brought us back to the matter at hand.

  “But one thing,” she said. “You had this information about the Oswulf Stone and writing in cipher code. How did you know so much, and why were you keeping it secret? Not that . . .”

  Stephen shrugged. “I was looking at the same sites and sources you were. I knew we had stones that could dispel the energy of the dead, and they seemed to match the description of the Eye of Isis. I looked into the Oswulf Stone, and there did seem to be evidence indicating that it existed and it might have some actual power. I wrote the notes in code because I like cryptology and I was bored of the crossword I’d been working on. I went to Chanceford, as I’m assuming you did. I assume you broke the code. It wasn’t very complex, I’m afraid.”

  “But this means the Shadow Cabinet—” Freddie said.

  “Is ridiculous,” Stephen replied. “You know as well as I do that it’s a conspiracy theory.”

  “But they’re right about these two stones,” she said.

  “A lot of these fantasies are based on some actual fact,” Stephen said. “Given the amount of research these people do, someone would have turned up something on the other stones. No one ever has.”

  “So you don’t think they exist?”

  “I think it’s highly unlikely. I chased up a few leads, but they were all nutters. There’s no cabal protecting magic stones in London. But we do have two new termini.”

  Callum smiled broadly at that.

  “Oh, it’s a sweet day,” Callum said. “We are back. For reals. Back.”

  “So what happens next?” I said. “What about Charlotte? How did she turn like that? And where is she?”

  “Stockholm syndrome, possibly,” Freddie said. “It happens quicker than you might think. The original Stockholm case only took a few days. But more likely she was conditioned over time. You said Jane used drugs. Drugs, isolation . . . and they gave her the sight.”

  “We don’t know where they went,” Thorpe said. “We don’t have identification on most of the people in the group. We couldn’t find Charlotte on CCTV. She’s gone, but this time of her own accord. As are Sid and Sadie.”

  “Listen to you lot,” Callum said, coming to the middle of the room. “We should celebrate better than this. We need to. Come on. Come on.”

  Thorpe considered for a moment.

  “I expect a drink or two isn’t out of order,” he said. “There’s a pub at the end of the road. We won’t be using this house anymore, so I think we can go. Not for long. But one round.”

  As we went out, the first flakes started to fall. They were much bigger than I expected, and faster. I reached out and grabbed one, only to watch it vanish in my hand the second it landed.

  “That’s disappointing,” I said. “I thought it would last longer than that.”

  We walked slowly, and Stephen and I fell to the back of the group. He tucked his hands deep into his coat pockets. This had been restored, as had his scarf.

  “What do you remember?” he asked me. “About the last day? About what happened to you?”

  “Not much,” I said. “Like I said, I drank something, then I woke up.”

  “Do you know how long you were unconscious?”

  “No.”

  “So you don’t remember anything?” he asked again.

  “About which part? You mean Sid and Sadie, and Jane?”

  I heard him sigh quietly. I looked up, but he was keeping his gaze ahead, on the others.

  “What are they?” I asked. “Sid and Sadie.”

  “Something new,” he said. “Or something very old. I don’t know. But they worry me. Very much. And I think . . .”

  He stopped and pushed his hands deeper into his pockets.

  “You think what?” I said.

  Stephen turned to me, finally. His chest rose and fell quickly, and I think he was holding himself in place, forcing his hands down. He examined my face, leaning in, just a bit. He was trying to read me. He was close enough to kiss, if I could get to my toes in time. If I could find the courage. But something told me I shouldn’t . . . something in the way he was examining me. Something in his face was both sad and satisfied.

  So I looked up, past him, as if that was what I meant to do all along. I stared into the falling snow. It was weird—looking up into snow made me feel like I was falling.

  “You’ve never been in snow?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, keeping my head tipped up. “Maybe? When I was little?”

  “You two!” Callum said, turning around. “Keep up. Snogging later. Drinks now.”

  As I moved my gaze back down, I caught Stephen looking into my face again.

  “We should . . . keep up. I suppose,” he said. “No telling what Callum’s likely to do. We do deserve one night off, you would think.”

  He reached out and touched my arm, then clasped it, then, after an agonizing moment of hesitation, put his hand back in his pocket again.

  31

  THERE WAS ONE MORE PIECE OF BUSINESS TO TAKE CARE OF, and we did it the next morning. Thorpe took me. I picked the place, and the place I picked was the Wexford Library. He balked at this at first, but I insisted. It was important. There was someone there I needed. I wished I could have gone with Stephen, but he was being worked up by Marigold—a full test, hooked up to machines, blood taken, the works. Once you die and come back, it makes people ask questions.

  “You’re sure about this?” Thorpe said.

  “I promised. And Jerome’s already seen so much.”

  “There are decisions to be made after this—serious ones.”

  “As opposed to all these casual decisions I’ve been making,” I said.

  “Fair point. But now it’s time to talk next steps. Next steps involve making things more official. New identities. Training. And perhaps most important, what we tell your family.”

  “Let’s talk about that later,” I said. “I have to do this now.”

  “One hour,” Thorpe said.

  He handed me a plastic card with a magnetized strip and a key. The card had been coded to override the external locks. The key was a copy of our housemistress Claudia’s skeleton key that could open any room in Hawthorne. I pocketed the two of these and got out of the car.

  Boo was already there, sitting on a bench in front of the building, keeping watch. She ate an apple and pretended to talk on the phone. The expensive new CCTV system was down for an hour of “maintenance,” so there would be no record of my coming or going. Claudia was known to have gone off to Truro to see her family for the holiday. All the other staff members were gone—teachers, librarians, dining hall, administration. Just for safety, the teachers had been told all the offices were shut for heating repairs, in case they might have wanted to cut short their holidays to do any work. The only person who would be on the grounds was the security person, and he had also been dispatched through a “glitch” in the schedule.

  A tiny hole had been opened for me to come see my old life. But there were still rules: scarf over face, gloves on hands, all of that.

  I walked quickly, as I’d been instructed, to the library. I went down the recessed stairwell to the basement service entrance—the very entrance that had caused so much trouble earlier. Today, there would be no problems. When I pressed the card against the reader, the door clicked open readily. The library basement was unfamiliar to me. It was full of boxes placed to ensure maximum shin-banging as you made your way to the steps. These were uncomfortably dark but, in the end, just steps. You go up until there’s nothing to
take you any farther. I exited in the gloom of the second floor, by the history section. It took me a moment to get my bearings and wend my way around. I gave myself a bit of a fright by triggering the stack lights along the way. History, foreign languages, literature . . .

  Alistair was there, as Alistair was always there. Hair ever spiked. Jeans ever slouched. Doc Martens ever . . . Martening. He was reading. Alistair was always reading. He’d read every book in the literature section.

  “Hey, stranger,” I said.

  As was typical with Alistair, he took a good, long moment, finishing the page or paragraph or poem before looking up.

  “Merry Christmas.”

  “Is it?” he asked.

  “Close enough.”

  “Well, then.”

  As usual, Alistair was full of conversation.

  “Things have been weird,” I said, coming a little closer. “I can’t really explain it, and I don’t have a lot of time. But I wanted to tell you to be . . . careful, I guess.”

  “Careful about what?”

  “If you need help, or if something weird happens, grab someone’s phone and text this number . . .” I pulled a slip of paper from my pocket and set it on a nearby shelf. “You know what texting is, right?”

  “I’m not an idiot.”

  “Do you think you could do that, though? Could you press the buttons and send a text?”

  “I could do it.”

  “Okay. This number?” I tapped the paper with my gloved finger. “It belongs to a spare cell phone that Boo carries. Just send the word help, or come here, or whatever. If you need to.”

  “Why would I need help?”

  “Keep the number, okay?” I said.

  He nodded and returned to his book, and I turned to go back the way I had come.

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” he called after me. “Alive, I mean. It’s better for you that way.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  But he was already ignoring me again.

  • • •