The Shadow Cabinet (21 page)

The door opened, and Jane entered. She had changed her clothes and was now wearing a pure white dress, a lot of fabric that seemed to corkscrew around her body. She was still wearing the necklace.

“It's time,” she said to both of us. “You need to prepare for the next steps. It's all going to be fine. Come now.”

Charlotte nodded eagerly and held out her hand to help me. I didn't want to leave Stephen, for a number of reasons, including the fact that it appeared as though I was going to have to go through whatever it was they had planned. I had been expecting something to happen by now, but maybe Jerome didn't get the message. Maybe . . .

“He'll be all right,” Charlotte said. “He'll be better. Come on.”

The two of them guided me to the bathroom, where the door was open and the lights on. The bathtub was full of lightly brownish water. Charlotte stepped outside, but Jane stayed.

“This water is from the Thames,” she said. “It is our sacred river. You must bathe in it. Please remove your clothing. I will witness.”

With Jane standing there watching, I took off all my clothes. This wasn't great, but it wasn't the worst thing I'd ever had to do.

“Into the bath.”

“Are you going to do to me what you did to Charlotte? Hold me under?”

“No, dear. You've already turned. This is to wash and purify you. It is a critical part of the ritual. You need to clean yourself in the water.”

The water was cold and smelled like metal. I splashed it over myself. Jane didn't quite look satisfied, so I splashed some more and rubbed some of it in my hair.

“This ceremony,” I said. “Before, you killed those people.”

“This is not a repeat of that ceremony.”

“So what happens?”

“You do not need to worry,” Jane said. “Everyone here has practiced. Everyone is ready. We will show you what to do. Your part is very simple. There is no need to worry about knowing your part.”

“That's not what I was worried about,” I said. “Before, you had to kill people. You need my blood.”

“We need very little of it,” she said. “A few drops. And that's enough.”

“And then what?”

“You can get out now,” she said gently. I would not be getting any more answers.

I stood, dripping, cold. I dried myself and was handed a plain white gown, which I put on. I think I had detached from the situation enough to be able to function. I had to do this. Jane lit a stick of incense and began to mutter under her breath, half closing her eyes. She moved the incense around me, tracing my body from the floor, around the sides, over my head, and down to the floor again. She handed the incense to Charlotte, who was waiting outside.

“Carry this downstairs and give it to Devina, dear.”

Charlotte went off, a finger of smoke trailing in her footsteps.

“It's time for you to meet my friends,” Jane said.

She led me out into the hall, which felt very cold now that I was damp with Thames water and wearing nothing but a sheet. All the lights had been turned off, but there was a glow at the end of the stairs and the sweet smoke of the incense. Marigold's living room had been transformed. Everything had been cleared from the middle of the room, including the carpet. There were candles all around. There were nine people in the room, some I'd seen before, some I hadn't. All were young. They sat in the shadows between the candles, talking amongst each other in low, gleeful voices. What I was really focused on, however, were three figures on the floor. One was Stephen. The other two I had seen once before in a picture. They were instantly recognizable—long, pale, nearly identical. The female was wearing a white diaphanous dress, the male in a white suit. Both their faces had been made up with a silvery powder. They didn't look like they had eyebrows. All three had been placed like spokes on a wheel with their bare feet toward the center of the room, where they rested on a large, flat rock.

It didn't look like anything special, this Oswulf Stone. It could have been part of a patio.

“I can't wait for you to meet them,” Jane said, looking down at the twins on the floor. “They'll be so glad to see you.”

A murmur of happiness from around the room.

“It is nearly time for us to begin,” Jane said. “Have you all washed in the water upstairs?”

Jane checked to make sure every single person had nodded. This was when I realized I'd taken a bath in Thames water that had probably been used by ten people before me. This was hardly the worst news of the day.

“Gather around,” Jane said. “We begin the work.”

Everyone in the room formed a circle, with Jane and me standing on the inside with Stephen, Sid, and Sadie.

“Mags, bring forth the kykeon.”

Mags, a tall black girl with short dreadlocks, brought forward a gold-colored bowl, which she held up reverentially.

“And now,” Jane said, “Rory, please go and stand on the stone and hold out one of your arms.”

With everyone watching, Jane assisted me as I stepped over and took my place on the uneven surface of the stone and held out one arm. I was looking around to figure out why, when there was a sudden flash and a pinching feeling. Jane had cut my arm, very quickly. It wasn't that painful, but it was a shock. The cut was a surface one, half between my elbow and hand. It bled quickly, and Jane turned my arm so that a few drops of the blood dripped down, falling to the stone.

“Blessed Demeter,” Jane said.

“Blessed Demeter,” said the others. This included Charlotte, who was looking at me with glossy-eyed wonder. How had it happened? I thought. How had they done this to her? How did we all get here? Hadn't we just been sitting around the refectory, eating sausage and talking about exams?

“I charge you,” Jane said to me, in a low, chanting tone, “to find these three lost souls. We ask blessed Demeter to grant your passage, that you may go down and bring forth these sleepers.”

Jane motioned to Mags, who passed her the bowl.

“The kykeon,” Jane said, holding it up. “The sacred drink of the mysteries.”

She gave it to me. It smelled like the shavings from a freshly cut lawn.

“This is a sacred mix of barley, mint, and honey,” Jane said. “Drink from it, Rory. Drink deeply.”

It seemed unlikely to me that whatever was in this cup was simply barley and mint and honey. Barley and mint and honey sounded like some half-assed herbal remedy for a cough, not something that would open the door between life and death. This was the real end. Whatever came next—I wouldn't be able to prepare for it. I couldn't guess what it was, or what it would be like, if it was like anything at all. Perhaps I drank this and died and everything stopped. The thought didn't scare me like it probably should have. It was so wide a thought that it filled my vision. It was sky, it was air. It was simply there. Because in the end, we aren't supposed to survive life.

Or maybe this went somewhere else entirely.

I thought of Stephen behind the wheel of that car, only seconds to make his decision—possibly less than that.
Do I drive in front of this car?
he must have thought.
Do I stop it? Do I put myself in the way?
That's what he had done for me, and he'd done it not knowing the outcome.

I had no desire to die. So, I decided, I wouldn't. Somehow, I would avoid it. I would not leave this world of weirdos and accidents and sunshine and rain.

I drank.

21

I
WAS
WALKING
DOWN
A
L
ONDON
STREE
T
. N
O
ONE
WAS
around. The air was so sweet, like a night on the edge of summer, on the first day the grass has to be cut. This was Louisiana air—late April, early May, something like that, before things got swampy. It was the smell and feel I liked best in the world. It was evening, maybe, or almost evening. The sky was vivid and strange—a deeply supersaturated blue. There were no cars, which made it easier to walk in the street.

I wasn't dreaming. I was reasonably sure of this. In dreams, there was always that faint degree of knowing that something wasn't really there—that you were doing something impossible, with all the wrong people. This wasn't like before either, when I imagined talking to Uncle Bick. This was solid reality. I could smell the sweet air and feel it on my face. I reached over and touched the front of a building and felt the smooth white stone, the cool of a glass door. I was aware that things about this were odd—the emptiness, the quiet, the colors. So there was Louisiana air over London. Somehow, this was all right. It was like Uncle Bick said—or like I said to myself in the guise of Uncle Bick—home was the sky. Home was the air. There was something immensely comforting about quiet London as it glowed around me. It was waiting for me to do something. I needed to go somewhere, and somewhere would feel like home.

It occurred to me that I had arrived in this place midwalk, so I stopped to get my bearings. There looked to be some kind of intersection down ahead of me, and when I got to it, I found I was at Piccadilly Circus, by the statue of Eros. Several streets radiated off this circle, with no particular indication of which one to take. I decided to walk down the one we had driven the other day, on the way to the bookshop. It felt right. I would go to Soho.

There were lots of stores here, stores, restaurants, pubs. They were all quiet, waiting. I walked until the street turned to cobbles and became a bit narrower. Funny, I had no idea where I was going, but no anxiety about getting lost. The moon was very large, very low in the sky, and colored a bright yellowy-white. Everything was sharp and clear. Even gray stone buildings seemed to be etched sharply from the fabric of the air around them.

There was a diner at the end of this particular block. It was called Frank's Diner, and it had a big red neon sign with a neon drawing of a waitress in a pink dress with a white cap. The lights on the sign and in the windows were a bit brighter than anywhere else. It was clearly supposed to be an American-style place, but like all the American-style places I'd seen in London so far, it bore no resemblance to anything I knew. It was someone's dream of America, snatched from television and old pictures. I could have gone in anywhere, but for some reason, this diner appealed to me. Even before I opened the door, I think I knew what would be there—a long counter with silver trim with a row of round stools running along it, a revolving case of pies, glossy red vinyl booths and kitschy signs with pictures of old-timey waitresses holding up hamburgers. The whole place was empty except for one table.

I think I knew what I would find there too.

Stephen was sitting in his police uniform sweater, the dark material matching his hair. He was facing the back of the restaurant and was watchful, like he was waiting for something or someone to emerge from a door in the back.

“Stephen?” I said, but I didn't say it very loudly. The quiet of the place was too overwhelming. It felt like if I called out, the walls might come down. He didn't look over.

I stepped very carefully across the black-and-white-tiled floor, assuring myself that every step was real. I could feel the floor, hard beneath my cheap, no-name sneakers. There was even a gentle squeak as the rubber met the tile. I was perfectly in his range of vision, but still he didn't see me. The closer I got to him, the more the diner came alive. I could smell food—the heady mix of fries and burgers, all that animal fat thickening up the air. I got all the way to the table before he noticed me. He took off his glasses, blinked, and then replaced them.

“We're fine for now,” he said. “I'm waiting for my sister to come back.”

“I'm not a waitress,” I said. “It's me.”

“I'm sorry?”

I made my way into the other side of the booth. The seat was heavily stuffed and mildly buoyant, and it lifted me so my feet didn't quite touch the ground anymore. I was sitting directly in the line of his focus. He looked confused. Stephen rarely looked confused. I'm sure he felt that way all the time—we all feel confusion—but he always masked it behind something else. He'd turn his face a bit or look at his phone or read something. Now there was no mask and nothing to hide. I always thought of Stephen's face as being angular and sharp, but now I saw how wrong that was. Yes, he had a strong bony line around the nose and a firmness around the chin, but so much of what I'd taken to be hard and sharp was just the way he must have been holding himself—tense the jaw, squint the eyes to see. He wasn't trying now, and the openness of his face moved something inside of me—I mean, I really felt like something around my heart was pushed open.

There was no mark on his head that I could see, no sign of the blow that had killed him, but that mark had been small. The damage had happened when the brain bounced inside the cranium. The hurt was all on the inside, as was typical with Stephen.

I let him study me, and the intensity of his thoughts was nearly palpable.

“Rory?” he finally said.

I went through a thousand messages and words and feelings and impulses, and somehow what I came out with was:

“You're wearing your glasses.”

He touched his glasses.

“You'd think at least your eyes would get fixed,” I said, trying to smile.

“I . . . don't know what you mean? Rory?”

“It's me,” I said. “I know my hair is different, but it's me.”

I put my hand on the table. I didn't know if I could touch him wherever we were. The rules of this—whatever this was—they were unknown. He looked at my hand and shifted in his seat before tentatively putting the fingers of his right hand on the edge of the table, as if trying to reciprocate.

“I . . . I feel like you're not supposed to be here,” he said. He was speaking mostly to himself, his brow furrowed with concentration. “I'm not sure why. Rory, I—”

“It's okay,” I said. “It's okay. I swear it's okay. I came to get you.”

“Get me? Why did you come to get me?”

I thought about his body on the cold floor, the feet up on the stone, my blood dripping down. I remembered the liquid burning my throat, the rising impulse to be sick, then a cottony darkness. I had been charged to bring him back and I had landed here, wherever here was.

“I'm waiting for Regina,” he said. “She went to the toilet with her friend. She'll be right back. You can meet her.”

I think he realized there was something not right about that. Talking seemed to bring him back to the moment, so I would make him talk. I looked around the empty diner. I'd never actually seen the place before, but it felt real enough. The fact that I'd been drawn to it, that I'd found Stephen in it—it had to mean something.

“Stephen,” I said, “where are we? What is this place?”

“It's a restaurant,” he said plainly. “I came here with Regina.”

“When did you go here with Regina?”

“What do you mean? We've only just gotten here.” On saying that, confusion clouded his expression again. “I believe we did. Though I've been waiting for some time. Something must be keeping her.”

“Where did you come from?” I asked. “Where were you before this?”

He concentrated on the question. It took him a moment to find the answer, and he perked up when he did. “My parents forgot me,” he said. “They left me at school at the end of term. They went to Barbados. They forgot me. So I called Regina.”

“Your parents forgot you and left you at school,” I said.

I really hated those people.

“I phoned Regina,” he said again, in that tone of light pleasure you get when you've just found something you've misplaced. “She helped me get home, and we went to London. She said it was my weekend. I could do whatever I wanted.”

“That was a long time ago, Stephen. You were younger then. You were a kid. You're older now. Look at what you're wearing. You're in a uniform.”

Stephen blinked and studied his hands. He looked down at his chest and examined the sweater with the police insignia. He looked around at the diner again, but this time he stopped on different objects. The counter. The display case. The menu. Then he looked back at the bathrooms, where he thought his sister was.

“She's taking drugs,” he said calmly. “That's what they're doing. That's what her friend brought. That's what she was waiting for.”

This piece of information must have kicked off a chain reaction, because I saw him coming back more and more.

“You can't be here,” he said, and this time, there was more certainty in his voice. “Rory, you can't be here.”

“Well, guess what,” I said. “I'm here. And we're going to leave. Together.”

“I need to wait for Regina.”

“She's not here,” I said. Whether she was or not, I didn't know for sure, but I was pretty sure she wasn't. This place was like a spiderweb—if something moved in another part of it, I was sure I'd feel the shake, the tiny vibrations. This was like being in my own mind—I knew I was the only person in there, even though I had no actual proof of that fact.

“Come on,” I said, gesturing toward the door. Stephen did not move. This news about Regina had silenced him again, and he frowned at the back wall. I had to get him talking once more and convince him that he should come with me.

“I need you to think,” I said. “You're good at thinking. Come on. You know who I am. I'm Rory. What's the last thing you remember?”

He struggled with this one. His breathing—here, he was breathing—quickened. He took his glasses off and shut his eyes and covered his face with his hands.

“Stephen, look at me.”

I reached over and took his hands from his face.

No boom. Just my hands on his.

I held them from across the table, and he looked down. He wasn't crying, but he was struggling—a confusion so deep it had become fear. I'd never seen him like this.

“You were so pissed at me because I got kicked out of Wexford. You told me to go back to school. Do you remember?”

This got a slight nod.

“Good. That's good. You remember I was kicked out. You put a phone in my coat. You followed me. And some people took me. They kidnapped me. You came after me. Do you remember that?”

“Vaguely.” His voice was uncertain.

“Jane took me. Her name was Jane. She took me, and you followed. And there was an accident. You pulled the car you were driving in front of Jane's car.”

“I did?”

“You did,” I said, fighting to keep my voice steady. “Callum and Boo came. You guys got me out of Jane's car. You took us back to your father's flat.”

A glint of recognition at that.

“Regina destroyed the flat.”

“Regina isn't here. I'm here.”

“She tore the curtains.”

He took his hand from mine and reached up and felt along his hairline, where he'd been injured. I'm not sure he even knew why he was doing it. There was no cut there now. I saw him trying to piece it together. I think he knew, but it was a vague knowledge, like something he'd heard once, a long time ago.

“Stephen, listen to me. We were in the flat together.”

“She said I couldn't go to Eton.”

“It was us in the flat. You. Me. Callum and Boo.”

“I told her I had to go. I had to.”

Words weren't going to do it. I got up and joined him on his side of the booth. I had no idea if this was possible, but I was doing it anyway. It was the only thing to do. I took his face in my hands and for a moment he looked utterly lost, utterly hopeless.

I kissed him.

This was not like any other experience I ever had. This was not a moment in time. I'm not sure the diner was there anymore, but he was. He was warm. He was unsure at first, but he was kissing me back. His body eased, his shoulders slumped. His heart was going strong.

Wherever I was, right now, I had no desire to leave. If this was it, I would stay.

He stopped the kiss, but not abruptly. Our lips remained together for a half a minute, closed, barely touching. It was like this bit of contact was holding all of reality together. He leaned back and looked at me, and this time, he saw me. The lights were on.

“We were in the flat. There was an accident. We went to the flat. And then we . . .”