The Shadow Cabinet (25 page)

“Stephen?” I called. “Stephen!”

It was all just light blindness. Home—it throbbed. It was taking me over. I couldn't stay here. Stephen couldn't be here with me. These things didn't go together. I heard him calling for me, and his voice sounded like he was at the other end of a long, empty hallway, not in a small, quiet room. I pulled myself from my bed and stumbled out into the hallway and down the stairs, the sunspots crowding my eyes. I continued calling for him as I made my half-blind way down to the living room. The screen doors were wide-open, but the view outside was blurry—like an out-of-focus picture of a yard. I went out anyway and found myself in a very different day from the hot and sunny one. The sky was restored to a slate gray, and the house was gone. The air was cool, and we stood in a London park, with Marble Arch maybe a hundred feet away. Stephen was a few yards away.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“What the hell was that?” I asked, pointing at the spot where the house had been.

“I'm not sure that can actually be known,” he said. “It seems to be a place that presents to us things that are familiar, things that compel us to stay. It gets inside of us. I suppose it knows what we want.”

If that was the case, Stephen had just seen all too clearly what was inside of me. I turned away in embarrassment and looked at the expanse of park that had reappeared all around. The only difference this time was that the park had been denuded of trees, making the gentle roll of the green lawns clearly visible. There was nothing beyond the park—no London to see. It was just green field. Sid and Sadie's car was nowhere in sight.

“Something about this place washes out your mind and makes you forget a lot of things,” he went on. “It takes away everything except what you most want. I wanted to see my sister. You want to go home.”

I couldn't figure out if he was lying to make the awkwardness go away, or if that's what he had actually taken from what had just transpired. I also couldn't figure out if I should be relieved or disappointed.

I found myself leaning toward disappointed.

“So what now?” I said.

“I believe that's the way out,” he said.

I turned around to see him pointing at Marble Arch, which had appeared at the edge of the park.

25

I
HADN
'
T
ACTUALLY
SEEN
M
ARB
LE
A
RCH
BEFORE
,
BUT
I
T
WAS
easy enough to identify. It was, as the name implied, a massive arch made of white stone that must have been marble. It was the obvious destination, and so we walked toward it. It seemed close, but we walked for five minutes, and then ten, and we were no closer. It was like the grass was rolling under us, treadmill style. We still couldn't go.

“What's the Shadow Cabinet?” I said again.

“Rory . . .”

“When it came up, things got weird.”

Stephen looked at his hands. He put them in his pockets and took them out again.

“We're here because of all the things we didn't tell each other,” I said. “I didn't tell you about Jane. I didn't tell you I got kicked out. I didn't tell you where I was really going. If I'd told you, you wouldn't have had to chase me. I might not even have gone. Then this wouldn't have happened. But it did, and I came here for you. And you—you don't tell people things all the time. And I know it's your job, I know all that, but, a lot of it? Is because you don't tell people things. What's the Shadow Cabinet?”

“I can't—”

“
Look at where we are,
” I yelled.

“I know!”

I'd never heard Stephen yell. It was a rumbling, distressing noise. He turned on his heel and walked away a few paces, then turned back.

“All of these problems started because you came here.” His voice was cold—artificially so. I knew what he was doing. It was pretty obvious. He was trying to say something to make me go. Stephen was many things, but a good liar wasn't one of them. Not for things like this.

“So you don't care about me,” I said. “And you wish you'd never met me? Is that it?”

“You cause problems. I—”

“Stephen,” I said. “Stop.”

He pulled his glasses off and angrily rubbed his hair.

“I don't know where I am,” he said, his breath coming quick. “But I know it's real, and I know you came here for me, and I don't know how to process that. I know I can't let this happen to you.”

“No one's asking you,” I said. “I came here myself.”

“
Why?
”

There was the question. He genuinely didn't get it. The blankness on his face was real.

“I haven't actually
met
your family,” I said, “but if I do? I think I'm going to do a lot of punching.”

“This isn't a joke.”

“I'm not laughing,” I said. “Somehow, you ended up this way where you think you can sacrifice yourself for everyone and no one can do it for you. I know. I read your file.”

This didn't help. In fact, as I said it, a hollowness came over his expression, and I knew I had inadvertently screwed up. I think Stephen was prepared for a certain amount of personal information getting out, but me reading that file was somehow wrong.

“Your things,” I said, “we had to take them. All the file said was that you were really good but that you didn't take care of yourself—”

“What it said,” he cut in, with real anger, “was that I was unstable.”

“It didn't say that at all.”

He made a noise of disgust and walked off in the direction of the ever-elusive arch. I followed. It eluded us some more. He sat on the ground, and I sat next to him, our legs side by side.

“We don't get out until I talk, is that it?” he said wearily.

“Unless you have a better idea.”

He flicked some remains of the grass from his knee.

“What I say now,” he said, “it doesn't go back with us. It stays here. This is critical, Rory.”

I wanted to press into his side. I wanted to hold him, to do everything we'd done before and more—but this was serious. I held my body rigidly in position, in listening mode.

“They recruited me after I joined the squad,” he said. “It's an organization. They aren't government. They're . . . they're beyond that. It's the living and the dead. Its entire function is to keep London secure, and it does that by being secret. Once you join, you're in. That's it. You don't quit. It's always your top priority. They first came to me when I joined the squad. They followed me, watched me. They started to explain how it all worked. At least, the parts I'm allowed to know.”

He concentrated, looking at his knees, then at me.

“The boundaries between the living and the dead, they used to be better understood. As we're evidence of, they're permeable. London is what you might think of as a place of passage—a port city, places where the water meets the land. There are several like it: Paris, Giza, Rome, Shanghai, Baghdad, New York, Santiago, New Delhi, São Paulo, Alexandria, a few others. New Orleans is one, actually. When I saw that's where you were from, when I first met you, I thought you might be one of us. I figured out pretty soon you weren't, but I don't think it's a coincidence you come from there. It's a powerful place.”

He glanced over at me for a moment.

“These places of passage tend to be in cities because humans instinctively gather at them, often because of the rivers. The rivers are key. A long time ago, protections were put down to try to strengthen these unstable places. That's the thing about all of this—we always think of humans as gaining knowledge as we go on, but we used to know a lot more, about this at least. The system of protection was extremely complex, with some of it being visible and some of it being hidden. In some places, it didn't hold very well. Those places tend to have problems. Still, as long as there's some kind of barrier, things generally work as they should. In London, a series of eight powerful stones were placed in key locations. The seventh stone was designed to move and was traditionally put in the crown of the king, but it was stolen, and it was smashed.”

“The Eye of Isis,” I said.

“The Eye of Isis. The terminus. How do you know about that?”

“Freddie.”

“Freddie. Of course. It doesn't surprise me that she knows something about it.”

“She'd heard of the Shadow Cabinet, but she didn't think it was a real thing. She didn't think termini were real either.”

“Well, it sounds absurd. It's meant to. The Shadow Cabinet generates some of the more implausible stories about itself. They even adopted the name just so people would be confused by the fact that there's a government body with the same title. But the name fits. We work in the shadows and deal with the shadows. Some real information about the group and its work is out there, but not much. The Eye of Isis and the Oswulf Stone are the two stones that are generally known to those who look around enough.”

“What about the others?”

He shook his head.

“You can't say,” I said.

“No,” he said. “Nor do I know the full picture. It's safer that way. Our job is to protect those stones. Telling people we exist means telling people about what really protects London.”

“And what happens if they're moved? What's so bad about it?”

He looked up and blinked into the sunny day that stretched above us.

“Things fall apart,” he said. “I think it depends on what you believe. Do you remember when Newman was quoting Revelation during the Ripper scare?”

“‘The name of the star is Wormwood,'” I said. I knew my Revelation because our local seafood place put a quote from it up every week on their sign. This is why we called it Scary Seafood. I could instantly recall images of seals breaking and lions and lambs and blood, all mixed in my memory with the smell of fried shrimp.

“So,” I said, “not good.”

“No.”

We fell silent for a few moments.

“Are Callum and Boo in the Shadow Cabinet?”

He shook his head no.

“Thorpe?”

“Has no idea it exists. At least one member of this squad has always been in the Shadow Cabinet. I was recruited because of the three terminus stones. They're part of the Eye of Isis. The Eye of Isis was broken into a dozen pieces. We had three, just three. Now we have one.”

He looked at me again, but this time his gaze was steady, and sad.

“Me,” I said. “Your job is to protect me.”

“It became my job the moment the power of the stone went into you.”

I couldn't understand why this made him look so sad.

“So what?” I said. “We know what I am.”

“I'm saying . . .” He inhaled deeply. “I'm saying I have a job I have to do that's much bigger than me and how I feel. I'm supposed to keep you safe. I'm supposed to keep you in London. It's very, very complicated.”

“It's not that complicated. I'm still me.”

“Believe me. I know. But I'm alone in thinking that way. To the Shadow Cabinet, you're a stone. You're a thing to be watched and kept. It matters. You don't understand. It's all that matters.”

There was such finality to it that the conversation seemed to fall to the ground. It was quiet in the park, with all of London's noise put away. No birds. No wind. Just us. Stephen had told me his secret, and yet, we were still here, still staring at Marble Arch in the distance.

“Jane has two terminus stones,” I said, almost as an afterthought. “They were Sid and Sadie's. She has them in a locket around her neck.”

“Jane? Has two terminus stones?”

“Like the ones you had.”

That would have been such critical information before. Now it felt like a minor detail. I continued to turn what Stephen had said over in my mind.

“Did you come after me because I'm a stone?” I asked. “Is that the only reason you're interested in me?”

“I would have done that no matter what,” he said.

“But is that why you—you know. What we did. Did you just pretend to like me?”

“Rory, I don't think you understand—”

I didn't get to hear what it was I didn't understand, because there was one noise. A car, purring along. It wasn't so much that it was a loud sound as much as it was the only other sound in that moment. Everything else went on mute and the atmosphere was filled with the gentle rumble of the car.

“They're here,” he said. “I think we need to go.”

When we stood, I saw the yellow car slowly making its way around the edge of the park. We started walking again. This time, however, we made progress. In fact, we seemed to be in front of the arch in a moment. Directly at the center, there was a Tube entrance—the familiar red-and-blue circular sign, an opening, and a set of stairs leading down.

“That's not where the Marble Arch Tube entrance is located,” Stephen said. “It's across the street.”

“This isn't the Tube,” I said.

“No.”

The car was at the curb. I heard the doors open but didn't turn around to look. This was the end. I knew it because when I looked down the steps, I saw nothing at all. It wasn't just that it was dark or shadowy—it was nothing.

“Come on,” I said.

“You go. I'll follow.”

Like I said, Stephen was a bad liar.

“Together,” I said.

“Rory—”

“Together.”

“Rory, they can't come back with us. I can't let it happen.”

He sounded sad, but it was nothing compared to how I felt.

“Okay,” I said. “Then I guess we both stay here.”

“Rory—”

“Stop saying my name,” I said to Stephen. “Here's what
you
need to understand. What happened the other night? It was kind of important. It was kind of
the most important thing.
You matter to me. I had to watch you die, and I am not doing that again. So either you come with me, or we're both staying.”

“Darlings!” Sid called.

They were walking toward us calmly, like we were meeting for a picnic in the park. Sid raised a hand in greeting and smiled.

“There's nothing you can do,” I said.

“There's always something. This is my duty. This isn't a discussion.”

“You're right,” I said. “It's not.”

I pushed him down the steps. I guess he was in no way expecting this. I saw the surprise. I saw that his body didn't lock and guard like it does if you know you're going to fall. He stumbled against the wall, then rolled down a few steps, and I saw him knock his head, and then I couldn't see him at all.

His head . . . his head? Again?

Sid and Sadie were still a bit in the distance, but coming closer. Now I understood—I had been charged with getting all three of them out. If I wanted Stephen, Sid and Sadie were coming too. They would pass through, or none of us would pass through.

It was time for me to go. I rushed down the steps, into the void, and then I—