The Shadow Cabinet (31 page)

“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

T
HERE
WAS
ONE
M
O
R
E
P
I
E
C
E
O
F
B
U
S
I
N
E
S
S
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.

• • •

I emerged on the blind side of the library and turned back onto the Wexford square. It was a quick thirty-pace walk to the same recessed entrance to Hawthorne. All of these buildings had been built along the same model, back when they were workhouses. This basement was largely disused as well, full of broken furniture and crates of old books. Near the steps, things got tidier. There were four laundry machines and several storage cabinets. I climbed up and went into the lobby.

The only reason I was being permitted to go inside of Hawthorne was that I had told Thorpe there was another ghost in there I needed to speak to. There wasn't, of course. Not a real one. A ghost of my life, possibly.

The building was frigid. This was no surprise. It had never been toasty warm, except for a few freak surges. I remembered how I used to sit right up against the flat radiators, trying to suck out every precious drop of heat, store it in my bones. I'd had many conversations that way. The handful of times I'd actually attempted homework, I often did it sitting on the floor, glued to the heater.

Now, with no one here but Claudia, all the main heating had been shut off, and the building was like a cold storage unit. You could easily have stored cheese anywhere. I didn't really feel the cold today. Maybe that's how English people dealt with it—they noticed it, pulled their sweaters down over their hands, and moved on. I did the same.

The only thing illuminating the hallways was a bit of milky light coming from the window at the end. They'd made a shrine of Charlotte's door. Hers was a single room, and from top to bottom, the door was covered in little notes and paper flowers. I plucked off one that said
WELCOME HOME
! I didn't recognize the handwriting, but whoever it was was deeply optimistic.

I'd never gotten the sense that Charlotte was well loved. She wasn't a warm person, but she was, now that I thought about it, a respected one. She was someone who got the job done. I suspected a lot of the first-years had left the notes. Charlotte was
their
head girl.
Their
prefect.
Their
leader with the big red head.

I put the note back where I found it and continued down the hall.

The door to my old room was not a shrine. Jazza still lived here. The message board on the door was full of scrawled notes letting Jazza know that they were leaving, wishing her a happy holiday. There were a few still-sealed Christmas cards shoved behind the board.

I used the skeleton key and opened up the room. The emptiness of the place made everything very loud. My empty furniture and stripped bed. They were waiting for me on Jazza's side. Jerome was prepared, at least to some extent. But Jaz gasped. She almost fell from the bed.

“Easy,” Jerome said, steading her.

“Hey,” I said.

She had righted herself and got up to stand. She walked over to me, very carefully, very deliberately. I thought she was coming in to hug me, but instead she landed her fist into my shoulder—not hard enough to hurt me, but hard enough to make a point.

“Where were you?” she said, choking a bit. “Where were you? All this time?”

She pulled back her hand, looking ashamed, and hugged me.

“I wanted to get in touch,” I said, over her shoulder. “I promise.”

I looked at Jerome across the room. He had folded his arms over his chest, but there was an acceptance in his face. I had to explain it all—the Ripper, the ghosts. I was not to talk about the squad, but simply to say I was under official protection. I was about to destroy the fabric of their reality, and I didn't want to do it. This may have been how Stephen felt when this happened to me, except they couldn't see what I saw. Jerome had seen the fog and the stone and the murder. He was already in deep.

“We need to talk,” I said, shutting the door. “Sit down . . .”

DECEMBER 21
HARDWELL'S BOOKSTORE, SOHO

T
HE
DAY
WAS
FREEZIN
G
COLD
—
THE
SHOP
'
S
IN
EFFECTUAL
heaters couldn't keep up. Cressida peered out of the hatch in the shelves that served as the counter. It was too cold to read, so she pulled the sleeves of one of her two jumpers down over her hands as impromptu mittens. The quiet of the shop was too much for some. People were used to more ambient noise, more music, people talking on mobiles. Hardwell's owned its quiet, and Cressida had grown accustomed to it. She could sit and look out at the shelves and be content. Good magic practice required concentration and appreciation of silence.

The tiny tinkle of the bell announced the arrival of visitors. Cressida leaned her head out far enough to see two tall figures enter. Despite the deep freeze outside, they wore no coats. The figures were close to identical. There was a man, young and shaggily blond, dressed in a light, silvery suit with a wide lapel. There was a woman who stepped in after him, her hair just a finger longer. She wore a long, deep green dress with a pattern of climbing red flowers. Neither outfit was enough protection in this weather, but they showed no signs of being cold.

The man approached the opening and unrolled a long smile. His companion, who had to be related—the resemblance was too strong—stood behind, casually running a finger down the spine of a book. He wore a little eye makeup, and she wore none at all.

“Happy Yule,” he said.

“Happy Yule,” Cressida replied.

“Nice to see some things haven't changed.” He leaned an elbow on the counter and had a look around. “One fixed point in a strange new world.”

Cressida had no idea what this meant, but working in a shop like this, you got used to people saying strange things.

“Is Clover here?” the woman asked. Her voice was gentle and quite high.

“In the back, sorting books.”

“Dearie me, working on a holiday?” The man shook his head, and his grin became more rakish. “We'll have a word with him. We're old friends. Lovely hat, by the way.”

He pointed at Cressida's woolen hat with the tiny metal disks she had so carefully knitted into the weave. The woman was already passing through down the aisle toward the back door. Her feet were obscured by her long dress, and her gait was so smooth she almost seemed to float. The man gave Cressida a mock salute before following along. In a moment, they had passed through the curtain that hid the door to the back, and Cressida continued her silent watch over the cold and silent cash register, wondering to herself why it was that Clover attracted so many freaks and outsiders.

• • •

In the back of the shop, Clover was alone, earbuds in, making himself a cup of tea. He didn't even notice the door open, though the room was small.

“Well, well,” the strange man said, “and blessed be.”

When Clover didn't turn, the woman slipped into the room and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around and regarded the strangers. His jaw dropped open, and he pulled the buds from his ears with one jerk. A trickle of chanting music spilled out and dripped on to the floor.

“A hello would be appropriate,” the man said. “Or hi, if you must.”

Clover's mouth moved, but no sound came out.

“A wave. A wink. We'll take anything, really . . .”

“Oh, Sid.” The woman walked up to Clover and draped her arm over his shoulders. “We've given him a fright.”

“We can be a lot to take in at once,” Sid said, dropping into a beaten-up chair and throwing his legs onto a wobbly tea table. “It's a fair cop. Drink it in, fair Clover. Absorb the sight.”

Clover became unsteady, and the woman helped him into a chair. She pulled his phone from his pocket and examined the device for a moment. She pulled up the earbuds and tucked one into her ear for a moment, then smiled with pleasure.

“It plays music, Sid.”

“Does it? Honestly, everything I've seen so far has been fab. I think we came back at the right time.”

Sadie handed the phone back to Clover, who accepted it and shut the music off with shaking hands.

“He's wobbling, bless him,” she said. “I'll get him his tea.”

“You are a ministering angel, Sadie.”

Sadie completed the tea making, spooning out the tea bag and adding the sugar and milk.

“A nice sweet tea,” she said, setting it down in front of Clover. “Just what you need. Drink it.”

Clover reached for it with a shaking hand while Sadie leaned by his side. He managed two large sips, and she took the cup from him and set it back down.

“Sadie?” he said, in a small voice. “Sid?”

“Present,” Sid said.

“And accounted for,” Sadie added, standing up and brushing her fingers gently through the remains of Clover's thinning hair.

“I like the beard,” Sid said, pointing. “It's very Gandalf. What do you think, Sadie?”

“It's lovely,” Sadie said, extending her arm to reach for the beard. She ran her hand down it like it was a delicate silk rope.

“You're . . .” Clover trembled a bit more and sipped some more tea. “You're . . .”

“It might save us some time if we skipped over that part,” Sid said. “Let's just say ‘here.' That covers the matter. And now that we are, who do you think we wanted to see first?”

“Out of everyone,” Sadie said, leaning into the side of the chair and half draping herself over Clover.

“Everyone,” Sid said. “At least, of the people who are still alive. We're still sorting that one out. Over forty years . . . all these people dropping dead. I don't want to take it personally, but it
feels
sort of personal. Whatever the case, you have, so politely, remained alive!”

“We're very happy,” Sadie said.

“We're delighted. So we came right around.”

Clover began to weep silently.

“Oh, Sid,” she said, stroking Clover's head some more. “I think we've upset him.”

“Should we have rung first?”

“Possibly. Turning up like this may be a bit much to take in.”

“You're right, Sadie. You're right.” Sid leaned back and put up his hands in admission. “A faux pas on our part.”

“I never . . .” Clover staggered on his own words. “I didn't . . .”

“Didn't what?” Sadie's voice was a gentle coo.

“I didn't think I'd see you again,” Clover said, breaking into a heaving cry.

“I wonder if they're all going to do this?” Sid asked his sister. “We seem to have this effect.”

They let Clover work this out for a moment. When he was finished, he dried his face and stood.

“I never knew if it would happen,” he said, “but I was ready. I prepared. I thought—I thought the time might have come. There was that event at Marble Arch, and some kids came asking about you and Jane, and they had a pig with them.”

“We met them,” Sid said. “A wonderful bunch.”

“But did you do what we needed you to?” Sadie said.

“I did. I did, Sadie. I have them. I brought them here in case . . . in case you came. And you came. I thought Jane would say, but I haven't been able to reach her. But I was ready.”

“Oh, Clover!”

“One thing I'll say about us, Sadie,” Sid said, “is that we chose well. Our family is the best family.”

“It's true,” Sadie said.

Clover looked down and smiled with pleasure.

“I never gave up hope,” he said. “Even though it was so long. You surprised me. I'm so glad to see you. I'm still . . .” He rubbed his eyes for a moment. “I'm taking it in. Forgive me.”

“There's nothing to forgive,” Sadie said.

“I keep them up front, behind the counter. I'll go and get them.”

“We'll come,” Sadie said.

“The girl doesn't know. She'll—”

“It's quite all right,” Sid said.

The three passed back into the main room of the shop, where Cressida was still staring blankly down the empty aisles. Clover hurried to the counter hatch, ushering her aside and ducking under to get to the back. There was a moment of scrabbling before he popped back under—no mean feat for such a tall man—carrying a red vinyl zippered bag with large handles.

“We should go back and . . .”

But Sadie had already taken the bag from his hands and unzipped it.

“Any joy?” Sid said.

“Boundless,” she replied. “Clover, you've a wonder.”

“An absolute star!” Sid added.

“It took a few years,” Clover said, putting his head down modestly. “I had to find them, find the money. Some of them were . . . we should maybe talk in the back.”

“No need,” Sid said. “We have no secrets.”

Cressida watched all this in silent confusion. She was completely unprepared when Sid reached over and grabbed her by the top of the head, turning it once with a quick flick, like he was twisting open a bottle. Cressida made no noise except for a slight gurgle, then she fell like a stone against the counter. Her head bounced once, and then she dropped behind the counter, vanishing from sight.

Clover jerked in reaction to this. Before he could speak, Sadie took him lightly by the arm and threw him the length of the bookstore aisle. He hit the back wall with such force that the door cracked and the curtains half fell. She glided down the aisle to examine him while Sid had a look inside of the bag.

“He's done extremely well,” he said. “I thought we might need more time to get the rest, but he appears to have gotten them all.”

Sadie bent over Clover and finished him in much the same way that Sid had done with Cressida. She came back down the aisle slowly, stopping for a moment to examine the spine of a book before plucking it from the shelf.

“Good read?” Sid asked.

“It looks like a new book.”

“I think they're mostly new books. To us, anyway.”

Sadie nodded in consideration of this fact.

“This shop was always so naff,” Sid said, looking around. “Terrible selection.”

“Very good staff, though,” Sadie said.

“Absolutely. You could never fault the staff. It's unfortunate, really. Our children grew up. They grew old. They learned a little too much.”

“This is the problem with growing old,” Sadie said.

“I'm more glad than ever that we avoided it. But Clover's hard work will not be in vain. This contains everything we need. We won't have to wait to start the party.”

“I think we've waited long enough as it is,” Sadie said, stretching out her arms. “It's time to rise. Time for everyone to rise. Oh, Sid. It's actually going to happen. It's all happening.”

“It's barely started, dear sister. The fun is yet to come.” Sid shouldered the bag. “Shall we? It's freezing in here, and I'm dying for a drink.”

The two of them left the shop, closing the door behind them politely and quietly. Once outside, they got into a buttery yellow Jaguar parked out front and drove off into the declining day.