The Shadow Cabinet (19 page)

“He needs you,” she said. “You are the only person who can help him. You can help everyone. All you need to do is tell me.”

“And I'm supposed to believe you?”

“What I propose can
only
help us both. If my friends wake, Stephen wakes. I promise to you, on all I hold sacred—I promise on blessed Demeter herself—”

“Blessed Demeter,” Jack said.

“Blessed Demeter,” Charlotte echoed.

“I promise to her and her daughter that I will keep my word to you. We will wake him. We will wake my friends. We will serve the greater good. May my soul be locked away forever if I lie, down in the depths of Hades.”

There was little question in my mind that she meant this. A reverential silence had blanketed the room. Charlotte even put her head down, like she was praying.

All I had to do was tell her where to find a rock. That was it. I didn't really know anything about this rock except that if it brought back Stephen, it was a rock worth having.

“Please, Rory,” Jane said. “If you delay, we'll be forced to be aggressive. We will find out where it is. Jack, show her.”

Jack pulled something from his pocket that I thought was a harmonica at first—because of course Jack would have a harmonica. Of course, Rory. But it was that shape and size, and it had some pearled inlay on the surface. He flicked his wrist, and a blade came out. He stood over Thorpe's body on the floor, one leg on either side. He leaned down and put the blade at Thorpe's eye.

“Stop it,” I said.

“Rory, that's up to you. I don't want that to happen. I don't want to hurt Stephen here either. Or the doctor. But we must know. This is bigger than all of us.”

Thorpe, Stephen, Dr. Marigold . . . even Charlotte, whatever had happened to her. All of these people needed me
now.
We could work something out later. We always did. I needed to do something now.

“Rory, Jack's impatient,” Jane said quietly.

Jack moved, and I put up my hand.

“It's under a pub,” I said, “called the Boatman. It's somewhere near Marble Arch. The stone's in the basement, in the floor.”

Jane grasped both my hands.

“That's good, Rory,” she said. “That's very good. It pains me you don't know the good you do.”

Charlotte came around and clapped her hands on my shoulders, like I'd done something in field hockey aside from get hit in the faceguard with the ball.

“I want to stay here with him,” I said. “Let me stay here with him.”

“That's fine,” Jane said. “There's time now. You stay with your friend. We will prepare. You have done a great thing today, Rory.”

I looked down at Stephen's sleeping face and wondered what he would make of all of this, then I decided not to think about that again.

THE BOATMAN PUB
LANCASTER GATE, LONDON

A
LLIE
L
AN
GLY
NEEDED
TO
WORK
O
N
HER
“
NO
.” S
UCH
A
simple word.
No.
“No, I don't want to come to your Christmas party, Gertie. I'd rather dip my hair in the shredder.” “No, Gert. The last time I went out with you, you came back to my flat and vomited on my cat.” “Actually, Gert, I'm going to have myself put into a medically induced coma that day. Sorry.”

That's all it would have taken.

Gertie worked with the worst people in the entire world. They'd only left uni last year and they weren't even good friends while they were there, so why did Allie feel so
obligated
all the time? If she'd said no, she would have been at home. Her roommates were out at their own party, so she would have had the flat to herself. She would have gotten a nice Indian takeaway, which she would have spread out on the coffee table. She could watch telly on her own, then take a nice long bath with no interruptions—a proper bath, with music on and a book and a cup of tea. It would have been heaven.

But Allie couldn't say no. It was like she was physically unable to do it. And now here she was, at some pub in the middle of London, surrounded by people she didn't know and didn't want to know. They were all pissed. The normal Christmas party things were all present and correct—Christmas crackers, paper crowns, Bing Crosby and Slade playing in the background. There was awkward, drunken dancing and toffee vodka shots. There was a lot of talk of branding. And then, to top it all off, someone knocked over an entire tray of pints, which went crashing to the ground. Allie jumped out of the way, but everyone around was soaked to the knee. Allie turned when this happened and saw a slip of a girl duck under the bar and pass through a door marked
EMPLOYEES ONLY
. Maybe she was going for a mop.

Instead of looking sorry about the accident, the people Gert worked with laughed. Sure. That's funny, Allie thought. Make the people from the pub clear all that out of the carpet, a dozen glasses broken. That's hilarious.

The mess and broken glass were cleared away, and Allie was pulled around the room to stand there while Gertie talked about things and people Allie knew nothing about. She had to do something. She had to stand up for herself. If she went right now, she could catch the bus, she could still be home by seven, she could still get the curry and get a full night's telly in. All she had to do was make a move.

“Gert,” she said, “I think I'm going to—”

Gert turned toward her and grinned, like she'd just remembered Allie was there.

“I need a ciggie,” Gert said, pulling on Allie's arm. “Come on, come on.”

Another thing Allie hated was smoking, and standing outside in the drizzle so people could smoke. Again, no. If she could only say
no.
What was wrong with her? They went outside, where London traffic pulsed around them. The pavements were crowded with people pushing their way to and from Oxford Street. This was the worst possible place to be—the middle of the shopping district right before Christmas. Getting home would be a nightmare. And it was cold. They moved around to the side of the pub. There was a white van parked there. Two doors set into the pavement were flapped open. These kinds of doors—the ones actually set in the ground where people walked—always made her nervous. But this was not a delivery. She watched as a bit of paving stone was pulled out of the doors on a rope.

Gertie was drunk and kept fumbling with her lighter in the rain.

“Gert,” Allie said, “I'm just going to . . .”

There was something a bit odd about the young men in the coveralls. She wasn't sure what. Maybe it was that they looked so young. Maybe it was the extreme blondness of the hair on the tall lad, and how he wore his hair slicked over to the side with a flat-top cap.

“Oh!” Gert yelped. “I need to show you the
most hilarious text
 . . .”

Allie moved just in time as Gertie flailed around with her lit cigarette while she dug around in her bag. That would have been her hair on fire or a hole burned in her new jacket. Stupid Gertie and her stupid cigarettes. Why did she agree to come outside with smokers?

Also, these people with the van, they were definitely strange. The girl she'd seen slip under the bar popped out of the opening and got in the back of the van. The blond boy shut the delivery bay doors. He looked up and saw Allie watching and smiled in a way that made Allie very uneasy, then he doffed the cap before hopping into the van. It almost hit Gert as they pulled out.

“Did you see that?” Gert said, wheeling around. “Did you see . . . I should get the registration number . . .”

Allie watched in some amusement as Gert tried to type the numbers into her phone, but the van was already gone, slipping into the mad traffic.

“Forget it,” Gertie said. “I don't even want to smoke now. Let's go back.”

“Actually? I'm just going to—”

“Oh, you can't leave.”

This was her moment. This was the test.
Say you are going home.

“Actually, Gert, I really need to . . .”

“Did you feel that?”

Allie had felt it—a rumble under the pavement. It lasted for about twenty seconds.

“Probably the Tube,” Allie said, pointing at the Tube sign across the road.

“I come here all the time. I've never felt that. That wasn't the Tube.”

Truth be told, it was a pretty strong vibration. Then it hit again—another pulse. Then a distant, muffled sound of people yelling. Allie and Gert both watched as people began spilling out of the Tube at the entrance of the park. And as they did so, something began to change in the air itself. The rainy night air felt like it was thickening. A fog began to take over, developing around them. Within a minute, it was so thick that Allie didn't see the cracks that were beginning to form in the pavement under their feet.

London fog is like fish and chips, salt and vinegar, crown and jewels, tea and biscuits. Jack the Ripper hid in it. Sherlock Holmes hurried through it. Every character in Dickens stood in a clump of it. Poets rhapsodized about it. Painters tried to snare it and stick it to a canvas. It mostly vanished fifty or sixty years ago, when the coal fires stopped and people got more serious about the environment. You couldn't burn just
anything
anymore and send orphans up the chimney to deal with the mess. Modern London is a responsible place, and its air is relatively clean and clear.

So people forgot that the fog wasn't always such a nice thing. It was the city's dark shadow, echoing between the rivers and the chimneys and the sky. It came in various colors—not just gray, but brown, black, yellow, or green. It didn't always stay outside. It crept into homes. It lingered in corners. Occasionally, the fog would kill. People wandered in front of carriages and into rivers; some simply choked from the sheer weight of it. The fog could turn day to night and breathable air into poison. Water could combine with pollutants and turn into hydrochloric acid and burn out your eyes. In four days in December of 1952, the London fog killed twelve thousand people.

Still, the fog returned from time to time, squatting over the city like a long-absent dragon guarding the precious things below. This fog was greater than all those fogs together. It poured out of the Tube entrance like milk, and the voices of the people in it were silenced instantly. It took the Tube entrance and it took the pub and it took Allie and Gert too. It stopped spreading at that point and stayed precisely where it was, a formation of white, made of quiet.

Around that end of Hyde Park, the people outside the fog looked on. They pulled out phones and took pictures. Then, very quietly, like a frost, the windows of the buildings and every car window along the street began to show spider cracks. The cracking started from the ground-floor windows in single cracks that grew up and up like the branches of a tree. The cracks inexplicably skipped from pane to pane, not minding the frames. Then they spread to the next story, oblivious to the bricks and mortar, then the next story, until each reached the top story of its respective house. There, the branches grew so dense that every pane went white with breaking.

And then, like an orchestra moving in unison to one great, final note, every window on the street exploded at once.

From Golgonooza the spiritual Four-fold London eternal

In immense labours & sorrows, ever building, ever falling,

Thro' Albion's four Forests which overspread all the Earth

From London Stone to Blackheath east: to Hounslow west:

To Finchley north: to Norwood south. . . .

All things begin & end in Albion's ancient Druid rocky shore. . . .

William Blake,

from Milton: A Poem