The Shadow Cabinet: A Novel
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Synopsis
“This entrancing mix of feminism, queerness, magic and power-hungry villains makes for an intoxicating reading experience.” —Nerd Daily
In the second installment of Juno Dawson's "irresistible" fantasy trilogy (Lana Harper), a group of childhood friends and witches must choose between what is right and what is easy if they have any hope of keeping their coven--and their world--from tearing apart forever.
Niamh Kelly is dead. Her troubled twin, Ciara, now masquerades as the benevolent witch as Her Majesty's Royal Coven prepares to crown her High Preistess.
Suffering from amnesia, Ciara can't remember what she's done--but if she wants to survive, she must fool Niamh's adopted family and friends; the coven; and the murky Shadow Cabinet--a secret group of mundane civil servants who are already suspicious of witches. While she tries to rebuild her past, she realizes none of her past has forgotten her, including her former lover, renegade warlock Dabney Hale.
On the other end of the continent, Leonie Jackman is in search of Hale, rumored to be seeking a dark object of ultimate power somehow connected to the upper echelons of the British government. If the witches can't figure out Hale's machinations, and fast, all of witchkind will be in grave danger--along with the fate of all (wo)mankind.
Sharp, funny, provocative, and joyous, Juno Dawson's sequel reimagines everything you think you knew about her coven and her witches in a story that spans continents and dives deep into the roots of England and its witchcraft. Ciara, Leonie, Elle, and Theo are fierce, angry, sexy, warm--and absolutely unapologetic as they fight for what they believe in, all in the name of sisterhood.
Release date: June 20, 2023
Publisher: Penguin Books
Print pages: 526
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The Shadow Cabinet: A Novel
Juno Dawson
35 YEARS AGO . . .
Galway, Ireland
To this day, people talk about the storm that hit Ireland when Miranda Kelly went to Inishmaan. They say the sea and the sky and the cliffs were a single grey mass, and if the sun had bothered to rise at all, no one would know it.
Squeaky wipers moved water back and forth over the windscreen, and Miranda hunched over the steering wheel, squinting at the road ahead. She had a nine-hour window to get out to the island and home again before Brendan returned from Dublin. Today was her one chance. She knew she ought to be glad of his attentiveness, but their quaint fisherman’s cottage in Galway was starting to feel like a prison.
The signage for Rossaveel Port was illuminated, and she turned off the main road, the car almost drifting over surface water like a pond skater. The ferry port was well-lit and she slowed into the car park. Her stomach sank as she saw the ticket office was shut. A man in a hi-vis jacket waved her down. She lowered the window an inch or two.
He said something in Irish, gesturing at the turbulent skies.
‘I must get to the island,’ Miranda said in English, her Irish not nearly good enough.
‘Won’t be happening today, darlin’. You go on home.’ He looked at her like she was mad and hurried out of the storm.
Turning back wasn’t an option. Miranda parked the Escort and grabbed her raincoat from the passenger seat, tucking her red hair under the collar of her jumper. She stepped out into an onslaught of wind and rain. The familiar old Aran Island ferry swayed and tilted in port, a dog on a leash. Clutching her hood over her face, Miranda ran past the ferry terminal to the small marina where the fishing boats were docked, clinking and clanging in their moorings. Someone had to be on one of them.
Sure enough, there was a thin light glowing inside one of the cockpits, the silhouette of a man moving within. Miranda ran alongside the tugboat, waving frantically. The fisherman wiped condensation from the window, perhaps checking he wasn’t imagining the strange woman. ‘Hello?’ she called.
The fisherman, his white beard yellowed with nicotine, emerged from the cabin. ‘You all right there, love?’
‘I need to get to Inishmaan!’ Miranda shouted against the wind. ‘Are you sailing today?’
‘In this?’ He looked at her as if she was crazed. ‘You out of your mind?’
Miranda wanted to shake him, to scream in his face, make him understand. Instead, she fought to keep her tone even. ‘I have to.’
‘You’re on your own there, love.’ With a patronising shake of his head, he ducked back inside the cabin.
He wasn’t wrong. She couldn’t do this on her own. Miranda wasn’t a powerful enough witch to make the crossing by flight. At least not yet. As the babies grew, so did her abilities.
She had hoped it wouldn’t come to this. ‘You will take me to the island.’
He stopped dead in his tracks and turned to face her. Rain ran off his bulbous nose, cherry red from cold, or drink, or both. He looked blankly at her, almost comically vacant. ‘I will take you to the island.’
Miranda stepped, cautiously, onto the boat, cradling her swollen belly as she went. She read him. He was called Seamus. ‘Seamus, we will be safe. This I promise you. Now, go. Quick as you can.’
With a morning sickness that lasted well into most afternoons, she was used to feeling nauseous. The boat was tossed over surging, murky waters. With raw, pink hands, Miranda gripped a rail inside the cab, doing everything she could to keep the ship steady. Since she’d become pregnant, her powers had increased. Never before would she have been able to steady the vessel in such turbulent waters. It scared her. Her little coven in Galway were stumped, and even Brendan’s contacts at the Cailleacha had told her there was absolutely no evidence that unborn children harbour supernormal abilities.
So how are they doing this? What is growing inside of me?
Another wave reared over the bow and she focused her mind. If this trip became suicide, what would Brendan think of her? She had left no note, no word with the coven. No one, not even her friends, knew of her plans. Perhaps Aoife, or Laura, would figure it out. Why else would a witch be travelling to Inishmaan, least of all one in her condition?
As her concentration slipped, poor Seamus seemed to become more aware of his surroundings. ‘Keep going!’ Miranda demanded, hardly recognising the mettle in her own voice.
Away from the port, the waves seemed to calm themselves, the sea instead swelling like the belly of a great beast, breathing in and out, out and in. The little tugboat did the best it could to vault these peaks.
When the lights of the coastline became hazily visible through the spray, Miranda dropped to her knees, spent. They had almost made it. Seamus still had to steer them into harbour. Once more, Miranda used her gift to stabilise the boat, drive through the waves. The hull creaked and strained. She should have brought an elemental, let them in on her plans.
On seeing the vessel approach, a pair of men raced down from the lifeboat station, steering them into dock. One grizzled, silver-haired man threw him a line and reeled them in. ‘Seamus, man! Are you feckin’ deranged?’
Miranda pushed past Seamus on deck. ‘Leave us,’ she told the newcomer. He obeyed, both men mindlessly heading to the cottage. She turned to Seamus. ‘You will wait for me here.’ She wiped rain from her face and stepped onto the jetty, a single long strip of concrete jutting into the sea. Waves battered the port, sloshing over the gangplank. Miranda strode towards land with purpose.
In much better weather, Brendan had once brought her to the Aran Islands as a tourist. It had been many years ago, after she finally made the move to Galway, and they’d come to see the Céad on St Patrick’s Day. The islands were remote, beautiful, a taste of what Ireland was, and in places still is, hundreds of years earlier. Brendan told her they’d only got electricity here in the seventies.
The islands had an innate power of their own, a Level 1 would sense it. The millennia in the limestone sang their ancient aria as she reached the road – if you could call it that. There was a desolate taxi rank – a corrugated iron shack really – just outside the marina, and there was a light on. Thank the goddess. Inishmaan was the least populated of the islands, and she’d feared a lengthy walk.
She found the office locked, but banged on the door until a red-faced woman peered through a gap. ‘What do you want?’ she said. ‘Port’s closed today.’
‘I need to get to Doolin Cottage,’ Miranda shouted over the wind.
The woman’s face twisted in barely concealed disgust. ‘You girls comin’ from the mainland. Oh aye, we know what you’re after. Yer a disgrace; think about that poor wee child.’
Miranda’s hands flew to her bump. It wasn’t an abortion she was after. ‘It’s not what you think.’
Recognition, and then fear, flickered on the woman’s face. ‘You’ve no business here. There’s no one on this whole island who’ll take you there, witch.’
Miranda braced herself. ‘You will take me to Doolin Cottage.’
She repeated the regrettable process all the way across the island, controlling the sour woman, Gráinne, from the backseat of her taxi. Women, in general, were more wilful than men, harder to direct.
In the hills, the roads were little more than lanes, drystone walls dividing them from endless pastures, silver grasses rippling in the gales. Gráinne brought the car to a halt, rain tapping like nuts and bolts on the roof. ‘What are you doing? Keep going.’
‘It’s up there,’ she replied, her voice leaden. ‘You have to walk from here. No roads to where you’re going.’
‘Very well. Wait here.’ The command would ruminate in the woman’s mind for an hour or so at least. It bought her some time.
Miranda fastened her soggy coat once more, and stepped into the endless weather. Lashed by wind, she shouldered her way uphill, following a well-trodden, muddy track. She was almost over the hump before she saw first a ramshackle stone wall, and then the half-ruined cottage beyond it. It squatted, a thatched gargoyle on the hill, overlooking the cliffs in the distance. No one would come here by happenstance, and perhaps that was the point.
A rusted gate hung off its hinges, and Miranda took care not to rip it off entirely. There was no garden as such, only a handful of spindle trees with few leaves to show for themselves. Dim paraffin light hummed from inside the cottage. Someone was home. Miranda knocked on the rickety front door and waited, her throat tight.
Old Biddy Needles. There wasn’t a witch in Ireland who didn’t know the name, and there’s not much scares witches, but they knew not to darken her door. When there was no reply, Miranda knocked once more. ‘Mrs Cleary? Are you there?’ She heard footsteps from within. ‘My name is Miranda Kelly. I’m a sister. Galway coven.’
A floorboard creaked on the other side of the door. ‘What brings you here, sister?’ The voice was old, tremulous.
Miranda almost wept with relief. ‘I need you. I didn’t know where else to go.’
The door opened and the heat of a fire greeted her, followed by a tinge of sage, and rabbit meat. ‘You better come in, then,’ Biddy said, stepping aside.
The old woman was now very old, hunched and unsteady on her feet. Her whole head was concealed by a thick, black lace veil through which Miranda could only make out the faintest suggestion of a face. A veil of mourning, it was said, for her former husband’s betrayal. She had worn it for almost a hundred years if rumours were to be believed.
‘Sit, child. Warm yourself by the fire. The ash went before the oak, and now comes the soak . . .’
‘Thank you,’ Miranda said. The cottage was tiny, two small rooms divided by a single wall. She didn’t like to think where the bathroom was. Dead rabbits and pheasants hung in the kitchen area, and there was a hunk of soda bread on the side. At least the room was warm. That was welcome. She took a stiff wooden chair instead of the well-dented, threadbare armchair.
Biddy returned to the fireplace with her sewing kit; a tidy, leather-bound case. ‘You
are with child?’
‘Twins,’ Miranda said. Biddy waited for her to continue. ‘Something isn’t right.’ It came out as a breathless sob, a mixture of unburdened, blessed relief and exasperation. ‘They all say I’m mad; my husband, the doctors, my friends. They tell me to relax; they tell me that the babies are fine, but I swear to Gaia, something is wrong. I just know it.’
‘A mother always does,’ Biddy said, opening her case. ‘Lay by the fire. Take off your blouse.’
The old woman rested a woollen blanket on the hearth, and Miranda did as instructed, neatly folding her soaked blouse on the chair. ‘Will this hurt?’
‘No more than not knowing,’ Biddy said.
Miranda lay flat on her back, looking up at the gaps in the thatched roof. With papery fingers, Biddy ran a gentle hand over her bump. ‘How far gone?’
‘Four months.’
‘Not too late then,’ she said, and Miranda knew exactly what she meant. It wasn’t just witches who sought Biddy’s services. Women of all ages came from all over Ireland if they were in trouble. The Gardaí knew, no doubt, but wouldn’t dare tackle Biddy Cleary.
She found herself unable to look away as Biddy withdrew the longest sewing needle from the kit. Unlike anything else in the cottage, it gleamed. The witch held it over the flames a second and then, with the speed of a far younger woman, pricked the flesh of her abdomen and removed it. It was over in the blink of an eye.
Biddy then lifted her veil, just enough for Miranda to see the taut, burned skin of her chin. With a pointed tongue, she licked the blood off the needle’s tip. Miranda heard her breath falter, tremble. Biddy passed the needle through the flame again and struck once more. She repeated the tasting.
And then she said nothing.
‘Well?’ Miranda asked when she could bear the silence no longer. Biddy used the armchair to rise to her feet. Miranda too sat up. ‘Tell me! What do you see?’
Biddy dropped her needle in a bowl of boiled water and set it aside. ‘You will have twins, girls, identical in appearance, but you knew this.’
‘Yes.’ Miranda sat by the fire, but was frozen, arms wrapped around her body. ‘Are they healthy, though?’
‘Oh yes,’ Biddy said
without hesitation.
Miranda clutched her stomach. ‘Oh bless the goddess,’ she breathed.
Biddy Needles sat in her armchair. ‘They will be as beautiful as they are powerful, both. Immensely so. Adepts.’
Miranda’s spirits lifted for a brief, glorious moment – the first second of peace in weeks. Perhaps Brendan was right and she was simply a first-time mother, anxious and paranoid. In a year or so, she’d look back on this day and laugh, even telling her friends about her flit to Aran. Only then Biddy went on.
‘But I’m very sorry to say, Miranda, beauty and power is all your daughters will have in common. For while one will be kind, generous and loving, the other will consort with the devils.’
Miranda’s eyes widened. ‘What?’
‘I’ll say it plain. One will be good, and the other evil.’
Roberts, Moira
To me; Kaur, Sandhya
Morning Niamh
Just to say I’m thinking of you today. I do hope we get a moment after the ceremony to talk about your inauguration. We really must get a date in the diary, I insist. The Shadow Cabinet down in London are getting very twitchy, and the Americans are interfering. After everything that happened with Helena, I think there are somewhat understandable worries about our authority. Crowning a new HP is the fastest way to show them it’s very much business as usual.
There’s nothing official set for Samhain? How’s your diary looking?
See you this afternoon,
M
Oh and sorry to be a pest but pls give Sandhya access to your diary so she can organise your schedule asap.
Moira Roberts
Chief Cailleach of Scotland
Interim High Priestess– Her Majesty’s Royal Coven
Chapter OneREMEMBRANCE
Ciara – Hebden Bridge, UK
Ding dong, the witch is dead.
She could not rid her head of the tune as the casket vanished into the earth. It was driving her spare.
Petty, certainly, but Ciara couldn’t help but be a tad disappointed at the turnout. There would have been scores of mourners if people knew who was really in the coffin. As it was, it was a pathetic affair; only a handful of faces from her past gathered around the open grave in a clearing in an autumnal Bluebell Meadow. That’s what they, and they alone, had called it as children. The leaves were on the turn, a reminder – as if one were needed – that all life is temporal. Ciara chose this glade because this is where she would want to be buried if she had a say in it. One of the more unusual perks of burying your own corpse, she supposed.
Despite a sullen grey sky, the clearing, miles deep inside the woods of Hardcastle Crags, was as beautiful now as it was then, if smaller than her vague memories of it. It had rained yesterday, and her nose was full of mulch, moss and damp bark, of spiderwebs and nettles. The forest was beginning its yearly compost.
The clump of mourners wore black, which didn’t feel right. The times they’d played here were happy ones. Hide and seek and fairy wars when they were younger, and later a place to flex their powers in private. Those long, long school holidays; Calippo lollies and daisy chains. Making dams in the beck. Learning all the B*Witched dance routines on MTV Hits. Those days.
She was glad to have them; the memories, that was. She had so few.
It made little sense that such vintage recollections remained intact, while the final years before her coma were blank. It was as if Niamh had demolished them from most recent backwards. Everything was black:
endless, yawning black. Ciara remembered nothing of her adult life, except what she’d gleaned from other people once she’d got to Hebden Bridge, and it was terrifying. Unsettling that she could almost taste those ice lollies on her tongue, but couldn’t fully remember how she’d wound up in that hospital.
Ciara, awake now. Darling, it’s me. It’s time to wake up at long last. You must awaken. Kill her, kill her now, and find me at once.
Ciara flinched. She remembered that part vividly. She remembered suddenly looming over her sister in that hospital, and—
Everything that followed.
She remembered Hale’s voice, as clear as Hebden Beck in her mind.
Find me at once.
She knew one thing: she had to find Dabney Hale. But how? And where? So, she’d come here, to the only place she remembered. Hebden fucking Bridge. Her sister’s home. And now, her sister’s resting place.
Fuckin’ Niamh, eh? She’d really done a number on her. Ciara knew that much. As such, she would not feel a second’s guilt over what had happened at the safehouse. She would not.
Ciara drew a deep breath in and timed it out. Pull your shit together. She couldn’t risk a meltdown. Not here, not now. Sheila Henry took her place at the head of the grave. A grave containing her body. Her old body. She’d traded it in.
‘We return our sister Ciara Kelly to the earth.’ Sheila – unchanged since they were kids – started the service. As much a part of town life as the bridge itself, Ciara could well believe the vicar had looked like a fifty-year-old butch since she was born. ‘There, she will live again in Gaia, one with her great creation. Her sister, Niamh, has asked to say a few words . . .’
It took Ciara a second to remember she was Niamh now. She sprang into action. ‘Yes! Sorry, miles away.’
‘Quite all right, deary, you take your time.’ She joined Sheila at the head of the grave, milking the procession. Funerals are inherently camp, such morbid theatre. She wished she’d had time to source a hat with a veil attached. Below, in the hole in the ground, was a simple
wooden box. Witches didn’t bother with expensive lacquered coffins that would only slow their inevitable return to the earth.
Sheila stood aside to allow Ciara, or Niamh, her big moment. Where to start? I can’t deny I have some lingering regrets about smothering my twin sister after appropriating her body, but it was chiefly unavoidable.
The white-hot, blinding, rage she had felt in that moment. The vector stone. She hadn’t had a choice. She felt for the ruby in her coat pocket now, rolling it between her thumb and forefinger. It was hardly bigger than a grain of sand but had contained a supernova. Now that the curse had played out, it was just a pretty gemstone, harmless. But, fuck; the charge it had given her, the fury. The spell that caused the soul transfer was immense. Ciara had felt it course through her like a million volts, giving her the strength to—
In the crowd, Leonie Jackman frowned, and Ciara buried the sour feeling as deeply as she could. She must remain impenetrable.
She tried to pass off her hesitation as a moment of fey sorrow. They all looked to her now, their eyes full of, not grief, but pity for Niamh. They didn’t mourn wayward Ciara Kelly, but rather the toll it would take on poor, dear, love-sponge Niamh. Everyone loves Niamh Kelly, she’s a fucking basket of kittens and puppies, that one. Leonie and Elle looked on with sympathy, side by side with her sister, even now. If only they knew the real Niamh.
‘My sister was far from perfect.’ An understatement. ‘But she was my sister all the same. We shared a womb, and a home, and a childhood. I have no memories in my head that don’t have my sister in them.’ And it was true. Niamh had always been there. Ciara had thought her a constant.
Elle started to cry noisily. At her side, a teenage girl with pastel pink hair handed her a tissue. Holly: Elle’s daughter. A child Ciara had no memory of whatsoever.
In the fortnight since she’d escaped her prison, she’d urgently tried to fill some gaps; reading minds where she could, gleaning facts and figures. She’d started in haste at the hospital, right after she’d . . . well.
With the ruby’s curse still lava in her veins, Ciara had been disoriented, almost drunk, in the giddy moments after. She sat a while in the visitor armchair, staring at the lifeless body on the bed. Pale. Eyes vacant. There was a single strand of hair stuck to its lip.
Gaia only knows how long she sat for. Could have been minutes, could have been hours. All she knew was Dabney’s message, replaying over and over in her reverie.
Find me.
Why? What for? Why now? What have I done?
When her heart rate felt human again, Ciara had left the attic cell.
It was then she had read the elderly nurse who’d been caring for her at the safehouse. Mildred, a woman who smelled of Germolene, had been changing the bed sheets in another bedroom when Ciara encountered her on her way downstairs. She saw the opportunity and took it. Sneaking up on her from behind, she clamped her right hand down onto her frizzy grey head. Poor Mildred had let out only the briefest cry before flopping onto the bed, out cold. Ciara rinsed the old woman’s mind, looking for any clues as to who, where, why, when.
The fact she’d been in that bed for NINE FUCKING YEARS had been a shock to say the naked minimum. Niamh fucking owed her a thirtieth, the cunt. The blanks the nurse filled in had somewhat helped, but it was less fruitful when it came to what had happened to Ciara personally because Mildred only knew hearsay about her past: ...
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