The Shadow Cabinet by Maureen Johnson

taking care of things, and electricity turned off, and water was shut off, and no one maintained anything. Apparently, it wouldn’t take long at all for the plants to come and run the place, knocking everything to the side and generally getting some long-awaited horticultural revenge.
    This was going to make finding “tree” difficult.
    The paths varied between paved and well maintained to places in the undergrowth that had been sufficiently tramped down by human feet to become bald. A few of the hardier London birds screamed in the trees, and the wind ripped through them. Highgate, I soon realized, got the name from being really high up. From some points, you could look down over London.
    I passed a few other people—cold, faintly miserable tourists clutching guidebooks in a smattering of different languages. All seemed to be wondering why they had come to a cemetery in England in December, when even the best day was a bit gloomy and spitting rain. They dutifully took pictures of the more interesting stones, and I pulled up my hood and walked past with my head turned the other way. Not that these people would have any idea who I was. It was Thorpe’s instruction, and I was feeling twitchy. The sky above looked like it planned to let loose at any moment. As it was, invisible rain was spitting in my face, and my gloveless hands were going numb in my pockets.
    The one thing I didn’t see was ghosts.
    Tree.
Really, Stephen. For a guy who loved precision and details, this is all the information he gave.
Tree.
    I reached what the map called the Egyptian Avenue, which began with a wide, sculpted archway that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Las Vegas reconstruction of ancient Egypt. It didn’t look ancient, it didn’t look Egyptian, but it did look like set dressing. Vines climbed all over the walls on either side of the arch, and these ended in a matching pair of obelisks that reminded me of the bookends that my cousin Diane used to prop up her books on auras. The archway led into an open-air corridor with a series of stone doorways on either side, tightly packed. A nice, cozy neighborhood for the dead in what amounted to a tourist attraction.
    And then, as I came out of the Egyptian Avenue, I saw what Stephen might have been talking about. There was a tree—but not just a tree—a massive honking tree, considerably larger than anything else around. It was the center of a circle of tombs that had clearly been built around it, marked on the map as the “Circle of Lebanon.” Here, the stone doorways were only a few feet apart—a collection of elegant portals to rooms that contained the dead. There was writing carved into the lintel and in the thick doorways—sometimes a line or two, sometimes long screeds. It was all snug, and extremely quiet, maybe the quietest place I’d been outdoors in London. I made my way around the circle once, then again. No one was around.
    â€œHello?” I called.
    Nothing. I tried again.
    â€œI’m looking for the Resurrection Man,” I called.
    The stones had no reply. The tree was silent.
    I walked on, to a row of tombs in a long, covered, curved passage called the Terrace on the map. All of these tombs—the Terrace, the Egyptian Avenue, the circle—these were the expensive ones. All these tiny, private cells for the richest dead people Victorian London had to offer. (So said the commentary on the side of the map.) I trailed around, making what I could of the already declining day. I wandered down path after path, past a statue of a sleeping angel on a tomb and a monument with a sculpture of a loyal dog sleeping by his master. That one made me pause and even tear up a little.
    â€œThat’s ol’ Tom Sayers,” said a voice behind me. I turned to find a man leaning against a tree. “Hero of the people. Great fighter he was. I saw him fight once. Beautiful thing to see. That there’s his dog, Lion.