“There was a time when all I had to do was smile.…” He smiles now, flashing a pair
of fake teeth that don’t fit quite right.
“Sir, I’m not here to kiss you.”
He adjusts his direction at the sound of my voice, pivoting in his chair until he’s
nearly facing me, and lifts his chin. “Then what are you knocking on my door for,
little lady?”
“My family is renovating the coffee shop downstairs, and I wanted to introduce myself.”
He gestures to his wheelchair. “I can’t exactly go downstairs,” he says. “Have everything
brought up.”
“There’s…an elevator.”
He has a sandpaper laugh. “I’ve survived this long. I’ve no plans to perish in one
of those metal death traps.” I decide I like him. His hand drifts shakily up to his
mouth, removes the stub of his cigarette. “Bishop. Bishop. Betty brought in a muffin
that was sitting in the hall. Suppose you’re to blame for that.”
“Yes, sir.”
“More of a cookie person, myself. No offense to the other baked goods. I just like
cookies. Well, suppose you want to come in.”
He slides the wheelchair back several feet into the room, and it catches the edge
of the carpet. “Blasted device,” he growls.
“Would you like a hand?”
He throws both of his up. “I’ve got two of those. Need some new eyes, though. Betty’s
my eyes, and she’s not here.”
I wonder when Betty will be back.
“Here,” I say, crossing the threshold. “Let me.”
I guide the chair through the apartment to a table. “Mr. Nix,” I say, sitting down
beside him. I set the copy of the
Inferno
on the worn table.
“No
Mr.
Just Nix.”
“Okay…Nix, I’m hoping you can help me. I’m trying to find out more about a series
of”—I try to think of how to put this politely, but can’t—“a series of deaths that
happened here a very long time ago.”
“What would you want to know about that for?” he asks. But the question lacks Angelli’s
defensiveness, and he doesn’t feign ignorance.
“Curiosity, mostly,” I say. “And the fact that no one seems to want to talk about
it.”
“That’s because most people don’t know about it. Not these days. Strange things, those
deaths.”
“How so?”
“Well, that many deaths so close together. No foul play, they said, but it makes you
wonder. Weren’t even in the paper. It was news around here, of course. For a while
it looked like the Coronado wouldn’t make it. No one would move in.” I remember the
string of vacancy listings in the directories. “Everyone thought it was cursed.”
“You didn’t, obviously,” I say.
“Says who?”
“Well, you’re still here.”
“I may be stubborn. Doesn’t mean I have the faintest idea what happened that year.
String of bad luck, or something worse. Still, it’s strange, how badly people wanted
to forget about it.”
Or how badly the Archive wanted them to.
“All started with that poor girl,” says Nix. “Regina. Pretty thing. So cheerful. And
then someone went and killed her. So sad, when people die so young.”
Someone?
Doesn’t he know it was Robert?
“Did they catch the killer?” I ask.
Nix shakes his head sadly. “Never did. People thought it was her boyfriend, but they
never found him.”
Anger coils inside me at the image of Robert trying to wipe the blood off his hands,
pulling on one of Regina’s coats, and running.
“She had a brother, didn’t she? What happened to him?”
“Strange boy.” Nix reaches out to the table, fingers dancing until they find a pack
of cigarettes. I take up a box of matches and light one for him. “The parents moved
out right after Regina’s death, but the boy stayed. Couldn’t let go. Blamed himself,
I think.”
“Poor Owen,” I whisper.
Nix frowns, blind eyes narrowing on me. “How did you know his name?”
“You told me,” I say steadily, shaking out the match.
Nix blinks a few times, then taps the space between his eyes. “Sorry. I swear it must
be going. Slowly, thanks be to God, but going all the same.”
I set the spent match on the table. “The brother, Owen. How did he die?”
“I’m getting there,” says Nix, taking a drag. “After Regina, well, things started
to settle at the Coronado. We held our breaths. April passed. May passed. June passed.
July passed. And then, just when we were starting to let out our air…” He claps his
hands together, showering his lap with ash. “Marcus died. Hung himself, they said,
but his knuckles were cut up and his wrists were bruised. I know because I helped
cut the body down. Not a week later, Eileen goes down the south stairs. Broke her
neck. Then, oh, what was his name, Lionel? Anyway, young man.” His hand falls back
into his lap.
“How did he die?”
“He was stabbed. Repeatedly. Found his body in the elevator. Not much use calling
that one an accident. No motive, though, no weapon, no killer. No one knew what to
make of it. And then Owen…”
“What happened?” I ask, gripping my chair.
Nix shrugs. “No one knows—well, I’m all that’s left, so I guess I should say no one
knew
—but he’d been having a hard time.” His milky eyes find my face and he points a bony
finger up at the ceiling. “He went off the roof.”
I look up and feel sick. “He jumped?”
Nix lets out a long breath of smoke. “Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on how you want to
spin things. Did he jump or was he pushed? Did Marcus hang himself? Did Eileen trip?
Did Lionel…well, there ain’t much doubt about what happened to Lionel, but you see
my point. Things stopped after that summer, though, and never started up again. No
one could make sense of it, and it don’t do any good to be thinking morbid thoughts,
so the people here did the one thing they could do. They forgot. They let the past
rest. You probably should too.”
“You’re right,” I say softly, but I’m still looking up, thinking about the roof, about
Owen.
I used to go up on the roof and imagine I was back on the cliffs, looking
out. It was a sea of brick below me.…
My stomach twists as I picture his body going over the edge, blue eyes widening the
instant before the pavement hits.
“I’d better be going.” I push myself to my feet. “Thank you for talking to me about
this.”
Nix nods absently. I head for the door, but stop, turn back to see him still hunched
over his cigarette, dangerously close to setting his scarf on fire.
“What kind of cookies?” I ask.
His head lifts, and he smiles. “Oatmeal raisin. The chewy kind.”
I smile even though he can’t see. “I’ll see what I can do,” I say, closing the door
behind me. And then I head for the stairs.
Owen was the last to die, and one way or another, he went off the roof.
So maybe the roof has answers.
I
TAKE THE STAIRWELL
up to the roof access door, which looks rusted shut, but it’s not. The metal grinds
against the concrete frame, and I step through a doorway of dust and cobwebs, past
a crumbling overhang, and out into a sea of stone bodies. I had seen the statues from
the street, gargoyles perched around the perimeter of the roof. What I couldn’t see
from there is that they cover the entire surface. Hunching, winged, sharp-toothed,
they huddle here and there like crows, and glare at me with broken faces. Half of
their limbs are missing, the rock eaten away by time and rain and ice and sun.
So this is Owen’s roof.
I try to picture him leaning against a gargoyle, head tipped back against a stone
mouth. And I can see it. I can see him in this place.
But I can’t see him jumping.
There is something undeniably sad about Owen, something lost, but it wouldn’t take
this shape. Sadness can sometimes sap the fight from a person’s features, but his
are sharp. Daring. Almost defiant.
I trail my hand along a demon’s wing, then make my way to the edge of the roof.
It was a sea of brick below me. But if I looked up instead of down, I could
have been anywhere.
If he didn’t jump, what happened?
A death is traumatic. Vivid enough to mark any surface, to burn in like light on photo
paper.
I slide the ring from my finger, kneel, and press my hands flat to the weathered roof.
My eyes slide shut, and I reach and reach. The thread is so thin and faint, I can
barely grab hold. A distant tone tickles my skin, and finally I catch what little
is left of the memory. My fingers go numb. I spin time back, past years and years
of quiet. Decades and decades of nothing but an empty roof.
And then the rooftop plunges into black.
A flat, matte black I recognize immediately. Someone has reached into the roof itself
and altered the memories, leaving behind the same dead space I saw in Marcus Elling’s
History.
And yet it doesn’t
feel
the same. It’s just like Roland said. Black is black, but it doesn’t feel like the
same hand, the same signature. And that makes sense. Elling was altered by a Librarian
in the Archive. This roof was altered by someone in the Outer.
But the fact that multiple people tried to erase this piece of past is hardly comforting.
What could have possibly happened to merit this?
…
there are things that even Keepers and Crew should not see
.…
I rewind past the black until the roof appears again, faded and unchanging, like a
photo. And then finally, with a lurch, the photo flutters into life and lights and
muddled laughter. This is the memory that hummed. I let it roll forward and see a
night gala, with fairy lights and men in coattails and women in dresses with tight
waists and A-line skirts, glasses of champagne and trays balanced on gargoyles’ wings.
I scan the crowd in search of Owen or Regina or Robert, but find none of them. A banner
strung between two statues announces the conversion of the Coronado from hotel to
apartments. The Clarkes don’t live here yet. It will be a year until they move in.
Three years until the string of deaths. I frown and guide the memory backward, watching
the party dissolve into a faded, empty space.
Before that night there is nothing loud enough to hum, and I let go of the thread
and blink, wincing in the sunlight on the abandoned roof. A stretch of black amidst
the faded past. Someone erased Owen’s death, carved it right out of this place, buried
the past from both sides. What could have possibly happened that year to make the
Archive—or someone in it—do this?
I weave through the stone bodies, laying my hands on each one, reaching, hoping one
of them will hum. But they are all silent, empty. I’m nearly back to the rusted door
when I hear it. I pause midstep, my fingers resting on an especially toothy gargoyle
to my right.
He’s whispering.
The sound is little more than an exhale through clenched teeth, but there it is, the
faintest hum against my skin. I close my eyes and roll time back. When I finally reach
the memory, it’s faded, a pattern of light blurred to nearly nothing. I sigh and pull
away, when something snags my attention—a bit of metal in the gargoyle’s mouth. Its
face is turned up to the sky, and time has worn away the top of its head and most
of its features, but its fanged mouth hangs open an inch or two, intact, and something
is lodged behind its teeth. I reach between stone fangs and withdraw a slip of rolled
paper, bound by a ring.
One time she wrote me a story and scattered it across the Coronado, wedged in garden
cracks and under tiles, and in the mouths of statues…
Regina.
My hands shake as I slide the metal off and uncurl the brittle page.
And then, having reached the top, the hero faced the gods and monsters that meant
to bar his path.
I let the paper curl in on itself and look at the ring that held it closed. It’s not
jewelry—it’s too big to fit a finger or a thumb—and clearly not the kind a young girl
would wear anyway, but a perfect, rounded thing. It appears to be made of iron. The
metal is cold and heavy, and one small hole has been drilled into the side of it;
but other than that, the ring is remarkably undisturbed by scratches or imperfections.
I slide it gently back over the paper and send up a silent thank-you to the long-dead
girl.
I can’t give Owen much time, and I can’t give him closure.
But I can give him this.
“Owen?”
I wince at the sound of my own voice echoing through the Narrows.
“Owen!” I call again, holding my breath as I listen for something, anything. Still
hiding, then. I’m about to reach out and read the walls—though they failed to lead
me to him last time—when I hear it, like a quiet, careful invitation.
The humming. It is thin and distant, like threads of memory, just enough to take hold
of, to follow.
I wind through the corridors, letting the melody lead me, and finally find Owen sitting
in an alcove, a doorless recess, the lack of key light and outlines rendering the
space even dimmer than the rest of the Narrows. No wonder I couldn’t find him. My
eyes barely register the space. Pressed against the wall, he is little more than a
dark shape crowned in silver-blond, his head bowed as he hums and runs his thumb over
the small dark line on his palm.
He looks up at me, the song trailing into the nothing. “Mackenzie.” His voice is calm
but his eyes are tense, as if he’s trying to steel himself. “Has it been a day?”
“Not quite,” I say, stepping into the alcove. “I found something.” I sink to my knees.
“Something of yours.”
I hold out my hand and uncurl my fingers. The slip of paper bound by the iron ring
shines faintly in the dark.
Owen’s eyes widen a fraction. “Where did you…?” he whispers, voice wavering.
“I found it in a gargoyle’s mouth,” I say. “On the Coronado roof.” I offer him the
note and the ring, and when he takes it, his skin brushes mine and there is a moment
of quiet in my head, a sliver, and then it’s gone as he pulls back, examining my gift.
“How did you—”
“Because I live there now.”
Owen lets out a shuddering breath. “So that’s where the numbered doors lead?” he asks.
Longing creeps into his voice. “I think I knew that.”
He slides the fragile paper from its ring and reads the words despite the dark. I
watch his lips move as he recites them to himself.
“It’s from the story,” he whispers. “The one she hid for me, before she died.”
“What was it about?”
His eyes lose focus as he thinks, and I don’t see how he can draw up a story from
so long ago, until I remember that he’s passed the decades sleeping. Regina’s murder
is as fresh to him as Ben’s is to me.
“It was a quest. A kind of odyssey. She took the Coronado and made it grand, not just
a building, but a whole world, seven floors full of adventure. The hero faced caves
and dragons, unclimbable walls, impassable mountains, incredible dangers.” A faint
laugh crosses his lips as he remembers. “Regina could make a story out of anything.”
He closes his hand over the note and the ring. “Could I keep this? Just until the
day’s over?”
I nod, and Owen’s eyes brighten—if not with trust, then with hope. Just like I wanted.
And I hate to steal that flicker of hope from him so soon, but I don’t have a choice.
I need to know.
“When I was here before,” I say, “you were going to tell me about Robert. What happened
to him?”
The light goes out of Owen’s eyes as if I blew out a candle’s flame.
“He got away,” he says through clenched teeth. “They let him get away.
I
let him get away. I was her big brother and I…” There’s so much pain in his voice
as it trails off; but when he looks at me, his eyes are clear, crisp. “When I first
found my way here, I thought I was in Hell. Thought I was being punished for not finding
Robert, for not tearing the world apart in search of him, for not tearing
him
apart. And I would have. Mackenzie, I really would have. He deserved that. He deserved
worse.”
My throat tightens as I tell Owen what I’ve told myself so many times, even though
it never helps. “It wouldn’t bring her back.”
“I know. Trust me, I do. And I would have done far worse,” he says, “if I’d thought
there
was
a way to bring Regina back. I would have traded places. I would have sold souls.
I would have torn this world apart. I would have done anything, broken any rule, just
to bring her back.”
My heart aches. I can’t count the times I’ve sat beside Ben’s drawer and wondered
how much noise it would take to wake him up. And I can’t deny how hard I’ve wished,
since I met Owen, that he wouldn’t slip: because if he could make it through, why
not Ben?
“I was supposed to protect her,” he says, “and I got her killed.…” He must take my
silence for simple pity, because he adds, “I don’t expect you to understand.”
But I do. Too well.
“My little brother is dead,” I say. The words get out before I can stop them. Owen
doesn’t say
I’m sorry.
But he does shift closer, until we’re sitting side by side.
“What happened?” he asks.
“He was killed,” I whisper. “Hit and run. They got away. I would give anything to
rewrite that morning, to walk Ben all the way to school, take an extra five seconds
to hug him, to draw on his hand, do anything to change the moment when he crossed
the street.”
“And if you could find the driver…” says Owen.
“I would kill him.” There is no doubt in my voice.
A silence falls around us.
“What was he like?” he asks, knocking his knee against mine. There is something so
simple in it, as if I am just a girl, and he is just a boy, and we are sitting in
a hallway—any hallway, not the Narrows—and I’m not talking about my dead brother with
a History I’m supposed to have sent back.
“Ben? He was too smart for his own good. You couldn’t lie to him, not even about things
like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. He’d put on these silly glasses and cross-examine
you until he found a crack. And he couldn’t focus on anything unless he was drawing.
He was really great at art. He made me laugh.” I’ve never spoken this way about Ben,
not since he died. “And he could be a real brat sometimes. Hated sharing. Would break
something before he’d let you have it. This one time he broke an entire box of pencils
because I wanted to borrow one. As if breaking pencils made them useless. So I pulled
out this sharpener, one of those little plastic ones, and sharpened all the pencil
halves and then we each had a set. Half as long as they were to start, but they still
worked. It drove him mad.”
A small laugh escapes, and then my chest tightens. “It feels wrong to laugh,” I whisper.
“Isn’t it strange? It’s like after they die, you’re only allowed to remember the good.
But no one’s all good.”
I feel the scratch of letters in my pocket, but leave it.
“I’ve gone to see him,” I say. “In the stacks. I talk to him, to his shelf, tell him
what he’s missing. Never the good stuff, of course. Just the boring, the random. But
no matter how I hold on to his memory, I’m starting to forget him, one detail at a
time. Some days I think the only thing that keeps me from prying open his drawer,
from seeing him, from waking him, even, is the fact it’s not him. Not really. They
tell me there’s no point because it wouldn’t be him.”
“Because Histories aren’t people?” he asks.
I cringe. “No. That’s not it at all.” Even though most Histories
aren’t
people, aren’t human, not the way Owen is. “It’s just that Histories have a pattern.
They slip. The only thing that hurts me more than the idea of the thing in that drawer
not being my brother is the idea of its being him, and my causing him pain. Distress.
And then having to send him back to the stacks after all of it.”
I feel Owen’s hand drift toward mine, hover just above my skin. He waits to see if
I’ll stop him. When I don’t, he curls his fingers over mine. The whole world quiets
at his touch. I lean my head against the wall and close my eyes. The quiet is welcome.
It dulls the thoughts of Ben.
“I don’t feel like I’m slipping,” says Owen.
“That’s because you aren’t.”
“Well, that means it’s possible, right? What if—”
“Stop.”
I pull free of his touch and push myself to my feet.
“I’m sorry,” he says, standing. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I’m not upset,” I say. “But Ben’s gone. There’s no bringing him back.” The words
are directed at myself more than at him. I turn to go. I need to move. Need to hunt.
“Wait,” he says, taking my hand. The quiet floods in as he holds up the note in his
other hand. “If you find any more of Regina’s story, would you…would you bring it
to me?” I hover at the edge of the alcove. “Please, Mackenzie. It’s all I have left
of her. What wouldn’t you give, to have something, anything, of Ben’s to hold on to?”