I
GASP AND JERK MY HAND BACK,
but it’s too late.
Ben’s brown eyes—Mom’s eyes, warm and bright and wide—blink once, twice.
And he sits up.
“Mackenzie?” he asks.
The ache in my chest explodes into panic. My pulse shatters the calmness I know I
need to show.
“Hi, Ben,” I choke out, the shock making it hard to breathe, to speak.
My brother looks around at the room—the stacked drawers reaching to the ceiling, the
tables and dust and oddness—then swings his legs over the edge of the shelf.
“What happened?” And then, before I can answer: “Where’s Mom? Where’s Dad?”
He hops down from the shelf, sniffles. His forehead crinkles. “I want to go home.”
My hand reaches for his.
“Then let’s go home, Ben.”
He moves to take my hand, but stops. Looks around again.
“What’s going on?” he asks, his voice unsteady.
“Come on, Ben,” I say.
“Where am I?” The black at the center of his eyes wobbles.
No.
“How did I get here?” He takes a small step back. Away from me.
“It’s going to be okay,” I say.
When his eyes meet mine, they are tinged with panic. “Tell me how I got here.” Confusion.
“This isn’t funny.” Distress.
“Ben, please,” I say softly. “Let’s just go home.”
I don’t know what I’m thinking. I can’t think. I look at him, and all I know is that
I can’t leave him here. He’s Ben, and I pinkie-swore a thousand times I’d never let
anything hurt him. Not the ghosts under the bed or the bees in the yard or the shadows
in his closet.
“I don’t understand.” His voice catches. His irises are darkening. “I don’t…I was…”
This isn’t supposed to happen. He didn’t wake himself. He’s not supposed to—
“Why…” he starts.
I step toward him, kneeling so I can take his hands. I squeeze them. I try to smile.
“Ben—”
“Why aren’t you telling me what happened?”
His eyes hover on me, the black spreading too fast, blotting out the warm, bright
brown. All I see in those eyes is the reflection of my face, caught between pain and
fear and an unwillingness to believe that he’s slipping. Owen didn’t slip. Why does
Ben have to?
This isn’t fair.
Ben begins to cry, hitching sobs.
I pull him into a hug.
“Be strong for me,” I whisper in his hair, but he doesn’t answer. I tighten my grip
as if I can hold the Ben I know—knew—in place, can keep him with me; but he pushes
me away. A jarring strength for such a small body. I stumble, and another pair of
arms catches me.
“Get back,” orders the man holding me. Roland.
His eyes are leveled on Ben, but the words are meant for me. He pushes me out of his
way and approaches my brother.
No, no, no,
I think, the word playing in my head like a metronome.
What have I done?
“I didn’t…”
“Stay back,”
Roland growls, then kneels in front of Ben.
That’s not Ben,
I think. Looking at the History—its eyes black, where Ben’s were brown.
Not Ben,
I think, clutching my hands around my ribs to keep from shaking.
Not Ben,
as Roland puts a hand on my brother’s shoulder and says something too soft for me
to hear.
Not Ben.
Metal glints in Roland’s other hand and he plunges a toothless gold key into Not
Ben’s chest and turns it.
Not Ben doesn’t cry out, but simply sinks. His eyes fall shut and his head falls forward,
and his body slumps toward the ground but never hits because Roland catches him, scoops
him up, and returns him to his drawer. The pain goes out of his face, the tension
goes out of his limbs. His body relaxes against the shelf, as if settling into sleep.
Roland slides the door shut, the dark devouring Not Ben’s body. I hear the cabinet
lock, and something in me cracks.
Roland doesn’t look at me as he pulls a notepad from his pocket.
“I’m sorry, Miss Bishop.”
“Roland,” I plead. “Don’t do this.” He scratches something onto the paper. “I’m sorry,”
I say. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but please don’t—”
“I don’t have a choice,” he says as the card on the front of Ben’s drawer turns red.
The mark of the restricted stacks.
No, no, no
come the metronome cries, each one causing a crack that splinters me.
I take a step forward.
“Stay where you are,” orders Roland, and whether it’s his tone or the fact that the
cracks hurt so much I can’t breathe, I do as he says. Before my eyes, the shelves
begin to shift. Ben’s red-marked drawer pulls backward with a hush until it’s swallowed
by the wall. The surrounding drawers rearrange themselves, gliding to fill the gap.
Ben’s drawer is gone.
I sink to my knees on the old wood floor.
“Get up,” orders Roland.
My body feels sluggish, my lungs heavy, my pulse too slow. I haul myself to my feet,
and Roland grabs my arm, forcing me out of the room into an empty hall.
“Who opened the drawer, Miss Bishop?”
I won’t rat out Carmen. She only wanted to help.
“I did,” I say.
“You don’t have a key.”
“‘Two ways through any lock,’” I answer numbly.
“I warned you to stay away,” growls Roland. “I warned you not to draw attention. I
warned you what happens to Keepers who lose their post. What were you
thinking
?”
“I wasn’t,” I say. My throat hurts, as if I’ve been screaming. “I just had to see
him—”
“You woke a History.”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“He’s not a goddamn puppy, Mackenzie, and he’s not your brother. That
thing
is not your brother, and you know that.”
The cracks are spreading beneath my skin.
“How can you not know that?” Roland continues. “Honestly—”
“I thought he wouldn’t slip!”
He stops.
“What?”
“I thought…that maybe…he wouldn’t slip.”
Roland brings his hands down on my shoulders, hard. “Every. History. Slips.”
Not Owen,
says a voice inside me.
Roland lets go. “Turn in your list.”
If there’s any wind left in my lungs, that order knocks it out.
“What?”
“Your list.”
If she proves herself unfit in any way, she will forfeit the position.
And if she proves unfit, you, Roland, will remove her yourself.
“Roland…”
“You can collect it tomorrow morning, when you return for your hearing.”
He promised me he wouldn’t. I trusted…but what have I done with
his
trust? I can see the pain in his eyes. I force one shaking hand into my pocket and
pass him the folded paper. He takes it and motions toward the door, but I can’t will
myself to leave.
“Miss Bishop.”
My feet are nailed to the floor.
“Miss Bishop.”
This isn’t happening. I just wanted to see Ben. I just needed—
“Mackenzie,” says Roland. I force myself forward.
I follow him through the maze of stacks. There is no warmth and there is no peace.
With every step, every breath, the cracks deepen, spread. Roland leads me through
the atrium to the antechamber and the front desk, where Elliot sits diligently.
When Roland turns to look at me, anger has dulled into something sad. Tired.
“Go home,” he says. I nod stiffly. He turns and vanishes back into the stacks.
Elliot glances up from his work, a vague curiosity in the arch of his brows.
I can feel myself breaking.
I barely make it through the door and into the Narrows before I shatter.
It
hurts
.
Worse than anything. Worse than noise or touch or knives. I don’t know how make it
stop. I have to make it stop.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t—
“Mackenzie?”
I turn to find Owen standing in the hall. His blue eyes hangs on me, the smallest
wrinkle between his brows.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
Everything about him is calm, quiet, level. Pain twists into anger. I push him, hard.
“Why haven’t you slipped?” I snap.
Owen doesn’t fight back, not even reflexively, doesn’t try to escape, the slightest
clenching of his jaw the only sign of emotion. I want to push him over. I want to
make him slip. He has to. Ben did.
“Why, Owen?”
I push him again. He takes a step away.
“What makes you so special? What makes you so different? Ben slipped. He slipped right
away, and you’ve been here for days and you haven’t slipped at all and it isn’t fair.”
I shove him again, and his back hits the wall at the end of the corridor.
“It isn’t fair!”
My hands dig into his shirt. The quiet is like static in my head, filling the space.
It is not enough to erase the pain. I am still breaking.
“Calm down.” Owen wraps his hands around mine, pinning them to his chest. The quiet
thickens, pours into my head.
My face feels wet, but I don’t remember crying. “It’s not fair.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “Please calm down.”
I want the pain to stop. I need it to stop. I won’t be able to claw my way back up.
There is all this anger and this guilt and—
And then Owen kisses my shoulder. “I’m so sorry about Ben.”
The quiet builds like a wave, drowning anger and pain.
“I’m sorry, Mackenzie.”
I stiffen, but as his lips press against my skin, the silence flares in my head, blotting
something out. Heat ripples through my body, pricking my senses as the quiet deadens
my thoughts. He kisses my throat, my jaw. Each time his lips brush my skin, the heat
and silence blossom side by side and spread, drowning a little bit of the pain and
anger and guilt, leaving only warmth and want and quiet in their place. His lips brush
my cheek, and then he pulls back, his pale eyes leveled cautiously on mine, his mouth
barely a breath from mine. When he touches me, there is nothing but touch. There is
no thought of wrong and no thought of loss and no thought of anything, because thoughts
can’t get through the static.
“I’m sorry, M.”
M
. That drags me under. That one little word he can’t possibly understand. M. Not Mackenzie.
Not Mac. Not Bishop. Not Keeper.
I want that. I need that. I cannot be the girl who broke the rules and woke her dead
brother and ruined everything.…
I close the gap. Pull Owen’s body flush with mine.
His mouth is soft but strong, and when he deepens the kiss, the quiet spreads, filling
every space in my mind, washing over me. Drowning me.
And then his mouth is gone, and his hands let go of mine. Everything comes back, too
loud. I pull his body against mine, feel the impossibly careful crush of his mouth
as it steals the air from my lungs, steals the thoughts from my head.
Owen steps forward, urging my body against the wall, pushing me with his kisses and
the quiet that comes with his touch. I am letting it all wash over me, letting it
wash away the questions and doubts, the Histories and the key and the ring and everything
else, until I am just M against his lips, his body. M reflected in the pale blue of
his eyes until he closes them and kisses me deeper, and then I am nothing.
I
CANNOT STAY HERE
forever, buried under Owen’s touch.
At last I push away, break the surface of the quiet, and before I lose my will, before
I cave, I leave. I can’t hunt, so I spend what’s left of the night searching the Coronado,
moving numbly from floor to floor, trying to read the walls for any clues, anything
the Archive—or whoever in it tried to cover things up—might have missed, but that
year is shot full of holes. I run through the time lines, scour the memories for leads,
and find only dull impressions and stretches of too-flat black. Elling’s old apartment
is locked, but I read the south stairs, where Eileen supposedly fell, and even brave
the elevators in search of Lionel’s stabbing, only to find the unnatural nothing of
excavated pasts. Whatever happened here, someone went out of their way to bury it,
even from people like me.
A dull ache has formed behind my eyes, and I’ve lost hope of finding any useful memory
intact, but I keep searching. I have to. Because every time I stop moving, the thought
of losing Ben—really losing him—catches up, the pain catches up, the thought of kissing
Owen—of using a History for his touch—catches up. So I keep moving.
I start searching for more of Regina’s story. I put my ring on, hoping to dull the
headache, and search the old-fashioned way, thankful for the distraction. I check
table drawers and shelves, even though sixty years have passed, and the chances of
finding anything are slim. I search for hidden compartments in the study, and take
down half the books to check behind them. I remember Owen saying something about garden
cracks. I know paper would never last out here, but I still search the mossy stones
by feel in the dark, grateful for the quiet predawn air.
The sun is rising as I look behind the counters and around the old equipment in the
coffee shop, careful not to touch the half-painted walls. And just as I’m about to
abandon the search, my eyes drift to the sheeting thrown over the rose pattern in
the floor to keep it safe.
In garden cracks and under tiles,
Owen said. It’s a long shot, but I kneel and pull aside the plastic tarp. The rose
beneath is as wide as my arm span, each inlaid marble petal piece the size of my palm.
I brush my hand back and forth across the rust-colored pattern. Near the center, I
feel the subtle shift of stones beneath my touch. One of the petals is loose.
My heart skips as I get my fingers under the lip of the petal. It lifts. The hiding
place is little more than a hole, the walls of which are lined with white cloth. And
there, folded and weighted down by a narrow metal bar, is another piece of Regina’s
story.
The paper is yellowing but intact, protected by the hidden chamber, and I lift it
to the morning light.
The red stones shifted and became steps, a great flight of stairs that led the hero
up and up. And the hero climbed.
The pieces are out of order. The last fragment spoke of facing gods and monsters at
the top of something. This one clearly goes before. But what comes after?
My attention shifts to the small bar that had held the note in place. It’s roughly
the size of a pencil but half the length, one end tapering just like a graphite point.
A groove has been cut from the blunt end down, and it’s made of the same metal as
the ring that held the first note.
For one horrible, bitter moment, I consider putting the pieces back, leaving them
buried. It seems so unfair that Owen should have pieces of Regina when I can have
none of Ben.
But as cruel as it is that Ben slipped when Owen didn’t, it isn’t Owen’s fault. He’s
the History, and I’m the Keeper. He couldn’t have known what would happen, and I’m
the one who chose to wake my brother.
The sun is up now. The morning of my trial. I slip both the paper and the bar into
my pocket and make my way upstairs.
Dad is already up, and I tell him I went running. I don’t know if he believes me.
He says I look tired, and I admit that I am. I shower numbly and stumble through the
early hours, trying not to think of the trial, of being deemed unfit, of losing everything.
I help Mom settle on new paint chips and pack up half the oatmeal raisin cookies for
Nix before I make a lame excuse to leave. Mom is so distracted by the paint dilemma—
it’s still not right, not quite right, has to be right
—that she simply nods. I pause in the doorway, watching her work, listening to Dad
on a call in the other room. I try to memorize this
before
, not knowing what
after
will be.
And then I go.
I cut through the Narrows, and the memory of last night sweeps over me with the humid
air and the far-off sounds. The memory of quiet. And as panic eats through me, I wish
I could disappear again. I can’t. But there’s something I should do.
I find the alcove, and Owen in it, and press the note and the small iron bar into
his hands, staying only long enough to steal a kiss and a moment of quiet. The peace
dissolves into fear as I reach the Archive door and step through.
I don’t know what I expected—a row of Librarians waiting, ready to strip me of my
key and my ring? Someone named Agatha waiting to judge me unfit, to carve my job right
out of my life, taking my identity with it? A tribunal? A lynch mob?
I certainly don’t expect Lisa to look up from her desk, over her green horn-rimmed
glasses, and ask me what I want.
“Is Roland here?” I ask unsteadily.
She goes back to her work. “He said you’d stop by.”
I shift my weight. “Is that all he said?”
“Said to send you in.” Lisa straightens. “Is everything all right, Miss Bishop?”
The antechamber is quiet, but my heart is slamming in my chest so loudly, I think
she’ll hear. I swallow and force myself to nod. She hasn’t been told. Just then, Elliot
rushes in, and I stiffen, thinking he’s come to tell her, come to collect me; but
when he leans over her, he says only, “Three, four, six, ten through fourteen.”
Lisa lets out a tight breath. “All right. Make sure they’re blacked out.”
I frown. What kind of technical difficulty is this?
Elliot retreats, and Lisa looks at me again, as if she’d forgotten I was there.
“Firsts,” she says, meaning first wing, first hall, first room. “Can you show yourself?”
“I think I can handle it.”
She nods and throws open several massive ledgers on the desk. I step past her into
the atrium. Looking up at the vaulted ceiling of stone and colored glass, I wonder
if I’ll ever feel at peace here again. I wonder if I’ll have the chance.
Something in the distance rumbles, followed shortly by an aftershock of sound. Startled,
I scan the stacks and spot Patrick on the far side of the atrium, and when he hears
the noise, he vanishes down the nearest wing, pulling the doors closed behind him.
I pass Carmen standing by a row of stacks before the first hall. She gives me a small
nod.
“Miss Bishop,” she says. “What brings you back so soon?”
For a moment, I just stare at her. I feel like my crimes are written on my face, but
there’s nothing in her voice to suggest she knows. Did Roland really say nothing?
“Just here to talk to Roland,” I say at last, managing only a ghost of calm. She waves
me on, and I turn down the first wing, then the first hall, and stop at the first
door. It’s closed, a heavy, glassless thing, and I press my fingertips against it
and summon the courage to go in.
When I do, two pairs of eyes meet mine: one gray and quite stern; the other brown
and rimmed with black.
Wesley perches on a table in the middle of the room.
“I believe you two know each other,” says Roland.
I consider lying, based on the gut sense that Keepers are supposed to work alone,
to exist alone. But Wes nods.
“Hey, Mac,” he says.
“What’s
he
doing here?” I ask.
Roland steps up. “Mr. Ayers will be assisting you in your territorial duties.”
I turn to him. “You gave me a babysitter?”
“Hey, now,” says Wes, hopping down from the table. “I prefer the term
partner
.”
I frown. “But only Crew are partnered.”
“I am making an exception,” Roland says.
“Come on, Mac,” says Wes, “it will be fun.”
My mind flicks to Owen, waiting in the dark of the Narrows, but I force the image
back. “Roland, what’s this about?”
“You’ve noticed an uptick in your numbers.”
I nod. “And ages. Lisa and Patrick both said there was some minor technical difficulty.”
Roland crosses his arms. “It’s called a disruption.”
“A disruption, I take it, is worse than a minor technical difficulty.”
“Have you noticed how quiet the Archive is kept? Do you know why that is?”
“Because Histories wake up,” says Wesley.
“Yes, they do. When there’s too much noise, too much activity, the lighter sleepers
begin to stir. The more noise, the more activity, the more Histories. Even deep sleepers
wake up.”
Which explains the older Histories in my territory.
“A disruption happens when the noise Histories make waking up causes other Histories
to wake up, and so on. Like dominoes. More and more and more, until it’s contained.”
“Or they all fall down,” I whisper.
“As soon as it started, we acted, and began blacking out rooms. Lighter sleepers first.
It should have been enough. A disruption starts in one place, like a fire, so it has
a core. Logic says that if you can douse the hottest part, you can tamp out the rest.
But it’s not working. Every time we put out a fire, a new one flares up in a perfectly
quiet place.”
“That doesn’t seem natural,” says Wes.
Roland shoots me a meaningful glance.
That’s because it isn’t.
So, is the disruption a distraction from the altered Histories? Or is it something
more? I wish I could ask, but following Roland’s lead, I don’t want to say too much
in front of Wes.
“And the Coronado,” Roland continues, “is being hit harder than other territories
at the moment. So, Mackenzie, until this
minor
technical difficulty
is resolved and your numbers return to normal, Wesley will be assisting you in your
territory.”
My mind spins. I came in here expecting to lose my job, lose my self, and instead
I get a partner.
Roland holds out a folded slip of paper.
“Your list, Miss Bishop.”
I take it, but hold his gaze. What about last night? What about Ben? Questions I know
better than to ask aloud. So instead I say, “Is there anything else?”
Roland considers me a moment, then draws something from his back pocket. A folded
black handkerchief. I take it and frown at the weight. Something is wrapped in the
fabric. When I peel back the cloth, my eyes widen.
It’s a key.
Not like the simply copper one I wear around my neck, or the thin gold ones the Librarians
use, but larger, heavier, colder. A near-black thing with sharp teeth and pricks of
rust. Something tugs at me. I’ve seen this key before. I’ve felt this key.
Wesley’s eyes widen. “Is that a
Crew
key?”
Roland nods. “It belonged to Antony Bishop.”
“Why do you have two keys?” I ask.
You look at me like you never thought I’d notice the second cord around your neck.
Now you tug it up over your head and hold it out for me, the metal hanging heavy on
the end. When I take the key, it is cold and strangely beautiful, with a handle at
one end and sharp teeth at the other. I can’t imagine a lock in the world those teeth
would fit.
“What does it do?” I ask, cradling the metal.
“It’s a Crew key,” you say. “When a History gets out, you’ve got to return them, fast.
Crew can’t waste time searching for doors into the Narrows. So this turns any door
into an Archive door.”
“Any door?” I ask. “Even the front door? Or the one to my room? Or the one on the—
shed that’s falling down”
“
Any
door. You just put the key in the lock and turn. Left for the Librarians, right for
Returns.”
I run a thumb over the metal. “I thought you stopped being Crew.”
“I did. Just haven’t brought myself to give it back yet.”
I hold up the key, sliding it through thin air as if there’s a door with a lock I
simply can’t see. And I’m about to turn it when you catch my wrist. Your noise washes
through my head, all winter trees and far-off storms.
“Careful,” you say. “Crew keys are dangerous. They’re used to rip open the seams between
the Outer and the Archive, and let us through. We like to think we can control that
kind of power with left turns and right turns, but these keys, they can tear holes
in the world. I did it once, by accident. Nearly ate me up.”
“How?”
“Crew keys are too strong and too smart. If you hold that piece of rusted metal up,
not to a door, just a bit of thin air, and give it a full turn, all the way around,
it’ll make a tear right in the world, a bad kind of door, one that leads
to
nowhere.”
“If it leads nowhere,” I ask, “then what’s the harm?”
“A door that leads nowhere and a door that leads
to
nowhere are totally different things, Kenzie. A door that leads
to
nowhere is dangerous. A door to nowhere is a door into nothing,” you say, taking
the key back and slipping the cord over your head. “A void.”
I look down at the Crew key, mesmerized. “Can it do anything else?”
“Sure can.”
“Like what?”
You give a tilted smile. “Make it to Crew and you’ll find out.”
I chew my lip. “Hey, Da?”
“Yes, Kenzie?”
“If Crew keys are so powerful, won’t the Archive notice it’s gone?”
You sit back and shrug. “Things get misplaced. Things get lost. Nobody’s going to
miss it.”