T
HE WEEKbefore you die, I can see it coming.
I see the good-bye in your eyes. The too-long looks at everything, as if by staring
you can make memories strong enough to last you through.
But it’s not the same. And those lingering looks scare me.
I am not ready.
I am not ready.
I am not ready.
“I can’t do this without you, Da.”
“You can. And you have to.”
“What if I mess up?”
“Oh, you will. You’ll mess up, you’ll make mistakes, you’ll break things. Some you’ll
be able to piece together, and others you’ll lose. That’s all a given. But there’s
only one thing you have to do for me.”
“What’s that?”
“Stay alive long enough to mess up again.”
The moment the Returns door closes, there is no door, and the white is so bright and
shadowless that it makes the room look like infinite space: no floor, no walls, no
ceiling. Nothing but dizzying white. I know I have to focus, have to find the place
where the door was and get out and find Owen—and I can do that, the rational Keeper
part of me reasons, if I can just breathe and make my way to the wall.
I take a step, and that’s when the white on every side explodes into color and sound
and life.
My
life.
Mom and Dad on the porch swing of our first house, her legs draped
across his lap and his book propped against her legs, and then the new blue
house with Mom too big to fit through the door, and Ben climbing the stairs
like they were mountain rocks, and Ben drawing on walls and floors and any
thing but paper, and Ben turning the space under the bed into a tree house
because he was scared of heights, and Lyndsey hiding there with him even
though she barely fit, and Lyndsey on the roof and Da in the summer house
teaching me to pick a lock, to take a punch, to lie, to read to be strong, and
hospital chairs and too-bright smiles and fighting and lying and bleeding
and breaking into pieces, and moving and boxes and Wesley and Owen,
and it all pours out of me and onto every surface, taking something vital with it,
something like blood or oxygen because my body and mind are shutting down more and
more with every frame extracted from my head.
And then the images begin to fold inward as the white recovers the room square by
square by square, blotting out my life like screens being switched off. I sway on
my feet. The white spreads, devouring, and I feel my legs buckle beneath me. The images
blink out one by one by one, and my heartbeat skips.
No.
The air and the light are thinning.
I squeeze my eyes shut and focus on the fact that gravity tells me I’m on the floor.
Focus on the fact that I have to get up. I can hear the voices now. I can make out
Mom’s voice chirping about the coffee shop; Dad’s telling me it will be an adventure;
Wesley’s saying he’s not going anywhere; Ben’s asking me to come see; and Owen’s telling
me it’s over.
Owen. Anger flares strong enough to help me focus, even as the voices weaken. Eyes
still shut, I beg my body to stand. It doesn’t, so I focus on crawling, on making
my way to the wall I know exists somewhere in front of me. The room is becoming too
quiet, and my mind is becoming too slow, but I keep crawling forward on my hands and
knees—the pain in my wrist a reminder that I am still alive—until my fingers skim
the base of the wall.
My heart skips again, falters.
My skin is going pins-and-needles numb as I manage to reach into my boot and pull
Da’s Crew key out. I use the wall to get myself up, brace myself when my body sways,
and run my hands over the surface until I catch the invisible lip of a door frame.
The scenes have all gone quiet now except for one with Da.
I can’t make out the words, and I can’t tell anymore if my eyes are open or closed,
and it’s terrifying, so I focus on the smooth Louisiana lilt in Da’s voice as he talks,
and I bring my hands back and forth, back and forth, until my fingers graze the keyhole.
I get the key into the lock and turn hard to the left as Da’s voice stops. Everything
goes black a moment before the lock clicks and the door opens. I stumble through,
gasping for air, every muscle shaking.
I’m back in the Narrows. Crew keys aren’t even supposed to lead here. Then again,
I’m pretty sure Crew keys aren’t supposed to be used from
within
a Returns room. As I force my body to its feet, my pulse pounds in my ears. I’m thankful
to still have a pulse. A scrap of paper is crumpled on the floor. My list. I lift
it, expecting names, but there are no names at all, only an order.
Get out of the Narrows. Stay out of the Narrows. It’s too late.—R
I look around.
The Narrows are empty and painfully quiet, and when I round the corner I see that
my cluster of numbered doors have all been flung open. The rooms beyond are cast in
shadow, but I can hear shouting in the lobby and the coffee shop—orders, the cold,
composed kind given by members of the Archive, not Histories or residents. Only the
third floor is quiet. Something in me twists, whispers
wrong wrong
wrong
, and I shut the other two doors and step out into the hall.
The first thing I see is the red streaking across the faded yellow wallpaper.
Blood.
I drop to my knees and say a prayer even as I touch the floor and reach. The memory
hums into my bones and numbs my hands as I roll it back. The scene is right at the
top, and it skips away too fast, a blur of black-spiked hair and metal and red. Everything
in me tightens. I slam the memories to a stop, and play them forward.
Anger washes over me as I watch Owen step out from the Narrows door and pull a pen
and slip of paper from his pocket. It’s the same size as the one with my list. Archive
paper. There’s a muffled sound down the hall, like knocking, as Owen leans the page
against the mirror and writes one word.
Out.
Moments later, a hand writes back.Good.
Owen smiles and pockets the slip.
The knocking stops, and I see Wesley standing by my door. He turns, his fist slipping
back to his side; and judging by the way he’s looking at Owen, he saw quite enough
when he read my skin.
Owen only smiles. And then he says something. The words are nothing more than a hush,
a murmur, but Wesley’s face changes. His lips move, and Owen’s shoulders shrug, and
then the knife appears in his hand. He slips his finger into the hilt’s hole, twirls
the blade casually.
Wesley’s hand curls into a fist, and he swings at Owen, who smiles, dodges fluidly,
and follows upward with his knife. Wesley leans back just in time, but Owen spins
the blade in his fingers at the top of its arc and swings down. This time Wesley isn’t
fast enough. He gasps and staggers back, gripping his shoulder. Owen strikes again,
and Wes avoids the blade but not Owen’s free hand, now a fist, as it comes down across
his temple. One knee buckles to the floor, and before Wes can get up, Owen slams him
back into the wall. Wes’s shoulder leaves a blossom of red against one of the hall’s
ghosted doors, and the left side of his face is stained with blood, a gash on his
forehead spilling down like a mask over his left eye. He collapses to the floor, and
Owen vanishes into the stairwell.
Wesley staggers to his feet and follows.
And so do I.
I spring up from the floor, the past vanishing into present as I race down the hall
and up the stairs. I’m close. I can hear the footsteps floors above. I vault up past
the sixth floor—more blood on the steps. Above me, I hear the roof door slam shut,
and the sound is still echoing as I reach it and stumble through into the garden of
stone demons.
And there they are.
Wesley catches Owen once across the jaw. Owen’s face flicks sideways, and the smile
sharpens before Wes throws another fist, and Owen catches his hand, pulls him forward,
and plunges the knife into his stomach.
A
SCREAM RISES
in my throat as Owen pulls the knife free and Wesley collapses to the concrete.
“I’m impressed, Miss Bishop,” Owen says, turning toward me. The sun is sinking, the
gargoyles multiplied by shadows.
Wesley coughs, tries to move, can’t.
“Hang in there, Wes,” I say. “Please. I’m sorry. Please.” I step forward, and Owen
holds the knife over Wes in warning.
“I tried to miss the vital organs,” he says. “But I told you, I’m rusty.”
He extends one foot toward the ledge of the roof as he looks down, the blood-soaked
knife hanging lazily from his fingers.
“It’s a long way down, Owen. And there are plenty of Crew at the bottom.”
“And they’re going to have their hands full with the Histories,” he says. “Which is
why I’m up here.”
He pulls the Crew key from his pocket and reaches out, slides it through the air as
if there were…a door. My eyes slip off it several times before I can find the edges.
A
shortcut
.
The teeth vanish into the door.
“Is that why you were on the roof last time? To get away?”
“If they’d caught me alive,” he says, still gripping the key, “they would have erased
my life.”
I have to get him away from that door before he goes through.
“I can’t believe you’re running away,” I say, making the disgust in my voice clear.
And sure enough, his hand slips from the key. It hangs in the air as his foot slides
from the ledge. “How did you get out?” he asks.
“It’s a secret.” I pivot and step back, the weight of my Crew key heavy in my coat.
I have an idea. “There’s something I don’t get. So what if you were Crew—you’re still
a History.” I take another step. “You should have slipped.”
He pulls the key out of the air and pockets it as he steps over Wesley’s body toward
me.
“There’s a reason Histories slip,” he says. “It’s not anger, or even fear. It’s confusion.
Everything is foreign. Everything is frightening. It’s why Regina slipped. It’s why
Ben slipped.”
“Don’t talk to me about my brother.” I take another step back, and nearly stumble
on the base of a statue. “You knew what would happen.”
Owen steps over a broken statue limb without looking down. “Confusion tips the scale.
And that’s why all members of the Archive are kept in the Special Collections. Because
our
Histories don’t slip. Because we open our eyes and know where we are. We’re not simple
and scared and easily stopped.”
I slip through a gap between the statues, and Owen falls out of sight. Moments later
he reappears, following me through the maze of gargoyles. Good. That means he’s away
from his shortcut. Away from Wes.
“But other Histories aren’t like us, Owen. They
do
slip.”
“Don’t you get it? They slip because they’re lost, confused. Regina slipped. Ben slipped.
But if we had been allowed to tell them about the Archive when they were still alive,
maybe they would have made it through.”
“You don’t know that,” I say, vanishing just long enough to pull the Crew key from
my pocket, guard it against my wrist.
“The Archive owed us a chance. They take everything. We deserve something back. But
no, it would be against the rules. Do you know why the Archive has so many rules,
Miss Bishop? It’s because they’re afraid of us. Terrified. They make us strong, strong
enough to lie and con and fight and hunt and kill, strong enough to rise up, to break
free. All they have are their secrets and their rules.”
I hesitate. He’s right. I’ve seen it, the Archive’s fear, in their strictures and
their threats. But that doesn’t mean what he’s
doing
is right.
“Without the rules,” I force myself to say, “there would be chaos.” I step back, feel
the front of a gargoyle come up against my shoulders. I slip sideways, never taking
my eyes off Owen. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? Chaos?”
“I want freedom,” he says, stalking me. “The Archive is a prison, and not only for
the dead. And that’s why I’m going to tear it down, shelf by shelf and branch by branch.”
“You know I won’t let you.”
He steps forward, knife hanging loosely at his side. He smiles. “You wanted this to
happen.”
“No, I didn’t.”
He shrugs. “It doesn’t matter. That’s how the Archive will see it. And they will carve
you up and throw you away. You’re nothing to them. Stop running, Miss Bishop. There’s
nowhere to go.”
I know he’s right. I’m counting on it. I’m standing in a ring of winged statues, their
faces crumbling with age, their bodies set too close. Owen looks at me as if I’m a
mouse he’s cornered, his eyes bright despite the dusk.
“I’ll stand trial for my mistakes, Owen, but not for yours. You are a monster.”
“And you aren’t? The Archive makes us monsters. And then it breaks the ones who get
too strong, and buries the ones who know too much.”
I dart sideways as his hand flies forward. I pretend to notice too late, pretend to
be too slow. He catches my elbow and forces me back against a demon, his arms caging
me. And then he smiles, pulls me toward him just enough to rest the tip of the bloodstained
knife between my shoulder blades.
“I wouldn’t be so quick to pass judgment. You and I are not so different.”
“You twisted it so I would think so. You conned my trust, made me think we were the
same, but I am
nothing
like you, Owen.”
He presses his forehead against mine. The quiet slides through me, and I hate it.
“Just because you can’t read me,” he whispers, “doesn’t mean I can’t read you. I’ve
seen inside you. I’ve seen your darkness and your dreams and your fears, and the only
difference between us is that I know the true extent of the Archive and its crimes,
and you are only just learning.”
“If you’re talking about my inability to quit, I already know.”
“You know
nothing
,” Owen hisses, forcing my body against his. I wrap my empty hand around his back
for balance, and bring the one with the key up behind him.
“But I could show you,” he says, softening. “It doesn’t have to end like this.”
“You used me.”
“So did they,” he says. “But I’m giving you the one thing they never have, and never
will. A choice.”
I slide the key through the empty air behind his back and begin to turn. Da said it
had to make a full circle, but halfway through the turn, the air
resists
and coalesces around the metal like a lock forming. A strange sense bleeds up the
key into my fingers as the door takes shape out of nothing, barely visible and yet
there, a shadow hovering in the air behind Owen. I look into his eyes, hold their
focus. They are so cold and empty and cruel. No butterflies, no shoulders-to-shoulders,
knees-to-knees, no sideways smiles. It makes this easier.
“I’d never help you, Owen.”
“Well, I’ll help you,” he says. “I’ll kill you before they do.”
I hold fast to the key, but let my other arm fall away from his back. “Don’t you see,
Owen?”
“See what?”
“The day’s over,” I say, turning the key the rest of the way.
His eyes widen with surprise as he hears the click behind him, but it’s too late.
The moment the key finishes the full turn, the door opens backward with explosive
force, not onto the dark halls of the Narrows or the white expanse of the Archive,
but a cavernous black, a void, like space without stars. A nothing. A nowhere. Just
like Da warned. But Da didn’t convey the crushing force, the pull, like air being
sucked out of an open plane door. It rips Owen and the knife backward, the void at
once swallowing him and wrenching me forward to follow; but I cling to the broken
arms of a gargoyle with all that’s left of my strength. The violent wind within the
doorway twists and, having devoured the History, reverses, slamming the door shut
in my face.
It leaves nothing. No door, nothing but the key Roland lent me, which hangs in the
air, still jammed in the invisible lock, its cord swaying from the force.
My knees buckle.
Then someone lets out a shuddering cough.
Wesley.
I pull the key free and run, weaving through the gargoyles and back to the edge of
the roof where Wesley is lying, curled, red spreading out beneath him. I drop to the
ground beside him.
“Wes. Wes, please, come on.”
His jaw is clenched, his palm pressed against his stomach. I’m still not wearing my
ring, and as I take his arm and try to wrap it around my shoulders, he gasps, and
it’s
pain fear worry anger pacing the
hall not home where is she where is she I shouldn’t have left and something
tight like panic
before I can focus on getting him to his feet.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, dragging him up, his fear and pain washing over me, his thoughts
running into mine. “I need you to stand. I’m sorry.”
Tears escape down his cheeks, dark from the eyeliner. His breath is ragged as I lead
him, too slowly, to the roof door. He leaves a trail of red.
“Mac,” he says between gritted teeth.
“Shhh. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.” And it’s such a bad lie, because how can
it possibly be okay when he’s losing this much blood? We’ll never make it down the
stairs. He won’t last long enough for an ambulance. He needs medical attention. He
needs Patrick. We reach the roof door, and I get the Crew key into the lock.
“I’ll kick your ass if you die on me, Wes,” I say, pulling him close as I turn the
key left and drag him through into the Archive.