The Archived

ELEVEN

Y

OU HOLD OUT

the slip of paper you keep rolled behind your ear.

I tap the small 7 beside the boy’s name. “Are they all so young?”

“Not all,” you say, smoothing the paper, an unlit cigarette between your teeth. “But most.”

“Why?”

You take the cigarette out, jabbing the air with the unlit tip. “That is the most worthless question in the world. Use your words. Be specific.

Why

is like

bah

or

moo

or that silly sound pigeons make.”

“Why are most of the ones that wake so young?”

“Some are

—

were

—

troubled. But most are restless. Didn’t live enough, maybe.” Your tone shifts. “But everyone has a History, Kenzie. Young and old.” I can see you testing the words in your mouth. “The older the History, the heavier they sleep. The older ones that wake have something in them, something different, something dark. Troubled. Unstable. They’re bad people. Dangerous. They’re the ones who tend to get into the Outer. The ones who fall into the hands of Crew.”

“Keeper-Killers,” I whisper.

You nod.

I straighten. “How do I beat them?”

“Strength. Skill.” You run a hand over my hair. “And luck. Lots of luck.”

My back presses against the wall as the tip of the knife nicks my throat, and I really don’t want to die like this.

“Key,” Hooper growls again, his black eyes dancing. “God, Abbie, I just want out. I want out and he said you had it, said I had to get it—so give it to me now.”

He?

The knife bites down.

My mind is suddenly horribly blank. I take a shallow breath.

“Okay,” I say, reaching for the key. The cord is looped three times around my wrist, and I’m hoping that somewhere between untangling it and motioning toward him, I can get the knife away.

I unloop it once.

And then something catches my eye. Down the hall, beyond Hooper’s massive form, a shadow moves. A shape in the dark. The form slips silently forward, and I can’t see his face, only his outline and a sweep of silver-blond hair. He slides up behind the History as I unloop the cord a second time.

I unloop the cord a final time, and Hooper is snatching the key, the knife retreating a fraction from my throat, when the stranger’s arm coils around the History’s neck.

The next moment Hooper is slammed backward onto the ground, the knife tumbling from his grasp. The motion is clean, efficient. The stranger catches the blade and drives it down toward the History’s broad chest, but he’s a beat too slow, and Hooper grabs hold of him and flings him into the nearest wall with an audible crack.

And then I see it, glittering on the floor between us.

My key.

I dive for it as Hooper sees, and lunges too. He reaches it first, but between one blink and the next, the blond man has his hands around Hooper’s jaw, and swiftly breaks his neck.

Before Hooper can sag forward, the stranger catches his body and slams it against the nearest door, driving the knife straight through his chest, the blade and most of the hilt buried deep enough to pin his body against the wooden door. I stare at the History’s limp form, chin against his chest, wondering how long it will take him to recover from that.

The stranger is staring, too, at the place where his hand meets the knife and the knife meets Hooper’s body, the wound bloodless. He curls and uncurls his fingers around the handle.

“He won’t stay like that,” I say, desperate to keep the tremor from my voice as I rewrap the key cord around my wrist.

His voice is quiet, low. “I doubt it.”

He lets go of the knife, and Hooper’s body hangs against the door. I feel a drop of blood running down my throat. I wipe it away. I wish my hands would stop shaking. My list is a spot of white on the blackened floor. I recover it, muttering a curse.

Right below Melanie Allen’s name sits a new one in clean print.

Albert Hooper. 45.

A little late. I look up as the stranger brings a hand to the slope of his neck and frowns.

“Are you hurt?” I ask, remembering how hard he hit the wall.

He rolls his shoulder first one way and then the other, a slow testing motion. “I don’t think so.”

He’s young, late teens, maybe, whitish blond hair long enough to drift into his eyes, across his cheekbones. He’s dressed in all black, not punk or goth, but simple, well-fitting. His clothing blurs into the dark around him.

The moment is surreal. I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve seen him before, but I know I’d remember if I did. And now we’re standing in the Narrows, the body of a History hanging like a coat on the door between us. He doesn’t seem bothered by that. If his combat skills aren’t enough to mark him as a Keeper, his composure is.

“Who are you?” I ask, trying to force as much authority into my voice as possible.

“My name’s Owen,” he says. “Owen Chris Clarke.”

His eyes meet mine as he says it, and my chest tightens. Everything about him is calm, even. His movements when fighting were fluid, efficient to the point of elegant. But his eyes are piercing. Wolfish. Eyes like one of Ben’s drawings, sketched out in a stark, pale blue.

I feel dazed, both by Hooper’s sudden attack and Owen’s equally sudden appearance, but I don’t have time to collect myself, because Hooper’s body shudders against the door.

“What’s your name?” Owen asks. And for some reason, I tell him the truth.

“Mackenzie.”

He smiles. He has the kind of smile that barely touches his mouth.

“Where did you come from?” I ask, and Owen glances over his shoulder, when Hooper’s eyelids flutter.

The door he’s braced against is marked with white, the edge of the chalk circle peering out from his back, and that’s all I have time to notice before Hooper’s black eyes snap open.

I spring into action, driving the key into the door and turning the lock as I grip the knife in the History’s chest and pull. The door falls open and the knife comes out; and I drive my boot into Hooper’s stomach, sending him back a few steps, just enough. His shoes hit the white of the Returns, and I catch the door and slam it shut between us.

I hear Hooper beat against it once before falling deathly silent. I spin to face the Narrows, only seconds having passed, but Owen Chris Clarke is gone.

I slump down onto the worn runner of the Coronado’s stairs and slide my ring back on, dropping the knife and the list onto the steps beside me. Hooper’s name is gone now. Little good it did, since it didn’t show up until I was halfway through the fight. I should report it, but to who? The Librarians would probably just turn it into a lecture on making Crew, on being prepared. But how could I have been prepared?

My eyes burn as I replay the fight. Clumsy. Weak. Caught off guard. I should never, ever be off guard. I know he’d lecture, I know he’d scold; but for the first time in years, the memories are not enough. I wish I could talk to Da.

“I nearly lost.”

It is a whispered confession to an empty lobby, the strength leaching from my voice. Behind my eyes, Owen Chris Clarke breaks Hooper’s neck. “I didn’t know how to fight him, Da. I felt helpless.” The word scratches my throat. “I’ve been doing this for years and I’ve never felt that.” My hands tremble faintly.

I turn my thoughts from Hooper to Owen as my fingers drift toward the knife. His fluid movements, the ease with which he handled the weapon and the History. Wesley said the territory had been shared. Maybe Hooper was on Owen’s list first. Or maybe Owen, like Wesley, had nothing better to do and happened to be in the right place at the right time.

I turn the knife absently between my fingers, and stop. There’s something etched into the metal, right above the hilt. Three small lines. The Archive mark. My stomach twists. The weapon belonged to a member of the Archive—Keeper, Crew, Librarian—so how did it end up in the hands of a History? Did Jackson swipe it when he escaped?

I rub my eyes. It’s late. I tighten my grip on the knife. Maybe I’ll need it. I drag myself to my feet, and I’m about to go upstairs when I hear it.

Music.

It must have been playing all along. I turn my head from side to side, trying to decipher where it’s coming from, and see that a sheet of paper has been tacked beneath the café sign: Coming Soon! announced in the cleanest, most legible version of my mother’s script. I head for the sign, but then I remember that I’m holding a large, unsheathed, and very conspicuous knife. There’s a planter in the corner where the grand stairs meet the wall, and I set the weapon carefully inside before crossing the lobby. The music grows. Into the hall, and it’s louder still, then through the door on the right, down a step and through another door, the notes leading me like bread crumbs.

I find my mother kneeling in a pool of light.

It’s not light, I realize, but clean, pale stone. Her head is bent as she scours the floor, the tiles of which, it turns out, are not gray at all, but a stunning pearlescent white marble. One section of the counter, too, where Mom has already asserted her cleaning prowess, is gleaming white granite, run through with threads of black and gold. These spots glitter, like gems across coal. The radio blasts, a pop song that peaks then trails off into commercials, but Mom doesn’t seem to register anything but the whoosh of her sponge and the spreading pool of white. In the middle of the floor, partially revealed, is a rust-colored pattern. A rose, petal after petal of inlaid stone, an even, earthy red.

“Wow,” I say.

She looks up suddenly. “Mackenzie, I didn’t see you there.”

She gets to her feet. She looks like a human cleaning rag, as if she simply transferred all the dirt from the café onto herself. On one of the counters a bag of groceries sits, forgotten. Condensation makes the plastic bag cling to the once-cold contents.

“It’s amazing,” I say. “There’s actually something underneath the dust.”

She beams, hands on her hips. “I know. It’s going to be perfect.”

Another pop song starts up on the radio, but I reach over and turn it off.

“How long have you been down here, Mom?”

She blinks several times, looks surprised. As if she hadn’t thought about time and its penchant for moving forward. Her eyes register the darkness beyond the windows, then travel back to the neglected groceries. Something in her sags. And for a moment, I see her. Not the watts-too-bright, smile-till-it-hurts her, but the real one. The mother who lost her little boy.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Mac,” she says, rubbing the back of her hand across her forehead. “I completely lost track of time.” Her hands are red and raw. She isn’t even wearing plastic gloves. She tries to smile again, but it falters.

“Hey, it’s fine,” I say. I hoist the soap-filled bucket onto the counter, wincing as the weight sends pain through my bandaged arm, and dump its contents into the sink. The sink, by the looks of it, could use it. I hook the empty container on my elbow. “Let’s go upstairs.”

Mom suddenly looks exhausted. She picks up the groceries from the counter, but I take them from her.

“I got it,” I say, my arm aching. “Are you hungry? I can heat you up some dinner.”

Mom nods wearily. “That would be great.”

“All right,” I say. “Let’s go home.”

Home. The word still tastes like sandpaper in my mouth. But it makes Mom smile—a tired, true smile—so it’s worth it.

I’m so tired my bones hurt. But I can’t sleep.

I press my palms against my eyes, going through the fight with Hooper over and over and over again, scouring the scene for what I could have—should have—done differently. I think of Owen, the swift, efficient movements, the breaking of the History’s neck, the plunging of the knife into his chest. My fingers drift to my sternum, then inch down until they rest on the place where it ends.

I sit up, reach beneath the bed, and free the knife from the lip of bed frame, where I hid it. Once Mom was settled, I went back to the lobby and rescued it from the planter. Now it glints wickedly in the darkened room, the Archive mark like ink on the shining metal. Whose was it?

I slide off my ring, letting it fall to the comforter, and close my hand over the hilt. The hum of memories buzzes against my palm. Weapons, even small ones, are easy to read because they tend to have such vivid, violent pasts. I close my eyes and catch hold of the thread inside. Two memories roll backward, the more recent one with Hooper—I watch myself pressed against the wall, eyes wide—and the older one with Jackson. But before Jackson brought it into the Narrows, there’s…nothing. Only flat black. This blade should be filled to the brim with stories, and instead it’s like it doesn’t have a past. But the three marks on the metal say otherwise. What if Jackson didn’t steal it? What if someone sent him into the Narrows armed?

I blink, trying to dispel my growing unease along with the matte black of missing memories.

The only bright side is that, wherever this weapon came from, it’s mine now. I hook my finger through the hole in the handle and twirl the blade slowly. I close my hand around the handle, stopping its path, and the hilt hits my palm with a satisfying snap, the metal tracing the line up my forearm. I smile. It is an amazing weapon. In fact, I’m fairly certain I could kill myself with it. But having it, holding it, makes me feel better. I’ll have to find a way to bind it to my calf, to keep it from sight, from reach. Da’s warnings echo in my head, but I quiet them.

I put my ring back on and return the knife to its hidden lip beneath the bed, promising myself I won’t use it. I tell myself I won’t need to. I lie back, less shaken, but no closer to sleep. My eyes settle on the blue bear propped on my side table, the black glasses perched on its nose. Nights like this I wish I could sit and talk to Ben, wear my mind out, but I can’t go back to the stacks so soon. I think of calling Lyndsey, but it’s late, and what would I say?

How was your day?… Yeah? Oh, mine?

I got attacked by a Keeper-Killer.

I know! And saved by a stranger who just vanished—

And that guyliner boy, he’s a Keeper!

…No, Keeper with a capital K.

And there’s the murder in my room. Someone tried to cover it up, ripped the pages right out of the history books.

Oh, and I almost forgot. Someone in the Archive might be trying to get me killed.

I laugh. It’s a strained sound, but it helps.

And then I yawn, and soon, somehow, I find sleep.