The Archived

TWELVE

THE NEXT DAY Melanie Allen. 10. has been joined by Jena Freeth. 14. but the moment I emerge from my room to hunt, Mom appears with an apron and a revived high-wattage smile, thrusts a box of cleaning supplies into my hands, and drops a book on top.

“Coffee shop duty!”

She says it like I’ve been given a prize, a reward. My forearm still aches dully, and the box bulges in my arms, threatening to crumble.

“I have a vague idea of what cleaning supplies do, but what’s with the book?”

“Your father picked up your school’s reading list.”

I look at my mother, then at the calendar on the kitchen wall, then at the sunlight streaming in the window. “It’s summer.”

“Yes, it’s a summer reading list,” she says cheerfully. “Now, off with you. You can clean or you can read, or you can clean and then read, or read and then clean, or—”

“I got it.” I could beg off, lie, but I’m still feeling shaky from last night and I wouldn’t mind a couple hours as M right now, a taste of normalcy. Besides, there’s a Narrows door in the coffee shop.

Downstairs, the overhead lights blink sleepily on. I drop the box on the counter, letting it regain its composure as I dig out the book. Dante’s Inferno. You’ve got to be kidding me. I consider the cover, which features a good deal of hellfire and proudly announces that this is the SAT prep edition, complete with starred vocabulary. I turn to the first page and begin to read.

In the midway of this our mortal life, I found me in a gloomy wood, astray…

No, thank you.

I toss Dante onto a pile of folded sheets by the wall, where it lands with a plume of dust. Cleaning it is, then. The whole room smells faintly of soap and stale air, and the stone counters and floor make it feel cold, despite the summer air beyond the windows. I throw them open, then switch the radio on, crank up the volume, and get to work.

The soapy mixture I concoct smells strong enough to chew right through my plastic gloves, to peel back skin and polish bone. It is beautiful bluish stuff, and when I smear it across the marble, it shimmers. I think I can hear it chewing away at the grime on the floor. A few vigorous circles and my corner of the floor even begins to resemble Mom’s.

“I don’t believe it.”

I look up to find Wesley Ayers sitting backward on a metal chair, a relic unearthed from beneath one of the folded sheets. Most of the furniture has been moved onto the patio, but a few chairs dot the room, including this one. “There’s actually a room under all this dust!” He drapes his arms over the chair and rests his chin on the arching metal. I never heard him come in.

“Good morning,” he adds. “I don’t suppose there’s a pot of coffee down here.”

“Alas, not yet.”

“And you call yourself a coffee shop.”

“To be fair, the sign says ‘Coming Soon.’ So,” I say, getting to my feet, “what brings you to the future site of Bishop’s Coffee Shop?”

“I’ve been thinking.”

“A dangerous pursuit.”

“Indeed.” He raises one eyebrow playfully. “I got it into my head to save you from the loneliness born of rainy days and solitary chores.”

“Oh, did you?”

“Magnanimous, I know.” His gaze settles on the discarded book. He leans, reaching until his fingertips graze Dante’s Inferno, still on its bed of folded sheets.

“What have we here?” he asks.

“Required reading,” I say, starting to scrub the counter.

“It’s a shame they do that,” he says, thumbing through the pages. “Requirement ruins even the best of books.”

“Have you read it?”

“A few times.” My eyebrows arch, and he laughs. “Again with the skepticism. Looks can be deceiving, Mac. I’m not all beauty and charm.” He keeps turning the pages. “How far in are you?”

I groan, making circular motions on the granite. “About two lines. Maybe three.”

Now it’s his turn to raise a brow. “You know, the thing about a book like this is that it’s meant to be heard, not read.”

“Oh, really.”

“Honest. I’ll prove it to you. You clean, I’ll read.”

“Deal.”

I scrub as he rests the book on the top of the chair. He doesn’t start from the beginning, but turns to a page somewhere in the middle, clears his throat, and begins.

“‘Through me you pass into the city of woe.’”

His voice is measured, smooth.

“‘Through me you pass into eternal pain.…’”

He slips to his feet and rounds the chair as he reads, and I try to listen, I do, but the words blur in my ears as I watch him step toward me, half his face in shadow. Then he crosses into the light and stands there, only a counter between us. Up close, I see the scar along his collar, just beneath the leather cord; his square shoulders; the dark lashes framing his light eyes. His lips move, and I blink as his voice dips low, private, forcing me to listen closer, and I catch the end.

“‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.’”

He looks up at me and stops. The book slips to his side.

“Mackenzie.” He flashes a crooked smile.

“Yeah?”

“You’re spilling soap on everything.”

I look down and realize he’s right. The soap is dripping over the counter, making bubble-blue puddles on the floor.

I laugh. “Well, can’t hurt,” I say, trying to hide my embarrassment. Wesley, on the other hand, seems to relish it. He leans across the counter, drawing aimless patterns in the soap.

“Got lost in my eyes, did you?”

He leans farther forward, his hands in the dry spaces between soap slicks. I smile and lift the sponge, intending to ring it out over his head, but he leans back just in time, and the soapy mix splashes onto the already flooded counter.

He points a painted black nail at his hair. “Moisture messes up the ’do.” He laughs good-naturedly as I roll my eyes. And then I’m laughing, too. It feels good. It’s something M would do. Laugh like this.

I want to tell Wes that I dream of a life filled with these moments.

“Well,” I say, trying to sop up the soap, “I have no idea what you were reading about, but it sounded nice.”

“It’s the inscription on the gates of Hell,” says Wes. “It’s my favorite part.”

“Morbid, much?”

He shrugs. “When you think about it, the Archive is kind of like a Hell.”

The cheerful moment wobbles, cracks. I picture Ben’s shelf, picture the quiet, peace-filled halls. “How can you say that?” I ask.

“Well, not the Archive so much as the Narrows. After all, it is a place filled with the restless dead, right?”

I nod absently, but I can’t shake the tightness in my chest. Not just at the mention of Hell, but at the way Wesley went from reciting homework to musing on the Archive. As if it’s all one life, one world—but it’s not, and I’m stuck somewhere between my Keeper world and my Outer world, trying to figure out how Wesley has one foot so comfortably in each.

You use your thumbnail to dig out a sliver of wood from the railing on the porch. It needs to be painted, but it never will be. It’s our last summer together. Ben didn’t come this year; he’s at some sleepaway camp. And when the house goes on the market this winter, the rail will still be crumbling.

You’re trying to teach me how to split myself into pieces.

Not messy, like tearing paper into confetti, but clean, even: like cutting a pie. You say that’s you how you lie and get away with it. That’s how you stay alive.

“Be who you need to be,” you say. “When you’re with your brother, or your parents, or your friends, or Roland, or a History. Remember what I taught you about lying?”

“You start with a little truth,” I say.

“Yes. Well, this is the same.” You throw the sliver of wood over the rail and start working on another. Your hands are never still. “You start with you. Each version of you isn’t a total lie. It’s just a twist.”

It’s quiet and dark, a too-hot summer even at night, and I turn to go inside.

“One more thing,” you say, drawing me back. “Every now and then, those separate lives, they intersect. Overlap. That’s when you have to be careful, Kenzie. Keep your lies clean, and your worlds as far apart as possible.”

Everything about Wesley Ayers is messy.

My three worlds are kept apart by walls and doors and locks, and yet here he is, tracking the Archive into my life like mud. I know what Da would say, I know, I know, I know. But the strange new overlap is scary and messy and welcome. I can be careful.

Wesley fiddles with the book, doesn’t go back to reading. Maybe he can feel it, too, this place where lines smudge. Quiet settles over us like dust. Is there a way to do this? Last night in the dark of the garden it was thrilling and terrifying and wonderful to tell the truth, but here in the daylight it feels dangerous, exposed.

Still. I want him to say the words again. I am a Keeper. I hunt Histories…I’m about to ask something, anything, to break the quiet, when Wesley beats me to it.

“Favorite Librarian?” As if he’s asking about my favorite food, or song, or movie.

“Roland,” I say.

“Really?” He drops the book.

“You sound surprised.”

“I pictured you as a Carmen fan. But I do appreciate Roland’s taste in shoes.”

“The red Chucks? He says he found them in the closets, but I’m pretty sure he swiped them from a History.”

“Weird to think of closets in the Archive.”

“Weird to think of Librarians living there,” I say. “It just seems unnatural.”

“I left a ball of Oreo filling out for months one time,” says Wesley. “It never got hard. Lot of unnatural things in the world.”

A laugh escapes my lips, echoes off the granite and glass of the hollowed coffee shop. The laugh is easy, and it feels so, so good. And then Wes picks up the book, and I pick up my sponge, and he promises to read as long as I keep cleaning. I turn back to my work as he clears his throat and starts. I scrub the counter four times just so he won’t stop.

For an hour, the world is perfect.

And then I look down at the frosted blue of the soap, and my mind drifts, of all things, to Owen. Who is he? And what’s he doing in my territory? Some small part of me thinks he was a phantom, that maybe I’ve split myself into one too many pieces. But he seemed real enough, driving the knife into Hooper’s chest.

“Question,” I say, and Wes’s reading trails off. “You said you covered the Coronado’s doors. That this place was shared.” Wes nods. “Were there any other Keepers covering it?”

“Not since I got my key last year. There was a woman at first, but she moved away. Why?”

“Just curious,” I say automatically.

His mouth quirks. “If you’re going to lie to me, you’ll have to try a bit harder.”

“It’s not a big deal. There was an incident in my territory. I’ve just been thinking about it.” My words skirt around Owen and land on Hooper. “There was this adult—”

His eyes go wide. “Adult History? Like a Keeper-Killer?”

I nod. “I took care of it, but…”

He misreads my question about the Keepers on patrol.

“Do you want me to go with you?”

“Where?”

“In the Narrows. If you’re worried—”

“I’m not—” I growl.

“I could go with you, for protect—”

I lift the sponge. “Finish that word,” I say, ready to pitch it at his head. To his credit, he backs down, the sentence fading into a crooked smile. Just then, something scratches my leg. I drop the sponge back to the counter, tug off the plastic gloves, and dig out the list. I frown. The two names, Melanie Allen. 10. and Jena Freeth. 14. hover near the top of the page, but instead of a third name below them, I find a note.

Miss Bishop, please report to the Archive. — R

R, for Roland. Wesley is lounging in the chair, one leg over the side. I turn the paper for him to see.

“A summons?” he asks. “Look at you.”

My stomach sinks, and for a moment I feel like I’m sitting in the back of English class when the intercom clicks on, ordering me to the principal’s office. But then I remember the favor I asked of Roland, and my heart skips. Did he find the murdered girl?

“Go on,” says Wesley, rolling up his sleeves and reaching for my discarded plastic gloves. “I’ll cover for you.”

“But what if Mom comes in?”

“I’m going to meet Mrs. Bishop eventually. You do realize that.”

I can dream.

“Go on now,” he presses.

“Are you sure?”

He’s already taking up the sponge. He cocks his head at me, silver glinting in his ears. He paints quite a picture, decked in black, a teasing smile and a pair of lemon-yellow gloves.

“What’s the matter?” he asks, wielding the sponge like a weapon. “Doesn’t it look like I know what I’m doing?”

I laugh, pocket the list, and head for the closet in the back of the café. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” I hear the slosh of water, a muttered curse, the sounds of a body slipping on a slick floor.

“Try not to hurt yourself,” I call, vanishing among the brooms.