The Archived

SEVENTEEN

I TENSE.

“What is it?” he asks.

“Nothing,” I say, a fraction too fast. What are the odds of Owen’s managing to make his way here, within arm’s reach of the numbered doors that don’t just lead out, but lead home?

I force myself to shrug. “It’s unusual, isn’t it? Living in a hotel?”

“It was incredible,” he says softly.

“Really?” I ask before I can stop myself.

“You don’t believe me?”

“It’s not that,” I say. “I just can’t picture it.”

“Close your eyes.” I do. “First, you step into the lobby. It is glass and dark wood, marble and gold.” His voice is smooth, lulling. “Gold traces the wallpaper, threads the carpet, it edges the wood and flecks the marble. The whole lobby glitters. It gleams. There are flowers in crystal vases: some roses the dark red of the carpet, others the white of stone. The place is always light,” he says. “Sun streams in through the windows, the curtains always thrown back.”

“It sounds beautiful.”

“It was. We moved in the year after it was converted to apartments.”

There’s something vaguely formal about Owen—there is a kind of timeless grace about him, his movements careful, his words measured—but it’s hard to believe he lived…and died…so long ago. But even more striking than his age is the date he’s referring to: 1951. I didn’t see the name Clarke in the directory, and now I know why. His family moved in during the time when the records are missing.

“I liked it well enough,” he’s saying, “but my sister loved it.”

His eyes take on an unfocused quality—not slipping, not black, but haunted.

“It was all a game to Regina,” he says quietly. “When we moved to the Coronado, she saw the whole hotel as a castle, a labyrinth, a maze of hiding places. Our rooms were side by side, but she insisted on passing me notes. Instead of slipping them under the door, she’d tear them up and hide the pieces around the building, tied to rocks, rings, trinkets, anything to weigh them down. One time she wrote me a story and scattered it all across the Coronado, wedged in garden cracks and under tiles, and in the mouths of statues.… It took me days to recover the fragments, and even then I never found the ending.…” His voice trails off.

“Owen?”

“You said you think there’s a reason Histories wake up. Something that eats at them…us.” He looks at me when he says it, and sadness streaks across his face, barely touching his features and yet transforming them. He wraps his arms around his ribs. “I couldn’t save her.”

My heart drops. I see the resemblance now, clear as day: their lanky forms, their silver-blond hair, their strange, delicate grace. The murdered girl.

“What happened?” I whisper.

“It was 1953. My family had lived at the Coronado for two years. Regina was fifteen. I was nineteen, and I’d just moved away,” Owen says through gritted teeth, “a couple of weeks before it happened. Not far, but that day it might as well have been countries, worlds, because when she needed me, I wasn’t there.”

The words cut through me. The same words I’ve said to myself a thousand times when I think about the day Ben died.

“She bled out on our living room floor,” he says. “And I wasn’t there.”

He leans back against the wall and slides down it until he’s sitting on the ground.

“It was my fault,” he whispers. “Do you think that’s why I’m here?”

I kneel in front of him. “You didn’t kill her, Owen.” I know. I’ve seen who did.

“I was her big brother.” He tangles his fingers in his hair. “It was my job to protect her. Robert was my friend first. I introduced them. I brought him into her life.”

Owen’s face darkens, and he looks away. I’m about to press when the scratch of letters in my pocket drags me back to the Narrows and the existence of other Histories. I pull the paper out, expecting a new name, but instead I find a summons.

Report at once. — R

“I have to go,” I say.

Owen’s hand comes to rest on my arm. For that moment, all the thoughts and questions and worries hush. “Mackenzie,” he says, “is my day over?”

I stand, and his hand slides from my skin, taking the quiet with it.

“No,” I say, turning away. “Not yet.”

My mind is still spinning over Owen’s sister—their resemblance is so strong, now that I know—as I step into the Archive. And then I see the front desk in the antechamber and come to a halt. The table is covered in files and ledgers, paper sticking out of the towering stacks of folders; and in the narrow alley between two piles, I can see Patrick’s glasses. Damn.

“If you’re trying to set a record for time spent here,” he says without looking up from his work, “I’m pretty sure you’ve done it.”

“I was just looking for—”

“You do know,” he says, “that despite my title, this isn’t really a library, right? We don’t lend, we don’t check out, we don’t even have a reference-only reading area. These constant visits are not only tiresome, they’re unacceptable.”

“Yes, I know, but—”

“And are you not busy enough, Miss Bishop? Because last time I checked, you had”—he lifts a pad of paper from the table, flicks through several pages—“five Histories on your list.”

Five?

“You do know why you have a list, correct?”

“Yes,” I manage.

“And why it’s imperative that you clear it?”

“Of course.” There’s a reason we constantly patrol, hoping to keep the numbers down, instead of just walking away, letting the Histories pile up in the Narrows. It’s said that if enough Histories woke and got into the space between the worlds, they wouldn’t need Keepers and keys to get through. They could force the doors open. Two ways through any lock, said Da.

“Then why are you still standing in front of—”

“Roland summoned me,” I say, holding up my Archive paper.

Patrick huffs and sits back in his seat, examining me for a long moment.

“Fine,” he says, returning to his work with little more than a gesture to the doors behind him.

I round the desk, slowing to watch him write in the ancient ledger sprawled open before him, and then, barely lifting his pen, in one of a half dozen smaller books. This is the first time I’ve ever seen the desk look cluttered.

“You seem busy,” I say as I pass.

“That’s because I am,” he answers.

“Busier than usual.”

“How astute.”

“I’m busier too, Patrick. You can’t tell me five names is standard, even for the Coronado.”

He doesn’t look up. “We’re experiencing some minor technical difficulties, Miss Bishop. So sorry to inconvenience you.”

I frown. “What kind of technical difficulties?” Glitching names? Armed Histories? Boys who don’t slip?

“Minor ones,” he snaps, making it clear as day that he’s done talking.

I put the list away as I pass through the main doors in search of Roland.

Crossing into the warm light of the atrium, my spirits lift, and I feel that sense of peace Da always spoke of. The calm.

And then something crashes.

Not here in the atrium but down one of the branching halls, the metal sound of a shelf falling to the floor. Several Librarians rise from their work and hurry toward the noise, closing the doors behind them; but I stand very, very still, remembering that I am surrounded by the sleeping dead.

I hold my breath and listen. Nothing happens. The doors stay closed. No sound comes through.

And then a hand lands on my shoulder and I spin, twisting the arm back behind the body. In one fluid move, the arm and body are both gone, and somehow I’m the one being pinned, facedown, against a table.

“Easy, there,” says Roland, letting go of my wrist and shoulder.

I take a few steadying breaths and lean against the table. “Why did you summon me? Did you find something? And did you hear that crash—”

“Not here,” he murmurs, motioning toward a wing. I follow him, rubbing my arm.

The farther we get from the atrium, the older the Archive seems. Roland leads me down corridors that begin to twist and coil and shrink, laid out more like the Narrows than the stacks. The ceilings shift from arching overhead to dipping low, and the rooms themselves are smaller, cryptlike and dusty.

“What was that sound?” I ask as Roland leads the way; but he doesn’t answer, only ducks into an oddly shaped alcove and turns again under a low stone arch. The room beyond is dim, and its walls are lined with worn, dated ledgers, not Histories. It is a cramped and faded version of the chamber in which I faced my trial.

“We have a problem,” he says as soon as he’s closed the door. “I looked through that list of names you sent. Most of them didn’t tell me anything, but two of them did. Two more people died in the Coronado, both in August, both within a month of Marcus Elling. And both Histories were altered, their deaths removed.”

I sink into a low leather chair, and Roland begins to pace. He looks exhausted, the lilt in his voice growing stronger as he talks. “I didn’t find them at first because they’d been mis-shelved, the entry ledgers saying one place but the catalogs saying another. Someone didn’t want them found.”

“Who were they?”

“Eileen Herring, a woman in her seventies, and Lionel Pratt, a man in his late twenties. Both lived in the Coronado, and both lived alone, just like Elling, but that’s the only connection I can find. I can’t even be certain they died in the Coronado, but their last intact memories are of the building. Eileen leaving her apartment on the second floor. Lionel sitting on the patio, having a smoke. The moments are mundane to a fault. Nothing about them gives any indication of what caused their deaths, and yet both have been blacked out.”

“Marcus, Eileen, and Lionel died in August. But Regina was murdered in March.”

His eyes narrow. “I thought you didn’t know her name.”

The air snags in my lungs. I didn’t. Not until Owen told me. But I can’t exactly explain that I’ve been sheltering her brother.

“You’re not the only one doing research, remember? I tracked down a resident of the Coronado, Ms. Angelli, who’d heard about the murder.”

It’s not a lie, I reason. Just a manipulation.

“What else did she know?” he presses.

I shake my head, trying to keep the spin as clean as I can. “Not much. She didn’t seem eager to swap stories.”

“Does Regina have a last name?”

I hesitate. If I give it, Roland will cross-reference her with Owen, who’s notably absent. I know I should tell him about Owen—we’re already breaking rules—but there are rules and there are Rules, and while Roland has gone far enough to break the former, I don’t know how he’d handle my breaking the latter and harboring a History in the Narrows. And I’ve still got so many questions for Owen.

I shake my head. “Angelli wouldn’t say, but I’ll keep pressing.” At least that lie will buy me a little time. I try to shift the focus back to the second set of deaths.

“Five months between Regina’s murder and these three deaths, Roland. How do we even know they’re related?”

He frowns. “We don’t. But it’s a suspicious number of filing errors. At first I thought it might be a cleanup, but…”

“A cleanup?”

“Sometimes, if things go badly—if a History does commit atrocities in the Outer, and there are victims as well as witnesses—the Archive does what it can to minimize the risk of exposure.”

“Are you saying the Archive actively covers up murders?”

“Not all evidence can be buried, but most can be twisted. Bodies can be disposed of. Deaths can be made to appear natural.” I must look as appalled as I feel, because he keeps talking. “I’m not saying it’s right, Miss Bishop; I’m just saying the Archive cannot afford to have people learning about Histories. About us.”

“But would they ever hide evidence from their own?”

He frowns again. “I’ve seen certain measures taken in the Outer. Surfaces altered. I’ve known members of the Archive who think the past should be sheltered here, in these walls, but not beyond them. People who think the Outer isn’t sacred. People who think there are things that Keepers and Crew should not see. But even they would never approve of this, of altering Histories, keeping the truth from us.” When he says us, he doesn’t mean me. He means the Librarians. He looks wounded. Betrayed.

“So someone here went rogue,” I say. “The question is why.”

“Not just why. Who.” Roland slides down into a chair. “Remember when I said we had a problem? Right after I found Eileen and Lionel, I went back to review Marcus’s History. I couldn’t. Someone had tampered with him. Erased him entirely.”

I grip the arms of my chair. “But that means it was done by a current Librarian. Someone in the Archive now.”

Suddenly I’m glad I’ve kept Owen a secret. If he is connected, then there’s one big difference between the other victims and him: he’s awake. I stand a better chance of learning what he knows by listening than by turning him back into a corpse. And if he is connected, then the moment I turn him in, our rogue Librarian will almost certainly erase what’s left of his memories.

“And judging by the rush job,” says Roland, “they know we’re digging.”

I shake my head. “But I don’t get it. You said that Marcus Elling’s death was first altered when he was brought in. That was more than sixty years ago. Why would a current Librarian be trying to cover up the work of an old one?”

Roland rubs his eyes. “They wouldn’t. And they’re not.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Alterations have a signature. Memories that have been hollowed out by different hands both register as black, but there’s a subtle difference in the way they read. The way they feel. The way Marcus Elling’s History reads now is the same way it read before. The same way the other two read. They were all altered by the same person.”

One person over the course of sixty-five years. “Can Librarians even serve that long?”

“There’s not exactly mandatory retirement,” he says. “Librarians choose the duration of their term. And since, as long as we’re stationed here, we don’t age…” Roland trails off, and I make a mental list of everyone I’ve seen in the branch. There have to be a dozen, two dozen Librarians here at any one time. I know only a few by name.

“It’s clever,” Roland says, half to himself. “Librarians are the one element of the Archive that isn’t—can’t be—fully recorded, kept track of. If they stayed too long in one place, a rogue action would have drawn attention, but Librarians are in a constant state of flux, of transfer. The staff is never together for very long. People come and go. They move freely through the branches. It’s conceivable…”

I think of Roland, who’s been here since my induction; but the others—Lisa and Patrick and Carmen—all came later.

“You stuck around,” I say.

“Had to keep you out of trouble.”

Roland’s Chucks bounce nervously.

“What do we do now?” I ask.

“We aren’t going to do anything.” Roland’s head snaps up. “You’re going to stay away from this case.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Mackenzie, that’s the other reason I summoned you. You’ve already taken too many chances—”

“If you’re talking about the list of names—”

“You’re lucky I’m the one who found it.”

“It was an accident.”

“It was reckless.”

“Maybe if I’d known the paper could do that, maybe if the Archive didn’t keep everything so damn secret—”

“Enough. I know you only want to help, but whoever is doing this is dangerous, and they clearly don’t want to get caught. It’s imperative that you stay out of—”

“—the way?”

“No, the crosshairs.”

I think of Jackson’s knife and Hooper’s attack. Too late.

“Please,” says Roland. “You have a lot more to lose. Let me take it from here.”

I hesitate.

“Miss Bishop…”

“How long have you been a Librarian?” I ask him.

“Too long,” he says. “Now, promise me.”

I force myself to nod, and I feel a pinch of guilt as his shoulders visibly loosen because he believes me. He gets to his feet and heads to the door. I follow, but halfway there, I stop.

“Maybe you should let me see Ben,” I say.

“Why’s that?”

“You know, as a cover-up. In case our rogue Librarian is watching.”

Roland almost smiles. But he still sends me home.