The Archived

TWENTY-SEVEN

WESLEY IS LATE.

He was supposed to pick me up at nine. I woke at dawn and spent the hour before Mom and Dad got up scouring the apartment for loose boards and any other hiding places where Regina could have hidden a scrap of story. I dragged the boxes from my closet, pulled half the drawers from the kitchen, tested every wooden plank for give, and found absolutely nothing.

Then I put on a show for my parents, doing stretches as I told them how Wes was on his way, how we were planning to hit Rhyne Park today (I found a map in the study, and the splotch of green labeled RHYNE seemed to be within walking distance). I mentioned that we’d grab lunch on the way back, and shooed my parents to their respective work with promises that I’d stay hydrated, wear sunscreen.

And then I waited for Wes, just like we’d agreed.

But nine a.m. came and went without him.

Now my eyes flick to the tub of oatmeal raisin cookies on the counter, and I think of Nix and the questions I could be asking him. About Owen and the missing months.

I give my partner another ten minutes, then twenty.

When the clock hits nine thirty, I grab the tub and head for the stairs. I can’t afford to sit still.

But halfway down the hall, something stops me—that gut sense Da was always talking about, the one that warns when something is off. It’s the painting of the sea. It’s crooked again. I reach out and straighten the frame, and that’s when I hear a familiar rattling sound, like something is sliding loose inside, and everything in me grinds to a halt.

I was born up north, by the sea, said Owen.

My heart pounds as I carefully lift the painting from the wall and turn it over. There’s a backing, like a second canvas, one corner loose, and when I tip the painting in my hands, something falls free and tumbles to the old checkered carpet with a whispered thud. I return the painting to the wall and kneel, retrieving a piece of paper folded around a chip of metal.

I unfold the paper with shaking hands, and read.…

He fought the men and he slayed the monsters and he bested the gods, and at last the hero, having conquered all, earned the thing that he wanted most. To go home.

The end of Regina’s story.

I read it twice more, then look closer at the bit of dark metal it was wrapped around. It’s the thickness of a nickel and about as large, if a nickel were hammered into a roughly rectangular shape. The two sides opposite each other are regular and straight, but the other two are off. The top side has a notch cut out, as if someone ran a knife across the stone just below the edge. The notch is on both sides. The bottom side of the square has been filed till it is sharp enough to cut with, the metal tapering to a point.

There’s something familiar about it, and even though I can’t place it, a small sense of victory flutters through me as I pocket the metal and the paper scrap and head upstairs.

On the seventh floor I knock, wait, and listen to the sound of the wheelchair rolling across the wood. Nix maneuvers the door with even less grace than the first time. When he’s got it open, his face lights up.

“Miss Mackenzie.”

I smile. “How did you know it was me?”

“You or Betty,” he says. “And she wears perfume thick as a coat.” I laugh. “Told her to stop bathing in it.”

“I brought the cookies,” I say. “Sorry it took so long.”

He pivots the wheelchair and lets me guide him back to the table.

“As you can see,” he says as he waves a hand at the apartment, “I’ve been so busy, I’ve hardly noticed.”

It looks untouched, like a painting of the last visit, down to the cigarette ash and the scarf around his neck. I’m relieved to see he didn’t set the thing on fire.

“Betty hasn’t been in to clean up,” he says.

“Nix…” I’m afraid to ask. “Is Betty still around?”

He laughs hoarsely. “She’s no dead wife, if that’s what you think, and I’m too old for imaginary friends.” A breath of relief escapes. “Comes ’round to check on me,” he explains. “Dead wife’s sister’s daughter’s friend, or something. I forget. She tells me my mind is going, but really I just don’t care enough to remember.” He points to the table. “You left your book here.” And sure enough, the Inferno is sitting where I left it. “Don’t worry. Not like I peeked.”

I consider leaving it again. Maybe he won’t notice. “Sorry about that,” I say. “Summer reading.”

“What do schools do that for?” he grumbles. “What’s the point of summer if they give you homework?”

“Exactly!” I set him up at the table and put the Tupperware in his lap.

He rattles it. “Too many cookies here for just me. You better help.”

I take one and sit down across from Nix. “I wanted to ask you—”

“If it’s about those deaths,” he cuts in, “I’ve been thinking about ’em.” He picks at the raisins in his cookie. “Ever since you asked. I’d almost forgotten. Scary, how easy it is to forget bad things.”

“Did the police think the deaths were connected?” I ask.

Nix shifts in his seat. “They weren’t certain. I mean, it was suspicious, to be sure. But like I said, you can connect the dots or you can leave them be. And that’s what they did, left ’em random, scattered.”

“What happened to the brother, Owen? You said he stayed here.”

“You want to know about that boy, you know who you should ask? That antiques collector.”

I frown. “Ms. Angelli?” I remember the not-so-subtle gesture of her door shutting in my face. “Because she has a thing for history?”

Nix takes a bite of cookie. “Well, that too. But mostly because she lives in Owen Clarke’s old place.”

“No,” I say slowly, “I do. Three F.”

Nix shakes his head. “You live in the Clarke family’s old place. But they moved out right after the murder. And that boy, Owen, he couldn’t go, but he couldn’t stay either, not there where his sister was… Well, he moved into a vacant apartment. And that Angelli woman lives there now. I wouldn’t have known it if she hadn’t come up to see me, a few years back when she moved in, curious about the history of the building. You want to know more about Owen, you should talk to her.”

“Thanks for the tip,” I say, already on my feet.

“Thanks for the cookies.”

Just then the front door opens and a middle-aged woman appears on the mat. Nix sniffs the air once.

“Ah, Betty.”

“Lucian Nix, I know you’re not eating sugar.”

Betty makes a beeline for Nix, and in the scramble of cookies and curses, I duck out and head downstairs. Names are still scratching on the list in my pocket, but they’ll have to wait just a little longer.

When I reach the fourth floor, I run through the spectrum of lies I could use to get Angelli to let me in. I’ve only passed her once since she shut the door in my face, and earned little more than a curt nod.

But when I reach her door and press my ear to the wood, I hear only silence.

I knock and hold my breath and hope. Still silence.

I test the door, but it’s locked. I search my pockets for a card or a hairpin, or anything I can use to jimmy the lock, silently thanking Da for the afternoon he spent teaching me to do that.

But maybe I won’t need to. I step back to examine the door. Ms. Angelli is a bit on the scattered side. I’m willing to bet that she’s a touch forgetful, and with the amount of clutter in her apartment, the odds of misplacing a key are high. The door frame is narrow but wide enough to form a shallow shelf on top, a lip. I stretch onto my toes and brush my fingertips along the sill of the door. They sweep against something metal, and sure enough, a key tumbles to the checkered carpet.

People are so beautifully predictable. I take up the key and slide it into the lock, holding my breath as I turn it and the door pops open, leading into the living room. Across the threshold, my eyes widen. I’d nearly forgotten how much stuff was here, covering every surface, the beautiful and the gaudy and the old. It’s piled on shelves and tables and even on the floor, forcing me to weave between towers of clutter and into the room. I don’t see how Ms. Angelli can walk through without upsetting anything.

The layout of 4D is the same as 3F, with the open kitchen and the hallway off the living room leading to the bedrooms. I slowly make my way toward them, checking each room to make sure I’m alone. Every room is empty of people and full of things, and I don’t know if it’s the clutter or the fact that I’ve broken in, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being watched. It trails me through the apartment, and when a small crash comes from the direction of living room, I spin, expecting to see Ms. Angelli.

But no one’s there.

And that’s when I remember. The cat.

Back in the living room, a few books have been toppled, but there’s no sign of Angelli’s cat Jezzie. My skin crawls. I try to convince myself that if I stay out of her way, she’ll stay out of mine. I shift the stack of books, a stone bust, and the edge of the carpet out of the way, clearing a space so I can read.

I take a deep breath, slide off my ring, and kneel on the exposed floorboards. But the moment I bring my hands to the wood, before I’ve even reached for the past, the whole room begins to hum against my fingers. Shudders. Rattles. And it takes me a moment to realize that I’m not feeling the weight of the memory in the floor alone, that there are so many antiques in this room, so many things with so many memories, that the lines between the objects are blurring. The hum of the floor touches the hum of things sitting on the floor, and so on, until the whole room sings, and it hurts. A pins-and-needles numb that climbs my arms and winds across my bruised ribs.

It’s too much to read. There is too much stuff in here, and it fills my head the way human noise does. I haven’t even started reaching past the hum to whatever memories are beyond it; I can hardly think through the noise. Pain flickers behind my eyes, and I realize I’m pushing back against the hum, so I try to remember Wesley’s lessons.

Let the noise go white, he said. I crouch in the middle of Angelli’s apartment with my eyes squeezed shut and my hands glued to the floor, waiting for the noise to run together around me, for it to even out. And it does, little by little, until I can finally think, and then focus, and reach.

I catch hold of the memory, and time spirals back, and with it the clutter shifts, changes, then lessens, piece after piece vanishing from the room until I can see most of the floor, the walls. People slide through the space, earlier tenants—some of the memories dull and faded, others bright—an older man, a middle-aged woman, a family with young twins. The room clears, morphs, until finally it is Owen’s space.

I can tell even before I see his blond head flicker through the room, moving backward because I’m still rewinding time. At first I’m filled with relief that there is a memory to read, that it hasn’t been blacked out along with so much of that year. And the memory suddenly sharpens, and I swear I see—

Pain shoots through my head as I slam the memory’s retreat to a stop, and let it slide forward.

In the room with Owen, there is a girl.

I only catch a glimpse before he blocks my view. She’s sitting in a bay window, and he’s kneeling in front of her, his hands up on either side of her face, his forehead pressed to hers. The Owen I know is calm to a fault, composed, and sometimes, though I wouldn’t tell him, ghostly. But this Owen is alive, full of restless energy woven through his shoulders and the way he’s subtly rocking on his heels as he speaks. The words themselves are nothing more than a murmur, but I can tell they are low and urgent; and as suddenly as he knelt, he’s up, hands falling from the girl’s face as he turns away.…And then I’m not looking at him anymore, because I’m looking at her.

She’s sitting with her knees drawn up just the way they were the night she was killed, blond hair spilling over them, and even though she’s looking down, I know exactly who she is.

Regina Clarke.

But that’s not possible.

Regina died before Owen ever moved into this apartment.

And then, as if she knows what I’m thinking, she looks up, past me, and she is Regina and not Regina all at once, a twisted version. Her face is tight with panic and her eyes are too dark and getting darker, the color smudging into—

A screaming sound tears through my head, high and long and horrible, and my vision plunges into color, then black, then color as something shoves up against my bare arm. I jerk back, out of the memories and away from the floor, but the stone bust catches my heel and sends me backward to the carpet, hard. Pain cuts across my ribs as I land, and my vision clears enough to take in the thing that attacked me. Jezzie’s small black form bobs toward me, and I scoot back, but—

A high-pitched howl grates against my bones as another cat, fat and white with an encrusted collar, wraps its tail around my elbow. I wrench free and—

A third cat brushes my leg, and the world explodes into keening and red and light and pain, metal dragging beneath my skin. Finally I tear free and scramble backward out into the hall, and force the door shut.

My back hits the opposite wall, and I slide to the floor, my eyes watering from the headache that’s as sudden and brutal as the cats’ touch. I need quiet, true quiet, and I reach into my pocket to fetch my ring, but my fingers meet with nothing.

No.

I look at the door to 4D. My ring must still be in there. I curse not so softly and put my forehead against my knees, trying to think through the pain and piece together what I’d seen before the onslaught of cats.

Regina’s eyes. They were going dark. They were smudging into black, like she was slipping. But only Histories slip. And only a History could be sitting in her brother’s apartment after she died, and that means it wasn’t Regina, in the way that the body in Ben’s drawer wasn’t Ben, and that means she got out. But how? And how did Owen find her?

“Mackenzie?”

I glance up to see Wes coming down the hall.

He quickens his step. “What’s wrong?”

I return my forehead to my knees. “I will give you twenty dollars if you go in there and get my ring.”

Wesley’s boots come to a stop somewhere to the right of my leg. “What’s your ring doing in Ms. Angelli’s place?”

“Please, Wes, just go get it for me.”

“Did you break in—”

“Wesley.” My head snaps up. “Please.” And I must look worse than I feel, because he nods and goes inside. He reappears a few moments later and drops the ring to the carpet, at my feet. I pick it up and slide it on.

Wesley kneels down in front of me. “You want to tell me what happened?”

I sigh. “I was attacked.”

“By a History?”

“No…by Ms. Angelli’s cats.”

The corner of his mouth twitches.

“It’s not funny,” I growl, and close my eyes. “I’m never going to live this down, am I.”

“Never. And damn, way to give a guy a scare, Mac.”

“You scare too easily.”

“You haven’t seen yourself.” He fetches a compact from one of the many pockets of his pants, and flicks it open so I can see the ribbon of blood running from my nose down over my chin. I wipe it away with my sleeve.

“Okay, that’s terrifying. Put it away,” I say. “So the cats won that round.”

I lick my lips, taste blood. I push myself to my feet. The hall sways slightly. Wesley reaches for my arm, but I wave him off and head for the stairs. He follows.

“What were you doing in there?” he asks.

The headache makes it hard to focus on the nuances of lying. So I don’t.

“I was curious,” I say as we descend the stairs.

“You had to be pretty damn curious to break into Angelli’s apartment.”

We reach the third floor. “My inquisitive nature has always been a weakness.” I can’t stop seeing Regina’s eyes. How did she get out? She wasn’t a Keeper-Killer, wasn’t a monster. She wasn’t even a punk, like Jackson. She was a fifteen-year-old girl. The murder could have been enough to unsettle her mind, even cause her to wake, but she never should have made it through the Narrows.

I step out of the stairwell, but when I turn to face Wes, he’s frowning at me.

“Don’t look at me like that with those big brown eyes.”

“They’re not just brown,” he says. “They’re hazel. Can’t you see the flecks of gold?”

“Good god, how much time do you spend looking at yourself in the mirror each day?”

“Not enough, Mac. Not enough.” But the laughter is gone from his voice. “You’re clever, trying to distract me with my own good looks, but it won’t work. What’s going on?”

I sigh. And then I really look at Wesley. The cut on his cheek is healing, but there’s a fresh bruise blossoming against his jaw. He’s guarding his left arm in a way that makes me think he took a hit, and he looks utterly exhausted.

“Where were you this morning?” I ask. “I waited.”

“I got held up.”

“Your list?”

“The names weren’t even on my list. When I got into the Narrows…I didn’t have enough hands. I didn’t have enough time. I barely got through in one piece. Your territory’s bad, but mine is suddenly impassable.”

“Then you shouldn’t have come.” I turn and walk down the hall.

“I’m your partner,” he says, trailing me. “And apparently that’s the problem. You were there at the trial, Mac. You heard the caveat. We could only be partners as long as my territory stayed clear. Someone did this. And I’ve been trying to understand all morning why a member of the Archive wouldn’t want us working together. All I can think is that I’m missing something.” Halfway down the hall he catches my arm, and I force myself not to pull back as the noise floods through me. “Am I missing something?”

I don’t know how to answer. I don’t have a truth or a lie that will fix anything. I’ve already put him in danger just by having him near, already painted a target on his back. He’d be safer if he just stayed away. If I could keep him away from this mess. Away from me.

“Wesley…” Everything else is falling apart. I don’t need this to crumble, too.

“Do you trust me?” His question is so sudden and honest that I’m caught off guard.

“Yeah. I do.”

“Then talk to me. Whatever’s going on, let me help. You’re not alone, Mackenzie. Our whole lives are about lying, keeping secrets. I just want you to know that you don’t have to keep them from me.”

And that breaks my heart. Because I know he means every word. And because I can’t confide in him. I won’t. I won’t tell him about the murders or the altered Histories or the rogue Librarian or Regina or Owen. And it’s not some noble endeavor to keep him out of harm’s way—there is no such thing right now. The truth is I’m scared.

“Thank you,” I say, and it has all the terrible awkwardness of someone responding to a heartfelt I love you with an I know. So I add, “We’re a team, Wes.”

I hate myself as I watch his shoulders slacken. His hand drops, leaving a quiet that’s even heavier than noise. He looks tired, his eyes ringed dark even beyond the makeup.

“You’re right,” he says hollowly. “We are. Which is why I’m giving you one last chance to tell me exactly what’s going on. And don’t bother lying. Right before you lie, you test out the words and your jaw shifts a fraction. You’ve been doing it a lot. So just don’t.”

And that’s when I realize how tired I am, of lies and omissions and half-truths. I put Wes in danger, but he’s still here—and if he’s willing to brave this chaos with me, then he deserves to know what I know. And I’m about to speak, about to tell him that, tell him everything, when he brings his hand to the back of my neck, pulls me forward, and kisses me.

The noise floods in. I don’t push back, don’t block it out, and for one moment, all I can think is that he tastes like summer rain.

His lips linger on mine, urgent and warm.

Lasting.

And then he pulls away, breath ragged.

His hand falls from my skin, and I understand.

He’s not wearing his ring.

He didn’t just kiss me.

He read me.

Wesley’s face is bright with pain, and I don’t know what he saw or what he felt, but whatever he read in me, it’s enough to make him turn and storm out.