“Histories aren’t meant to wake in the first place,” I counter. “And what you’re suggesting—a mass awakening—is madness for the living and the dead. Crew will hunt you down before you even start.”
“Not if they are with me.” He takes a step forward. “You think you are the only one who doubts, Mackenzie? The only one who feels trapped? Do you know why the Archive keeps everyone isolated? It’s so they feel alone. So that when one of them feels fear or anger or doubt—and they all do—they think they are the only ones. They stay quiet, because they know that one life doesn’t matter to the Archive.
“Crew are stronger, paired minds, willing to obey or disobey as a group, but not daring enough to do so. Keepers and Crew all know: if one person or pair rises up, the Archive will simply cut them down. It can always extinguish one voice, Mackenzie. But it can’t douse them all. Fear. Anger. Doubt. They have been piling up like kindling inside the Archive, and the whole place is ready to burn. The Archive is doing everything it can to keep the fire from starting, but all that’s needed is someone to strike the match. So believe me when I tell you that the Crew will go with me. And the other Keepers, too. The question is, will you?”
I open my mouth, but I’m cut off by the sound of steps in the trophy hall beyond the door. Owen falls silent beside me as voices take shape.
“I know the official missing person mark is forty-eight hours,” someone is saying, “but what with all the disappearances, I thought it best to let you know.”
“I’m glad you did,” replies a gruff voice I recognize at once. Detective Kinney. I press myself against the wall beside the door as the footsteps draw closer. Owen doesn’t try to hide, but doesn’t move, either.
“His wife called me this morning,” says the first man. “Apparently, he never picked up their son from preschool yesterday, and he never went home last night.”
“Does he have a habit of wandering off?”
“No. And then, when he didn’t show this morning, I figured I’d better call. I wish I could tell you more.”
The footsteps come to a stop on the other side of the door.
“He was last seen here?” asks Kinney, peering in through the glass.
“Coach Kris saw him in his office before the bell rang.”
Kinney pulls away from the door. “We’ll start there, then,” he says.
The footsteps fade along with the voices as the two walk away. I let out a deep breath, resting my hands on my knees.
“This is all your fault,” I say. “If you hadn’t dragged those people through—”
“Really it’s yours,” counters Owen, “since you pushed me into the void. But who’s counting crimes?”
The bell rings in the distance, and I check to make sure the coast is clear before pushing the door open.
“The detective is,” I say, Owen falling into step beside me. I have to remind myself as I step onto the quad that no one else can see him. And even if they could, he’d blend in. His silver-blond hair glitters in the sunlight, and I can almost imagine what he must have looked like as a student here. His simple black attire lacks any gold piping, but otherwise he’d look just like any other senior. I don’t know how much of that has to do with the fact that he is—was—Crew and how much is the fact that, even though he seems old, he’s not.
Within seconds of entering the tide of students, I realize how hard it will be to keep my ring off. The path is crowded, and I’m instantly buffeted by a chorus of what color tights should I wear tonight will Geoffrey even notice I’ll never pass x to the ninth is what how many references do I need should have added art Coach Metz better not make us do sprints I’m still sore from Mom is going to kill me I’m going to kill Amelia I hate this place Wesley Ayers better dance with me why did I agree to so weird sometimes metatarsal is connected to the I wish I had cookies get it right empty house Dad is being such an ass stressed silver horns or black streaks can I pull off wings and it’s all tangled up in stress and fear and want and teenage hormones.
I grit my teeth against the crush of people’s lives.
“It’s time to let the world in,” presses Owen beside me. He brings his hand down on my shoulder, his quiet pressing through me, and instead of talking—ostensibly to myself—I think the next question.
And what happens once you’ve done that? I challenge. The living would, what? Be free to visit the dead?
“Why not?” says Owen aloud. “They already do—in graveyards.”
Yeah, I think, but in graveyards the dead can’t wake.
I roll my shoulder, shaking him off before he can hear my thoughts spinning.
People aren’t smart when it comes to the dead. That’s what Da said, and he was right.
How many would claw their way toward their loved ones, rip them from sleep to keep them close? How long would it take for the walls to come down as well as the doors and the world to tear itself apart?
How can he not see that this is madness? Is he truly that blind to the consequences? Or is he really willing to tear the world apart just to get his way? Either way, I have to stop him. But how? Even in his weakened state, the odds aren’t in my favor. Owen cannot die. I can.
I pause on the path and pretend to look through a notebook. Owen rests his chin on top of my head, hushing everything but his voice. “Penny for your thoughts?”
If you’re so convinced that everyone else will follow you, why do you need me?
Owen pulls away, and by the time he comes around to face me, his features have grayed into something unreadable. “Before I can call on anyone, there’s something I need,” he says. “The Archive has it, and I have a plan to take it—but that plans requires two.”
My pulse quickens. But it’s not fear that makes it race, it’s excitement. Because Owen has just handed me the way to beat him. I might not be able to drag him back to the Archive, but I can follow him in. No one else has to get hurt. No one else has to die.
I start walking again, and Owen follows in my wake, a swell of students carrying us into the building on a wave of was there a test what was I thinking please let this day be over.
We move in silence through the crowded hall, and come to a stop outside my class.
“What is it we need to steal?” I ask under my breath.
Owen smiles at my use of we. He tucks a strand of dark hair behind my ear. I can feel the quiet spreading through me with his fingertips, feel him reading me for lies, but I’ve learned his tricks, and I’m learning my own. As he reaches through my mind, I focus on a simple truth: Something has to change.
“I’m glad I have your attention,” he says, his hand falling away. “And I appreciate the collective pronoun. But before our partnership goes any further, I need to know that your heart’s in it.”
My heart sinks a little. A test. Of course it wouldn’t be as easy as saying yes. Owen Chris Clarke doesn’t gamble. He only plays games when he thinks he’ll win. Am I willing to play? Do I really have a choice?
I hold his gaze as the second bell rings and the hall empties around us.
My voice is barely a whisper, but my words are firm.
“What do you want me to do?”
TWENTY-SIX
“GO TO THE ARCHIVE,” says Owen, “and steal me something.”
“What kind of something?” I ask, clenching my fingers around my backpack strap. Pain flickers through my wrist. It helps me focus.
“Something small,” says Owen. “Just a show of good faith. If you succeed, I’ll tell you what we’re really going to take from them. If you fail, there’s no point. You’ll just be in my way.” His eyes go to a clock on the wall. “You have until lunch,” he says, turning away. “Good luck.”
I stand there, watching him go, until someone clears his throat behind me.
“Avoiding my class, Miss Bishop?”
I turn to find Mr. Lowell holding the door open for me.
“Sorry, sir,” I say, and follow him inside. His hand grazes against my shoulder as he guides
me through, and I’m hit with worry strange girl distant trouble at home I see the bruises quiet clutter ink stains before I continue forward out of his reach and take my seat. Sixteen people in a classroom without the buffer of a ring make the air feel like it’s singing. I sit there, wincing faintly every time a student gets too close, Owen’s warped ideas playing through my head while Lowell lectures on the warped ideas of others. I’m not paying much attention until something Lowell says echoes Owen.
“Every uprising starts with a spark,” says Lowell. “Sometimes that spark is a moment, tipping the scale. And sometimes that spark is a decision. In the case of the latter, there is no doubt that it takes a certain amount of madness to tip that first domino—but it also takes courage, vision, and an all-encompassing belief, even misguided, in their mission.…”
Owen sees himself as a revolutionary, exposing the Archive his cause. That single-minded focus acts both as his strength and his weakness. But is it a weakness I can use?
He’s so fixated on his goal that he can’t see the flaws. It’s proof that even someone as cold and calculating as Owen was once human. People—the living and the dead alike—see what they want to see and believe what they want to believe. Owen wants to believe in this mission, and he also wants to believe that I am salvageable.
All I have to do is prove it.
The moment the bell rings I’m on my feet, moving through the halls and their mess of sum total of silver or gold silver or gold Saturday school for purple laces if he ever hits me again I’ll out the doors and across the quad to the Narrows door set into the side of the shed, where I pull the key out from under my collar and pass through. Wesley’s coding system is different from mine, but I soon figure out that he’s labeled Returns with a white plus sign and the Archive with a white X, and I slot my key, take a breath, and step through into the antechamber.
Patrick is seated behind the desk, turning through the pages of the ledger. He pauses to write a note, then continues leafing through.
“Miss Bishop,” he says, my name little more than a grumble. “Here to confess?”
“Not yet,” I say. It’s still hard for me to believe he’s not the one responsible for the voids. I was sure he was out to get me removed. Erased. But he’s not—at least, not this time, this way.
“I need to see Roland. Just for a few minutes.” Patrick’s eyes move up from the ledger to mine. “Please, Patrick. It’s important.”
He closes the book slowly. “Second hall, third room,” he says, adding, “Be quick about it.”
I set off through the open doors and into the atrium, but I don’t follow Patrick’s directions. Instead of cutting down the second hall to the third room, I head down the sixth hall, following it to the very end the way Roland did when he first showed me to his room. I half expect the corridors to change around me, the way they seem to when I trail him through the maze, but the straight line stays straight. I press my ear to the small set of doors at the end, listening for steps, then slip through into the smaller, dimly lit hall that holds the Librarians’ quarters.
Halfway down the hall, I find his simple, dark-paneled door. It’s unlocked. The room is as cozy as it was before, but the lack of music whispering from the wall—and the lack of Roland sitting in his chair—makes the space seem too vulnerable. I whisper an apology for what I’m about to do.
I cross to the table by the chair and slide open the drawer. The silver pocket watch is gone—surely Roland has it on him—but the old, palm-sized notebook is there. It sings beneath my fingers as I slip it gently into my back pocket, my heart twisting. I scour the rest of the drawer for a scrap of paper and pen, and when I find them, I write a note. I do not say I’m sorry, or that I will bring it back, only jot down two small words.
Trust me.
I don’t even look at the paper, since lives are messy and it will be easier to hide this small deviation from the theft if it’s subtle. If Owen goes looking, I want it to be a mere whisper in my head instead of an image. Instead I focus on the very real guilt I feel as I fold the note, put it in the drawer, and duck out. My heart thuds in my chest all the way back into the atrium.
Wood and stone and colored glass, and all throughout, a sense of peace.
That’s how Da described the Archive to me when I was young. As I walk through the stacks now, I grasp the calm that used to come so easily. These days it feels like a memory, one I’m reaching for and can’t quite grab. Wood and stone and colored glass. That’s all he told me. He didn’t mention the fact I could never leave, or that the Librarians were dead, or that Histories weren’t the only things to fear.
Your life is only made of secrets and lies because the Archive is.
I smother Owen’s voice in my head before it can become my own. I cross back through the doors into the antechamber, sensing that something is wrong the moment I move from wood to stone, but it’s too late. The massive doors swing shut behind me, and I turn to see Agatha in front of them, her hair the color of blood and her cream-colored coat like a splash of paint against the dark wood.
My eyes flick to the desk, where Patrick is sitting. Of course he would call her.
“My list is clear,” I say as calmly as possible.
“But I’m out of Crew,” says Agatha. Her voice has lost its velvet calm. “And out of patience.” She takes a step forward. “You’ve run me on a chase, Miss Bishop, and I am sick of it. I want you to answer me honestly. How did you make the voids?”
“I didn’t make them,” I say, fighting to keep my voice steady even as I take a step back toward the door and the sentinels guarding it.
“I don’t believe you,” she says, tugging off a black glove as she comes toward me. “If you are innocent, then show me.” I shake my head. “Why don’t you want me in your head? Afraid of what I’ll find? The innocent have nothing to hide, Miss Bishop.” She pulls off the other glove.
“You don’t have permission.”
“I don’t care,” she growls, her bare hands tangling in my shirt.
“Agatha,” warns Patrick, but she doesn’t listen.
“Do you know how small you are?” she hisses. “You are one cog in one wheel in one corner of an infinite machine, and you have the audacity to deny me? To defy me? Do you know what that’s called?”
“Freedom,” I challenge.
A cold smile touches the edge of her mouth. “Treason.”
I feel the two sentinels move behind me, and before I can turn, their hands clench around my shoulders and wrists. Their movements are fast and efficient, wrenching my arms behind my back, twisting up hard until my knees buckle. My pulse races in my ears and my vision starts to go dark, but before I can fight back against the men or the encroaching tunnel moment, Agatha’s hands are there, pressing against my temples.
At first, all I hear is the quiet that comes with her touch.
And then the pain starts.
TWENTY-SEVEN
THE PAIN IS like hot nails in my head, but a moment after it starts it’s gone, along with Agatha’s touch. The sentinels let go of my arms, and I fall forward to my hands and knees on the Archive floor. When I look up, Roland’s hand is wrapped around Agatha’s wrist, and Patrick is standing at the mouth of the atrium, holding one of the doors open.
“What are you doing?” snaps Roland.
“My job,” says Agatha icily.
“Your job is not to torture Keepers in my antechamber.”
“I have every reason to believe that—”
“If you truly have every reason, then get permission from the board.” There’s a challenge in his voice, and Agatha stiffens at it, the smallest shadow of fear flickering across her perfect skin. Appealing to the board of directors means admitting she’s not only allowed more traitorous behavior in the Archive, but that she’s failed to uncover the source. “You will not touch her again without approval.”
Roland lets go of Agatha’s wrist, but doesn’t take his eyes off her.
“Miss Bishop,” he says as
I get to my feet, “I think you’d better get back to class.”
I nod shakily, and I’m about to turn toward the door when Agatha says, “She has something of yours, Roland.” I stiffen, but he doesn’t. His face is a perfect blank as Agatha adds, “A notebook.”
I can’t bring myself to look at him, but I can feel his gray eyes weighing me down. “I know,” he lies. “I gave it to her.”
Only then do I look up, but his attention has already shifted back to Agatha. I’m halfway through the door when she says to him, “You can’t protect her.” But whatever he says back is lost as I slip into the dark.
I don’t stop moving until I reach Dallas’s office. I’m early, and she’s not there, but I sink down onto the couch, my heart pounding. I can still feel Agatha’s hands against my temples, the pain of the memories being dragged forward toward her fingers. Too close. I pull Roland’s journal from my pocket. The memories hum against my skin as I cradle it in my palm, but I don’t reach for them—I’ve taken enough from him already. Instead I close my eyes and lean my head back against the couch.
“I’m impressed.”
I look up to find Owen sitting in Dallas’s low-back chair, twirling his knife absently on the leather arm while he watches me intently.
“I have to admit,” he says, “I wasn’t sure you’d do it.”
“I’m full of surprises,” I say drily. He holds out his hand for the journal, and I hesitate before relinquishing it. “It’s very important to someone.”
“Everything in the Archive is,” he says, taking it from me. His hand lingers a moment around mine, and I recognize the touch for what it is: a reading. His quiet slides through my mind while my life slides through his. I can almost see the struggle with Agatha play out in his eyes, the way they widen, then narrow.