I pull the list from my pocket and watch as Jena Freeth. 14. fades from the page.
The fight has done one thing—scraped the film of fear away, and as I lean, breathing heavy, against the Returns door, I feel like myself again.
I retrace my steps to the spot where I saw Owen, but he’s nowhere to be found.
Shaking my head, I go in search of Melanie Allen. I read the walls and track her down, and send her back, all the while listening for Owen’s song. But it never starts again.
FOURTEEN
LIST CLEARED, I head back to the coffee shop, ready to save Wesley Ayers from the perils of domestic labor. I use the Narrows door in the café closet, and freeze.
Wesley isn’t alone.
I creep to the edge of the closet and chance a look out. He’s engaged in lively conversation with my dad, talking about the perks of a certain Colombian coffee while he mops the floor. The whole place glitters, polished and bright. The rust-red rose, roughly the diameter of a coffee table, gleams in the middle of the marble floor.
Dad is juggling a mug and a paint roller, waving both as he sloshes dark roast and finishes a large color swatch—burnt yellow—on the far wall. His back is to me as he chats, but Wesley catches sight of me and watches as I slide from the closet and along the wall until I’m near the café door.
“Hey, Mac,” he says. “Didn’t hear you come in.”
“There you are,” says Dad, jabbing the air with his roller. He’s standing straighter, and there’s a light in his eyes.
“I told Mr. Bishop I offered to cover while you ran upstairs to get some food.”
“I can’t believe you put Wesley here to work so fast,” says Dad. He sips his coffee, seems surprised to find so little left, and sets it down. “You’ll scare him off.”
“Well,” I say, “he does scare easily.”
Wesley wears a look of mock affront.
“Miss Bishop!” he says, and I have to fight back a smile. His impersonation of Patrick is spot-on. “Actually,” he admits to my father, “it’s true. But no worries, Mr. Bishop, Mac’s going to have to do better than assign chores if she means to scare me off.”
Wesley actually winks. Dad smiles. I can practically see the marquee in his head: Relationship Material! Wesley must see it too, because he capitalizes on it, and sets the mop aside.
“Would you mind if I borrowed Mackenzie for a bit? We’ve been working on her summer reading.”
Dad beams. “Of course,” he says, waving his paint roller. “Go on, now.”
I half expect him to add kids or lovebirds, but thankfully he doesn’t.
Meanwhile, Wes is trying to tug off the plastic gloves. One snags on his ring, and when he finally manages to wrest his hand free, the metal band flies off, bouncing across the marble floor and underneath an old oven. Wes and I go to recover it at the same time, but he’s stopped by Dad’s hand, which comes down on his shoulder.
Wes goes rigid. A shadow crosses his face.
Dad’s saying something to Wes, but I’m not listening as I drop to the floor before the oven. The metal grate at the base digs into the cut on my arm as I reach beneath, stretching until my fingers finally close around the ring, and I get to my feet as Wesley bows his head, jaw clenched.
“You okay there, Wesley?” asks Dad, letting go. Wes nods, a short breath escaping as I drop the ring into his palm. He slides it on.
“Yeah,” he says, voice leveling. “I’m fine. Just a little dizzy.” He forces a laugh. “Must be the fumes from Mac’s blue soap.”
“Aha!” I say. “I told you cleaning was bad for your health.”
“I should have listened.”
“Let’s get you some fresh air, okay?”
“Good idea.”
“See you, Dad.”
The café door closes behind us, and Wesley slumps back against it, looking a little pale. I know the feeling.
“We have aspirin upstairs,” I offer. Wesley laughs and rolls his head to look at me.
“I’m fine. But thank you.” I’m struck by the change in tone. No jokes, no playful arrogance. Just simple, tired relief. “Maybe a little fresh air, though.”
He straightens up and heads through the lobby, and I follow. Once we reach the garden, he sinks down on his bench and rubs his eyes. The sun is bright, and he was right, this is a different place in daylight. Not a lesser place, really, but open, exposed. At dusk there seemed so many places to hide. At midday, there are none.
The color is coming back into Wesley’s face, but his eyes, when he stops rubbing them, are distant and sad. I wonder what he saw, what he felt, but he doesn’t say.
I sink onto the other end of the bench. “You sure you’re okay?”
He blinks, stretches, and by the time he’s done, the strain is gone and Wes is back: the crooked smile and the easy charm.
“I’m fine. Just a bit out of practice, reading people.”
Horror washes over me. “You read the living? But how?”
Wesley shrugs. “The same way you read anything else.”
“But they’re not in order. They’re loud and tangled and—”
He shrugs. “They’re alive. And they may not be organized, but the important stuff is there, on the surface. You can learn a lot, at a touch.”
My stomach turns. “Have you ever read me?”
Wes looks insulted but shakes his head. “Just because I know how doesn’t mean I make a sport of it, Mac. Besides, it’s against Archive policy, and believe it or not, I’d like to stay on their good side.”
You and me both, I think.
“How can you stand to read them?” I ask, suppressing a shudder. “Even with my ring on, it’s awful.”
“Well, you can’t go through life without touching anyone.”
“Watch me,” I say.
Wesley’s hand floats up, a single, pointed finger drifting through the air toward me.
“Not funny.”
But he keeps reaching.
“I. Will. Cut. Your. Fingers. Off.”
He sighs and lets his hand drop to his side. Then he nods at my arm. Red has crept through the bandage and the sleeve where the bottom of the oven dug in.
I look down at it. “Knife.”
“Ah,” he says.
“No, it really was a teenage boy with a really big knife.”
He pouts. “Keeper-Killers. Kids with knives. Your territory was never that much fun when I worked there.”
“I’m just lucky, I guess.”
“You sure I can’t give you a hand?”
I smile, more at the way he offers this time—tiptoeing through the question—than the prospect; but the last thing I need is another complication in my territory.
“No offense, but I’ve been doing this for quite a while.”
“How’s that?”
I should backtrack, but it’s too late to lie when the truth is halfway up my throat. “I became a Keeper at twelve.”
His brow furrows. “But the age requirement is sixteen.”
I shrug. “My grandfather petitioned.”
Wesley’s face hardens as he grasps the meaning. “He passed the job to a kid.”
“It wasn’t—” I warn.
“What kind of sick bastard would—” The words die on his lips as my fingers tangle in his collar, and I shove him back against the stone bench. For a moment he is just a body and I am a Keeper, and I don’t even care about the deafening noise that comes with touching him.
“Don’t you dare,” I say.
Wesley’s face is utterly unreadable as my hands loosen and slide away from his throat. He brings his fingers to his neck but never takes his eyes from mine. We are, both of us, coiled.
And then he smiles.
“I thought you hated touching.”
I groan and shove him, slumping back into my corner of the bench.
“I’m sorry,” I say. The words seem to echo through the garden.
“One thing’s for certain,” he says. “You keep
me on my toes.”
“I shouldn’t have—”
“It wasn’t my place to judge,” he says. “Your grandfather obviously did something right.”
I try to shape a tight laugh, and it dies in my throat. “This is new to me, Wes. Sharing. Having someone I can share with. And I really appreciate your help—That sounds lame. I’ve never had someone like… This is a mess. There’s finally something good in my life and I’m already making a mess of it.” My cheeks go hot, and I have to clench my teeth to stop the rambling.
“Hey,” he says, knocking his shoe playfully against mine. “It’s the same for me, you know? This is all new to me. And I’m not going anywhere. It takes at least three assassination attempts to scare me off. And even then, if there are baked goods involved, I might come back.” He hoists himself up from the bench. “But on that note, I retreat to tend my wounded pride.” He says it with a smile, and somehow I’m smiling, too.
How does he do that, untangle things so easily? I walk with him back through the study and into the lobby. As the revolving doors groan to a stop after him, I close my eyes and sink back against the stairs. I’ve been mentally berating myself for all of ten seconds when I feel the scratch of letters and dig my list from my pocket to see a new name scrawl itself across my paper.
Angela Price. 13.
It’s getting harder to keep this list clear. I am heading for the Narrows door set into the side of the stairs when I hear a creak and turn to see Ms. Angelli coming in, struggling with several bags of groceries. For an instant, I’m back in the Archive, watching the last moment of Marcus Elling’s recorded life as he performed the exact same task. And then I blink, and the large woman from the fourth floor comes back into focus as she reaches the stairs.
“Hi, Ms. Angelli,” I say. “Can I give you a hand?” I hold out my hands, and she gratefully passes two of the four bags over.
“Obliged, dear,” she says.
I follow her up, choosing my words. She knows about the Coronado’s past, its secrets. I just have to figure out how to get her to share. Coming at it head-on didn’t work, but maybe a more oblique path will. I think of her living room, brimming with antiques.
“Can I ask you something,” I say, “about your job?”
“Of course,” she says.
“What made you want to be a collector?” I understand clinging to one’s own past, but when it comes to the pasts of other people, I don’t get it.
She gives a winded laugh as she reaches the landing. “Everything is valuable, in its own way. Everything is full of history.” If only she knew. “Sometimes you can feel it in them, all that life. I can always spot a fake.” She smiles, but then her face softens. “And…I suppose…it gives me purpose. A tether to other people in other times. As long as I have that, I’m not alone. And they’re not really gone.”
I think of Ben’s box of hollow things in my closet, the bear and the black plastic glasses, a tether to my past. My chest hurts. Ms. Angelli shifts her grip on the groceries.
“I haven’t got much else,” she adds quietly. And then the smile is back, bright as her rings, which have torn tiny holes in the grocery bags. “I suppose that might sound sad.…”
“No,” I lie. “I think it sounds hopeful.”
She turns and heads past the elevators, into the north stairwell. I follow, and our footsteps echo as we climb.
“So,” she calls back, “did you find what you were looking for?”
“No, not yet. I don’t know if there are other records about this place, or if it’s all lost. It seems sad, doesn’t it, for the Coronado’s history to be forgotten? To fade away?”
She is climbing the stairs, and while I can’t see her face, I watch her shoulders stiffen. “Some things should be allowed to fade.”
“I don’t believe that, Ms. Angelli,” I say. “Everything deserves to be remembered. You think so too, or you wouldn’t do what you do. I think you probably know more than anyone else in this building when it comes to the Coronado’s past.”
She glances back, her eyes dancing nervously.
“Tell me what happened here,” I say. We reach the fourth floor and step out into the hall. “Please. I know that you know.”
She drops her groceries onto a table in the hall and digs around for her keys. I set my bags beside hers.
“Children are so morbid these days,” she mutters. “I’m sorry,” she adds, unlocking the door. “I just don’t feel comfortable talking about this. The past is past, Mackenzie. Let it rest.”
And with that, she scoops up her groceries, steps into her apartment, and shuts the door in my face.
Instead of dwelling on the irony of Ms. Angelli telling me to let the past rest, I go home.
The phone is ringing when I get there. I’m sure it’s Lyndsey, but I let it ring. A confession: I am not a good friend. Lyndsey writes letters, Lyndsey makes calls. Lyndsey makes plans. Everything I do is in reaction to everything she does, and I’m terrified of the day she decides not to pick up the phone, not to take the first step. I’m terrified of the day Lyndsey outgrows my secrets, my ways. Outgrows me.
And yet. Some part of me—a part I wish were smaller—wonders if it would be better to let it go. Let her go. One less thing to juggle. One less set of lies, or at least omissions. I hate myself as soon as the thought forms. I reach for the phone.
“Hey!” I say, trying to sound breathless. “Sorry! I just walked in.”
“Have you been out finding me some ghosts or exploring forbidden corners and walled-up rooms?”
“The search continues.”
“I bet you’re too busy getting close to Guyliner.”
“Oh, yeah. If I could just keep my hands off him long enough to look around…” But despite the joke, I smile—a small genuine thing that she obviously can’t see.
“Well, don’t get too close until I can inspect him. So, how goes it in the haunted mansion?”
I laugh, even as a third name scratches itself into the list in my pocket. “Same old, same old.” I dig the list out, unfold it on the counter. My stomach sinks.
Angela Price. 13.
Eric Hall. 15.
Penny Walker. 14.
“Pretty boring, actually,” I add, running my fingers over the names. “How about you, Lynds? I want stories.” I crumple the list, shove it back in my jeans, and head into my room.
“Bad day?” she asks.
“Nonsense,” I say, sagging onto my bed. “I live for your tales of adventure. Regale me.”
And she does. She rambles, and I let myself pretend we’re sitting on the roof of her house, or crashed on my couch. Because as long as she talks, I don’t have to think about Ben, or the dead girl in my room, or the missing pages in the study, or the Librarian erasing Histories. I don’t have to wonder if I’m losing my mind, dreaming up Keepers, or acting paranoid, twisting glitches and bad luck into dangerous schemes. Because as long as she talks, I can be somewhere else, someone else.
But soon she has to leave, and hanging up feels like letting go. The world sharpens the way it does when I pull out of a memory and back into the present, and I examine the list again.
The Histories’ ages have been going up.
I noticed it before and thought it was a blip, a rash of double digits, but now everyone on my list is in their teens. I can’t afford to wait. I pull on some workout pants and a fresh black shirt, the knife still strapped carefully to my calf. I won’t use it, but I can’t bring myself to leave it behind. The metal feels good against my skin. Like armor.
I head into the living room right as Mom comes through the front door with her arms full of bags.
“Where are you off to?” she asks, dropping everything on the table as I continue toward the door.
“Going for a run,” I say, adding, “Might go out for track this year.” If my list doesn’t settle down, I’ll need a solid excuse for being gone so often anyway, and I used to run, back in middle school when I had spare time. I like running.
Not that I actually plan to go running tonight, but still.
“It’s getting dark,” says Mom. I can see her working through the pros and cons. I head her off.
“There’s still a little light left, and I’m pretty out of shape. Won’t go far.” I pull my knee to my chest in a stretch.
“What about dinner?”
“I’ll eat when I get back.”
Mom squints at me, and for a moment, part of me begs for her to see through this, a flimsy, half-concocted lie. But then she turns her attention to her bags. “I think it’s a good idea, you joining track.”
She always tells me she wishes I’d join a club, a sport, be a part of something. But I am a part of something.
“Maybe you could use some structure,” she adds. “Something to keep you busy.”
I almost laugh.
The sound crawls up my throat, a near hysterical thing, and I end up coughing to hold it back. Mom tuts and gets me a glass of water. Staying busy isn’t exactly a problem right now. But last time I checked, the Archive didn’t offer PE credits for catching escaped Histories.
“Yeah,” I say, a little too sharply. “I think you’re right.”
In that moment, I want to shout.
I want to show her what I go through.
I want to throw it in her face.
I want to tell her the truth.
But I can’t.
I would never.
I know better.
And so I do the only thing I can.
I walk out.
FIFTEEN
ANGELA PRICE is easy enough to find, and despite her being very upset, and mistaking me for her dead best friend, which of course only adds to her distress, I usher her back to Returns with little more than cunning lies and a few hugs.
Eric Hall is scrawny, albeit a little…hormonal, and I get him to the nearest Returns door with a giggle, a girlish look, and promises I’ll never have to keep.