By the time I finish hunting down and delivering Penny Walker, I feel like I really have gone for a run. I have a headache from reading walls, my muscles burn from being constantly on guard, and I think I might actually be able to sleep tonight. I’m making my way back toward the cluster of numbered doors when something catches my eye.
The white chalk circle on the front of one of the Returns doors has been disturbed, altered. Two vertical lines and one horizontal curve have been drawn into the chalk, turning my marker into a kind of…smiley face? I bring my hand to the door and close my eyes, and I’ve barely skimmed the surface of the memories when a form appears right in front of me, lean and dressed in black, his silvery-blond hair standing out against the dark.
Owen.
I let the memory roll forward, and his hand dances languidly across the chalk, drawing the face. And then he dusts the white from his fingers, puts his hands back in his pockets, and ambles down the hall. But when he reaches the end, he doesn’t continue around the corner. He turns on his heel and doubles back.
What is he doing here? He’s not tracking, not hunting. He’s…pacing.
I watch him come all the way down the hall, toward me, eyes on the floor. He walks until he’s inches from my face. And then he stops and looks up, his eyes finding mine, and I can’t shake the feeling that he sees me even though he’s alone in the past and I’m alone in the now.
Who are you? I ask his wavering form.
It doesn’t answer, only stares unblinking off into the dark beyond me.
And then I hear it.
Humming. Not the humming of the walls beneath my hands, not the sound of memories, but an actual human voice, somewhere nearby.
I pull away from the door and blink, the Narrows refocusing around me. The melody weaves through the halls, close. It’s coming from the same direction as my numbered doors, and I round the corner to find Owen leaning against the door with the I above its handle.
His eyes are closed. But when I step closer, they drift open and turn to consider me. Crisp and blue.
“Mackenzie.”
I cross my arms. “I was beginning to wonder if you were real.”
An eyebrow arches. “What else would I be?”
“A phantom?” I say. “An imaginary friend?”
“Well then, am I all that you imagined?” The very corner of his mouth curls up as he pushes off the door. “You really doubt my existence?”
I don’t take my eyes off him, don’t even blink. “You have a way of disappearing.”
He spreads his arms. “Well, here I am. Still not convinced?”
My eyes trail from the top of his white-blond hair over his sharp jaw, down his black clothes. Something’s off.
“Where’s your key?” I ask.
Owen pats his pockets. “I don’t have one.”
That’s not possible.
I must have said it aloud, because his eyes narrow. “What do you mean?”
“A Keeper can’t get into the Narrows without a key.…”
Unless he’s not a Keeper. I close the gap between us. He doesn’t retreat, not as I come toward him, and not as I press my hand flush against his chest and see…
Nothing. Feel nothing. Hear nothing.
Only quiet. Dead quiet. My hands fall away, and the quiet vanishes, replaced by the low hum of the hall.
Owen Chris Clarke isn’t a Keeper. He’s not even alive.
He’s a History.
But that can’t be. He’s been here for days, and he hasn’t started slipping. The blue of his eyes is so pale that I’d notice even the slightest change, and his pupils are crisp and black. And everything about him is level, normal, human. But he’s not.
Behind my eyes I see him break Hooper’s neck, and I take a step back.
“What’s wrong?” he says.
Everything, I want to say. Histories have a pattern. From the moment they wake up, they devolve. They become more distressed, frightened, destructive. Whatever they’re feeling at the moment of waking becomes worse and worse. But they never, ever become rational, or self-possessed, or calm. Then how does Owen behave like a person in a hallway rather than a History in the Narrows? And why isn’t he on my list?
“I need you to come with me,” I say, trying to picture the nearest Returns door. Owen takes a single small step back.
“Mackenzie?”
“You’re dead.”
His brow creases. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I can prove it to you.” Prove it to both of us. My hand itches for the knife that’s hidden against my leg, but I think better of it. I’ve seen Owen use it. Instead I grip Da’s key. The teeth are rusted but sharp enough to break the skin, with pressure.
“Hold out your hand.”
He frowns but doesn’t hesitate, offering his right hand. I press the key against his palm—putting a key in the hands of a History; Da would kill me—and drag it quick across his skin. Owen hisses and pulls back, cradling his hand to his chest.
“Alive enough to feel that,” he grumbles, and I’m afraid I’ve made a mistake until he looks down at his hand and his expression changes, shifts from pain to surprise.
“Let me see,” I say.
Owen turns his palm toward me. The slash across his hand is a thin dark line, the skin clearly broken, but the cut doesn’t bleed. His eyes float up to mine.
“I don’t…” he starts, before his gaze drops back to his hand. “I don’t understand…I felt it.”
“Does it still hurt?”
He rubs at the line on his palm. “No.” And then, “What am I?”
“You’re a History,” I say. “Do you know what that means?”
He pauses, looks down over his arms, his wrists and hands, his clothes. A shadow flits across his face, but when he answers, it’s with a tight “No.”
“You’re a record of the person you were when you were alive.”
“A ghost?”
“No, not exactly. You—”
“But I am a ghost,” he cuts in, his voices inching louder, and I brace myself for the slip. “I’m not flesh and blood, I’m not human, I’m not alive, I’m not real…” And then he checks himself. Swallows hard and looks away. When his eyes find mine, he’s calm. Impossible.
“You have to go back,” I say again.
“Go where?”
“To the Archive. You don’t belong here.”
“Mackenzie,” he says, “I don’t belong there either.”
And I believe him. He’s not on my list, and if it weren’t for the irrefutable proof, I’d never believe he’s a History. I force myself to focus. He will slip; he has to—and then I’ll have to deal with him. I should deal with him now.
“How did you get here?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I was asleep, and then I was awake, and then I was walking.” He seems to remember only as he says it. “And then I saw you, and I knew you needed help.…”
“I didn’t need help,” I snap, and he does the one thing I’ve never seen a History do.
He laughs. It’s a soft, choked sound—but still.
“Yes, well,” he says, “you looked like you might appreciate a hand, then. How did you get here?”
“Through a door.”
His eyes go to the numbered ones. “One of those?”
“Yes.”
“Where do they go?”
“Out.”
“Can I go out?” he asks. There’s no apparent strain in the question, only curiosity.
“Not through those doors,” I say. “But I can take you through one with a white circle—”
“Those doors don’t go out,” he says shortly. “They go back. I’d rather stay here than go back there.” A flicker of anger again, but he’s already regaining composure, despite the fact that Histories don’t have composure.
“You need to go back,” I say.
His eyes narrow a fraction.
“I confuse you,” he says. “Why is that?”
Is he actually trying to read me?
“Because you’re—”
The sound of footsteps cuts through the hall.
I pull the list from my pocket, but it’s still blank. Then again, I’m standing right beside a History who, according to this same slip of paper, doesn’t exist, so I’m not sure how much I trust the system right now.
“Hide,” I whisper.
Owen holds his ground and stares past me down the hall. “Don’t make me go back.”
The steps are getting closer, only a few corridors away. “Owen, hide now.”
His gaze shifts back to me. “Promise me you won’t—”
“I can’t do that,” I say. “My job—”
“Please, Mackenzie. Give me one day.”
“Owen—”
“You owe me.” It’s not a challenge. When he says it, there’s a careful absence in his voice. No accusation. No demand. Just simple, empty observation. “You do.”
“Excuse me?”
“I helped you with that man, Hooper.” I can’t believe a History is trying to bargain. “Just one day.”
The steps are too close.
“Fine,” I hiss, pointing to a corridor. “Now, hide.”
Owen takes a few silent strides backward, vanishing into the dark as I spin and make my way briskly to the bend in the hall where the steps are growing louder and closer—
And then they stop.
I press myself against the corner and wait, but judging by the way the footsteps paused, the other person is waiting too.
Someone has to move, so I turn the corner.
The fist comes out of nowhere, narrowly missing my cheek. I duck and cross behind my attacker. A pole swipes toward my stomach, but my foot finds its way up at the same time, boot connecting with stick. The pole tumbles toward the damp floor. I catch it and bring it up to the attacker’s throat, pinning him against the wall. It’s only then that I look at his face, and I’m met by a crooked smile. My grip loosens.
“That’s twice in one day you’ve assaulted me.”
I let the pole fall away, and Wesley straightens.
“What the hell, Wes?” I growl. “I could have hurt you.”
“Um,” he says, rubbing his throat, “you kind of did.”
I shove him, but the moment my hands meet his body, his crashing rock band sound shatters into got to get away from there from her from them massive house giant stairs high laughter and glass escape before the pressure forces me back, knocking the air from my lungs. I feel ill. With Owen, I forgot about the inextricable link between touch and sight—he may act like a living being, but his quiet says he’s not. And Wes is anything but quiet. Did he see anything when our skin met? If he did, it doesn’t show.
“You know,” he says, “for someone who doesn’t like touching people, you keep finding ways to put your hands on me.”
“What are you even doing here?” I say.
He nods at the numbered doors. “I forgot my bag in the café. Thought I’d run back and get it.”
“Using the Narrows.”
“How do you think I go back and forth? I live on the other side of the city.”
“I don’t know, Wes! A cab? A bus? On foot?”
He raps a knuckle against the wall. “Condensed space, remember? The Narrows, fastest transportation around.”
I offer up the pole. “Here’s your stick.”
“Bˉo staff.” He takes the pole and twirls it a few times. There’s something in his eyes, not his usual grin, but a kind of happiness nonetheless, an excitement. Boys. He flicks his wrist and the pole collapses into a short cylinder, like the batons sprinters pass off in relay races.
He watches, obviously waiting for me to be impressed.
“Ooooooh,” I say halfheartedly, and he grumbles and puts the stick away. I turn back toward my numbered doors, eyes scanning the dark beyond for Owen, but he’s gone.
“How’s the hunting?” asks Wes.
“It’s getting worse,” I say. I can already feel a new name writing itself on the paper in my pocket. I leave the list there. “Was it this bad when you covered the territory?”
“I don’t think so, no. A bit irregular, but never unmanageable. I don’t know if I had the full picture, or if I was only being given names here and there.”
“Well, it’s bad now. I cross one History off my list, and three more show up. It’s like that Greek beast…”
“Hydra,” he answers; then, reading my surprise, adds, “Again with the skepticism. I took a trip to the Smithsonian. You should try it sometime. Get your hands on a few ancient artifacts. Worlds faster than reading books.”
“Aren’t all those things behind glass?”
“Yes, well…” He shrugs as we reach the door. “You done for the night?”
I think of Owen somewhere in the dark. But I already promised him a day. And I really, really want a shower.
“Yeah,” I say finally. “Let’s go.”
Wes and I part ways in the lobby, and I’m about to hit the stairs when I get this gut feeling and find myself making a detour to the study.
Angelli was no help at all, what with her let the past rest speech—but I can’t, not until I know what happened—and there’s got to be something here. I don’t know where I’ll find it, but I’ve got an idea where to start.
The directories fill a shelf, a block of red, then a block of blue. I swipe the oldest blue directory, the one from the first years of the conversion, shuffling the books a bit to hide the gap. And then I head upstairs to find Mom experimenting in the kitchen, Dad hiding in a corner of the living room with a book, and a box of pizza open on the table. I field a few questions on the length and quality of my run, finally enjoy a glorious shower, and then sink onto my bed with a slice of cold pizza and the Coronado’s log, flipping through as I eat. There has to be something. Names fill the inaugural year, but the three missing years that follow are a wall of white in the middle of the book. I scan 1954, hoping that some clue—one of the names, maybe—will catch my eye.
In the end it’s not the names that strike me as odd, but the lack of them. In the inaugural year, every room is rented out, and there’s a wait list at the back of the section. The year the records come back, the word Vacant is written into more than a dozen spots. Was a murder enough to empty the Coronado? What about two murders? I think of Marcus Elling on his shelf, the stretch of black where his death should have been. His name is among the ones that fill the original roster. Three years later, his room is among the ones marked Vacant. Did people leave in reaction to the deaths? Or could more of them be victims? I dig up a pen and pull my Archive list from my pocket. Turning it over, I scribble out the names of the other residents whose apartments were marked Vacant when the records resumed.
I sit back to read over the names, but I’ve only reached the third one when they begin to disappear. One by one, from top to bottom, the words soak into the paper and fade away until the page is blank, erasing themselves the way names do when I’ve returned the Histories. I’ve always thought of the paper as a one-way street, a way for the Archive to send notices, not a place for dialogue.
But a moment later, new words write themselves across the page.
Who are these people? —R
After a brief period of stunned silence, I force myself to scribble out an explanation of the directory: the missing pages and the vacancies. I watch as each word dissolves into the paper, and hold my breath until Roland responds.
Will investigate.
And then…
Paper is not safe. Do not use again. —R
I can feel the end of the discussion in Roland’s handwriting as it dissolves. As if he’s set the pen aside and closed the book. I’ve seen the ancient ledger they keep on the front desk, the one they use to send out names and notes and summons, a different page for every Keeper, every Crew. I hold my slip of Archive paper, wondering why I never knew that it could carry messages both ways.
Four years of service
, and the Archive is still so full of secrets—some big, like altering; some small, like this. The more of them I learn, the more I realize how little I know, and the more I wonder about the things I have been told. The rules I have been taught.
I turn the Archive paper over. There are three new names. None of them is Owen’s. The Archive teaches us that Histories share a common want, a need, to get out. It is a primal, vital thing, an all-consuming hunger: as if they are starved and all the food is on the other side of the Narrows’ walls. All the air. All the life. That need causes panic, and the History spirals and shatters and slips.
But Owen isn’t slipping, and when he asked for one thing, it wasn’t a way out.
It was time.
Don’t make me go back.
Promise me you won’t.
Please, Mackenzie. Give me one day.
I press my palms into my eyes. A History who’s not on my list and doesn’t slip and wants only to stay awake.
What kind of History is that?
What is Owen?
And then, somewhere in my tangled, tired thoughts, the what becomes a far more dangerous word.
Who.
“Don’t you ever wonder about the Histories?” I ask. “Who they are?”
“Were,” you correct. “And no.”
“But…they’re people…were people. Don’t you—”
“Look at me.” You knock my chin up with your finger. “Curiosity is a gateway drug to sympathy. Sympathy leads to hesitation. Hesitation will get you killed. Do you understand?”
I nod halfheartedly.
“Then repeat it.”
I do. Over and over again, until the words are burned into my memory. But unlike your other lessons, this one never quite sticks. I never stop wondering about the who and the why. I just learn to stop admitting it.
SIXTEEN
I CAN’T EVEN TELL if the sun is up yet.
Rain taps against the windows, and when I look out, all I see is gray. The gray of clouds and of wet stone buildings and wet streets. The storm drags its stomach over the city, swelling to fill the spaces between buildings.
I had a dream.
In it, Ben was stretched out on the living room floor, drawing pictures with his blue pencils and humming Owen’s song. When I came in, he looked up, and his eyes were black; but as he got to his feet, the black began to shrink, twist back into the centers, leaving only warm brown.