The world doesn’t end. People don’t die. Doors don’t open. Crew don’t pour out and arrest me. Wesley Ayers beams enough for both of us.
“I patrol the Narrows,” he says.
“I hunt Histories,” I say.
“I return them to the Archive.”
It becomes a game, whispered and breathless.
“I hide who I am.”
“I fight with the dead.”
“I lie to the living.”
“I am alone.”
And then I get why Wes can’t stop smiling, even though it looks silly with his eyeliner and jet-black hair and hard jaw and scars. I am not alone. The words dance in my mind and in his eyes and against our rings and our keys, and now I smile too.
“Thank you,” I say.
“My pleasure,” he says, looking up at the sky. “It’s getting late. I’d better go.”
For one silly, nonsensical moment, I’m scared of his leaving, scared he’ll never come back and I’ll be left with this, this…loneliness. I swallow the strange panic and force myself not to follow him to the study door.
Instead I keep still and watch him tuck his key beneath his shirt, roll his ring so the three lines are hidden against his palm. He looks exactly the same, and I wonder if I do too and how that’s possible, considering how I feel—like some door in me has been opened and left ajar.
“Wesley,” I call after him, instantly berating myself when he stops and glances back at me.
“Good night,” I say lamely.
He smiles and closes the gap between us. His fingers brush over my key before they curl around it, and guide it under the collar of my shirt, the metal cold against my skin.
“Good night, Keeper,” he says.
And then he’s gone.
TEN
I LINGER A MOMENT in the garden after Wes is gone, savoring the taste of our confessions on my tongue, the small defiance of sharing a secret. I focus on the coolness creeping into the air around me, and the hush of the evening.
Da took me onto the stretch of green behind his house once and told me that building walls—blocking out people and their noise—should feel like this. An armor of quiet. Told me that walls were just like a ring but better because they were in my head, and because they could be strong enough to silence anything. If I could just learn to build them.
But I couldn’t. I sometimes think that maybe, if I could remember what it felt like, touching people and feeling nothing but skin… But I can’t, and when I try to block out their noise, it just gets worse, and I feel like I’m in a glass box under the ocean, the sound and pressure cracking in. Da ran out of time to teach me, so all I have are frustrating memories of him wrapping his arm around people without even flinching, making it look so easy, so normal.
I would give anything to be normal.
The thought creeps in, and I force it away. No I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t give anything. I wouldn’t give the bond I had with Da. I wouldn’t give the time I have with Ben’s drawer. I wouldn’t give Roland, and I wouldn’t give the Archive, with its impossible light and the closest thing I’ve ever felt to peace. This is all I have. This is all I am.
I head for the study doors, thinking of the murdered girl and the bloodstained boy. I have a job. SERVAMUS MEMORIAM. I push the doors open, and stiffen when I see the large woman behind the desk in the corner.
“Ms. Angelli.”
Her eyebrows inch into a nest of hair I strongly suspect is a wig, and a moment of surprise passes before recognition spreads across her broad face. If she’s upset to see me after this morning, she doesn’t show it, and I wonder for once if I read too much into her rush to leave. Maybe she really was late for an appraisal.
“Mackenzie Bishop, of the baked goods,” she says. Her voice is quieter here in the study, almost reverent. Several large texts are spread before her, the corners of the pages worn. A cup of tea sits nestled in the space between two books.
“What are you reading?” I ask.
“Histories, mostly.” I know she only means the kind in books, the little h kind, as Da would say. Still, I flinch.
“Where did they all come from?” I ask, gesturing toward the volumes stacked on the table and lining the walls.
“The books? Oh, they appeared over time. A resident took one and left two behind. The study simply grew. I’m sure they stocked it when the Coronado was first converted, leather-bound classics and atlases and encyclopedias. But these days it’s a delightful mix of old and new and odd. Just the other night I found a romance novel mixed in with the directories! Imagine.”
My pulse skips. “Directories?”
Something nervous shifts in her face, but she points a ringed finger over her shoulder. My eyes skim the walls of books behind her until they land on a dozen or so slightly larger than the rest, more uniform. In the place of a title, each spine has a set of dates.
“They chronicle the residents?” I ask casually, eyes skimming the years. The dates go all the way back to the earliest parts of the past century. The first half of the books are red. The second half are blue.
“They were first used while the Coronado was still a hotel,” she explains. “A kind of guestbook, if you will. Those red ones, those are from the hotel days. The blue ones are from the conversion on.”
I round the table to the shelf that bears the books’ weight. Pulling the most recent one from the wall and flipping through, I see that each directory comprises five years’ worth of residential lists, an ornate page dividing each year. I go to the last divider, the most recent year, and turn until I get to the page for the third floor. In the column for 3F, someone has crossed out the printed word Vacant and added Mr. and Mrs. Peter Bishop in pencil. Flipping back through, I find that 3F has been vacant for two years, and was rented before that to a Mr. Bill Lighton. I close the book, return it to the shelf, and immediately take up the previous directory.
“Looking for something?” Ms. Angelli asks. There’s a subtle tension in her voice.
“Just curious,” I say, again searching for 3F. Still Mr. Lighton. Then Ms. Jane Olinger. I pause, but I know from reading the walls that it was more than ten years ago, and besides, the girl was too young to be living alone. I reshelve the book and pull the next one down.
Ms. Olinger again.
Before that, Mr. and Mrs. Albert Locke. Still not far enough.
Before that, Vacant.
Is this how normal people learn the past?
Next, a Mr. Kenneth Shaw.
And then I find what I’m looking for. The wall of black, the dead space between most of the memories and the murder. I run my finger down the column.
Vacant.
Vacant.
Vacant.
Not just one set, either. There are whole books of Vacant. Ms. Angelli watches me too intently, but I keep pulling the books down until I reach the last blue book, the one that starts with the conversion: 1950 – 54.
The 1954 book is marked Vacant, but when I reach the divider marked 1953, I stop.
3F is missing.
The entire floor is missing.
The entire year is missing.
In its place is a stack of blank paper. I turn back through 1952 and 1951. Both are blank. There’s no record of the murdered girl. There’s no record of anyone. Three entire years are just…missing. The inaugural year, 1950, is there, but there’s no name written under 3F. What did Lyndsey say? There was nothing on record. Suspiciously nothing.