“M,” he moans against my neck. I feel myself blush. In all the strangeness, there’s something about the way he looks at me, the way he touches me, that feels so incredibly…normal. Boy-and-girl and smiles-and-sideways-glances and whispers-and-butterflies normal. And I want that so, so badly. I can feel the scratch of letters in my pocket, now constant. I leave the list where it is.
A faint smile tugs at the corner of Owen’s mouth as it hovers above mine. We are close enough to share breath, the quiet dizzying but not quite strong enough. Not yet. Thoughts keep trickling through my head, warnings and doubts, and I want to silence them. I want to disappear.
As I run my fingers through his hair and pull his face to mine, I wonder if Owen is escaping too. If he can disappear into my touch, forget what he is and what he’s lost.
I am blotting out pieces of my life. I am blotting out everything but this. But him. I exhale as he brushes against me, my body beginning to uncurl, to loosen at his fingertips. I am letting him wash over me, drown every part of me that I don’t need in order to kiss or to listen or to smile or to want. This is what I want. This is my drug. The pain, both skin-deep and deeper, is finally gone. Everything is gone but the quiet.
And the quiet is wonderful.
“Why do you smoke, Da?”
“We all do things we shouldn’t, things that harm us.”
“I don’t.”
“You’re still young. You will.”
“But I don’t understand. Why hurt yourself?”
“It won’t make sense to you.”
“Try me.”
You frown. “To escape.”
“Explain.”
“I smoke to escape from myself.”
“Which part?”
“Every part. It’s bad for me and I know it and I still do it, and in order for me to do it and enjoy it, I have to not think about it. I can think about it before and after, but while I’m doing it, I stop thinking. I stop being. I am not your Da, and I am not Antony Bishop. I am no one. I am nothing. Just smoke and peace. If I think about what I’m doing, then I think about it being wrong and I can’t enjoy it, so I stop thinking. Does it make sense now?”
“No. Not at all.”
“I had a dream last night.…” says Owen, rolling the iron ring from Regina’s note over his knuckles. “Well, I don’t know if it was night or day.”
We’re sitting on the floor. I’m leaning against him, and he has one arm draped over my shoulder, our fingers loosely intertwined. The quiet in my head is like a sheet, a buffer. It is water, but instead of floating, like Wes taught me, I am drowning in it. This is a thing like peace but deeper. Smoother.
“I didn’t know Histories could dream,” I say, wincing when it comes out a little harsh, making Histories into an it instead of a him or you.
“Of course,” he says. “Why do you think they—we—wake up? I imagine it’s because of dreams. Because they’re so vivid, or so urgent, that we cannot sleep.”
“What did you dream about?”
He navigates the iron ring to his palm, folds his fingers over it.
“The sun,” he says. “I know it seems impossible, to dream of light in a place as dark as this. But I did.”
He rests his chin on my hair. “I was standing on the roof,” he says. “And the world below was water, glittering in the sun. I couldn’t leave, there was no way off, so I stood and waited. So much time seemed to pass—whole days, weeks—but it never got dark, and I kept waiting for something—someone—to come.” The fingers of his free hand trace patterns on my arm. “And then you came.”
“What happened then?” I ask.
He doesn’t speak.
“Owen?” I press, craning to look at him.
Sadness flickers like a current through his eyes. “I woke up.”
He pockets the iron ring and produces the iron bar and the second piece of the story, the one I handed him before the trial.
“Where did you find this?” he asks.
“Under a marble rose,” I say. “Your sister picked some clever hiding places.”
“The Even Rose,” he says softly. “That was the name of the café back then. And Regina was always clever.”
“Owen, I’ve looked everywhere, and I still haven’t found the ending. Where could it be?”
“It’s a large building. Larger than it looks. But the pieces of the story seem to fit where they’ve been hidden. The Even Rose fragment spoke of climbing out of stones. The fragment from the roof spoke of reaching the top, battling the monsters. The ending will fit its place, too. The hero will win the battle—he always does—and then…”
“He’ll go home,” I finish quietly. “You said it was a journey. A quest. Isn’t the point of a quest is to get somewhere? To get home?”
He kisses my hair. “You’re right.” He twirls the trinket piece. “But where is home?”
Could it be 3F? The Clarkes lived there once. Could the ending to Regina’s story be hidden in their home? In mine?
“I don’t know, M,” he whispers. “Maybe Regina won this last game.”
“No,” I say. “She hasn’t won yet.”
And neither has the rogue Librarian. Owen’s quiet calms my panic and clears my head. The more I think about it, the more I realize that there’s no way this disruption is just a distraction from the dark secrets of the Coronado’s past. It’s something more. There was no need to shatter the peace of the Archive after erasing evidence in both the Archive and the Outer. No, I’m missing something; I’m not seeing the whole picture.
I disentangle myself from Owen and turn to face him, forfeiting the quiet to ask a question I should have asked long ago. “Did you know a man named Marcus Elling?”
A small crease forms between Owen’s eyes. “He lived on our floor. He was quiet but always kind to us. Whatever happened to him?”
I frown. “You don’t know?”
Owen’s face is blank. “Should I?”
“What about Eileen Herring? Or Lionel Pratt?”
“The names sound familiar. They lived in the building, right?”
“Owen, they all died. A few months after Regina.” He just stares at me, confused. My heart sinks. If he can’t remember anything about the murders, about his own death on the roof…I thought I was protecting him from the Archive, but what if I’m too late? What if someone’s already taken the memories I need? “What do you remember?”
“I…I didn’t want to leave. Right after Regina died, my parents packed up everything and ran away, and I couldn’t do it. If there was any part of her left in the Coronado, I couldn’t leave her. That’s the last thing I can remember. But that was days after she died. Maybe a week.”
“Owen, you died five months after your sister.”
“That’s not possible.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s true. And I’ve got to find out what happened between her death and yours.” I drag myself to my feet, pain rippling through my ribs. It’s late, it’s been a hell of a day, and I have to meet Wesley in the morning.