“Nothing.” Except for the bike’s current proximity to Eric. I tilt my head back. “It just looks like rain.” To be fair, it is kind of cloudy.
He looks up, too. “Uh-huh.” Not that cloudy. His eyes drop back to mine. “Be honest. You just want to get inside my halls.”
“Oh, yeah,” I say, teasing. “Creepy corridors are such a turn-on.”
The corner of his mouth tugs up. “Follow me.”
Wes leads me around the back of campus to an abandoned building. Abandoned might be too severe a phrase; the building is small and old and elegant and draped with ivy, but it doesn’t look anywhere near structurally sound, let alone usable. Wes makes another sweeping gesture at the door set into the building’s side.
“I don’t understand,” I say. “Your nearest Narrows door is…an actual door?”
Wes beams. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
The paint has all flaked off, and the small glass inserts that once occupied the upper middle have broken and been replaced by cobwebs. Even so, it is strange and lovely. I knew that Narrows doors all started out as real doors—wood and hinges and frames—but over time, walls change, buildings come down, and the portals stay. Every Narrows door I’ve ever seen has been nothing more than a crack in the world, a seam you can barely see. An impossible entrance that takes shape only when summoned by a key.
But here this is: this small, wood-and-metal door. I tug off my ring, the world shifting subtly around me as I tuck the metal band into my skirt pocket and reach out. Pressing my palm flat against the door, I can feel the strangeness, the hum of two worlds meeting and reverberating through the wood. It makes my fingertips go numb. Wesley fishes his key out from under his polo; he slides it into the rusted lock—a real, metal lock—and turns.
“Anything I should know about?” I ask as the door swings open onto darkness.
“Keep your eyes peeled for someone named Elissa,” he says. I cast a last glance around for Eric, then follow Wesley through.
The Narrows are the Narrows are the Narrows.
The fact that Wesley’s territory looks and smells and sounds like mine—dark and dank and full of distant echoes, like groaning pipes—is just a reminder of how vast the Archive system is. The only differences are the markings he’s made on the doors—I use Xs and Os, but Wes has drawn broad red slashes over every locked door, green checks over every usable one. And of course there’s the fact I have no idea where I’m going. It looks so much like my territory that I feel like I should know every turn, but the halls and doors are a disorienting almost-mirror.
“Which way home?”
“Your home is this way,” he says, pointing down the hall.
“And yours?” I ask.
He gestures vaguely behind him.
Curiosity tugs at me. “Can I see?”
“Not today,” says Wes, his voice strangely tense.
“But we’re so close. How can I pass up the opportunity to see inside the life of the mysterious Wesley Ayers?”
“Because I’m not offering,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “Look, it’s a big house. Soulless. And I hate it. That’s all you need to know.” He seems genuinely annoyed, so I let it go. He’s so quick to defend the school, even with all its pretention, but whatever’s at his house must be worse. The image of Wesley sitting on some grand patio with a butler shudders and breaks.
He starts walking away, and I follow. We move in silence through the Narrows, our senses tuned to the dimly lit corridors around us. I try to make a mental map of these new halls. It’s not enough to know the number of rights and lefts—Da taught me how to learn a space, make a memory of it so I could find my way through in both directions and correct my course if I strayed. It’s harder this time, since there’s already a nearly identical territory mapped in my head.
“Are you going to tell me what happened to your hands?” asks Wes.
“Nothing I couldn’t handle.”
“You promised me a story.”
“It isn’t a very nice one,” I say, but I still tell him. His steps slow. Even in the dark, I can see him pale as he listens.
“I would have killed them,” he says under his breath.
“I nearly did,” I say. I carved Eric out of the story. I don’t want Wesley to worry, not until there’s a good reason to. Luckily the appearance of the territory wall saves me from having to say more.
The boundary between Wesley’s territory and mine looks like a dead end, bare except for the keyhole set into it. It’s strange, I think, how separate Keepers are kept. Crew may be paired up, but we’re isolated. Each on his own page.
Wes slides his key into the small, glowing mark on the otherwise bare wall; as he does, the door takes shape around the lock, the stony surface rippling into wood. The lock turns over with a soft metallic click, and he pulls the door open to reveal my section of the Narrows. The same—a mirror image—and yet different. More familiar.
I free my own key from under my collar and wrap the cord around my wrist. Wes smiles and gives a sweeping bow before stepping aside to let me pass.
“Be safe,” he says, holding the door open as I cross through.
I hear it swing shut behind me; by the time I look back, there is nothing but a smooth stone wall and a tiny keyhole filled with light. A shadow crosses it briefly, and then it’s gone, and when I press my ear to the wall, I imagine I can hear Wesley’s footsteps fading. I feel the scratch of letters on my list, but I don’t pull the paper out. The History will have to wait. It might not be happy or sane, but I’ll deal with it when I get back.
I head straight through the territory to the numbered doors, my mind already on Mr. Phillip’s house as I slot the key into the first door and step out onto the third floor hall, and stop.
Eric is leaning up against the faded yellow wallpaper, reading his book.
“If I didn’t know better,” he says, turning a page, “I’d think you were avoiding me.”
“Flat tire,” I say, sliding my ring back on as the Narrows door dissolves behind me.
“I’m sure.” He closes the book and pockets it.
“You know,” I say, “there’s a word for guys who lurk outside schools.”
Eric almost smiles. “When you sneak off, it makes one think you’re up to no good.”
“When you follow people without telling them why, it makes one think the same.”
Eric winks. “How are your hands?”
I hesitate. He sounds like he actually cares. Maybe I was wrong about him. I hold them up for his inspection.
“Good,” he says. “Fast healer.”
“Comes in handy.”
“Thank your genes, Miss Bishop. Your recovery rate comes with the territory, just like your sight.”
I look down at my mending knuckles. I’d never thought much about it before, but I guess it makes sense.
Just then, the stairwell door bangs open and a woman strides through, a Crew key dangling from her fingers. She’s tall, her black eyes fringed with dark lashes, a black ponytail plunging between her shoulders and down her back, straight and knife-sharp. In fact, everything about her is sharp, from the line of her jaw and her shoulders to her fingernails and the heeled boots at the ends of her long, thin legs. I recognize her from that day in the Archive.