Roland lets go of Agatha’s wrist, but doesn’t take his eyes off her.
“Miss Bishop,” he says as I get to my feet, “I think you’d better get back to class.”
I nod shakily, and I’m about to turn toward the door when Agatha says, “She has something of yours, Roland.” I stiffen, but he doesn’t. His face is a perfect blank as Agatha adds, “A notebook.”
I can’t bring myself to look at him, but I can feel his gray eyes weighing me down. “I know,” he lies. “I gave it to her.”
Only then do I look up, but his attention has already shifted back to Agatha. I’m halfway through the door when she says to him, “You can’t protect her.” But whatever he says back is lost as I slip into the dark.
I don’t stop moving until I reach Dallas’s office. I’m early, and she’s not there, but I sink down onto the couch, my heart pounding. I can still feel Agatha’s hands against my temples, the pain of the memories being dragged forward toward her fingers. Too close. I pull Roland’s journal from my pocket. The memories hum against my skin as I cradle it in my palm, but I don’t reach for them—I’ve taken enough from him already. Instead I close my eyes and lean my head back against the couch.
“I’m impressed.”
I look up to find Owen sitting in Dallas’s low-back chair, twirling his knife absently on the leather arm while he watches me intently.
“I have to admit,” he says, “I wasn’t sure you’d do it.”
“I’m full of surprises,” I say drily. He holds out his hand for the journal, and I hesitate before relinquishing it. “It’s very important to someone.”
“Everything in the Archive is,” he says, taking it from me. His hand lingers a moment around mine, and I recognize the touch for what it is: a reading. His quiet slides through my mind while my life slides through his. I can almost see the struggle with Agatha play out in his eyes, the way they widen, then narrow.
“She’s angry because I won’t grant her access to my mind.”
“Good,” he says, pulling away. He pages through Roland’s notebook, and I’m surprised by how gentle he is with it. “It’s strange,” he adds under his breath, “the way we hold on to things. My uncle couldn’t part with his dog tags. He had them on him always, looped around his neck along with his key, a reminder. He served in both wars, my uncle. He was a hero. And he was Crew. As loyal as they come. When he got back from the second war, I had just turned thirteen, and he began to train me. He was never the kind and gentle type—the Archive and the wars made sure of that—but I believed in him.” He closes Roland’s journal and runs his thumb over the cover. “I was initiated into the Archive when I was only fourteen—did you know that?” I didn’t. “That night,” he continues, “after my induction, my uncle went home and shot himself in the head.”
The air catches in my throat, but I will myself to say nothing.
“I couldn’t understand,” he says, almost to himself, “why a man who’d lived through so much would do that. He left a note. As I am. That’s all he wrote. It wasn’t until two years later, when I learned about the Archive’s policy to alter those who live long enough to retire, that it made sense. He would rather have died whole than let them take his life apart and cut out everything that mattered just to keep its secrets.” His eyes drift up from the journal. There is a light in them, narrow and bright. “But change is coming. Soon there will be no secrets for them to guard. You accused me once of wanting to create chaos, but you’re wrong. I am only doing my job. I am protecting the past.”
He offers me the journal back, and I take it, relieved.
“It’s rather fitting that you chose to take that,” he says as I slip it into my bag. “The thing we’re going to steal is not so different.”
“What is it?” I ask, trying to stifle some of the urgency in my voice.
“The Archive ledger.”
I frown. “I don’t under—” But I’m cut off as the door clatters open and Dallas comes in, juggling her journal, a cell phone, and a mug of coffee. Her eyes land on me, and for a moment—the smallest second—I think they take in Owen, too. Or at least the space around him. But then she blinks and smiles and drops her stuff on the table.
“Sorry I’m late,” she says. Owen rises to his feet and retreats to a corner of the room as she collapses into the abandoned chair. “What do you want to talk about? Who you’re taking to Fall Fest? That seems to be all anyone else wants to talk about.” She fetches up her journal and begins to turn through pages, and I’m surprised to see she’s actually taken notes. I’ve only ever seen her doodle flower patterns in the corners of the page. “Oh, I know,” she says, landing on a page. “I want to talk a little about your grandfather.”
I stiffen. Da is the last person I want to talk about right now, especially with Owen in the audience. But when I meet his gaze over Dallas’s shoulder, there is a new interest—an intensity—and I remember something he said last night:
The Archive is broken. Da knew—he had to know—and he still let them have you.
I’m just beginning to earn Owen’s trust (or at least his interest). If this is going to work, I need to keep it. Maybe I can use Da.
“What about him?” I ask.
Dallas shrugs. “I don’t know. But you quote him a lot. I guess I want to know why.”
I frown a little, and take a moment to choose my words, hoping they both read the pause as emotion rather than strategy.
“When I was little,” I say, looking down at my hands, “I worshipped him. I used to think he knew everything, because he had an answer to every question I could think up. It never occurred to me that he didn’t always know. That he would lie or make it up.” I consider the place between two knucklebones where my ring should be. “I assumed he knew. And I trusted him to tell the truth.…” My voice trails off a little as I glance up. “I’m just now starting to realize how little he told me.”
I’m amazed to hear myself say the words. Not because the lies come easily, but because they’re not lies at all. Dallas is staring at me in a way that makes me feel exposed.
I tug my sleeves over my hands. “That was probably too much. I should have just said that I loved him. That he was important to me.”
Dallas shakes her head. “No, that was good. And the way we feel about people should never be put in past tense, Mackenzie. After all, we continue to feel things about them in the present tense. Did you stop loving your brother when he died?”
I can feel Owen’s gaze like a weight, and I have to bring my fingers to the edge of the couch and grip the cushion to steady them. “No.”
“So it’s not that you loved him,” she continues. “You love him. And it’s not that your grandfather was important to you. He is. In that way, no one’s ever really gone, are they?”
Da’s voice rings out like a bell in my head.
What are you afraid of, Kenzie?
Losing you.
Nothing’s lost. Ever.
“Da didn’t believe in Heaven,” I find myself saying, “but I think it scared him, the idea of losing all the things—people, knowledge, memories—he’d spent his life collecting. He liked to tell me he believed in someplace. Someplace calm and peaceful, where your life was kept safe, even after it was over.”