The Archived (17 page)

I
 
TENSE
.

“What is it?” he asks.

“Nothing,” I say, a fraction too fast. What are the odds of Owen’s managing to make
his way here, within arm’s reach of the numbered doors that don’t just lead out, but
lead
home
?

I force myself to shrug. “It’s unusual, isn’t it? Living in a hotel?”

“It was incredible,” he says softly.

“Really?” I ask before I can stop myself.

“You don’t believe me?”

“It’s not that,” I say. “I just can’t picture it.”

“Close your eyes.” I do. “First, you step into the lobby. It is glass and dark wood,
marble and gold.” His voice is smooth, lulling. “Gold traces the wallpaper, threads
the carpet, it edges the wood and flecks the marble. The whole lobby glitters. It
gleams. There are flowers in crystal vases: some roses the dark red of the carpet,
others the white of stone. The place is always light,” he says. “Sun streams in through
the windows, the curtains always thrown back.”

“It sounds beautiful.”

“It was. We moved in the year after it was converted to apartments.”

There’s something vaguely formal about Owen—there is a kind of timeless grace about
him, his movements careful, his words measured—but it’s hard to believe he lived…and
died…so long ago. But even more striking than his age is the date he’s referring to:
1951. I didn’t see the name
Clarke
in the directory, and now I know why. His family moved in during the time when the
records are missing.

“I liked it well enough,” he’s saying, “but my sister loved it.”

His eyes take on an unfocused quality—not slipping, not black, but haunted.

“It was all a game to Regina,” he says quietly. “When we moved to the Coronado, she
saw the whole hotel as a castle, a labyrinth, a maze of hiding places. Our rooms were
side by side, but she insisted on passing me notes. Instead of slipping them under
the door, she’d tear them up and hide the pieces around the building, tied to rocks,
rings, trinkets, anything to weigh them down. One time she wrote me a story and scattered
it all across the Coronado, wedged in garden cracks and under tiles, and in the mouths
of statues.… It took me days to recover the fragments, and even then I never found
the ending.…” His voice trails off.

“Owen?”

“You said you think there’s a reason Histories wake up. Something that eats at them…us.”
He looks at me when he says it, and sadness streaks across his face, barely touching
his features and yet transforming them. He wraps his arms around his ribs. “I couldn’t
save her.”

My heart drops. I see the resemblance now, clear as day: their lanky forms, their
silver-blond hair, their strange, delicate grace. The murdered girl.

“What happened?” I whisper.

“It was 1953. My family had lived at the Coronado for two years. Regina was fifteen.
I was nineteen, and I’d just moved away,” Owen says through gritted teeth, “a couple
of weeks before it happened. Not far, but that day it might as well have been countries,
worlds, because when she needed me, I wasn’t there.”

The words cut through me. The same words I’ve said to myself a thousand times when
I think about the day Ben died.

“She bled out on our living room floor,” he says. “And I wasn’t there.”

He leans back against the wall and slides down it until he’s sitting on the ground.

“It was my fault,” he whispers. “Do you think that’s why I’m here?”

I kneel in front of him. “You didn’t kill her, Owen.” I know. I’ve seen who did.

“I was her big brother.” He tangles his fingers in his hair. “It was my job to protect
her. Robert was my friend first. I introduced them. I brought him into her life.”

Owen’s face darkens, and he looks away. I’m about to press when the scratch of letters
in my pocket drags me back to the Narrows and the existence of other Histories. I
pull the paper out, expecting a new name, but instead I find a summons.

Report at once.
—
R


“I have to go,” I say.

Owen’s hand comes to rest on my arm. For that moment, all the thoughts and questions
and worries hush. “Mackenzie,” he says, “is my day over?”

I stand, and his hand slides from my skin, taking the quiet with it.

“No,” I say, turning away. “Not yet.”

My mind is still spinning over Owen’s sister—their resemblance is so strong, now that
I know—as I step into the Archive. And then I see the front desk in the antechamber
and come to a halt. The table is covered in files and ledgers, paper sticking out
of the towering stacks of folders; and in the narrow alley between two piles, I can
see Patrick’s glasses. Damn.

“If you’re trying to set a record for time spent here,” he says without looking up
from his work, “I’m pretty sure you’ve done it.”

“I was just looking for—”

“You do know,” he says, “that despite my title, this isn’t
really
a library, right? We don’t lend, we don’t check out, we don’t even have a reference-only
reading area. These constant visits are not only tiresome, they’re unacceptable.”

“Yes, I know, but—”

“And are you not busy enough, Miss Bishop? Because last time I checked, you had”—he
lifts a pad of paper from the table, flicks through several pages—“five Histories
on your list.”

Five?

“You do know why you
have
a list, correct?”

“Yes,” I manage.

“And why it’s imperative that you clear it?”

“Of course.” There’s a reason we constantly patrol, hoping to keep the numbers down,
instead of just walking away, letting the Histories pile up in the Narrows. It’s said
that if enough Histories woke and got into the space between the worlds, they wouldn’t
need Keepers and keys to get through. They could force the doors open.
Two ways through any lock,
said Da.

“Then why are you still standing in front of—”

“Roland summoned me,” I say, holding up my Archive paper.

Patrick huffs and sits back in his seat, examining me for a long moment.

“Fine,” he says, returning to his work with little more than a gesture to the doors
behind him.

I round the desk, slowing to watch him write in the ancient ledger sprawled open before
him, and then, barely lifting his pen, in one of a half dozen smaller books. This
is the first time I’ve ever seen the desk look
cluttered
.

“You seem busy,” I say as I pass.

“That’s because I am,” he answers.

“Busier than usual.”

“How astute.”

“I’m busier too, Patrick. You can’t tell me five names is standard, even for the Coronado.”

He doesn’t look up. “We’re experiencing some minor technical difficulties, Miss Bishop.
So sorry to inconvenience you.”

I frown. “What kind of technical difficulties?” Glitching names? Armed Histories?
Boys who don’t slip?

“Minor ones,” he snaps, making it clear as day that he’s done talking.

I put the list away as I pass through the main doors in search of Roland.

Crossing into the warm light of the atrium, my spirits lift, and I feel that sense
of peace Da always spoke of. The calm.

And then something crashes.

Not here in the atrium but down one of the branching halls, the metal sound of a shelf
falling to the floor. Several Librarians rise from their work and hurry toward the
noise, closing the doors behind them; but I stand very, very still, remembering that
I am surrounded by the sleeping dead.

I hold my breath and listen. Nothing happens. The doors stay closed. No sound comes
through.

And then a hand lands on my shoulder and I spin, twisting the arm back behind the
body. In one fluid move, the arm and body are both gone, and somehow I’m the one being
pinned, facedown, against a table.

“Easy, there,” says Roland, letting go of my wrist and shoulder.

I take a few steadying breaths and lean against the table. “Why did you summon me?
Did you find something? And did you hear that crash—”

“Not here,” he murmurs, motioning toward a wing. I follow him, rubbing my arm.

The farther we get from the atrium, the older the Archive seems. Roland leads me down
corridors that begin to twist and coil and shrink, laid out more like the Narrows
than the stacks. The ceilings shift from arching overhead to dipping low, and the
rooms themselves are smaller, cryptlike and dusty.

“What was that sound?” I ask as Roland leads the way; but he doesn’t answer, only
ducks into an oddly shaped alcove and turns again under a low stone arch. The room
beyond is dim, and its walls are lined with worn, dated ledgers, not Histories. It
is a cramped and faded version of the chamber in which I faced my trial.

“We have a problem,” he says as soon as he’s closed the door. “I looked through that
list of names you sent. Most of them didn’t tell me anything, but two of them did.
Two more people died in the Coronado, both in August, both within a month of Marcus
Elling. And both Histories were altered, their deaths removed.”

I sink into a low leather chair, and Roland begins to pace. He looks exhausted, the
lilt in his voice growing stronger as he talks. “I didn’t find them at first because
they’d been mis-shelved, the entry ledgers saying one place but the catalogs saying
another. Someone didn’t want them found.”

“Who were they?”

“Eileen Herring, a woman in her seventies, and Lionel Pratt, a man in his late twenties.
Both lived in the Coronado, and both lived alone, just like Elling, but that’s the
only connection I can find. I can’t even be certain they died
in
the Coronado, but their last intact memories are of the building. Eileen leaving
her apartment on the second floor. Lionel sitting on the patio, having a smoke. The
moments are mundane to a fault. Nothing about them gives any indication of what caused
their deaths, and yet both have been blacked out.”

“Marcus, Eileen, and Lionel died in August. But Regina was murdered in March.”

His eyes narrow. “I thought you didn’t know her name.”

The air snags in my lungs. I didn’t. Not until Owen told me. But I can’t exactly explain
that I’ve been sheltering her brother.

“You’re not the only one doing research, remember? I tracked down a resident of the
Coronado, Ms. Angelli, who’d heard about the murder.”

It’s not a lie,
I reason. Just a manipulation.

“What else did she know?” he presses.

I shake my head, trying to keep the spin as clean as I can. “Not much. She didn’t
seem eager to swap stories.”

“Does Regina have a last name?”

I hesitate. If I give it, Roland will cross-reference her with Owen, who’s notably
absent. I know I should tell him about Owen—we’re already breaking rules—but there
are rules and there are Rules, and while Roland has gone far enough to break the former,
I don’t know how he’d handle my breaking the latter and harboring a History in the
Narrows. And I’ve still got so many questions for Owen.

I shake my head. “Angelli wouldn’t say, but I’ll keep pressing.” At least that lie
will buy me a little time. I try to shift the focus back to the second set of deaths.

“Five months between Regina’s murder and these three deaths, Roland. How do we even
know they’re related?”

He frowns. “We don’t. But it’s a suspicious number of filing errors. At first I thought
it might be a cleanup, but…”

“A cleanup?”

“Sometimes, if things go badly—if a History does commit atrocities in the Outer, and
there are victims as well as witnesses—the Archive does what it can to minimize the
risk of exposure.”

“Are you saying the Archive actively covers up murders?”

“Not all evidence can be buried, but most can be twisted. Bodies can be disposed of.
Deaths can be made to appear natural.” I must look as appalled as I feel, because
he keeps talking. “I’m not saying it’s right, Miss Bishop; I’m just saying the Archive
cannot afford to have people learning about Histories. About us.”

“But would they ever hide evidence from their own?”

He frowns again. “I’ve seen certain measures taken in the Outer. Surfaces altered.
I’ve known members of the Archive who think the past should be sheltered here, in
these walls, but not beyond them. People who think the Outer isn’t sacred. People
who think there are things that Keepers and Crew should not see. But even they would
never approve of this, of altering Histories, keeping the truth from
us
.” When he says
us
, he doesn’t mean me. He means the Librarians. He looks wounded. Betrayed.

“So someone here went rogue,” I say. “The question is why.”

“Not just why.
Who
.” Roland slides down into a chair. “Remember when I said we had a problem? Right
after I found Eileen and Lionel, I went back to review Marcus’s History. I couldn’t.
Someone had tampered with him. Erased him entirely.”

I grip the arms of my chair. “But that means it was done by a current Librarian. Someone
in the Archive
now
.”

Suddenly I’m glad I’ve kept Owen a secret. If he is connected, then there’s one big
difference between the other victims and him: he’s
awake
. I stand a better chance of learning what he knows by listening than by turning him
back into a corpse. And if he
is
connected, then the moment I turn him in, our rogue Librarian will almost certainly
erase what’s left of his memories.

“And judging by the rush job,” says Roland, “they know we’re digging.”

I shake my head. “But I don’t get it. You said that Marcus Elling’s death was first
altered when he was brought in. That was more than sixty years ago. Why would a current
Librarian be trying to cover up the work of an old one?”

Roland rubs his eyes. “They wouldn’t. And they’re not.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Alterations have a signature. Memories that have been hollowed out by different hands
both register as black, but there’s a subtle difference in the way they read. The
way they feel. The way Marcus Elling’s History reads now is the same way it read before.
The same way the other two read. They were all altered by the same person.”