The Archived (8 page)

He’s not.

He’s stopped, several feet back, and is staring at the keyhole of a door set into
the floor. The edge of an X peeks out beneath his shoe.

“Come on, Jackson,” I say. “Don’t you want to go home?”

He toes the keyhole. “You aren’t taking me home,” he says.

“I am.”

He looks up at me, his eyes catching the thin stream of light coming from the keyhole
at his feet. “You don’t know where my home is.”

That is, of course, a very good point. “No, I don’t.” A wave of anger washes over
his face when I add, “But the doors do.”

I point to the one at his feet. “It’s simple. The X means it’s not your door.” I point
to the one just ahead, the filled-in circle drawn on its front. “That one, with the
chalk circle. That’s your door. That’s where we’re going.”

Hope flickers in him, and I might feel bad about lying if I had any choice. Jackson
catches up, then pushes past me.

“Hurry up,” he says, waiting by the door, running a finger over the chalk as his gaze
continues down the hall. I reach out to slide the key into the lock.

“Wait,” he says. “What’s that?”

I look up. He’s pointing at another door, one at the very end of the hall. A white
circle has been drawn above the keyhole, large enough to see from here. Damn.

“Jackson—”

He spins on me. “You lied. You’re not taking me home.” He steps forward, and I step
back, away from the door.

“I didn’t—”

He doesn’t give me a chance to lie again, but lunges for the key. I twist out of the
way, catching his sleeved wrist as he reaches out. I wrench it behind his back, and
he yelps, but somehow, by some combination of fighter’s luck and sheer will, twists
free. He turns to run, but I catch his shoulder and force him forward, against the
wall.

I keep my arm firmly around his throat, pulling back and up with enough force to make
him forget that he is six inches taller than I am, and still has two arms and two
legs to fight with.

“Jackson,” I say, trying to keep my voice level, “you’re being ridiculous. Any door
with a white circle can take you—”

And then I see metal, and jump back just in time, the knife in his hand arcing through
the air, fast. This is wrong. Histories never have weapons. Their bodies are searched
when they’re shelved. So where did he get it?

I kick up and send him reeling backward. It only buys a moment, but a moment is long
enough to get a good look at the blade. It gleams in the dark, well-kept steel as
long as my hand, a hole drilled in the grip so it can be spun. It is a
lovely
weapon. And there is no way it belongs to a punk teen with a worn-out hoodie and
a bad attitude.

But whether it’s his, or he stole it, or someone gave it to him—a possibility I don’t
even want to consider—it doesn’t change the fact that right now he’s the one holding
a knife.

And I’ve got nothing.

I
 
AM ELEVEN,
and you are stronger than you look.


You take me out into the summer sun to show me how to fight. Your limbs are weapons,
brutally fast. I spend hours figuring out how to avoid them, how to dodge, roll, anticipate,
react. It’s get out of the way or get hit.


I’m sitting on the ground, exhausted and rubbing my ribs where you got a touch, even
though I saw you try to pull back.


“You said you’d teach me how to fight,” I say.


“I am.”


“You’re only showing me how to defend.”


“Trust me. You need to know that first.”


“I want to learn how to attack.” I cross my arms. “I’m strong enough.”


“Fighting isn’t really about using your strength, Kenzie. It’s about using theirs.
Histories will always be stronger. Pain doesn’t stick, so you can’t hurt them, not
really. They don’t bleed, and if you kill them, they don’t stay dead. They die, they
come back. You die, you don’t.”


“Can I have a weapon?”


“No, Kenzie,” you snap. “Never carry a weapon. Never count on anything that’s not
attached to you. It can be taken. Now, get back up.”


There are times when I wish I’d broken Da’s rules. Like right now, staring at the
sharp edge of a knife in the hands of a slipping History. But I don’t break Da’s rules,
not ever. Sometimes I break the Archive’s rules, or bend them a bit, but not his.
And they must work, because I’m still alive.

For now.

Jackson fidgets with the knife, and I can tell by the way he holds it he’s not used
to the weapon. Good. Then at least I stand a chance of getting it away from him. I
tug the yellow bandana from my hair and pull it tight between my hands. And I force
my mouth to smile, because he might have the advantage as far as sharp things go,
but even when the game turns physical, it never stops being mental.

“Jackson,” I say, pulling the fabric taut. “You don’t need to—”

Something moves in the hall beyond him. A shadow there and then gone, a dark shape
with a silver crown. Sudden enough to catch my attention, dragging it from Jackson
for only a second.

Which is, of course, the second he lunges.

His limbs are longer than mine, and it’s all I can do to get out of the way. He fights
like an animal. Reckless. But he’s holding the knife wrong, too low, leaving a gap
on the hilt between his hand and the blade. The next slice comes blindingly quick,
and I lean back but hold my ground. I have an idea, but it means getting close, which
is always risky when the other person has a knife. He jabs again, and I try to twist
my body to get my arms to one side, one above and one below the knife; but I’m not
fast enough, and the blade skims my forearm. Pain burns over my skin, but I’ve almost
got this—and sure enough, on the next try he jabs wrong and I dodge right, lifting
one arm and lowering the other so the knife slices into the circle of space made by
my limbs and the bandana. He sees the trap too late, jerks back; but I swing my hand
down, looping the fabric around the knife, the gap on the hilt. I snap it tight and
bring my boot to the front of his green hoodie as hard as I can, and he stumbles,
losing his hold on the knife.

The fabric goes slack and the blade tumbles into my grip, handle hitting my palm right
as he dives forward, tackling me around the waist and sending us both to the floor.
He knocks the air from my lungs like a brick to the ribs, and the blade goes skittering
into the dark.

At least it’s a fair fight now. He might be strong, made stronger by slipping, but
he clearly didn’t have a grandfather who saw combat training as a bonding opportunity.
I free my leg from under him and manage to get my foot against the wall, for once
thankful that the Narrows are so narrow. Pushing off, I roll on top of Jackson, just
in time to dodge a clumsily thrown fist.

And then I see it on the floor, right above his shoulder.

A keyhole.

I never marked it, so I don’t know where it leads, or if my key will even work, but
I have to do something. Ripping my wrist and my key free of his grip, I drive the
metal teeth down into the gap and turn, holding my breath until I hear it click. I
look down into Jackson’s wild eyes just before the door falls open, plunging us both
downward.

Space changes, suddenly, and instead of falling down we fall forward, sprawling onto
the cold marble of the Archive’s antechamber floor.

I can see the front desk in the corner of my eye, a
QUIET PLEASE
sign and a stack of papers and a green-eyed girl looking over it.

“This is not the Returns room,” she says, her voice edged with amusement. She has
hair the color of sun and sand.

“I realize that,” I growl as I try to pin a hissing, cussing, clawing Jackson to the
floor. “A little help?”

I’ve got him down for all of two seconds before he somehow gets his knee and then
his shoe between our bodies.

The young Librarian stands up as Jackson uses his boot to pry me off, sending me backward
to the hard floor. I’m still on the ground, but Jackson is halfway to his feet when
the Librarian rounds the desk and cheerfully plunges something thin and sharp and
shining into his back. His eyes widen, and when she twists the weapon there’s a noise,
like a lock turning or a bone breaking, and all the life goes out of Jackson Lerner’s
eyes. She withdraws, and he crumples to the floor with the sickening thud of dead
weight. I can see now that what she holds is not a weapon exactly, but a kind of key.
It’s gleaming gold and has a handle and a stem, but no teeth.

“That was fun,” she says.

There’s something like a giggle in the corners of her voice. I’ve seen her around
the stacks. She always catches my eye because she is so young. Girlish. Librarian
is top rank, so the vast majority are older, seasoned. But this girl looks like she’s
twenty.

I drag myself to my feet. “I need a key like that.”

She laughs. “You couldn’t handle it. Literally.” She holds it out, but the moment
my fingers touch the metal, they go pins-and-needles numb. I pull back, and her laugh
trails off as the key vanishes into the pocket of her coat.

“Stumble through the wrong door?” she asks just before the large doors behind the
desk fly open.

“What is going on?” comes a very different voice. Patrick storms in, the eyes behind
his black glasses flicking from the Librarian to Jackson’s body on the floor to me.

“Carmen,” he says, his attention still leveled on me. “Please take care of that.”

The girl smiles and, despite her size, hauls the body up and through a pair of doors
built right into the curving walls of the antechamber. I blink. I never noticed those
before. And the moment they’ve closed behind her, I can’t seem to focus on them. My
eyes roll off.

“Miss Bishop,” Patrick says tersely. The room is quiet except for my heavy breathing.
“You’re bleeding on my floor.”

I look down and realize he’s right. Pain rolls up my arm as my eyes slide over the
place where Jackson’s knife cut through fabric and grazed skin. My sleeve is stained
red, a narrow line running down my hand and over my key before dripping to the floor.
Patrick is gazing distastefully at the drops as they hit the granite.

“Did you have a problem with the doors?” asks Patrick.

“No,” I say, aiming for a joke. “The doors were fine. I had a problem with the
History
.”

Not even a smile.

“Do you need medical attention?” he asks.

I feel dazed, but I know better than to show it. Certainly not in front of him.

Every branch staffs a medically trained Librarian in the interest of keeping work-related
injuries quiet, and Patrick is the man for this branch. If I say yes, then he’ll treat
me; but he’ll also have an excuse to report the incident, and there won’t be anything
Roland can do to keep it off the books. I don’t have a clean record, so I shake my
head.

“I’ll live.” A swatch of yellow catches my eye, and I recover my bandana from the
floor and wrap it around the cut. “But I really liked this shirt,” I add as lightly
as possible.

He frowns and I think he’s going to chew me out or report me, but when he speaks it’s
only to say, “Go clean up.”

I nod and turn back to the Narrows, leaving a trail of red behind.

I
 
AM A MESS.

I scoured the Narrows, but Jackson’s knife was nowhere to be found. As for the strange
shadow I saw during the fight, the one with the silvery crown…maybe my eyes were playing
tricks on me. That happens, now and then, with the ring off. Press against a surface
wrong and you can see the present and past at once. Things can get tangled.

I wince, focusing on the task at hand.

The cut on my arm is deeper than I thought, and it bleeds through the gauze before
I can get the bandage on. I toss another ruined wrap into the plastic bag currently
serving as the bathroom trash bin and run the cut under cool water, digging through
the extensive first-aid kit I’ve assembled over the years. My shirt is sitting in
a heap on the floor, and I take in my reflection, the web of fine scars across my
stomach and arms, and the bruise blossoming on my shoulder. I am never without the
marks of my job.

Pulling my forearm from the water, I dab the cut, finally getting it gauzed and wrapped.
Red drops have made a trail along the counter and into the sink.

“I christen thee,” I mutter to the sink as I finish bandaging the cut. I take the
trash bag and add it to the larger one in the kitchen, making sure all evidence of
my first aid is buried, just as Mom appears, a slightly smooshed but still cellophaned
muffin in one hand, and the basket in the other. The muffins inside have cooled, a
film of condensation fogging up the wrappers. Damn. I knew I forgot something.

“Mackenzie Bishop,” she says, dropping her purse on the dining room table, which is
the only fully assembled piece of furniture. “What is this?”

“A Welcome muffin?”

She drops the basket with a thud.

“You said you would
deliver
them. Not drop them on people’s doormats and leave the basket in the stairwell. And
where have you been?” she snaps. “This couldn’t have taken you all morning. You can’t
just disappear.…” She’s an open book: anger and worry too thinly veiled behind a tight-lipped
smile. “I asked for your help.”

“I knocked, but nobody was home,” I snap back, pain and fatigue tightening around
me. “Most people have jobs, Mom. Normal jobs. Ones where they get up and go to the
office and come home.”

She rubs her eyes, which means that she’s been rehearsing whatever she’s about to
say. “Mackenzie. Look. I was talking to Colleen, and she said that you’d need to grieve
in your own way—”

“You’re kidding me.”

“—and when you add that to your age, and the natural desire for rebellion—”

“Stop.” My head is starting to hurt.

“—I know you need space. But you also need to learn discipline. Bishop’s is a family
business.”

“But it wasn’t a family
dream
.”

She flinches.

I want to be oblivious to the hurt written on her face. I want to be selfish and young
and normal. M would be that way. She would need space to grieve. She would rebel because
her parents were simply uncool, not because one was wearing a horrifying happy mask
and the other was a living ghost. She’d be distant because she was preoccupied with
boys or school, not because she’s tired from hunting down the Histories of the dead,
or distracted by her new hotel-turned-apartment, where the walls are filled with crimes.

“Sorry,” I say, adding, “Colleen’s right, I guess.” The words try to crawl back down
my throat. “Maybe I just need a little time to adjust. It’s a lot of change. But I
didn’t mean to bail.”

“Where were you?”

“Talking to a neighbor,” I say. “Ms. Angelli. She invited me in, and I didn’t want
to be rude. She seemed kind of lonely, and she had this amazing place full of old
stuff, and so I just stayed with her for a while. We had tea, and she showed me her
collections.”

Da would call that an extrapolation. It’s easier than a straight lie because it contains
seeds of truth. Not that Mom would be able to tell if I told her a blatant lie, but
it makes me feel a fraction less guilty.

“Oh. That was…sweet of you,” she says, looking wounded because I’d rather have tea
with a stranger than talk to her.

“I should have kept better track of time”—and then, feeling guiltier—“I’m sorry.”
I rub my eyes and begin to lean toward the bedroom. “I’m going to go unpack a little.”

“This will be good for us,” she promises. “This will be an adventure.” But while it
sounded cheerful coming from Dad, it leaves her lips like a breath being knocked out
of her. Desperate. “I promise, Mac. An adventure.”

“I believe you,” I say. And because I can tell she wants more, I manage a smile and
add, “I love you.”

The words taste strange, and as I make my way to my room and then to my waiting bed,
I can’t figure out why. When I pull the sheet over my head, it hits me.

It’s the only thing I said that wasn’t a lie.

I’m twelve, six months shy of becoming a Keeper, and Mom is mad at you because you’re
bleeding. She accuses you of fighting, of drinking, of refusing to age gracefully.
You light a cigarette and run your fingers through your shock of peppered hair and
let her believe it was a bar fight, let her believe you were looking for trouble.


“Is it hard?” I ask when she storms out of the room. “Lying so much?”


You take a long drag and flick ash into the sink, where you know she’ll see it. You’re
not supposed to smoke anymore.


“Not hard, no. Lying is easy. But it’s lonely.”


“What do you mean?”


“When you lie to everyone about everything, what’s left? What’s true?”


“Nothing,” I say.


“Exactly.”


The phone wakes me.

“Hey, hey,” says Lyndsey. “Daily check-in!”

“Hey, Lynds.” I yawn.

“Were you sleeping?”

“I’m trying to fulfill your mother’s image of me.”

“Don’t mind her. So, hotel update? Found me any ghosts yet?”

I sit up, swing my legs off the bed. I’ve got the bloodstained boy in my walls, but
I don’t think that’s really shareable. “No ghosts yet, but I’ll keep looking.”

“Look harder! A place like that? It’s got to be full of creepy things. It’s been around
for, like, a hundred years.”

“How do you know that?”

“I looked it up! You don’t think I’d let you move into some haunted mansion without
scoping out the history.”

“And what did you find?”

“Weirdly, nothing. Like,
suspiciously
nothing. It was a hotel, and the hotel was converted into apartments after World
War Two, a big boom time moneywise. The conversion was in a ton of newspapers, but
then a few years later the place just falls off the map…no articles, nothing.”

I frown, getting up from the bed. Ms. Angelli admitted that this place was full of
history. So where is it? Assuming
she
can’t read walls, how did she learn the Coronado’s secrets? And why was she so defensive
about sharing them?

“I bet it’s like a government conspiracy,” Lynds is saying. “Or a witness protection
program. Or one of those horror reality films. Have you checked for cameras?”

I laugh, but silently wonder—glancing at the blood-spotted floor—if the truth is worse.

“Have you at least got tenants who look like they belong in a Hitchcock film?”

“Well, so far I’ve met a morbidly obese antiques hoarder, and a boy who wears eyeliner.”

“They call that guyliner,” she says.

“Yes. Well.” I stretch and head for the bedroom door. “I’d call it stupid, but he’s
rather nice to look at. I can’t tell if the eyeliner makes him attractive, or if he’s
good-looking in spite of it.”

“At least you’ve
got
nice things to look at.”

I step around the ghostly drops on the floor and venture out into the apartment. It’s
dusk, and none of the lights are on.

“How are
you
doing?” I ask. Lyndsey possesses the gift of normalcy. I bathe in it. “Summer courses?
College prep? Learning new languages? New instruments? Single-handedly saving countries?”

Lyndsey laughs. It’s so easy for her. “You make me sound like an overachiever.”

I feel the scratch of letters and pull the list from my jeans.

Alex King. 13.


“That’s because you
are
an overachiever,” I say.

“I just like to stay busy.”

Come over here, then,
I think, pocketing the list.
This place would
keep you busy.

I distinctly hear the thrum of guitar strings. “What’s that noise?” I ask.

“I’m tuning, that’s all.”

“Lyndsey Newman, do you actually have me on speaker just so you can talk and tune
a guitar at the same time? You’re jeopardizing the sanctity of our conversations.”

“Relax. The parents have vacated. Some kind of gala. They left in fancy dress an hour
ago. What about yours?”

I find two notes on the kitchen counter.

My mother’s reads:
Store! Love, Mom.

My father’s reads:
Checking in at work. –D

“Similarly out,” I say, “but minus the fancy dress and the togetherness.”

I retreat to the bedroom.

“The place to yourself?” she says. “I hope you’re having a party.”

“I can barely hear over the music and drinking games. I better tell them to quiet
down before someone calls the cops.”

“Talk soon, okay?” she says. “I miss you.” She really means it.

“I miss you, Lynds.” I mean it too.

The phone goes dead. I toss it onto the bed and stare down at the faded spots on my
floor.

Questions eat at me. What happened in this room? Who was the boy? And whose blood
was he covered in? Maybe it’s not my job, maybe it’s an infraction to find out, a
misuse of power, but every member of the Archive takes the same oath.

We protect the past. And the way I see it, that means we need to understand it.

And if neither Lyndsey’s search engines nor Ms. Angelli are going to tell me anything,
I’ll have to see for myself. I tug the ring from my finger, and before I can chicken
out, I kneel, press my hands to the floor, and reach.