The Archived

“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.

NINE

THERE IS A GIRL sitting on a bed, knees pulled up beneath her chin.

I run the memories back until I find the small calendar by the bed that reads MARCH, the blue dress on the corner chair, the black book on the table by the bed. Da was right. Bread crumbs and bookmarks. My fingers found their way.

The girl on the bed is thin in a delicate way, with light blond hair that falls in waves around her narrow face. She is younger than I am, and talking to the boy with the bloodstained hands, only right now his hands are still clean. Her words are a murmur, nothing more than static, and the boy won’t stand still. I can tell by the girl’s eyes that she’s talking slowly, insistently, but the boy’s replies are urgent, punctuated by his hands, which move through the air in sweeping gestures. He can’t be much older than she is, but judging by his feverish face and the way he sways, he’s been drinking. He looks like he’s about to be sick. Or scream.

The girl sees it too, because she slides from the bed and offers him a glass of water from the top of the dresser. He knocks the glass away hard and it shatters, the sound little more than a crackle. His fingers dig into her arm. She pushes him away a few times before he loses his grip and stumbles back into the bed frame. She turns, runs. He’s up, swiping a large shard of glass from the floor. It cuts into his hand as he lunges for her. She’s at the door when he reaches her, and they tumble into the hall.

I drag my hand along the floor until I can see them through the doorway, and then I wish I couldn’t. He’s on top of her, and they are a tangle of glass and blood and fighting limbs, her slender bare feet kicking under him as he pins her down.

And then the struggle slows. And stops.

He drops the shard beside her body and staggers to his feet, and I can see her, the lines carved across her arms, the far deeper cut across her throat. The shard pressed into her own palm. He stands over her a moment before turning back toward the bedroom. Toward me. He is covered in blood. Her blood. My stomach turns, and I have to resist the urge to scramble away. He is not here. I am not there.

You killed her, I whisper. Who are you? Who is she?

He staggers into the room, and for a moment he breaks, slides into a crouch, rocking. But then he gets back up. He looks down at himself, the glitter of broken glass at his feet, and over at the body, and begins to wipe his bloody hands slowly and then frantically on his bloody shirt. He scrambles over to the closet and yanks a black coat from a hook, forcing it on and pulling it closed. And then he runs, and I’m left staring at the girl’s body in the hall.

The blood is soaking into her pale blond hair. Her eyes are open, and in that moment, all I want is to cross to her and close them.

I pull my hands from the floor and open my eyes, and the memory shatters into the now, taking the body with it. The room is my room again, but I still see her in that horrible light-echo way, like she’s burned into my vision. I shove my ring on, tripping over half the boxes as I focus on the simple need to get the hell out of this apartment.

I slam the door to 3F behind me and sag against it, sliding to the floor and pressing my palms to my eyes, breathing into the space between my chest and knees.

Revulsion claws up my throat and I swallow hard and picture Da taking one look at me and laughing through smoke, telling me how silly I look. I picture the council who inducted me seeing straight through the worlds and declaring me unfit. I am not M, I think. Not some silly squeamish girl. I am more. I am a Keeper. I am Da’s replacement.