The Archived

“A stint as a spy. I wasn’t much good.”

A crooked line runs down the back of his hand. “And that?”

“Scuff with a lion.”

Watching Wesley lie is fascinating.

“And that?”

“Caught a piranha bare-handed.”

No matter how absurd the tale, he says it steady and simple, with the ease of truth. A scratch runs along his forearm. “And that?”

“Knife fight in a Paris alley.”

I search his skin for marks, our bodies drawing closer without touching.

“Dove through a window.”

“Icicle.”

“Wolf.”

I reach up, my fingers hovering over a nick on his hairline.

“And this?”

“A History.”

Everything stops.

His whole face changes right after he says it, like he’s been punched in the stomach. The silence hangs between us.

And then he does an unfathomable thing. He smiles.

“If you were clever,” he says slowly, “you would have asked me what a History was.”

I am still frozen when he reaches out and brushes a finger over the three lines etched into the surface of my ring, then twists one of his own rings to reveal a cleaner but identical set of lines. The Archive’s insignia. When I don’t react—because no fluid lie came to me and now it’s too late—he closes the gap between us, close enough that I can almost hear the bass again, radiating off his skin. His thumb hooks under the cord around my throat and guides my key out from under my shirt. It glints in the twilight. Then he fetches the key from around his own neck.

“There,” he says cheerfully. “Now we’re on the same page.”

“You knew,” I say at last.

His forehead wrinkles. “I’ve known since the moment you came into the hall last night.”

“How?”

“Your eyes went to the keyhole. You did a decent job of hiding the look, but I was watching for it. Patrick told me there would be a new Keeper here. Wanted to see for myself.”

“Fu

“The Coronado isn’t really my territory. It hasn’t been anyone’s for ages. I like to check in on Jill, and I keep an eye on the place while I’m at it. It’s an old building, so you know how it goes.” He taps a nail against his key. “I even have special access. Your doors are my doors.”

“You’re the one who cleared my list,” I say, the pieces fitting together. “There were names on my list, and they just disappeared.”

“Oh, sorry.” He rubs his neck. “I didn’t even think about that. This place has been shared for so long. They always keep the Coronado doors unlocked for me. Didn’t mean any harm.”

A moment of quiet hangs between us.

“So,” he says.

“So,” I say.

A smile begins to creep up the side of Wesley’s face.

“What?” I ask.

“Oh, come on, Mac…” He blows at a chunk of hair hanging in his face.

“Come on, what?” I say, still sizing him up.

“You don’t think it’s cool?” He gives up and fixes his hair with his fingers. “To meet another Keeper?”

“I’ve never met one except for my grandfather.” It sounds naive, but it never occurred to me to think of others. I mean, I knew they existed, but out of sight, out of mind. The territories, the branches of the Archive—I think they’re all designed to make you feel like an only child. Unique. Or solitary.

“Me either,” Wes is saying. “What a broadening experience this is.” He squares his shoulders toward me. “My name is Wesley Ayers, and I am a Keeper.” He breaks out into a full grin. “It feels good to say it out loud. Try.”

I look up at him, the words caught in my throat. I have spent four years with this secret bottled in me. Four years lying, hiding, and bleeding, to hide what I am from everyone I meet.

“My name is Mackenzie Bishop,” I say. Four years since Da died, and not a single slip. Not to Mom or Dad, not to Ben, or even to Lynds. “And I am a Keeper.”

The world doesn’t end. People don’t die. Doors don’t open. Crew don’t pour out and arrest me. Wesley Ayers beams enough for both of us.

“I patrol the Narrows,” he says.

“I hunt Histories,” I say.

“I return them to the Archive.”

It becomes a game, whispered and breathless.

“I hide who I am.”

“I fight with the dead.”

“I lie to the living.”

“I am alone.”

And then I get why Wes can’t stop smiling, even though it looks silly with his eyeliner and jet-black hair and hard jaw and scars. I am not alone. The words dance in my mind and in his eyes and against our rings and our keys, and now I smile too.

“Thank you,” I say.

“My pleasure,” he says, looking up at the sky. “It’s getting late. I’d better go.”

For one silly, nonsensical moment, I’m scared of his leaving, scared he’ll never come back and I’ll be left with this, this…loneliness. I swallow the strange panic and force myself not to follow him to the study door.

Instead I keep still and watch him tuck his key beneath his shirt, roll his ring so the three lines are hidden against his palm. He looks exactly the same, and I wonder if I do too and how that’s possible, considering how I feel—like some door in me has been opened and left ajar.

“Wesley,” I call after him, instantly berating myself when he stops and glances back at me.

“Good night,” I say lamely.

He smiles and closes the gap between us. His fingers brush over my key before they curl around it, and guide it under the collar of my shirt, the metal cold against my skin.

“Good night, Keeper,” he says.

And then he’s gone.

TEN

I  LINGER A MOMENT in the garden after Wes is gone, savoring the taste of our confessions on my tongue, the small defiance of sharing a secret. I focus on the coolness creeping into the air around me, and the hush of the evening.

Da took me onto the stretch of green behind his house once and told me that building walls—blocking out people and their noise—should feel like this. An armor of quiet. Told me that walls were just like a ring but better because they were in my head, and because they could be strong enough to silence anything. If I could just learn to build them.

But I couldn’t. I sometimes think that maybe, if I could remember what it felt like, touching people and feeling nothing but skin… But I can’t, and when I try to block out their noise, it just gets worse, and I feel like I’m in a glass box under the ocean, the sound and pressure cracking in. Da ran out of time to teach me, so all I have are frustrating memories of him wrapping his arm around people without even flinching, making it look so easy, so normal.

I would give anything to be normal.

The thought creeps in, and I force it away. No I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t give anything. I wouldn’t give the bond I had with Da. I wouldn’t give the time I have with Ben’s drawer. I wouldn’t give Roland, and I wouldn’t give the Archive, with its impossible light and the closest thing I’ve ever felt to peace. This is all I have. This is all I am.

I head for the study doors, thinking of the murdered girl and the bloodstained boy. I have a job. SERVAMUS MEMORIAM. I push the doors open, and stiffen when I see the large woman behind the desk in the corner.

“Ms. Angelli.”

Her eyebrows inch into a nest of hair I strongly suspect is a wig, and a moment of surprise passes before recognition spreads across her broad face. If she’s upset to see me after this morning, she doesn’t show it, and I wonder for once if I read too much into her rush to leave. Maybe she really was late for an appraisal.

“Mackenzie Bishop, of the baked goods,” she says. Her voice is quieter here in the study, almost reverent. Several large texts are spread before her, the corners of the pages worn. A cup of tea sits nestled in the space between two books.

“What are you reading?” I ask.

“Histories, mostly.” I know she only means the kind in books, the little h kind, as Da would say. Still, I flinch.