The Archived

“But most don’t,” I say. “I answered your question. Now answer one of mine.”

He gives a slight obliging bow. I look at him, this impossible History. What made him this way?

“How did you die?”

He stiffens. Not much, to his credit; but I catch the glimpse of tension in his jaw. His thumb begins to rub at the line I made on his palm. “I don’t remember.”

“I’m sure it’s traumatic, to think—”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “It’s not that. I don’t remember. I can’t remember. It’s like it’s just…blank.”

My stomach twists. Could he have been altered, too?

“Do you remember your life?” I ask.

“I do,” he says, sliding his hands into his pockets.

“Tell me.”

“I was born up north, by the sea. Lived in a house on the cliffs in a small town. It was quiet, which I guess means I was happy.” I know the feeling. My life before the Archive is a set of dull impressions, pleasant but distant and strangely static, as if they belong to someone else. “And then we moved to the city, when I was fourteen.”

“Who’s we?” I ask.

“My family.” And there’s that sadness again in his eyes. I don’t realize how close we’re standing until I see it, written across the blue. “When I think of living by the sea, it’s all one picture. Blurred smooth. But the city, it was fractured, clear and sharp.” His voice is low, slow, even. “I used to go up on the roof and imagine I was back on the cliffs, looking out. It was a sea of brick below me,” he says. “But if I looked up instead of down, I could have been anywhere. I grew up there, in the city. It shaped me. The place I lived…it kept me busy,” he adds with a small private smile.

“What was your house like?”

“It wasn’t a house,” he says. “Not really.”

I frown. “What was it, then?”

“A hotel.”

The air catches in my chest.

“What was it called?” I whisper.

I know the answer before he says it.

“The Coronado.”

SEVENTEEN

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 spi

“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.