The Archived

“Miss Mackenzie.”

I smile. “How did you know it was me?”

“You or Betty,” he says. “And she wears perfume thick as a coat.” I laugh. “Told her to stop bathing in it.”

“I brought the cookies,” I say. “Sorry it took so long.”

He pivots the wheelchair and lets me guide him back to the table.

“As you can see,” he says as he waves a hand at the apartment, “I’ve been so busy, I’ve hardly noticed.”

It looks untouched, like a painting of the last visit, down to the cigarette ash and the scarf around his neck. I’m relieved to see he didn’t set the thing on fire.

“Betty hasn’t been in to clean up,” he says.

“Nix…” I’m afraid to ask. “Is Betty still around?”

He laughs hoarsely. “She’s no dead wife, if that’s what you think, and I’m too old for imaginary friends.” A breath of relief escapes. “Comes ’round to check on me,” he explains. “Dead wife’s sister’s daughter’s friend, or something. I forget. She tells me my mind is going, but really I just don’t care enough to remember.” He points to the table. “You left your book here.” And sure enough, the Inferno is sitting where I left it. “Don’t worry. Not like I peeked.”

I consider leaving it again. Maybe he won’t notice. “Sorry about that,” I say. “Summer reading.”

“What do schools do that for?” he grumbles. “What’s the point of summer if they give you homework?”

“Exactly!” I set him up at the table and put the Tupperware in his lap.

He rattles it. “Too many cookies here for just me. You better help.”

I take one and sit down across from Nix. “I wanted to ask you—”

“If it’s about those deaths,” he cuts in, “I’ve been thinking about ’em.” He picks at the raisins in his cookie. “Ever since you asked. I’d almost forgotten. Scary, how easy it is to forget bad things.”

“Did the police think the deaths were co

Nix shifts in his seat. “They weren’t certain. I mean, it was suspicious, to be sure. But like I said, you can co

“What happened to the brother, Owen? You said he stayed here.”

“You want to know about that boy, you know who you should ask? That antiques collector.”

I frown. “Ms. Angelli?” I remember the not-so-subtle gesture of her door shutting in my face. “Because she has a thing for history?”

Nix takes a bite of cookie. “Well, that too. But mostly because she lives in Owen Clarke’s old place.”

“No,” I say slowly, “I do. Three F.”

Nix shakes his head. “You live in the Clarke family’s old place. But they moved out right after the murder. And that boy, Owen, he couldn’t go, but he couldn’t stay either, not there where his sister was… Well, he moved into a vacant apartment. And that Angelli woman lives there now. I wouldn’t have known it if she hadn’t come up to see me, a few years back when she moved in, curious about the history of the building. You want to know more about Owen, you should talk to her.”

“Thanks for the tip,” I say, already on my feet.

“Thanks for the cookies.”

Just then the front door opens and a middle-aged woman appears on the mat. Nix sniffs the air once.

“Ah, Betty.”

“Lucian Nix, I know you’re not eating sugar.”

Betty makes a beeline for Nix, and in the scramble of cookies and curses, I duck out and head downstairs. Names are still scratching on the list in my pocket, but they’ll have to wait just a little longer.

When I reach the fourth floor, I run through the spectrum of lies I could use to get Angelli to let me in. I’ve only passed her once since she shut the door in my face, and earned little more than a curt nod.

But when I reach her door and press my ear to the wood, I hear only silence.

I knock and hold my breath and hope. Still silence.

I test the door, but it’s locked. I search my pockets for a card or a hairpin, or anything I can use to jimmy the lock, silently thanking Da for the afternoon he spent teaching me to do that.

But maybe I won’t need to. I step back to examine the door. Ms. Angelli is a bit on the scattered side. I’m willing to bet that she’s a touch forgetful, and with the amount of clutter in her apartment, the odds of misplacing a key are high. The door frame is narrow but wide enough to form a shallow shelf on top, a lip. I stretch onto my toes and brush my fingertips along the sill of the door. They sweep against something metal, and sure enough, a key tumbles to the checkered carpet.

People are so beautifully predictable. I take up the key and slide it into the lock, holding my breath as I turn it and the door pops open, leading into the living room. Across the threshold, my eyes widen. I’d nearly forgotten how much stuff was here, covering every surface, the beautiful and the gaudy and the old. It’s piled on shelves and tables and even on the floor, forcing me to weave between towers of clutter and into the room. I don’t see how Ms. Angelli can walk through without upsetting anything.

The layout of 4D is the same as 3F, with the open kitchen and the hallway off the living room leading to the bedrooms. I slowly make my way toward them, checking each room to make sure I’m alone. Every room is empty of people and full of things, and I don’t know if it’s the clutter or the fact that I’ve broken in, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being watched. It trails me through the apartment, and when a small crash comes from the direction of living room, I spin, expecting to see Ms. Angelli.

But no one’s there.

And that’s when I remember. The cat.

Back in the living room, a few books have been toppled, but there’s no sign of Angelli’s cat Jezzie. My skin crawls. I try to convince myself that if I stay out of her way, she’ll stay out of mine. I shift the stack of books, a stone bust, and the edge of the carpet out of the way, clearing a space so I can read.

I take a deep breath, slide off my ring, and kneel on the exposed floorboards. But the moment I bring my hands to the wood, before I’ve even reached for the past, the whole room begins to hum against my fingers. Shudders. Rattles. And it takes me a moment to realize that I’m not feeling the weight of the memory in the floor alone, that there are so many antiques in this room, so many things with so many memories, that the lines between the objects are blurring. The hum of the floor touches the hum of things sitting on the floor, and so on, until the whole room sings, and it hurts. A pins-and-needles numb that climbs my arms and winds across my bruised ribs.

It’s too much to read. There is too much stuff in here, and it fills my head the way human noise does. I haven’t even started reaching past the hum to whatever memories are beyond it; I can hardly think through the noise. Pain flickers behind my eyes, and I realize I’m pushing back against the hum, so I try to remember Wesley’s lessons.

Let the noise go white, he said. I crouch in the middle of Angelli’s apartment with my eyes squeezed shut and my hands glued to the floor, waiting for the noise to run together around me, for it to even out. And it does, little by little, until I can finally think, and then focus, and reach.

I catch hold of the memory, and time spirals back, and with it the clutter shifts, changes, then lessens, piece after piece vanishing from the room until I can see most of the floor, the walls. People slide through the space, earlier tenants—some of the memories dull and faded, others bright—an older man, a middle-aged woman, a family with young twins. The room clears, morphs, until finally it is Owen’s space.

I can tell even before I see his blond head flicker through the room, moving backward because I’m still rewinding time. At first I’m filled with relief that there is a memory to read, that it hasn’t been blacked out along with so much of that year. And the memory suddenly sharpens, and I swear I see—