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The volume begins to turn up.
My hand’s halfway to the power switch when the window next to the desk begins to fog. Not the whole window, but a small cloud in the middle of the glass. My heart hammers in my chest as a series of letters writes itself across the misted surface.
R I N G
I glance down at my silver band and then back up as a line draws itself through the word.
R I N G
I stare at the message, torn between confusion and disbelief before finally tugging off the metal band and setting it on the sill. When I look up again, Owen’s there, his reflection hovering right behind mine in the glass. I spin, ready to strike, but he catches my fist and forces me up against the window, resting his knife under my chin.
“Violence isn’t always the answer,” he says calmly.
“Says the one holding a knife to my throat,” I hiss.
I can see the outline of the Crew key beneath his black shirt. If I can get it away from him and reach the closet door without him slitting my throat, I can—
He presses down on the blade in warning, and I wince, the knife’s sharp edge denting the skin under my jaw. A little harder and it will slice.
“That would be a bad idea,” says Owen, reading the thoughts in my skin. “Besides, the key beneath my shirt isn’t the one you need.” He leaves the knife against my throat and uses his other hand to pull the cord free of his collar, so I can see the too-familiar piece of rusted metal hanging from the end. It’s not a Crew key at all. It’s Da’s key. Mine.
“Maybe, if you can be civilized, I’ll give it back.”
The knife begins to retreat, and the moment it shifts away from my skin, I catch his wrist and wrench hard. The blade tumbles to the hardwood floor, but before I can lunge for it, Owen sends it skittering across the room with his shoe. Then he catches my shoulders and pins me back against the wall beside the window.
“You really are a handful,” he says.
“Then why haven’t you killed me?” I challenge. He pulled back earlier and again just now. The Owen in my nightmares never hesitated.
“If you really want me to, I’ll oblige, but I was hoping we could talk first. Your father is sitting in your living room, asleep in a chair with a book. I’m going to let go of you,” he says, “but if you try anything, I’ll slit his throat.” I stiffen under his touch. “And even if you scream and wake him,” adds Owen, “he can’t see me, so he won’t stand a chance.”
Owen’s hands retreat from my shoulders, and I will myself not to attack.
“What’s going on?” I say. “Why can’t he see you?”
Owen looks down at his hands, flexing them. “The void. It seems to have a few side effects. You helped confirm that when you first came into the storage room. I was standing right there, and you didn’t even see me until you took off—”
“My ring,” I say under my breath. It’s a buffer, after all. A set of blinders.
“It comes in handy, I suppose,” says Owen. “And all that matters is I’m here.”
“But how are you here?” I growl. “You said you just tore your way through, but I don’t understand. The doors you made, they weren’t random. Why did you attack those people?”
Owen rests his shoulder against the wall. He still looks…drained. “I didn’t mean to hurt them. I was looking for you.”
My chest tightens. “What do you mean?”
The song on the radio ends and another picks up, this one slower, sadder.
“It turns out,” says Owen, “the vast infinite emptiness you pitched me into isn’t really empty. It’s more like a shortcut without a destination. Half a door. But you can’t have half a door,” he says, blue eyes dancing. “You have to give it a place to go. Or a person to go to. Someone you can focus on with all your strength. I chose you.”
“But you didn’t find me, Owen. You found five i
Owen frowns. “Five people who crossed paths with you. There’s a saying in the Archive: ‘Strange things shine brighter.’ You notice it when you read the memories in objects. But the same thing happens to the memories up here.” He taps his temple. “We stand out in the minds of others more than in our own. Whoever they were, you must have made an impression. Left a mark.”
My stomach turns. Behind my eyes I see them:
Judge Phillip on the verge of tears when he smelled the cookies in the oven.
Bethany clutching the silver necklace I returned.
A dazed Jason flirting to get my name and number.
Coach Metz with his gruff good, good when I agreed to try out for track.
And Cash? I wasn’t paying attention, he said, because I was thinking about you. Truth be told, I can’t stop thinking about you.
I wrap my arms around my ribs, feeling sick. He could have been taken, dragged through into the dark. Others were.
“Is there any way,” I say, “to get them back?”
Owen shakes his head. “The void isn’t meant for the living. It’s not meant for the dead, either.” Even in the dim light, I can see the way it wore on him. He looks strangely fragile. But I know better than to trust appearances.
Four people dead, for thinking about me. For caring. And how many others could have been taken? My parents? Wesley? All because of Owen. All because of me.
“What are you doing here?” I say through clenched teeth.
“I told you, I came to talk.” Owen turns, considering the rest of the room. “I hate this place,” he whispers, the words almost swallowed by the melody still leaking from the radio.
And then I remember this wasn’t always my room. It was hers; Regina’s. Owen’s sister lived in here. She died in the hallway just outside. Owen looks down at the floor, where faint bloodstains still linger, worn to shadows by time. “Fu
His hands, hanging loose and open at his sides, curl into fists. He should slip. If he were an ordinary History, the sight of this room and the memory of what happened here would be enough. The black of his pupils would waver and spread, engulfing the icy blue of his eyes. And as it did, he would go mad with fear and anger and guilt.
But Owen has never been an ordinary History. A prodigy turned prodigal son of the Archive. A brilliant but cu
I watch him step around the mark on the floor the way one would a body. “How long was I gone?” he asks, crouching to fetch his knife from the corner.
“Three weeks, six days, twenty hours,” I say, wishing the answer didn’t come so easily.
“What happened to Carmen?” he asks, straightening.
“She was reshelved,” I say, “after she tried to strangle me on your behalf.”
Owen turns back toward me, sliding the knife into the holster at his back. “Did she do anything else?”
“Besides waking up half the branch? No.”
A grim smile flickers across his face. “And the Archive just let you walk away?”
I say nothing, and he closes the gap between us. “No,” he answers for me. “They didn’t. Something is different about you, Miss Bishop. Something is wrong. They may have let you keep your memories, but they haven’t given you back your life.”
“At least I’m alive,” I challenge.
“But your head is full of splinters,” he says, his fingers tangling in my hair, his cheek coming to rest against mine. “Broken pieces and bad dreams and terror and doubt,” he whispers in my ear. “So jumbled up you can’t even tell real from not. Tell me, did the Archive do that to you?”
“No,” I say. “You did.”
His hand falls away as he pulls back to look at me. “I opened your eyes,” he says with strange sincerity. “I told you the truth. It’s not my fault you couldn’t handle it.”
“You lied to me, used me, and tried to kill me.”