Latchkey

by Nicole Kornher-Stace

Five.

  * * *

  Foster was lying on the floor, bleeding from two bullet-holes. The ghost knelt beside her.

  Great, Isabel thought. This one again.

  “No,” he said. “Get up. You idiot, you can take worse than this, don’t you dare let them break you, get up.” He shook her. He slapped her. Blood ran out of her mouth. He lowered her back to the floor, his grip so tight Isabel heard bones crack in Foster’s shoulders. “Not like this, Kit,” the ghost was saying, softer now. “Not like this.”

  He let go and knelt beside her, eyes shut, face a blank. He did not close Foster’s eyes. He stayed there for a long time. He seemed to be debating something with himself. It looked like the kind of debate that had no winning side, really, no preferable outcome. Just the Ragpicker’s own top-shelf shit both ways as far as the eye can see.

  The ghost’s sword was on the ground beside him. He picked it up.

  This part was new to Isabel. When she’d seen this memory before, it’d stopped before she’d reached this point. She’d stopped it there herself.

  In one smooth motion the ghost stood and raised the sword. There he paused. Looked down at the awful extinguishment of Foster’s face. The depthless nothing in her eyes. The line of black blood that ran out her mouth to pool on the floor beside her cheek. Lowered the sword. Paced the room a few times like a caged predator, wheel and turn, more visibly agitated than Isabel had ever seen him. He was muttering under his breath to himself. When he passed Isabel she caught snippets: make me do this, only way, how can I, should have believed you, fucking idiot.

  Fucking idiot did not seem to be aimed at Foster.

  All at once he stopped. Looked stonily down at the dead thing on the floor. Raised the sword.

  “I’m going to get you out of here,” he said, his voice awful. “The only way I can. Thank you for showing me how.”

  The mask of his face had utterly sloughed off. Beneath it was dread, a deeper dread maybe than Isabel had ever felt. And alongside that, resolve.

  Resolve to do wh— Isabel wondered, and then it was happening, and she could only watch.

  The sword flashed, and the top of Foster’s head slid off.

  Isabel couldn’t help it. She screamed. Then stared—no more able to speak than if her throat had been kicked in—as the ghost worked his fingers into Foster’s brain.

  She became gradually aware of a horrible soft choking sound coming out of either herself or the ghost. She couldn’t tell which. Possibly it was both.

  Many, many seconds of blind rummaging later, the ghost emerged with Foster’s chip and pocketed it. Stalked briskly out of the room and returned after several minutes with Foster’s uniform, Foster’s sword, and more blood on his boots than before. He piled all that stuff on top of Foster’s body and picked it all up at once, careful to hold her skull together, and—

  * * *

  Isabel came back shuddering uncontrollably, gripping the hilt of the harvesting-knife hard enough to cramp her whole arm. She almost lost a fingertip cleaning the knife and took three tries to sheathe it. She was having a hard time looking at the ghost. She’d promised she’d tell him everything she saw. But this…

  The whole time we’d been covering for each other, the ghost had told her once. Taking turns saving each other. She knew the rage and shame he’d felt at letting Foster die. And he hadn’t even known the rest of the story. What had happened after. What she’d just seen.

  No way could she say to him: if Foster’s body had gone into Medical like Salazar’s and everyone’s, they would’ve put her chip in the archive with the rest of them, and I would’ve carried it out of there in a little black box with her name on it. You were trying to help her, save her, keep what was left of her out of the Director’s hands, but you—no way you could’ve known you were—

  She couldn’t even mentally finish that sentence without wanting to break things, or throw up, or both.

  “It worked,” she said weakly. “Patel took the chip. The rest is up to her now.”

  “Capture and release,” Foster said. “Not bad.” She punched Isabel in the shoulder as lightly as she could. It still felt like running flat-out into a doorframe. “Sometimes things work out, huh?”

  “Sometimes,” Isabel echoed. Feeling very small. Very dejected. Very lost. “Listen, I’m not feeling so great, I’m going to take a walk, I’ll see you guys later.”

  She headed out around the edge of the town, going where her feet took her. Years of habit and muscle memory were leading her up the narrow path that tacked up into the hills and dead-ended at the ruined Archivist-house.

  The ghost gave her a head start of a quarter-mile or so, then appeared out of nowhere beside her.

  “It was bad,” he said. “Wasn’t it.”

  “Yep.”

  If you’d left that chip where it was, it would’ve ended up in that drawer, and I would have found it. And now I never will.

  Her memories aren’t lost because of Latchkey. They’re lost because of you.

  “Worse than—”

  “Yep.”

  This gave him pause.

  “It’s about Foster.”

  “Yep.”

  He stopped. She bulled ahead a few more paces, whipped sideways, kicked a rock off the hillside, instantly regretted it. The ghost folded his arms patiently for the minute it took her to recover.

  “You’re gonna have to trust me when I say that this time, you actually, truly, no shit do not want to know.”

  “I know that,” he said. “But I need to.”

  Isabel exhaled hard. “Or, or, also an option, I could just, you know, carry it for you. For a little while. Until I figure some stuff out. I’ll write it down. I won’t forget. I just—”

  “It isn’t yours to carry,” he said softly. “If it’s going to eat at one of us, it should be the one who deserves it. You don’t need to—”

  “I know that,” she said. “But I want to.”

  She started walking. Didn’t get far. He caught her sleeve.

  She let him turn her around, but fastened her gaze to the stars beyond his head. Carrion Boy’s attendant crow, two tiny stars emerging from behind the hill: His vanguard and Ember Girl’s alike, taking point for both of Them across the endless empty night.

  “Wasp.”

  “What.”

  “Please.”

  Somehow, this above all else was unbearable.

  “Sit down,” she said, and he did, and she told him.

  After, he was quiet for a long time. Long enough for Isabel’s curiosity to get the better of her. She glanced at his face and immediately wished she hadn’t.

  “Because of what you saw with Salazar’s chip when you were kids,” she heard herself saying. It was like handing a bandage to someone who’d been cut in half. Like trying to put out a bonfire by spitting on it. Why couldn’t she shut up? “Because it was all that was left of her. All you could save. All you could get—”

  “It’s my fault,” he said. “Not only how she died, but everything…everything…”

  Isabel swallowed. Gentle deceits, she thought, and said: “Yes.”

  “Where did I—” the ghost said, and faltered. Choking on his fury, quivering with the effort of containment. Every word taut as a tripwire. That desperate misguided precision. “Did you happen to see where I—”

  “You want to know why I didn’t want to tell you? This is why. Because the stupid thing that this piece of crap does—” she was drawing the harvesting-knife, holding it out, so much easier if she could just fling the damned thing out into the dark for real this time and be done with it— “all it does is tell me what went wrong. It doesn’t give me any way to make it right. And it sure as hell doesn’t—”

  She stopped. All at once, the puzzle-pieces in her head were colliding, fitting together into something she could almost see the shape of.

  The harvesting-knife, which kept leading her toward Foster, in the ghost-place and the living one.

  Foster,
who the Latchkey ghosts kept mistaking her for. First Salazar, then Ayres, Tanaka, the Director. Even Patel, with her memories restored to her, had still—

  The realization hit her like icewater.

  Salazar hadn’t been the first.

  Something she’d said once, three years ago, to the ghost standing beside her now, who’d drawn his sword on her the day they met.

  You attacked me because you took me for Foster.

  “What,” the ghost said. Unsure what he was reading in her face. She wasn’t sure what it was herself. “What.” His tone like he’d taken a bullet in a place he couldn’t see, was relying on her to report upon it honestly.

  Chooser knew how she must look to him. Bringing the knife back in close, turning it over and over in the silvery moonlight. Reaching toward it with her off-hand, slowly, like it’d burn her.

  There was so much she hadn’t understood. So many questions yet unanswered.

  But if there was one thing she understood in this world or any other, it was this ghost. Honestly, given what she knew of him, she was almost surprised it took her this long to figure it out.

  The harvesting-knife, the chip, the ghosts all mistaking her for Foster—

  A ghost’s strength is its memories.

  But that didn’t mean what it would in the world of the living, did it? In the ghost-place, memories took tangible form. They were a cabin in a meadow of grass higher than her head. They were a well with no bottom, a monster made of leaves. They were a city. They were many cities overlapping. They were a bridge built of the tokens buried with the dead. They were the fabric of the ghost-place, and of the ghosts within. Their only strength and currency. Realer than anything.

  Suddenly, horribly, she felt like laughing. This whole time, she thought. This whole Ragpicker-taken time.

  When the hilt-half of Foster’s sword had been found and given to the first Archivist four centuries ago, modifications had been made to its design. Sixteen dots of darker metal had been fastened to it, signifying the stars of Catchkeep’s up-self. The hilt had been wrapped with a grip of holy dogleather from the first brace of shrine-dogs. When Isabel had realized what the harvesting-knife used to be, she’d removed these modifications, leaving it a naked blade, its hilt wrapped with its original synthetic grip, tougher than dogleather, soft and shiny, the blue-black of a crow.

  Now she was picking at the end of it. Now she was prying up a strip, unwinding, unwinding, almost dropping the knife her hands were shaking so hard. There were a good three layers of this stuff wound onto the hilt. She reached the bottom layer, unwound a bit of that, and stopped. The corner of something peeked out, silver in the starlight.

  “Hey,” she said. “You’re going to want to see this.”

  Acknowledgments

  When I wrote Archivist Wasp back in 2013 or so, I always had it in the back of my mind to write more books in that world, and with those characters. But I didn’t pitch it as a series or trilogy or what-have-you. Honestly I didn’t really pitch it as anything—the story behind that book’s publication is a little weird, and certainly unorthodox.

  With Latchkey it gets weirder.

  I amicably parted ways with Archivist Wasp’s publisher, Small Beer Press, in early 2017, but not before going through several rounds of edits. My thanks to Kelly Link first of all. Even if we didn’t end up working together on this one, her insights regarding several plot points were invaluable. Also to Gavin Grant for taking a chance on Wasp and her specimen in the first place when literally everyone else told me they were too weird, too cross-genre, too unclassifiable, didn’t tick enough YA boxes, etc. I had to walk away from offers because I refused to shoehorn in a romance that didn’t belong in that book. Gavin and Kelly never asked for one.

  My agent, the fabulous Kate McKean, remains awesome. Kate! Did I mention you are awesome? Thank you for putting up with my weird random questions and messy drafts. Let’s make more books together!

  Thanks to my first readers! You guys are the best. Unfortunately, I drafted this book so long ago that I don’t actually remember exactly which of you weighed in on this one. So I’ll just go ahead and thank you all. Dan Stace, Patty Templeton, Caitlyn Paxson, Jessica Wick, Julia Rios, Amal El-Mohtar, Grey Walker, Ysabeau Wilce, Dominik Parisien, Autumn Canter, and C.S.E. Cooney. Also to my family and all the friends who helped me along in every stage of the writing and publishing process in more ways than I have space here to discuss.

  And thanks to Mike and Anita Allen, without whom I’d probably be putting this book online with a tip jar somewhere. (The really weird part? They published the short story Archivist Wasp grew out of, in their anthology Clockwork Phoenix 4. The world is small.)

  Also a huge shoutout to all the book bloggers, handsellers, librarians, teachers, etc. who clicked hard enough with AW to champion it to others across the internet and real world alike. Thank you. So much. Here I need to single out Shana DuBois especially. She is goddamn fantastic and I owe her bigtime.

  One last massive thank you to everyone who read and loved (or liked, or hated, or was indifferent to, but read!) Archivist Wasp. It’s the book of my heart and I never really expected it to go anywhere. To be fair, a weird little cross-genre novel about a far-future post-apocalyptic ghosthunter priestess, the ghost of a near-future genetically-enhanced supersoldier, and their adventures in the underworld was never going to be an easy sell. Seeing it resonate with readers over and over again has been so, so satisfying.

  About the Author

  Nicole Kornher-Stace is the author of Desideria, The Winter Triptych, and the Andre Norton Award finalist Archivist Wasp. She lives in New Paltz, New York, where she is currently at work on her first middle grade novel. There is a newly-adopted cat trying to sit on her keyboard as she types these words, and chances are excellent the same cat is trying to sit on the same keyboard as you read them. Find out more about her at nicolekornherstace.com.

  Praise for Latchkey

  “Near-future science-fiction crimes bleed into dystopian horror centuries later in a wildly imaginative genre-hybrid sequel to Archivist Wasp…Although this narrative provides satisfying closure, readers will hope for more about these unlikely allies. Excruciating, cathartic, and triumphant.”

  —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

  “Fierce, blazing, brilliant. The mythic and brutal world of Nicole Kornher-Stace’s Latchkey is so richly realized, you don’t step into it, you fall.”

  —Jacqueline West, New York Times–bestselling author of The Books of Elsewhere

  “Kornher-Stace understands that the best sequels don’t retread old ground; they use what you know to build something fresh, something both natural and unexpected. Latchkey peels away the layers of its past while pushing its characters into the future, offering the hope that out of the wreckage of old cruelty might come new dreams. Like a ghost caught in a loop, you’ll find yourself drawn in, not to escape until it’s done.”

  —Marie Brennan, Hugo Award-nominated author of A Natural History of Dragons

  “Like Catchkeep’s harvester knife, Latchkey will cut you up. Wasp, now Isabel, may no longer be the Archivist, but her force and fire riain undiminished, even in the face of raiders, amnesiac ghosts and her own psychic wounds. I adored Archivist Wasp for its unerring vision of an atavistic mythos-ridden future and its dangerous heroine, but Latchkey ups all the antes as Isabel struggles to create a new future for herself, her fellow villagers, and the ghosts—whose past traumas might be the key to everything. Kornher-Stace’s action is precise and razor-sharp, and her talent for bringing her characters—and her readers—to the brink is unsurpassed. Oh, and her world-building! Latchkey leaves other dystopias in the dust wallowing in More-of-the-Same. Kornher-Stace doesn’t do More-of-the-Same; she’s a strictly leave-her-readers-in-palpitations type of writer. Prepare to palpitate, and to read the entire novel in one go. I did. Like the ghosts that just won’t leave Isabel alone, I’d follow Kornher-Stace anywhere. After reading Latchkey, you will too.”


  —Ysabeau S. Wilce, Andre Norton Award-winning author of The Flora Trilogy and Prophecies, Libels and Dreams

  “As lean, dusty, and haunted as the overgrown ruins of a greyhound racetrack, Latchkey, like its predecessor, is a beautifully written ode to friendship, survival, secrets, and memory. Wildly inventive, saturated with grit and guts and a wistful, calloused ephemerality, this is a book that lands with all the sting and palm-tingling impact of two partners joining hands before facing down impossible odds. It refuses classification. It laughs grimly at the concept of labels. It tests boundaries and kicks the door in with a quirked lip and a sad glint in its narrowed sunset eye.

  “Nobody else could have written Latchkey. More than anything else I've ever read, this is undiluted, 110% the vision of one author. Nicole Kornher-Stace is her own genre entirely, and if you're anything at all like me, you are the target audience.”

  —Brooke Bolander, Hugo, Nebula, Locus and World Fantasy Award-nominated author of The Only Harmless Great Thing

  “Latchkey is explosively imaginative. This narrative shimmers with rich characters and a nuanced mythology. Weaving throughout it like a trail of ink is a heartbreaking exploration of trauma and how we engage with the scars left behind by history. Readers will leave this world feeling as if they've drawn new breath.”

  —Roshani Chokshi, New York Times–bestselling author of The Star-Touched series and Aru Shah and the End of Time

  “I loved Archivist Wasp, and Latchkey surpasses it in every way. Everything about it moved me to tears and wonder: the girls who used to be mortal enemies amicably dividing up chores; Isabel’s tender hopes for community alongside her aching loneliness; the tentative expansion of her world’s horizons to other starveling towns. Latchkey reads like a parting of Archivist Wasp’s mists: clear, sharp, taut, with an angry, singing heart, this is a book that refuses categories by embracing everything it loves.”