The Dark Vault

by Victoria Schwab

  “I do,” I answer evenly.

  Roland straightens. “Then I approve the naming.”

  Meredith makes a stifled sound of dismay.

  “She held composure against you, Meredith, and that is something,” says Roland, and finally his smile breaks through. “And as for her fighting, I’m in the best position to judge, and I say she has merit.” He looks past me, to you. “You’ve raised quite a girl, Antony.” He glances over at Allen. “What do you say?”

  The bearded Librarian raps his fingers on the table, eyes unfocused.

  “You can’t actually be considering…” mutters Meredith.

  “If we do this, and she proves herself unfit in any way,” says Allen, “she will forfeit the position.”

  “And if she proves unfit,” adds Meredith, “you, Roland, will remove her yourself.”

  Roland smiles at the challenge.

  I step forward. “I understand,” I say, as loud as I dare.

  Allen stands slowly. “Then I approve the naming.”

  Meredith glowers for a moment before standing too. “I am overruled, and as such, I must approve the naming.”

  Only then does your hand come to rest against my shoulder. I can feel your pride in your fingertips. I smile.

  I will show them all.

  For you.

  SIX

  I YAWN AS ROLAND leads me back through the Archive. I’ve been here for hours, and I can tell I’m running out of night. My bones ache from sitting on the floor, but it was worth it for a little time with Ben.

  Not Ben, I know. Ben’s shelf.

  I roll my shoulders, stiff from leaning so long against the stacks, as we wind back through the corridors and into the atrium. Several Librarians dot the space, busy with ledgers and notepads and even, here and there, open drawers. I wonder if they ever sleep. I look up at the arched stained glass, darker now, as if there were a night beyond. I take a deep breath and am starting to feel better, calmer, when we reach the front desk.

  A man with gray hair, black glasses, and a stern mouth behind a goatee is waiting for us. Roland’s music has been shut off.

  “Patrick,” I say. Not my favorite Librarian. He’s been here nearly as long as I have, and we rarely see eye to eye.

  The moment he catches sight of me, his mouth turns down.

  “Miss Bishop,” he scolds. He’s Southern, but he’s tried to obliterate his drawl by being curt, cutting his consonants sharp. “We try to discourage such recurrent disobedience.”

  Roland rolls his eyes and claps Patrick on the shoulder.

  “She’s not doing any harm.”

  Patrick glares at Roland. “She not doing any good, either. I should report her to Agatha.” His gaze swivels to me. “Hear that? I should report you.”

  I don’t know who this Agatha is, but I’m fairly certain I don’t want to know.

  “Restrictions exist for a reason, Miss Bishop. There are no visiting hours. Keepers do not attend to the Histories here. You are not to enter the stacks without good reason. Are we clear?”

  “Of course.”

  “Does that mean you will cease this futile and rather tiresome pursuit?”

  “Of course not.”

  A cough of a laugh escapes from Roland, along with a wink. Patrick sighs and rubs his eyes, and I can’t help but feel a bit victori-ous. But when he reaches for his notepad, my spirits sink. The last thing I need is a demerit on my record. Roland sees the gesture, too, and brings his hand down lightly on Patrick’s arm.

  “On the topic of attending to Histories,” he offers, “don’t you have one to catch, Miss Bishop?”

  I know a way out when I see it.

  “Indeed,” I say, turning toward the door. I can hear the two men talking in low, tense voices, but I know better than to look back.

  I find and return twelve-year-old Thomas Rowell, fresh enough out that he goes without many questions, let alone a fight. Truth be told, I think he is just happy to find someone in the dark halls, as opposed to something. I spend what’s left of the night testing every door in my territory. By the time I finish, the halls—and several spots on the floor—are scribbled over with chalk. Mostly X’s, but here and there a circle. I work my way back to my two numbered doors, and discover a third, across from them, that opens with my key.

  Door I leads to the third floor and the painting by the sea. Door II leads to the side of the stairs in the Coronado lobby.

  But Door III? It opens only to black. To nothing. So why is it unlocked at all? Curiosity pulls me over the threshold, and I step through into the dark and close the door behind me. The space is quiet and cramped and smells of dust so thick, I taste it when I breathe in. I can reach out and touch walls to my left and right, and my fingers encounter a forest of wooden poles leaning against them. A closet?

  As I slide my ring back on and resume my awkward groping in the dark, I feel the scratch of a new name on the list in my pocket. Again? Fatigue is starting to eat into my muscles, drag at my thoughts. The History will have to wait. When I step forward, my shin collides with something hard. I close my eyes to cut off the rising claustrophobia; finally, my hands find the door a few feet in front of me. I sigh with relief and turn the metal handle sharply.

  Locked.

  I could go back into the Narrows through the door behind me and take a different route, but a question persists: Where am I? I listen closely, but no sound reaches me. Between the dust in this closet and the total lack of anything resembling noise from the opposite side, I think I must be somewhere abandoned.

  Da always said there were two ways to get through any locked door: by key or by force. And I don’t have a key, so…I lean back and lift my boot, resting the sole against the wood of the door. Then I slide my shoe left until it butts up against the metal frame of the handle. I withdraw my foot several times, testing to make sure I have a clear shot before I take a breath and kick.

  Wood cracks loudly, and the door moves; but it takes a second strike before it swings open, spilling several brooms and a bucket out onto a stone floor. I step over the mess to survey the room and find a sea of sheets. Sheets covering counters and windows and sections of floor, dirty stone peering out from the edges of the fabric. A switch is set into the wall several feet away, and I wade through the sheets until I get near enough to flip the lights.

  A dull buzzing fills the space. The light is faint and glaring at the same time, and I cringe and switch it back off. Daylight presses in with a muted glow against the sheets over the windows—it’s later than I thought—and I cross the large space and pull a makeshift curtain down, showering dust and morning light on everything. Beyond the windows is a patio, a set of suspiciously familiar awnings overhead—

  “I see you’ve found it!”

  I spin to find my parents ducking under a sheet into the room.

  “Found what?”

  Mom gestures to the space, its dust and sheets and counters and broken broom closet, as if showing me a castle, a kingdom.

  “Bishop’s Coffee Shop.”

  For a moment, I am genuinely speechless.

  “The café sign in the lobby didn’t give it away?” asks Dad.

  Maybe if I’d come through the lobby. I am still dazed by the fact that I’ve stepped out of the Narrows and into my mother’s newest pet project, but years of lying have taught me to never look as lost as I feel, so I smile and roll with it.

  “Yeah, I had a hunch,” I say, rolling up the window sheet. “I woke up early, so I thought I’d take a look.”

  It’s a weak lie, but Mom isn’t even listening. She’s flitting around the space, holding her breath like a kid about to blow out birthday candles as she pulls down sheets. Dad is still looking at me rather intently, eyes panning over my dark clothes and long sleeves, all the pieces that don’t line up.

  “So,” I say brightly, because I’ve learned if I can talk louder than he can think, he tends to lose his train of thought, “you think there’s a coffee machine under one of the
se sheets?”

  He brightens. My father needs coffee like other men need food, water, shelter. Between the three classes he’s set to teach in the history department and the ongoing series of essays he’s composing, caffeine ranks way up there on his priority list. I think that’s all it took for Mom to get him to support her dream of owning a café: an invitation from the local university and the guarantee of continuous coffee. Brew it, and they will come.

  I try to stifle a yawn.

  “You look tired,” he says.

  “So do you,” I shoot back, pulling the covers off a piece of equipment that might have once been a grinder. “Hey, look.”

  “Mackenzie…” he presses, but I flip the switch and the machinery does in fact grind to life, drowning him out with a horrible sound like it’s eating its own parts, chewing up metal nuts and bolts and gobbling down air. Dad winces, and I turn it off, sounds of mechanic agony echoing through the room, along with a smell like burning toast.

  I can’t help glancing back at the cleaning closet, and Mom must have followed my gaze, because she heads straight for it.

  “I wonder what happened here,” she says, swinging the door on its broken hinges.

  I shrug and head over to an oven, or something like it, and pry the door open. The inside is stale and scorched.

  “I was thinking that we should bake some muffins,” says Mom. “‘Welcome’ muffins!” She doesn’t say it like welcome but rather like Welcome! “You know, to let everyone know that we’re here. What do you think, Mac?”

  In response, I nudge the oven door, and it swings shut with a bang. Something dislodges and lands with a tinktinktinktink across the stone before rolling up against her shoe.

  Her smile doesn’t even falter. It turns my stomach, her sickly-sweet-everything’s-better-than-fine pep. I’ve seen the inside of her mind, and this is all a stupid act. I lost Ben. I shouldn’t have to lose her, too. I want to shake her. I want to say…But I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to get through to her, how to make her see that she’s making it worse.

  So I tell the truth. “I think it’s falling apart.”

  She misses my meaning. Or steps around it. “Well then,” she says cheerfully, stooping to fetch the metal bolt, “we’ll just use the apartment oven until we get this one in shape.”

  With that she turns on her heel and bobs away. I look around, hoping to find Dad, and with him some measure of sympathy or at least commiseration, but he’s on the patio, staring up at the awnings.

  “Chop chop, Mackenzie,” Mom calls through the door. “You know what they say—”

  “I’m pretty sure no one says it but you—”

  “Up with the sun and just as bright.”

  I look out the window at the light and cringe, and follow.

  We spend the rest of the morning in the apartment baking Welcome! muffins. Or rather, Dad ducks out to run some errands, and Mom makes muffins while I do my best to look busy. I could really use a few hours of sleep and a shower, but every time I make a move to leave, Mom thinks up something for me to do. While she’s distracted pulling a fresh batch from the oven, I dig the Archive list from my pocket. But when I unfold it, it’s blank.

  Relief washes over me before I remember that there should be a name on it. I could swear I felt the scrawl of a new History being added when I was stuck in the café closet. I must have imagined it. Mom sets the tray of muffins on the counter as I refold the paper and tuck it away. She drapes a cloth over them, and out of nowhere I remember Ben standing on his toes to peek beneath the towel and steal a pinch even though it was always too hot and he burned his fingers. It’s like being punched in the chest, and I squeeze my eyes shut until the pain passes.

  I beg off baking duty for five minutes just to change clothes—mine smell like Narrows air and Archive stacks and café dust. I pull on jeans and a clean shirt, but my hair refuses to work with me, and I finally dig a yellow bandana out of a suitcase and fashion a headband, trying to hide the mess as best I can. I’m tucking Da’s key beneath my collar when I catch sight of the dark spots on my floor and remember the bloodstained boy.

  I kneel down, trying to tune out the clatter of baking trays beyond the door as I slide off my ring and bring my fingertips to the floorboards. The wood hums against my hands as I close my eyes and reach, and—

  “Mackenzie!” Mom calls out.

  I sigh and blink, pushing up from the floor. I straighten just as Mom knocks briskly on the door. “Have I lost you?”

  “I’m coming,” I say, shoving the ring back on as her footsteps fade. I cast one last glance at the floor before I leave. In the kitchen, the muffins are already wrapped in blossoms of cellophane. Mom is filling a basket, chattering about the residents, and that’s when I get an idea.

  Da was a Keeper, but he was a detective too, and he used to say you could learn as much by asking people as by reading walls. You get different answers. My room has a story to tell, and as soon as I can get an ounce of privacy, I’ll read it; but in the meantime, what better way to learn about the Coronado than to ask the people in it?

  “Hey, Mom,” I say, pushing up my sleeves, “I’m sure you’ve got a ton of work to do. Why don’t you let me deliver those?”

  She pauses and looks up. “Really? Would you?” She says it like she’s surprised I’m capable of being nice. Yes, things have been rocky between us, and I’m offering to help because it helps me—but still.

  She tucks the last muffin into a basket and nudges it my way.

  “Sure thing,” I say, managing a smile, and her resulting one is so genuine that I almost feel bad. Right up until she wraps me in a hug and the high-pitched strings and slamming doors and crackling paper static of her life scratches against my bones. Then I just feel sick.

  “Thank you,” she says, tightening her grip. “That’s so sweet.” I can barely hear the words through the grating noise in my head.

  “It’s…really…nothing,” I say, trying to picture a wall between us, and failing. “Mom,” I say at last, “I can’t breathe.” And then she laughs and lets go, and I’m left dizzy but free.

  “All right, get going,” she says, turning back to her work. I’ve never been so happy to oblige.

  I start down the hall and peel the cellophane away from a muffin, hoping Mom hasn’t counted them out as I eat breakfast. The basket swings back and forth from the crook of my arm, each muffin individually wrapped and tagged. BISHOP’S, the tag announces in careful script. A basket of conversation starters.

  I focus on the task at hand. The Coronado has seven floors—one lobby and six levels of housing—with six apartments to a floor, A through F. That many rooms, odds are someone knows something.

  And maybe someone does, but nobody seems to be home. There’s the flaw in both my mother’s plans and in mine. Late morning on a weekday, and what do you get? A lot of locked doors. I slip out of 3F and head down the hall. 3E and 3D are both quiet, 3C is vacant (according to a small slip of paper stuck to the door), and though I can hear the muffled sounds of life in 3B, nobody answers. After several aggressive knocks on 3A, I’m getting frustrated. I drop muffins on each doorstep and move on.

  One floor up, it’s more of the same. I leave the baked goods at 4A, B, and C. But as I’m heading away from 4D, the door swings open.

  “Young lady,” comes a voice.

  I turn to see a vast woman filling the door frame like bread in a loaf pan, holding the small, cellophaned muffin.

  “What is your name? And what is this adorable little treat?” she asks. The muffin looks like an egg, nested in her palm.

  “Mackenzie,” I say, stepping forward. “Mackenzie Bishop. My family just moved in to 3F, and we’re renovating the coffee shop on the ground floor.”

  “Well, lovely to meet you, Mackenzie,” she says, engulfing my hand with hers. She is made up of low tones and bells and the sound of ripping fabric. “My name is Ms. Angelli.”

  “Nice to meet you.” I slide my hand free as poli
tely as possible.

  And then I hear it. A sound that makes my skin crawl. A faint meow behind the wall that is Ms. Angelli, just before a clearly desperate cat finds a crack somewhere near the woman’s feet and squeezes through, tumbling out into the hall. I jump back.

  “Jezzie,” scorns Ms. Angelli. “Jezzie, come back here.” The cat is small and black, and stands just out of reach, gauging its owner. And then it turns to look at me.

  I hate cats.

  Or really, I just hate touching them. I hate touching any animal, for that matter. Animals are like people but fifty times worse—all id, no ego; all emotion, no rational thought—which makes them a bomb of sensory input wrapped in fur.

  Ms. Angelli frees herself from the doorway and nearly stumbles forward onto Jezzie, who promptly flees toward me. I shrink back, putting the basket of muffins between us.

  “Bad kitty,” I growl.

  “Oh, she’s a lover, my Jezzie.” Ms. Angelli bends to fetch the cat, which is now pretending to be dead, or is paralyzed by fear, and I get a glimpse of the apartment behind her.

  Every inch is covered with antiques. My first thought is, Why would anyone have so much stuff?

  “You like old things,” I say.

  “Oh, yes,” she says, straightening. “I’m a collector.” Jezzie is now tucked under her arm like a clutch purse. “A bit of an artifact histo-rian,” she says. “And what about you, Mackenzie—do you like old things?”

  Like is the wrong word. They’re useful, since they’re more likely to have memories than new things.

  “I like the Coronado,” I say. “That counts as an old thing, right?”

  “Indeed. A wonderful old place. Been around more than a century, if you can believe it. Full of history, the Coronado.”

  “You must know all about it, then.”

  Ms. Angelli fidgets. “Ah, a place like this, no one can know everything. Bits and pieces, really, rumors and tales…” She trails off.

  “Really?” I brighten. “Anything unusual?” And then, worried my enthusiasm is a little too strong, I add, “My friend is convinced a place like this has to have a few ghosts, skeletons, secrets.”