The Dark Vault

by Victoria Schwab

Next, a Mr. Kenneth Shaw.

  And then I find what I’m looking for. The wall of black, the dead space between most of the memories and the murder. I run my finger down the column.

  Vacant.

  Vacant.

  Vacant.

  Not just one set, either. There are whole books of Vacant. Ms. Angelli watches me too intently, but I keep pulling the books down until I reach the last blue book, the one that starts with the conversion: 1950 – 54.

  The 1954 book is marked Vacant, but when I reach the divider marked 1953, I stop.

  3F is missing.

  The entire floor is missing.

  The entire year is missing.

  In its place is a stack of blank paper. I turn back through 1952 and 1951. Both are blank. There’s no record of the murdered girl. There’s no record of anyone. Three entire years are just…missing. The inaugural year, 1950, is there, but there’s no name written under 3F. What did Lyndsey say? There was nothing on record. Suspiciously nothing.

  I drop the blue book open on the table, nearly upsetting Ms. Angelli’s tea.

  “You look a touch pale, Mackenzie. What is it?”

  “There are pages missing.”

  She frowns. “The books are old. Perhaps something fell out….”

  “No,” I snap. “The years are deliberately blank.”

  Apartment 3F sat vacant for nearly two decades after the mysterious missing chunk of time. The murder. It had to have happened in those years.

  “Surely,” she says, more to herself than to me, “they must be archived somewhere.”

  “Yeah, I—” And it hits me. “You’re right. You’re totally right.” Whoever did this tampered with evidence in the Outer, but they can’t tamper with it in the Archive. I’m already out of the leather chair. “Thanks for your help,” I say, scooping up the directory and returning it to its shelf.

  Ms. Angelli’s eyebrows inch up. “Well, I didn’t really do—”

  “You did. You’re brilliant. Thanks. Good night!” I’m at the door, then through it, into the Coronado’s lobby, and pulling the key from my neck and the ring from my finger before I even reach the door set into the stairs.

  “What brings you to the Archive, Miss Bishop?”

  It’s Lisa at the desk. She looks up, pen hovering over a series of ledgers set side by side behind the QUIET PLEASE sign, which I’m pretty sure is her contribution. Her black bob frames her face, and her eyes are keen but kind—two different shades—behind a pair of green horn-rimmed glasses. Lisa is a Librarian, of course, but unlike Roland, or Patrick, or most of the others, for that matter, she really looks the part (aside from the fact that one of her eyes is glass, a token from her days as Crew).

  I fiddle with the key around my wrist.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” I lie, even though it’s not that late. It’s my default response here, the way people always answer How are you? with Good or Great or Fine, even when they’re not. “Those look nice,” I say, gesturing to her nails. They’re bright gold.

  “You think so?” she asks, admiring them. “Found the polish in the closets. Roland’s idea. He says they’re all the rage right now.”

  I’m not surprised. In addition to his public addiction to trashy magazines, Roland has a private addiction to stealing glances at newly added Histories. “He would know.”

  Her smile thins. “What can I do for you tonight, Miss Bishop?” she asks, two-toned eyes leveled on me.

  I hesitate. I could tell Lisa what I’m looking for, of course, but I’ve already used up my quota of Lisa-issued rule-bending coupons this month, what with the visits to Ben’s shelf. And I don’t have any bartering chips, no tokens from the Outer that she might like. I’m comfortable with Lisa, but if I ask her and she says no, I’ll never make it past the desk.

  “Is Roland around?” I ask casually. Lisa’s gaze lingers, but then she goes back to writing in the ledgers.

  “Ninth wing, third hall, fifth room. Last time I checked.”

  I smile and round the desk to the doors.

  “Repeat it,” orders Lisa.

  I roll my eyes, but parrot, “Nine, three, five.”

  “Don’t get lost,” she warns.

  My steps slow as I cross into the atrium. The stained glass is dark, as if the sky beyond—if there were a sky—had slipped to night. But still the Archive is bright, well-lit despite the lack of lights. Walking through is like wading into a pool of water. Cool, crisp, beautiful water. It slows you and holds you and washes over you. It is dazzling. Wood and stone and colored glass and calm. I force myself to look down at the dark wood floor, and find my way out of the atrium, repeating the numbers nine three five, nine three five, nine three five. It is too easy to go astray.

  The Archive is a patchwork, pieces added and altered over the years, and the bit of hall I wander down is made of paler wood, the ceilings still high but the placards on the front of the shelves worn. I reach the fifth room, and the style shifts again, with marble floors and a lower ceiling. Every space is different, and yet in all of them, that steady quiet reigns.

  Roland is standing in front of an open drawer, his back to me and his fingertips pressed gently into a man’s shoulder.

  When I enter the room, his hands shift from the History to its drawer, sliding it closed with one fluid, silent motion. He turns my way, and for a moment his eyes are so…sad. But then he blinks and recovers.

  “Miss Bishop.”

  “’Evening, Roland.”

  There’s a table and a pair of chairs in the center of the room, but he doesn’t invite me to sit. He seems distracted.

  “Are you all right?” I ask.

  “Of course.” An automatic reply. “What brings you here?”

  “I need a favor.” His brows knit. “Not Ben. I promise.”

  He looks around the space, then leads me into the hall beyond, where the walls are free of shelves.

  “Go on…” he says slowly.

  “Something horrible happened in my room. A murder.”

  A brow arches. “How do you know?”

  “Because I read it.”

  “You shouldn’t be reading things unnecessarily, Miss Bishop. The point of that gift is not to indulge in—”

  “I know, I know. The perils of curiosity. But don’t pretend you’re immune to it.”

  His mouth quirks.

  “Look, isn’t there any way you can…” I cast my arm wide across the room, gesturing at the walls of bodies, of lives.

  “Any way I can what?”

  “Do a search? Look for residents of the Coronado. Her death would have been in March. Sometime between 1951 and 1953. If I can find the girl here in the Archive, then we can read her and find out who she was, and who he was—”

  “Why? Just to slake your interest? That’s hardly the purpose of these files—”

  “Then what is?” I snap. “We’re supposed to protect the past. Well, someone is trying to erase it. Years are missing from the Coronado’s records. Years in which a girl was murdered. The boy who killed her left. He ran. I need to find out what happened. I need to know if he got away, and I can’t—”

  “So that’s what this is about,” he says under his breath.

  “What do you mean?”

  “This isn’t just about understanding a murder. It’s about Ben.”

  I feel like I’ve been slapped. “It’s not. I—”

  “Don’t insult me, Miss Bishop. You’re a remarkable Keeper, but I know why you can’t stand leaving a name on your list. This isn’t just about curiosity, it’s about closure—”

  “Fine. But that doesn’t change the fact that something horrible happened in my room, and someone tried to cover it up.”

  “People do bad things,” Roland says quietly.

  “Please.” Desperation creeps in with the word. I swallow. “Da used to say that Keepers needed three things: skill, luck, and intuition. I have all three. And my gut says something is wrong.”

  He tilts his head a fraction. I
t’s a tell. He’s bending.

  “Humor me,” I say. “Just help me find out who she was, so I can find out who he was.”

  He straightens but pulls a small pad from his pocket and begins to make notes.

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  I smile, careful not to make it broad—I don’t want him to think he was conned—just wide enough to read as grateful. “Thank you, Roland.”

  He grunts. I feel the telltale scratch of letters in my pocket, and retrieve the list to find a new name. I rub my thumb over the number. Ben’s age.

  “All well?” he asks casually.

  “Just a kid,” I say, pocketing the list.

  I turn to go, but hesitate. “I’ll keep you apprised, Miss Bishop,” says Roland in answer to my pause.

  “I owe you.”

  “You always do,” he says as I leave.

  I wind my way back through the halls and the atrium and into the antechamber, where Lisa is flipping through the pages of her ledgers, eyes narrowed in concentration.

  “Going so soon?” she asks as I pass.

  “Another name,” I say. She should know. She gave it to me. “The Coronado is certainly keeping me busy.”

  “Old buildings—”

  “I know, I know.”

  “We’ve been diverting traffic, so to speak, as best we could, but it will be better now that you’re on the premises—”

  “Joy.”

  “It’s safe to say you’ll experience a higher number of Histories here than in your previous territory. Maybe two to three times. No more—”

  “Two to three times?”

  Lisa folds her hands. “The world tests us for reasons, Miss Bishop,” she says sweetly. “Don’t you want to be Crew?”

  I hate that line. I hate it because it is the Librarians’ way of saying deal with it.

  She locks eyes with me over her horn-rimmed glasses, daring me to press the issue. “Anything else, Miss Bishop?”

  “No,” I grumble. It’s rare to see Lisa so rigid. “I think that’s all.”

  “Have a nice night,” she calls, offering a small, gold-flecked wave before taking up her pen. I head back into the Narrows to find Melanie.

  There’s this moment when I step into the Narrows, right after the Archive door closes behind me and before I start hunting; this little sliver of time where the world feels still. Not quiet, of course, but steady, calm. And then I hear a far-off cry or the shuffle of steps or any one of a dozen sounds, and all of them remind me it’s not the calm that keeps me still. It’s fear. Da used to say that only fools and cowards scorned fear. Fear keeps you alive.

  My fingers settle on the stained wall, the key on my wrist clinking against it. I close my eyes and press down, reach until I catch hold of the past. My fingers, then palms, then wrists go numb. I’m just about to roll the memories back in search of Melanie Allen, when I’m cut off by a sound, sharp like metal against rock.

  I blink and draw back from the wall.

  The sound is too close.

  I follow the noise down the corridor and around the corner.

  The hall is empty.

  Pausing, I slide the Archive list from my pocket, checking it again, but ten-year-old Melanie is the only name there.

  The sound comes a second time, grating as nails, from the end of the hall, and I hurry down it, turn left and—

  The knife comes out of nowhere.

  It slashes, and I drop the paper and jerk back, the blade narrowly missing my stomach as it carves a line through the air. I recover and dodge sideways as the knife slices the air again, clumsy but fast. The hand holding the knife is massive, the knuckles scarred, and the History behind the knife looks just as rough. He is height and muscle, filling the hall, his eyes half buried beneath thick, angry brows, the irises fully black. He’s been out long enough to slip. Why wasn’t he listed? My stomach sinks when I recognize the knife in his hand as Jackson’s. A blade of folded metal the length of my hand running into a dark hilt and—somewhere hidden by his palm—a hole drilled into the grip.

  He slashes again, and I drop to a crouch, trying to think; but he’s fast, and it’s all I can do to stay on my feet and in one piece. The hall is too narrow to take out his legs, so I spring up, get a foot on the wall, and push off, crushing his face into the opposite wall with my boot. His head connects with a sound like bricks, but he barely flinches, and I hit the ground and roll just in time to avoid another slice.

  Even as I dodge and duck, I can tell I’m losing ground, being forced backward.

  “How do you have that key, Abbie?”

  He’s already slipped. He’s looking at me but seeing someone else, and whoever this Abbie is, he doesn’t seem too happy with her.

  I scan him desperately for clues as I duck. A faded jacket with a small nameplate sewn into the front reads Hooper.

  He swings the knife like an ax, chopping the air. “Where did you get the key?”

  Why isn’t he on my list?

  “Give it to me,” he growls. “Or I’ll cut it from your pretty wrist.”

  He slashes with so much force that the knife hits a door and sticks, the metal embedded in the wood. I seize the chance and kick him as hard as I can in the chest, hoping the momentum will force him to let go of the blade. It doesn’t. Pain rolls up my leg from the blow, which knocks Hooper back just hard enough to help him free his weapon from the Narrows wall. His grip tightens on the handle.

  I know I’m running out of room.

  “I need it,” he groans. “You know I need it.”

  I need to pause this whole moment until I can figure out what a full-grown History is doing in my territory and how I’m going to get out of here without considerable blood loss.

  Another step back and a wall comes up to meet my shoulders.

  My stomach twists.

  Hooper presses forward, and the cool tip of the knife comes up just below my chin, so close that I’m afraid to swallow.

  “The key. Now.”

  ELEVEN

  YOU HOLD OUT THE slip of paper you keep rolled behind your ear.

  I tap the small 7 beside the boy’s name. “Are they all so young?”

  “Not all,” you say, smoothing the paper, an unlit cigarette between your teeth. “But most.”

  “Why?”

  You take the cigarette out, jabbing the air with the unlit tip. “That is the most worthless question in the world. Use your words. Be specific. Why is like bah or moo or that silly sound pigeons make.”

  “Why are most of the ones that wake so young?”

  “Some are—were—troubled. But most are restless. Didn’t live enough, maybe.” Your tone shifts. “But everyone has a History, Kenzie. Young and old.” I can see you testing the words in your mouth. “The older the History, the heavier they sleep. The older ones that wake have something in them, something different, something dark. Troubled. Unstable. They’re bad people. Dangerous. They’re the ones who tend to get into the Outer. The ones who fall into the hands of Crew.”

  “Keeper-Killers,” I whisper.

  You nod.

  I straighten. “How do I beat them?”

  “Strength. Skill.” You run a hand over my hair. “And luck. Lots of luck.”

  My back presses against the wall as the tip of the knife nicks my throat, and I really don’t want to die like this.

  “Key,” Hooper growls again, his black eyes dancing. “God, Abbie, I just want out. I want out and he said you had it, said I had to get it—so give it to me now.”

  He?

  The knife bites down.

  My mind is suddenly horribly blank. I take a shallow breath.

  “Okay,” I say, reaching for the key. The cord is looped three times around my wrist, and I’m hoping that somewhere between untangling it and motioning toward him, I can get the knife away.

  I unloop it once.

  And then something catches my eye. Down the hall, beyond Hooper’s massive form, a shadow moves. A shape in the dark. The
form slips silently forward, and I can’t see his face, only his outline and a sweep of silver-blond hair. He slides up behind the History as I unloop the cord a second time.

  I unloop the cord a final time, and Hooper is snatching the key, the knife retreating a fraction from my throat, when the stranger’s arm coils around the History’s neck.

  The next moment Hooper is slammed backward onto the ground, the knife tumbling from his grasp. The motion is clean, efficient. The stranger catches the blade and drives it down toward the History’s broad chest, but he’s a beat too slow, and Hooper grabs hold of him and flings him into the nearest wall with an audible crack.

  And then I see it, glittering on the floor between us.

  My key.

  I dive for it as Hooper sees, and lunges too. He reaches it first, but between one blink and the next, the blond man has his hands around Hooper’s jaw, and swiftly breaks his neck.

  Before Hooper can sag forward, the stranger catches his body and slams it against the nearest door, driving the knife straight through his chest, the blade and most of the hilt buried deep enough to pin his body against the wooden door. I stare at the History’s limp form, chin against his chest, wondering how long it will take him to recover from that.

  The stranger is staring, too, at the place where his hand meets the knife and the knife meets Hooper’s body, the wound bloodless. He curls and uncurls his fingers around the handle.

  “He won’t stay like that,” I say, desperate to keep the tremor from my voice as I rewrap the key cord around my wrist.

  His voice is quiet, low. “I doubt it.”

  He lets go of the knife, and Hooper’s body hangs against the door. I feel a drop of blood running down my throat. I wipe it away. I wish my hands would stop shaking. My list is a spot of white on the blackened floor. I recover it, muttering a curse.

  Right below Melanie Allen’s name sits a new one in clean print.

  A little late. I look up as the stranger brings a hand to the slope of his neck and frowns.

  “Are you hurt?” I ask, remembering how hard he hit the wall.

  He rolls his shoulder first one way and then the other, a slow testing motion. “I don’t think so.”