The Dark Vault

by Victoria Schwab

  He’s young, late teens, maybe, whitish blond hair long enough to drift into his eyes, across his cheekbones. He’s dressed in all black, not punk or goth, but simple, well-fitting. His clothing blurs into the dark around him.

  The moment is surreal. I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve seen him before, but I know I’d remember if I did. And now we’re standing in the Narrows, the body of a History hanging like a coat on the door between us. He doesn’t seem bothered by that. If his combat skills aren’t enough to mark him as a Keeper, his composure is.

  “Who are you?” I ask, trying to force as much authority into my voice as possible.

  “My name’s Owen,” he says. “Owen Chris Clarke.”

  His eyes meet mine as he says it, and my chest tightens. Everything about him is calm, even. His movements when fighting were fluid, efficient to the point of elegant. But his eyes are piercing. Wolfish. Eyes like one of Ben’s drawings, sketched out in a stark, pale blue.

  I feel dazed, both by Hooper’s sudden attack and Owen’s equally sudden appearance, but I don’t have time to collect myself, because Hooper’s body shudders against the door.

  “What’s your name?” Owen asks. And for some reason, I tell him the truth.

  “Mackenzie.”

  He smiles. He has the kind of smile that barely touches his mouth.

  “Where did you come from?” I ask, and Owen glances over his shoulder, when Hooper’s eyelids flutter.

  The door he’s braced against is marked with white, the edge of the chalk circle peering out from his back, and that’s all I have time to notice before Hooper’s black eyes snap open.

  I spring into action, driving the key into the door and turning the lock as I grip the knife in the History’s chest and pull. The door falls open and the knife comes out; and I drive my boot into Hooper’s stomach, sending him back a few steps, just enough. His shoes hit the white of the Returns, and I catch the door and slam it shut between us.

  I hear Hooper beat against it once before falling deathly silent. I spin to face the Narrows, only seconds having passed, but Owen Chris Clarke is gone.

  I slump down onto the worn runner of the Coronado’s stairs and slide my ring back on, dropping the knife and the list onto the steps beside me. Hooper’s name is gone now. Little good it did, since it didn’t show up until I was halfway through the fight. I should report it, but to who? The Librarians would probably just turn it into a lecture on making Crew, on being prepared. But how could I have been prepared?

  My eyes burn as I replay the fight. Clumsy. Weak. Caught off guard. I should never, ever be off guard. I know he’d lecture, I know he’d scold; but for the first time in years, the memories are not enough. I wish I could talk to Da.

  “I nearly lost.”

  It is a whispered confession to an empty lobby, the strength leaching from my voice. Behind my eyes, Owen Chris Clarke breaks Hooper’s neck. “I didn’t know how to fight him, Da. I felt helpless.” The word scratches my throat. “I’ve been doing this for years and I’ve never felt that.” My hands tremble faintly.

  I turn my thoughts from Hooper to Owen as my fingers drift toward the knife. His fluid movements, the ease with which he handled the weapon and the History. Wesley said the territory had been shared. Maybe Hooper was on Owen’s list first. Or maybe Owen, like Wesley, had nothing better to do and happened to be in the right place at the right time.

  I turn the knife absently between my fingers, and stop. There’s something etched into the metal, right above the hilt. Three small lines. The Archive mark. My stomach twists. The weapon belonged to a member of the Archive—Keeper, Crew, Librarian—so how did it end up in the hands of a History? Did Jackson swipe it when he escaped?

  I rub my eyes. It’s late. I tighten my grip on the knife. Maybe I’ll need it. I drag myself to my feet, and I’m about to go upstairs when I hear it.

  Music.

  It must have been playing all along. I turn my head from side to side, trying to decipher where it’s coming from, and see that a sheet of paper has been tacked beneath the café sign: Coming Soon! announced in the cleanest, most legible version of my mother’s script. I head for the sign, but then I remember that I’m holding a large, unsheathed, and very conspicuous knife. There’s a planter in the corner where the grand stairs meet the wall, and I set the weapon carefully inside before crossing the lobby. The music grows. Into the hall, and it’s louder still, then through the door on the right, down a step and through another door, the notes leading me like bread crumbs.

  I find my mother kneeling in a pool of light.

  It’s not light, I realize, but clean, pale stone. Her head is bent as she scours the floor, the tiles of which, it turns out, are not gray at all, but a stunning pearlescent white marble. One section of the counter, too, where Mom has already asserted her cleaning prowess, is gleaming white granite, run through with threads of black and gold. These spots glitter, like gems across coal. The radio blasts, a pop song that peaks then trails off into commercials, but Mom doesn’t seem to register anything but the whoosh of her sponge and the spreading pool of white. In the middle of the floor, partially revealed, is a rust-colored pattern. A rose, petal after petal of inlaid stone, an even, earthy red.

  “Wow,” I say.

  She looks up suddenly. “Mackenzie, I didn’t see you there.”

  She gets to her feet. She looks like a human cleaning rag, as if she simply transferred all the dirt from the café onto herself. On one of the counters a bag of groceries sits, forgotten. Condensation makes the plastic bag cling to the once-cold contents.

  “It’s amazing,” I say. “There’s actually something underneath the dust.”

  She beams, hands on her hips. “I know. It’s going to be perfect.”

  Another pop song starts up on the radio, but I reach over and turn it off.

  “How long have you been down here, Mom?”

  She blinks several times, looks surprised. As if she hadn’t thought about time and its penchant for moving forward. Her eyes register the darkness beyond the windows, then travel back to the neglected groceries. Something in her sags. And for a moment, I see her. Not the watts-too-bright, smile-till-it-hurts her, but the real one. The mother who lost her little boy.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Mac,” she says, rubbing the back of her hand across her forehead. “I completely lost track of time.” Her hands are red and raw. She isn’t even wearing plastic gloves. She tries to smile again, but it falters.

  “Hey, it’s fine,” I say. I hoist the soap-filled bucket onto the counter, wincing as the weight sends pain through my bandaged arm, and dump its contents into the sink. The sink, by the looks of it, could use it. I hook the empty container on my elbow. “Let’s go upstairs.”

  Mom suddenly looks exhausted. She picks up the groceries from the counter, but I take them from her.

  “I got it,” I say, my arm aching. “Are you hungry? I can heat you up some dinner.”

  Mom nods wearily. “That would be great.”

  “All right,” I say. “Let’s go home.”

  Home. The word still tastes like sandpaper in my mouth. But it makes Mom smile—a tired, true smile—so it’s worth it.

  I’m so tired my bones hurt. But I can’t sleep.

  I press my palms against my eyes, going through the fight with Hooper over and over and over again, scouring the scene for what I could have—should have—done differently. I think of Owen, the swift, efficient movements, the breaking of the History’s neck, the plunging of the knife into his chest. My fingers drift to my sternum, then inch down until they rest on the place where it ends.

  I sit up, reach beneath the bed, and free the knife from the lip of bed frame, where I hid it. Once Mom was settled, I went back to the lobby and rescued it from the planter. Now it glints wickedly in the darkened room, the Archive mark like ink on the shining metal. Whose was it?

  I slide off my ring, letting it fall to the comforter, and close my hand over the hilt. The hum of mem
ories buzzes against my palm. Weapons, even small ones, are easy to read because they tend to have such vivid, violent pasts. I close my eyes and catch hold of the thread inside. Two memories roll backward, the more recent one with Hooper—I watch myself pressed against the wall, eyes wide—and the older one with Jackson. But before Jackson brought it into the Narrows, there’s…nothing. Only flat black. This blade should be filled to the brim with stories, and instead it’s like it doesn’t have a past. But the three marks on the metal say otherwise. What if Jackson didn’t steal it? What if someone sent him into the Narrows armed?

  I blink, trying to dispel my growing unease along with the matte black of missing memories.

  The only bright side is that, wherever this weapon came from, it’s mine now. I hook my finger through the hole in the handle and twirl the blade slowly. I close my hand around the handle, stopping its path, and the hilt hits my palm with a satisfying snap, the metal tracing the line up my forearm. I smile. It is an amazing weapon. In fact, I’m fairly certain I could kill myself with it. But having it, holding it, makes me feel better. I’ll have to find a way to bind it to my calf, to keep it from sight, from reach. Da’s warnings echo in my head, but I quiet them.

  I put my ring back on and return the knife to its hidden lip beneath the bed, promising myself I won’t use it. I tell myself I won’t need to. I lie back, less shaken, but no closer to sleep. My eyes settle on the blue bear propped on my side table, the black glasses perched on its nose. Nights like this I wish I could sit and talk to Ben, wear my mind out, but I can’t go back to the stacks so soon. I think of calling Lyndsey, but it’s late, and what would I say?

  How was your day?…Yeah? Oh, mine?

  I got attacked by a Keeper-Killer.

  I know! And saved by a stranger who just vanished—

  And that guyliner boy, he’s a Keeper!

  …No, Keeper with a capital K.

  And there’s the murder in my room. Someone tried to cover it up, ripped the pages right out of the history books.

  Oh, and I almost forgot. Someone in the Archive might be trying to get me killed.

  I laugh. It’s a strained sound, but it helps.

  And then I yawn, and soon, somehow, I find sleep.

  TWELVE

  THE NEXT DAY has been joined by but the moment I emerge from my room to hunt, Mom appears with an apron and a revived high-wattage smile, thrusts a box of cleaning supplies into my hands, and drops a book on top.

  “Coffee shop duty!”

  She says it like I’ve been given a prize, a reward. My forearm still aches dully, and the box bulges in my arms, threatening to crumble.

  “I have a vague idea of what cleaning supplies do, but what’s with the book?”

  “Your father picked up your school’s reading list.”

  I look at my mother, then at the calendar on the kitchen wall, then at the sunlight streaming in the window. “It’s summer.”

  “Yes, it’s a summer reading list,” she says cheerfully. “Now, off with you. You can clean or you can read, or you can clean and then read, or read and then clean, or—”

  “I got it.” I could beg off, lie, but I’m still feeling shaky from last night and I wouldn’t mind a couple hours as M right now, a taste of normalcy. Besides, there’s a Narrows door in the coffee shop.

  Downstairs, the overhead lights blink sleepily on. I drop the box on the counter, letting it regain its composure as I dig out the book. Dante’s Inferno. You’ve got to be kidding me. I consider the cover, which features a good deal of hellfire and proudly announces that this is the SAT prep edition, complete with starred vocabulary. I turn to the first page and begin to read.

  In the midway of this our mortal life, I found me in a gloomy wood, astray…

  No, thank you.

  I toss Dante onto a pile of folded sheets by the wall, where it lands with a plume of dust. Cleaning it is, then. The whole room smells faintly of soap and stale air, and the stone counters and floor make it feel cold, despite the summer air beyond the windows. I throw them open, then switch the radio on, crank up the volume, and get to work.

  The soapy mixture I concoct smells strong enough to chew right through my plastic gloves, to peel back skin and polish bone. It is beautiful bluish stuff, and when I smear it across the marble, it shimmers. I think I can hear it chewing away at the grime on the floor. A few vigorous circles and my corner of the floor even begins to resemble Mom’s.

  “I don’t believe it.”

  I look up to find Wesley Ayers sitting backward on a metal chair, a relic unearthed from beneath one of the folded sheets. Most of the furniture has been moved onto the patio, but a few chairs dot the room, including this one. “There’s actually a room under all this dust!” He drapes his arms over the chair and rests his chin on the arching metal. I never heard him come in.

  “Good morning,” he adds. “I don’t suppose there’s a pot of coffee down here.”

  “Alas, not yet.”

  “And you call yourself a coffee shop.”

  “To be fair, the sign says ‘Coming Soon.’ So,” I say, getting to my feet, “what brings you to the future site of Bishop’s Coffee Shop?”

  “I’ve been thinking.”

  “A dangerous pursuit.”

  “Indeed.” He raises one eyebrow playfully. “I got it into my head to save you from the loneliness born of rainy days and solitary chores.”

  “Oh, did you?”

  “Magnanimous, I know.” His gaze settles on the discarded book. He leans, reaching until his fingertips graze Dante’s Inferno, still on its bed of folded sheets.

  “What have we here?” he asks.

  “Required reading,” I say, starting to scrub the counter.

  “It’s a shame they do that,” he says, thumbing through the pages. “Requirement ruins even the best of books.”

  “Have you read it?”

  “A few times.” My eyebrows arch, and he laughs. “Again with the skepticism. Looks can be deceiving, Mac. I’m not all beauty and charm.” He keeps turning the pages. “How far in are you?”

  I groan, making circular motions on the granite. “About two lines. Maybe three.”

  Now it’s his turn to raise a brow. “You know, the thing about a book like this is that it’s meant to be heard, not read.”

  “Oh, really.”

  “Honest. I’ll prove it to you. You clean, I’ll read.”

  “Deal.”

  I scrub as he rests the book on the top of the chair. He doesn’t start from the beginning, but turns to a page somewhere in the middle, clears his throat, and begins.

  “‘Through me you pass into the city of woe.’”

  His voice is measured, smooth.

  “‘Through me you pass into eternal pain….’”

  He slips to his feet and rounds the chair as he reads, and I try to listen, I do, but the words blur in my ears as I watch him step toward me, half his face in shadow. Then he crosses into the light and stands there, only a counter between us. Up close, I see the scar along his collar, just beneath the leather cord; his square shoulders; the dark lashes framing his light eyes. His lips move, and I blink as his voice dips low, private, forcing me to listen closer, and I catch the end.

  “‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.’”

  He looks up at me and stops. The book slips to his side.

  “Mackenzie.” He flashes a crooked smile.

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re spilling soap on everything.”

  I look down and realize he’s right. The soap is dripping over the counter, making bubble-blue puddles on the floor.

  I laugh. “Well, can’t hurt,” I say, trying to hide my embarrassment. Wesley, on the other hand, seems to relish it. He leans across the counter, drawing aimless patterns in the soap.

  “Got lost in my eyes, did you?”

  He leans farther forward, his hands in the dry spaces between soap slicks. I smile and lift the sponge, intending to ring it out over his he
ad, but he leans back just in time, and the soapy mix splashes onto the already flooded counter.

  He points a painted black nail at his hair. “Moisture messes up the ’do.” He laughs good-naturedly as I roll my eyes. And then I’m laughing, too. It feels good. It’s something M would do. Laugh like this.

  I want to tell Wes that I dream of a life filled with these moments.

  “Well,” I say, trying to sop up the soap, “I have no idea what you were reading about, but it sounded nice.”

  “It’s the inscription on the gates of Hell,” says Wes. “It’s my favorite part.”

  “Morbid, much?”

  He shrugs. “When you think about it, the Archive is kind of like a Hell.”

  The cheerful moment wobbles, cracks. I picture Ben’s shelf, picture the quiet, peace-filled halls. “How can you say that?” I ask.

  “Well, not the Archive so much as the Narrows. After all, it is a place filled with the restless dead, right?”

  I nod absently, but I can’t shake the tightness in my chest. Not just at the mention of Hell, but at the way Wesley went from reciting homework to musing on the Archive. As if it’s all one life, one world—but it’s not, and I’m stuck somewhere between my Keeper world and my Outer world, trying to figure out how Wesley has one foot so comfortably in each.

  You use your thumbnail to dig out a sliver of wood from the railing on the porch. It needs to be painted, but it never will be. It’s our last summer together. Ben didn’t come this year; he’s at some sleepaway camp. And when the house goes on the market this winter, the rail will still be crumbling.

  You’re trying to teach me how to split myself into pieces.

  Not messy, like tearing paper into confetti, but clean, even: like cutting a pie. You say that’s you how you lie and get away with it. That’s how you stay alive.

  “Be who you need to be,” you say. “When you’re with your brother, or your parents, or your friends, or Roland, or a History. Remember what I taught you about lying?”

  “You start with a little truth,” I say.

  “Yes. Well, this is the same.” You throw the sliver of wood over the rail and start working on another. Your hands are never still. “You start with you. Each version of you isn’t a total lie. It’s just a twist.”