The Dark Vault

by Victoria Schwab

  “Always,” I say, ducking out.

  I’d never take the bus. Especially not with my ring hanging uselessly around my neck. The lie does save time, though, since I don’t have to worry about stashing my bike before cutting into the Narrows.

  Two of the three Histories go without a fight, and the third isn’t a match for me, even in my current condition. I approach the boundary between Wesley’s territory and mine and slide my key into the lock, hoping it turns. It does. The door bleeds into light and shape before it opens.

  I’m in such a hurry that I don’t think about the fact that this isn’t my territory until I round a corner and nearly run straight into Wesley. I stagger back in time to avoid a collision, and he pulls up short in time to avoid dropping a coffee carrier.

  “Jesus, Mac,” he says, clutching his chest with his free hand.

  “Sorry!” I say, holding up mine in surrender.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Hunting,” I say as we set off toward Hyde’s door.

  “I kind of got that,” says Wes. “I meant, what are you doing in my territory?”

  “Oh. Roland granted me access so I could clear my list from school.”

  Wes nods. “I’m glad they finally cut you some slack. Not that scaling walls isn’t fun, but this seems a little less dangerous.”

  “Only because you don’t have your stick out.”

  “Bˉo staff,” corrects Wes. “And it’s in my bag. But my list is clear, and my hands were full.”

  “What’s with the coffee?” I ask.

  He holds up the carrier. “It’s for you.”

  “You do know my parents own a coffee shop,” I say.

  “That’s never stopped you from taking Cash’s,” he says with a pout. “And I figured after yesterday’s incident, you might be looking for a new supplier.” It takes me a second to realize that by “incident” he means Cash’s coffee making me sick, and not Cash’s kiss. If he’s heard about the latter, he doesn’t let on, and I don’t broach the subject, since it’s the least of my problems right now.

  He offers me a cup and I take it, careful not to let our fingers touch. The last thing I need is for Wesley to see Owen written all over my mind.

  “Any word from Agatha?” he asks. “About the voids?”

  The coffee turns to lead in my mouth. I try to swallow. “Not yet.”

  “Don’t worry,” he says, misreading my concern. “She’ll find whoever’s doing this.” We reach a door with a green check mark. “How did you sleep?” he adds. “I missed your bed.”

  “It missed you, too,” I say as he opens the door. Unlike the doors that no longer exist in the Outer—the ones tucked in cracks and folds—the Hyde School door opens not onto darkness, but onto the campus. The school is visible even from the Narrows side. I look out, scanning the green for signs of Owen’s silver-blond hair. I don’t see him, but that doesn’t mean he’s not there—and I can’t afford to lead Wesley to him.

  “You coming?” asks Wes.

  I reach for the list in my skirt pocket as if I can feel letters writing themselves on the page.

  “One more,” I say with a sigh and a glance back over my shoulder. “You go on ahead.”

  Wes hesitates, but nods and steps out onto Hyde’s grass. I close the door between us and count to ten, twenty, thirty…and then I unlock it with my own key and step through, beelining for the Wellness Center. I half expect to see yellow crime scene tape, but the building is quiet. The trophy hall is empty and perfectly still, and I hold my breath as I make my way toward the storage room door, bracing myself for the scene beyond the glass insert. But when I look through, the air catches in my throat. I push the door open and hit all three switches, showering the room with light.

  It’s untouched. Immaculate. No toppled shelves, no scattered equipment, no blood on the floor. Nothing except the void, the remnants of which still hover in the middle of the room, snagging and repelling my gaze at the same time, the only proof that anything happened here.

  “I thought it would be best to clean up.”

  I spin to see Owen leaning against the wall, his hands in his pockets. “Good morning.”

  My fingers curl into fists at my sides. I hate that I’m relieved to see him. I’ve been dreading this moment since last night, and yet the thought of his not being here was in a way more frightening. But now that he’s here, I need to figure out what to do. I have to dispatch him, and soon, but the questions that have been filling up my head all night are now trying to climb my throat.

  Owen slides the knife out of the holster at his back. “Still determined to fight me?” I hesitate, my eyes flicking from the glinting knife to his face and back. This is not the way to beat him. I force my hands to unclench. “Ready to listen, then?” He arches an eyebrow, feigning surprise.

  “You claim there’s a way to live without lies,” I start. “How?”

  Owen smiles, returning the knife to its hidden sheath. “Isn’t it obvious?” he says. “Your life is only made of secrets and lies because the Archive is. You exist in the shadows because the Archive does.” His blue eyes glitter with excitement. “I am going to drag the Archive out of the dust-covered dark and into the light of day. I’m going to give it back to the world it claims to serve.”

  “How?”

  “By opening the doors,” he says, spreading his arms. “By letting the Archive out and the world in.”

  “The world can’t even see the doors, Owen.”

  “Only because it’s forgotten how. The whole world is wearing blinders. But if we take them off, eyes will adjust. Lives will adjust. They’ll have to.” I shake my head. “It’s time for change, Mackenzie. It’s messy, but the era of secrets must end. The world will adapt, and so will the Archive. It must.” His brow furrows, darkening his eyes. “Think about what the Archive’s secrets have cost us. Histories only slip because they wake into a world they do not know. They succumb to panic. Confusion. Fear. But if the Archive weren’t a secret—if everyone knew what came next—they wouldn’t be afraid. And if they let go of their fear and began to understand, then if and when they woke, they wouldn’t slip. Ben wouldn’t have slipped. Regina wouldn’t have slipped. No one would slip.”

  “Histories aren’t meant to wake in the first place,” I counter. “And what you’re suggesting—a mass awakening—is madness for the living and the dead. Crew will hunt you down before you even start.”

  “Not if they are with me.” He takes a step forward. “You think you are the only one who doubts, Mackenzie? The only one who feels trapped? Do you know why the Archive keeps everyone isolated? It’s so they feel alone. So that when one of them feels fear or anger or doubt—and they all do—they think they are the only ones. They stay quiet, because they know that one life doesn’t matter to the Archive.

  “Crew are stronger, paired minds, willing to obey or disobey as a group, but not daring enough to do so. Keepers and Crew all know: if one person or pair rises up, the Archive will simply cut them down. It can always extinguish one voice, Mackenzie. But it can’t douse them all. Fear. Anger. Doubt. They have been piling up like kindling inside the Archive, and the whole place is ready to burn. The Archive is doing everything it can to keep the fire from starting, but all that’s needed is someone to strike the match. So believe me when I tell you that the Crew will go with me. And the other Keepers, too. The question is, will you?”

  I open my mouth, but I’m cut off by the sound of steps in the trophy hall beyond the door. Owen falls silent beside me as voices take shape.

  “I know the official missing person mark is forty-eight hours,” someone is saying, “but what with all the disappearances, I thought it best to let you know.”

  “I’m glad you did,” replies a gruff voice I recognize at once. Detective Kinney. I press myself against the wall beside the door as the footsteps draw closer. Owen doesn’t try to hide, but doesn’t move, either.

  “His wife called me this morning,” says the first
man. “Apparently, he never picked up their son from preschool yesterday, and he never went home last night.”

  “Does he have a habit of wandering off?”

  “No. And then, when he didn’t show this morning, I figured I’d better call. I wish I could tell you more.”

  The footsteps come to a stop on the other side of the door.

  “He was last seen here?” asks Kinney, peering in through the glass.

  “Coach Kris saw him in his office before the bell rang.”

  Kinney pulls away from the door. “We’ll start there, then,” he says.

  The footsteps fade along with the voices as the two walk away. I let out a deep breath, resting my hands on my knees.

  “This is all your fault,” I say. “If you hadn’t dragged those people through—”

  “Really it’s yours,” counters Owen, “since you pushed me into the void. But who’s counting crimes?”

  The bell rings in the distance, and I check to make sure the coast is clear before pushing the door open.

  “The detective is,” I say, Owen falling into step beside me. I have to remind myself as I step onto the quad that no one else can see him. And even if they could, he’d blend in. His silver-blond hair glitters in the sunlight, and I can almost imagine what he must have looked like as a student here. His simple black attire lacks any gold piping, but otherwise he’d look just like any other senior. I don’t know how much of that has to do with the fact that he is—was—Crew and how much is the fact that, even though he seems old, he’s not.

  Within seconds of entering the tide of students, I realize how hard it will be to keep my ring off. The path is crowded, and I’m instantly buffeted by a chorus of what color tights should I wear tonight will Geoffrey even notice I’ll never pass x to the ninth is what how many references do I need should have added art Coach Metz better not make us do sprints I’m still sore from Mom is going to kill me I’m going to kill Amelia I hate this place Wesley Ayers better dance with me why did I agree to so weird sometimes metatarsal is connected to the I wish I had cookies get it right empty house Dad is being such an ass stressed silver horns or black streaks can I pull off wings and it’s all tangled up in stress and fear and want and teenage hormones.

  I grit my teeth against the crush of people’s lives.

  “It’s time to let the world in,” presses Owen beside me. He brings his hand down on my shoulder, his quiet pressing through me, and instead of talking—ostensibly to myself—I think the next question.

  And what happens once you’ve done that? I challenge. The living would, what? Be free to visit the dead?

  “Why not?” says Owen aloud. “They already do—in graveyards.”

  Yeah, I think, but in graveyards the dead can’t wake.

  I roll my shoulder, shaking him off before he can hear my thoughts spinning.

  People aren’t smart when it comes to the dead. That’s what Da said, and he was right.

  How many would claw their way toward their loved ones, rip them from sleep to keep them close? How long would it take for the walls to come down as well as the doors and the world to tear itself apart?

  How can he not see that this is madness? Is he truly that blind to the consequences? Or is he really willing to tear the world apart just to get his way? Either way, I have to stop him. But how? Even in his weakened state, the odds aren’t in my favor. Owen cannot die. I can.

  I pause on the path and pretend to look through a notebook. Owen rests his chin on top of my head, hushing everything but his voice. “Penny for your thoughts?”

  If you’re so convinced that everyone else will follow you, why do you need me?

  Owen pulls away, and by the time he comes around to face me, his features have grayed into something unreadable. “Before I can call on anyone, there’s something I need,” he says. “The Archive has it, and I have a plan to take it—but that plans requires two.”

  My pulse quickens. But it’s not fear that makes it race, it’s excitement. Because Owen has just handed me the way to beat him. I might not be able to drag him back to the Archive, but I can follow him in. No one else has to get hurt. No one else has to die.

  I start walking again, and Owen follows in my wake, a swell of students carrying us into the building on a wave of was there a test what was I thinking please let this day be over.

  We move in silence through the crowded hall, and come to a stop outside my class.

  “What is it we need to steal?” I ask under my breath.

  Owen smiles at my use of we. He tucks a strand of dark hair behind my ear. I can feel the quiet spreading through me with his fingertips, feel him reading me for lies, but I’ve learned his tricks, and I’m learning my own. As he reaches through my mind, I focus on a simple truth: Something has to change.

  “I’m glad I have your attention,” he says, his hand falling away. “And I appreciate the collective pronoun. But before our partnership goes any further, I need to know that your heart’s in it.”

  My heart sinks a little. A test. Of course it wouldn’t be as easy as saying yes. Owen Chris Clarke doesn’t gamble. He only plays games when he thinks he’ll win. Am I willing to play? Do I really have a choice?

  I hold his gaze as the second bell rings and the hall empties around us.

  My voice is barely a whisper, but my words are firm.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  TWENTY-SIX

  “GO TO THE ARCHIVE,” says Owen, “and steal me something.”

  “What kind of something?” I ask, clenching my fingers around my backpack strap. Pain flickers through my wrist. It helps me focus.

  “Something small,” says Owen. “Just a show of good faith. If you succeed, I’ll tell you what we’re really going to take from them. If you fail, there’s no point. You’ll just be in my way.” His eyes go to a clock on the wall. “You have until lunch,” he says, turning away. “Good luck.”

  I stand there, watching him go, until someone clears his throat behind me.

  “Avoiding my class, Miss Bishop?”

  I turn to find Mr. Lowell holding the door open for me.

  “Sorry, sir,” I say, and follow him inside. His hand grazes against my shoulder as he guides me through, and I’m hit with worry strange girl distant trouble at home I see the bruises quiet clutter ink stains before I continue forward out of his reach and take my seat. Sixteen people in a classroom without the buffer of a ring make the air feel like it’s singing. I sit there, wincing faintly every time a student gets too close, Owen’s warped ideas playing through my head while Lowell lectures on the warped ideas of others. I’m not paying much attention until something Lowell says echoes Owen.

  “Every uprising starts with a spark,” says Lowell. “Sometimes that spark is a moment, tipping the scale. And sometimes that spark is a decision. In the case of the latter, there is no doubt that it takes a certain amount of madness to tip that first domino—but it also takes courage, vision, and an all-encompassing belief, even misguided, in their mission….”

  Owen sees himself as a revolutionary, exposing the Archive his cause. That single-minded focus acts both as his strength and his weakness. But is it a weakness I can use?

  He’s so fixated on his goal that he can’t see the flaws. It’s proof that even someone as cold and calculating as Owen was once human. People—the living and the dead alike—see what they want to see and believe what they want to believe. Owen wants to believe in this mission, and he also wants to believe that I am salvageable.

  All I have to do is prove it.

  The moment the bell rings I’m on my feet, moving through the halls and their mess of sum total of silver or gold silver or gold Saturday school for purple laces if he ever hits me again I’ll out the doors and across the quad to the Narrows door set into the side of the shed, where I pull the key out from under my collar and pass through. Wesley’s coding system is different from mine, but I soon figure out that he’s labeled Returns with a white plus sign and the
Archive with a white X, and I slot my key, take a breath, and step through into the antechamber.

  Patrick is seated behind the desk, turning through the pages of the ledger. He pauses to write a note, then continues leafing through.

  “Miss Bishop,” he says, my name little more than a grumble. “Here to confess?”

  “Not yet,” I say. It’s still hard for me to believe he’s not the one responsible for the voids. I was sure he was out to get me removed. Erased. But he’s not—at least, not this time, this way.

  “I need to see Roland. Just for a few minutes.” Patrick’s eyes move up from the ledger to mine. “Please, Patrick. It’s important.”

  He closes the book slowly. “Second hall, third room,” he says, adding, “Be quick about it.”

  I set off through the open doors and into the atrium, but I don’t follow Patrick’s directions. Instead of cutting down the second hall to the third room, I head down the sixth hall, following it to the very end the way Roland did when he first showed me to his room. I half expect the corridors to change around me, the way they seem to when I trail him through the maze, but the straight line stays straight. I press my ear to the small set of doors at the end, listening for steps, then slip through into the smaller, dimly lit hall that holds the Librarians’ quarters.

  Halfway down the hall, I find his simple, dark-paneled door. It’s unlocked. The room is as cozy as it was before, but the lack of music whispering from the wall—and the lack of Roland sitting in his chair—makes the space seem too vulnerable. I whisper an apology for what I’m about to do.

  I cross to the table by the chair and slide open the drawer. The silver pocket watch is gone—surely Roland has it on him—but the old, palm-sized notebook is there. It sings beneath my fingers as I slip it gently into my back pocket, my heart twisting. I scour the rest of the drawer for a scrap of paper and pen, and when I find them, I write a note. I do not say I’m sorry, or that I will bring it back, only jot down two small words.

  Trust me.

  I don’t even look at the paper, since lives are messy and it will be easier to hide this small deviation from the theft if it’s subtle. If Owen goes looking, I want it to be a mere whisper in my head instead of an image. Instead I focus on the very real guilt I feel as I fold the note, put it in the drawer, and duck out. My heart thuds in my chest all the way back into the atrium.