The Unbound

by Victoria Schwab

  And I’m catching up.

  The kid loses a stride when he looks back, and then another when he takes a corner too fast and slides into the wall. Harker springs off, keeps going. I cut the corner sharp, too, shoes skidding a fraction on the slick ground of the Narrows, but I know these halls, these walls, these floors, and I’m off again, closing the gap.

  He’s between one sprinting step and the next when my hand finally tangles in his collar, catching him off balance. I pull hard, and Harker goes sprawling backward to the floor, a few feet from the nearest Returns door, marked by a white chalk circle shaded in. He starts to scramble away, but I haul him to his feet and pin him back against the wall as I get my key into the lock and turn. The door opens, showering us both in glaring white light.

  I get a good look at his eyes as they go wide—the pupils wavering, about to slip—right before I shove him into the glaring white, but it’s not until after he’s through the door, the light is gone, and I’m left alone in the dark with my slamming pulse that I process the look he gave me and realize what it was.

  Fear.

  Not of the Narrows or of the glaring Returns, but of me.

  It’s like being doused with cold water, that thought, and it leaves me feeling breathless and dizzy. I bring a hand up to the wall for balance. A shallow pain draws my eyes to my arm, and for the first time I see the scratches there, raked across my skin, and a sick feeling spreads through me.

  When did this happen?

  When did Harker fight back?

  I rack my brain, trying to rewind my own mind, trying to remember when he scratched me, or what made him run in the first place, or how we met, and panic coils around me as I realize that I can’t.

  I remember stepping through the door and into the Narrows. I remember the sound of humming, and then…nothing. Nothing until halfway through the chase. The time between is just missing. I squeeze my eyes shut, scrambling for the memories and finding only a blur. I sink down to the floor and rest my forehead against my knees, forcing air into my lungs.

  One of Da’s lessons plays in my head, his voice low and steady and smooth: Keep your head on, Kenzie. Can’t think straight when you’re all worked up. Histories panic. Look at all the good it does them.

  I take another breath and try to calm down. What was I doing? I was reading the walls…I was about to read the walls when I heard the humming, and then…and then I lick my lips and taste blood, and just like that, the memories rush back.

  Someone was humming.

  Just like Owen used to do. My heart started to race as I followed the melody through the halls. It sounded so much like humming at first, but then it didn’t—the Narrows does distort things—growing louder and harsher until it wasn’t anything like humming, wasn’t music at all, but a hard and steady thud thud thud.

  Harker kicking a door halfway down the hall, so loud he didn’t hear me coming until I was there behind him, head pounding, and then he spun and, before I could even lie my way into his good graces, caught me off guard with his fist.

  It comes back like still frames, glimpses in a strobe.

  My hand tangled in his shirt.

  Shoving him back.

  A mess of thrashing limbs.

  His shoe coming up against my stomach.

  His hands clawing his way free.

  Both of us running.

  I feel sick with relief. The memory’s shaky, but it’s there.

  As I pull the list from my pocket and watch Harker’s name bleed off the page, one question claws its way through my spinning thoughts: why did I black out in the first place?

  If I had to guess, I’d say sleep. Or rather, the lack of it.

  This—blacking out, losing time, whatever it is—happened once before. A few days after Owen. Last time—which was the first time, and I’d hoped the only time—I hadn’t been sleeping, either. I was so tired, I could barely see straight. One moment I was trying to talk down a History, a teenage girl, and the next I was alone in the hall and my knuckles were raw and her name was gone from my list. When I finally calmed down, the memories came back, blurry and stilted, but there. She’d already slipped, thought I was someone else. Called me M (probably Em, like Emily or Emma). That’s all it had taken to make my hands shake and my heart race and my mind skip. A sliver of Owen.

  I told myself then it wasn’t a big deal. It only happened once—unlike the nightmares that came every night like clockwork—so I didn’t tell Roland. I didn’t want him to worry. Da used to say you had to see patterns, but not go looking for them, and I didn’t want to make something out of nothing. But Da also used to say that one mistake was an accident, but two was a problem.

  As I look down at the scratches on my arms, I know.

  This is officially a problem.

  I will myself to get back to my feet. I consider the door beside the one I just sent Harker through, the one marked with the hollow white circle I use to denote the Archive. I should tell Roland. And I will—later. Right now, I have to get home. Last time I lost a minute, maybe two, but now I can tell I’ve lost more than that. I dig my nails into my palms, hoping the sting will keep me awake as I head back for the numbered doors.

  The key dangles from its cord around my wrist, and I swing it up into my grip and slide the teeth into the lock on the door that leads back to the third floor. It opens, the hall beyond nothing but shadow from this side, and my shoe is halfway through when I hear a familiar voice on the other side and jerk back sharply, heart hammering in my chest.

  Stupid, stupid mistake.

  The doorway isn’t visible to normal people. If I’d passed through into the Coronado, I would have walked straight through the wall itself—at least it would have appeared that way—and into my mother.

  “It’s going well, I think.…” The Coronado may be lost from sight, but her voice reaches through the veiled space, muffled, yet audible. “Right, it takes time, I know.”

  I can hear her coming down the hall, nearing the Narrows door as she talks, the long pauses making it clear she’s on the phone. And then her footsteps stop right in front of me. Maybe she’s looking in the mirror across from the invisible door. I think of the schoolbag stashed behind the table under the mirror, and hope she hasn’t discovered it.

  “Oh, Mackenzie?”

  I stiffen, until I realize she’s answering the person on the line.

  “I don’t know, Colleen,” she says.

  I roll my eyes. Her therapist. Mom’s been seeing Colleen since Ben died last year. I’d hoped the sessions would end with the move. Apparently, they haven’t. Now I brace my hands on either side of the doorway and listen to one half of the conversation. I know I shouldn’t leave the Narrows door open, but my list is clear and my curiosity is piqued.

  “It hasn’t come up,” says Mom. “Yes, okay, I haven’t brought it up. But she seemed better. Seems. Seemed. It’s so hard to tell with her. I’m her mother. I should be able to tell, and I can’t. I can tell something’s wrong. I can tell she’s wearing this mask, but I can’t see past it.” My chest tightens at the pain in her voice. “No. It’s not drugs.”

  I clench my teeth against a curse. I hate Colleen. Colleen’s the one who told Mom to throw out Ben’s things. The one time we met face-to-face, she saw a scratch on my wrist from a pissed-off History and was convinced I did it to myself to feel things.

  “I know the symptoms,” says Mom, ticking off a list that pretty well sums up my current behavior—evasion, moodiness, troubled sleep, being withdrawn, inexplicable disappearances…though in my defense, I do my best to explain them. Just not using the truth. “But it’s not. Yes, I’m sure.” I’m glad she’s sticking up for me, at least on this front. “Okay,” she says after a long pause, starting down the hall again. “I will. I promise.” I listen to her trail off, wait for the jingling sound of her keys, the apartment door opening and closing, and then I sigh and step out into the hall.

  The Narrows door dissolves behind me as I slide my ring back on. T
he skirt and the bag seem undisturbed behind the table, and in a few short steps I’ve transformed back into an ordinary Hyde School junior. My reflection stares back at me, unconvinced.

  I can tell something’s wrong. I can tell she’s wearing this mask, but I can’t see past it.

  I practice my smile a few times, checking my mask to make sure it’s free of cracks before I turn down the hall and head home.

  That evening, I put on a show.

  I picture Da clapping in his slow, lazy way as I tell Mom and Dad about my day, injecting as much enthusiasm into my voice as I can without tipping my parents from pleasant surprise to suspicion.

  “Hyde’s pretty incredible,” I say.

  Dad lights up. “I want to hear all about it.”

  So I tell him. I’m basically feeding the pamphlet propaganda back to him, line by line, but while I may be amping up the excitement, the sentiment isn’t a total lie. I did enjoy it. And it feels good to tell something that even vaguely resembles the truth.

  “And you’ll never guess who goes there!” I say, stealing a carrot as Mom chops them.

  “You can tell us during dinner,” she says, shooing me away with a pile of placements and silverware. “Set the table first.” But she smiles as she says it.

  Dad clears some books from the table so I can set it and retreats to the couch to watch the news.

  “Who’s closing the coffee shop tonight?” I ask.

  “Berk’s got it.”

  Berk is Betty’s husband, and Betty is Nix’s caretaker. Nix is ancient and blind and lives up on the seventh floor and won’t come down because he’s wheelchair-bound and doesn’t trust the rickety metal elevators.

  Berk and Betty moved into one of the vacants on the sixth floor two weeks ago after Nix finally succeeded in lighting his scarf on fire with his cigarette. I was shocked—not about the fire, that was inevitable, but that they would move in for him, not being related in any way. But apparently Nix was like a father to Betty once, and now she’s acting like a daughter. It’s sweet, and it all worked out because Berk—who’s a painter—was looking for a social fix, and Mom was looking for a hand at Bishop’s. She can’t pay him yet, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He only asked to be able to hang his pieces in the coffee shop for sale.

  “I’ll take him down some dinner later,” says Mom, setting aside a plate.

  I’m carrying water glasses to the table when the headline on the TV catches my attention, and I look over Dad’s shoulder at the screen. It’s the same news story from early this morning, about the missing person. A room in disarray flashes across the screen, and I’m about to ask Dad to turn the volume up when Mom says, “Turn that off. Dinner’s ready.”

  Dad obediently clicks the TV off, but my eyes linger on the blackened screen, holding the image of the room in my mind. It looked familiar.…

  “Mackenzie,” Mom warns, and I blink, losing the image as I turn to find my parents both already at the table. They look like they’ve been waiting.

  I shake my head and manage a smile. “Sorry. Coming.”

  But sitting down turns out to be a bad idea.

  The moment I do, the fatigue catches back up, and I spend most of dinner rambling about Hyde just to stay awake. As soon as the dishes are cleared, I retreat to my room in the name of homework, but I’ve barely gotten through a page of reading before my eyes unfocus, the words on the paper blurring together. I try standing, then I try pacing while holding my textbook, but my mind can’t seem to grab hold of anything. I feel like my bones are made of lead.

  My gaze wanders to the bed. All I can think of is how much I want to lie down…

  The book slips through my fingers, hitting the ground with a soft thunk.

  …how badly I want to sleep…

  I reach the bed.

  …how certain I am…

  I tug back the covers.

  …that when I do…

  I sink into the sheets.

  …I won’t dream of anything.

  SEVEN

  THE ROOF IS full of monsters, and they are all alive.

  They perch on stone claws and watch with stone eyes as Owen stalks me through the maze of bodies.

  “Stop running, Miss Bishop,” his voice echoes across the rooftop.

  And just like that, the concrete floor crumbles beneath me and I plunge seven stories through the bones of the building to the Coronado lobby, hitting the floor so hard my bones sing. I roll onto my back and look up in time to see the gargoyles tumbling toward me. I throw my hands up, bracing for the weight of stone. It never comes. I blink and find myself in a cage made from the broken statues, a web of crossing arms and legs and wings. And standing in the middle is Owen, his knife dangling from his fingers.

  “The Archive is a prison,” he says calmly.

  He comes toward me, and I scramble to my feet and back away until I’m pressed up against the stone bodies. Their limbs jerk to life and shoot forward, grabbing my arms and legs, snaking around my waist. Every time I struggle the limbs tighten, my bones cracking under their grip. I bite back a scream.

  “But don’t worry.” Owen runs a hand over my head before tangling his fingers in my hair. “I will set you free.”

  He draws the flat side of the knife down my body, bringing the tip to rest between my ribs. He puts just enough weight on the blade to slice through my shirt and nick my skin, and I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to get away, trying to wake up, but the hand tangled in my hair tightens.

  “Open your eyes,” he warns.

  I drag them open and find his face inches from mine. “Why?” I growl. “So I can see the truth?”

  His smile sharpens. “No,” he says. “So I can watch the life go out of them.”

  And then he drives the knife forward into my chest.

  I sit up in the dark, one hand clutching at my shirt, the other pressed over my mouth to stifle the cry that’s already escaped. I know it’s a dream, but it is so terrifyingly real. My whole body aches from the fall and the gargoyles’ grip, and the place on my chest where the knife drove in burns with phantom pain.

  My face is damp, and I can’t tell if it’s from sweat or tears or both. The clock says twelve forty-five, and I draw up my knees and rest my head against them, taking a few slow, steadying breaths.

  A moment later, there is a knock on my door.

  “Mackenzie,” comes my father’s quiet voice. I look up as the door opens and I can see his outline in the light spilling from my parents’ bedroom into the hall behind him. He comes to sit on the edge of my bed, and I’m grateful to the dark for hiding whatever is written across my face right now.

  “What’s going on, hon?” he whispers.

  “Nothing,” I say. “Sorry if I woke you guys up. Just had a bad dream.”

  “Again?” he asks gently. We both know it’s been happening too often.

  “It’s no big deal,” I say, trying to keep my voice light.

  Dad tugs his glasses from his face and cleans them on his T-shirt. “You know what your Da used to tell me about bad dreams?”

  I know what Da used to tell me, but I doubt it’s the same thing he told my father, so I shake my head.

  “He used to tell me there were no bad dreams. Just dreams. That when we call them good or bad, we give importance to them. I know that doesn’t make it better, Mac. I know it’s easy to talk like that when you’re awake. But the fact is, dreams catch us with our armor off.”

  Not trusting myself to speak, I nod.

  “Do you want to…talk to someone about it?” He doesn’t mean talk to him or talk to Mom. He means a therapist. Like Colleen. But I’ve got more than enough people trying to get inside my head right now.

  “No. Really, I’m fine.”

  “You’re sure?”

  I nod again. “Trust me.”

  My heart sinks, because I can see in my father’s eyes that he wants to, but doesn’t. Da used to say that lies were easy, but trust was hard. Trust is like faith: it can turn people in
to believers, but every time it’s lost, trust becomes harder and harder to win back. I’ve spent the last four and a half years—since I became a Keeper—trying to cling to my parents’ trust, watching doubt replace it little by little. And doubt, Da warned, is like a current you have to swim against, one that saps your strength.

  “Well, if you change your mind…” he says, sliding to his feet.

  “I’ll let you know,” I say, watching him go.

  He’s right. I should talk to someone. But not Colleen.

  I listen to the sound of his receding steps after he’s closed the door, and to the murmur of my mother’s voice when he returns to their room. I let the whole apartment go quiet and dark, and only when I’m sure that they’re asleep do I get up, get dressed, and sneak out.

  I step into the Archive, and I shiver.

  My sleep hasn’t been the only thing affected by Owen and Carmen’s recent attack. The Archive has changed, too. It has always been marked by quiet, but where the lack of noise used to feel peaceful, now it feels coiled and tense. The silence is heavier, enforced by hushed voices and warning looks. The massive doors behind the antechamber’s desk have been pinned back like butterfly wings, held open to make sure that the newly installed sentinels have full visibility and immediate access to the atrium and the network of halls beyond. The two figures are the most striking addition—and the most loathsome. Dressed in solemn black, they flank the entrance to the Archive. The sentinels are Histories, like everyone else who works within the Archive walls; but unlike the Librarians, they wear no gold keys and do not seem fully awake.

  Roland told me that they’ve been implemented in every branch in his jurisdiction, though he himself had no say in the matter of their presence. The order for increased security came from over his head. I’m guessing that means it came from Agatha.

  Agatha, the assessor, who I haven’t seen again since the interrogation, but whose presence seems to haunt this place the way Owen’s haunts me.