The Dark Vault

by Victoria Schwab

  Ms. Angelli frowns and sets Jezzie back in the apartment, and locks the door.

  “I’m sorry,” she says abruptly. “You caught me on my way out. I’ve got an appraisal in the city.”

  “Oh,” I fumble. “Well, maybe we could talk more, some other time?”

  “Some other time,” she echoes, setting off down the hall at a surprising pace.

  I watch her go. She clearly knows something. It never really occurred to me that someone would know and not want to share. Maybe I should stick to reading walls. At least they can’t refuse to answer.

  My footsteps echo on the concrete stairs as I ascend to the fifth floor, where not a single person appears to be home. I leave a trail of muffins in my wake. Is this place empty? Or just unfriendly? I’m already reaching for the stairwell door at the other end of the hall when it swings open abruptly and I run straight into a body. I stumble back, steadying myself against the wall, but I’m not fast enough to save the muffins.

  I cringe and wait for the sound of the basket tumbling, but it never comes. When I look up, a guy is standing there, the basket safely cradled in his arms. Spiked hair and a slanted smile. My pulse skips.

  The third-floor lurker from last night.

  “Sorry about that,” he says, passing me the basket. “No harm, no foul?”

  “Yeah,” I say, straightening. “Sure.”

  He holds out his hand. “Wesley Ayers,” he says, waiting for me to shake.

  I’d rather not, but I don’t want to be rude. The basket’s in my right hand, so I hold out my left awkwardly. When he takes it, the sounds rattle in my ears, through my head, deafening. Wesley is made like a rock band, drums and bass and interludes of breaking glass. I try to block out the roar, to push back, but that only makes it worse. And then, instead of shaking my hand, he gives a theatrical bow and brushes his lips against my knuckles, and I can’t breathe. Not in a pleasant, butterflies-and-crushes way. I literally cannot breathe around the shattering sound and the bricklike beat. My cheeks flush hot, and the frown must have made its way onto my face, because he laughs, misreading my discomfort, and lets go, taking all the noise and pressure with him.

  “What?” he says. “That’s custom, you know. Right to right, handshake. Left to right, kiss. I thought it was an invitation.”

  “No,” I say curtly. “Not exactly.” The world is quiet again, but I’m still thrown off and having trouble hiding it. I shuffle past him toward the stairs, but he turns to face me, his back to the hall.

  “Ms. Angelli, in Four D,” he continues. “She always expects a kiss. It’s hard with all the rings she wears.” He holds up his left hand, wiggles his fingers. He’s got a few of his own.

  “Wes!” calls a young voice from an open doorway halfway down the hall. A small, strawberry-blond head pops out of 5C. I want to be annoyed that she didn’t answer when I knocked, but I’m still resisting the urge to sit down on the checkered carpet. Wesley makes a point of ignoring her, his attention trained on me. Up close I can confirm that his light brown eyes are ringed with eyeliner.

  “What were you doing in the hall last night?” I ask, trying to bury my unease. His expression is blank, so I add, “The third-floor hall. It was late.”

  “It wasn’t that late,” he says with a shrug. “Half the cafés in the city were still open.”

  “Then why weren’t you in one of them?” I ask.

  He smirks. “I like the third floor. It’s so…yellow.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s yellow.” He reaches out and taps the wallpaper with a painted black nail. “Seventh is purple. Sixth is blue. Fifth”—he gestures around us—“is clearly red.”

  I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s clearly any color.

  “Fourth is green,” he continues. “Third is yellow. Like your bandana. Retro. Nice.”

  I bring a hand up to my hair. “What’s second?” I ask.

  “It’s somewhere between brown and orange. Ghastly.”

  I almost laugh. “They all look a bit gray to me.”

  “Give it time,” he says. “So, you just move in? Or do you enjoy roaming the halls of apartment buildings, hocking”—he peers into the basket—“baked goods?”

  “Wes,” the girl says again, stamping her foot, but he ignores her pointedly, winking at me. The girl’s face reddens, and she disappears into the apartment. A moment later she emerges, weapon in hand.

  She sends the book spinning through the air with impressive aim, and I must have blinked, or missed something, because the next min-ute, Wesley’s hand has come up and the book is resting in it. And he’s still smiling at me.

  “Be right there, Jill.”

  He brushes the book off and lets it fall to his side while he peers into the muffin basket. “This basket nearly killed me. I feel I deserve compensation.” His hand is already digging through the cellophane, past ribbons and tags.

  “Help yourself,” I say. “You live here, then?”

  “Can’t say that I do—Oooooh, blueberry.” He lifts a muffin and reads the label. “So you are a Bishop, I presume.”

  “Mackenzie Bishop,” I say. “Three F.”

  “Nice to meet you, Mackenzie,” he says, tossing the muffin into the air a few times. “What brings you to this crumbling castle?”

  “My mother. She’s on a mission to renovate the café.”

  “You sound so enthused,” he says.

  “It’s just old…” That’s enough sharing, warns a voice in my head.

  One dark eyebrow arches. “Afraid of spiders? Dust? Ghosts?”

  “No. Those things don’t worry me.” Everything is loud here, like you.

  His smile is teasing, but his eyes are sincere. “Then what?”

  I’m spared by Jill, who emerges with another book. Part of me wants to see this Wesley try to stave off a second blow while holding a book and a blueberry muffin, but he turns away, conceding.

  “All right, all right, I’m coming, brat.” He tosses the first book back to Jill, who fumbles it. And then he casts one last look at me with his crooked smile. “Thanks for the muffin, Mac.” He just met me and he’s already using a nickname. I’d kick his ass, but there’s a slight affection to the way he says it, and for some reason I don’t mind.

  “See you around.”

  Several moments after the door to 5C has closed, I’m still standing there when the scratch of letters in my pocket brings me to my senses. I head for the stairs and pull the paper from my jeans.

  This History is old enough that I can’t afford to put it off. They slip so much faster the older they get—distress to destruction in a matter of hours; minutes, even. I get back to the third floor, ditching the basket in the stairwell, and pocket my ring as I reach the painting of the sea. I pull the key’s cord over my head, wrapping it several times around my wrist as my eyes adjust to make out the keyhole in the faint wall crack. I slot the key and turn. A hollow click; the door floats to the surface, lined in light, and I head back into the forever night of the Narrows.

  I close my eyes and press my fingertips against the nearest wall, reaching until I catch hold of the memories, and behind my eyes the Narrows reappear, bleak and bare and grayer, but the same. Time rolls away beneath my touch, but the memory sits like a picture, unchanging, until the History finally flickers in the frame, blink-and-you-miss-it quick. The first time, I do miss it, and I have to drag time to a stop and turn it forward, breathing out slow, slow, inching frame by frame until I see him. It goes like empty empty empty empty empty empty body empty empty—gotcha. I focus, holding the memory long enough to identify the shape as a teenage boy in a green hoodie—it must be Jackson—and then I nudge the memory forward and watch him walk past from right to left, and turn the first corner. Right.

  I blink, the Narrows sharpening around me as I pull back from the wall, and follow Jackson’s path around the corner. Then I start again, repeating the process at each turn until I close the gap, until I’m nearly walking in his wake. Just
as I’m reading the fourth or fifth wall, I hear him, not the muddled sounds of the past but the shuffling steps of a body in the now. I abandon the memory and track the sound down the hall, whipping around the corner, where I find myself face-to-face with—

  Myself.

  Two distorted reflections of my sharp jaw and my yellow bandana pool in the black that’s spreading across the History’s eyes, eating up the color as he slips.

  Jackson Lerner stands there staring at me with his head cocked, a mop of messy reddish brown hair falling against his cheeks. Beneath his bright green hoodie, he has that gaunt look boys sometimes get in their teens. Like they’ve been stretched. I take a small step back.

  “What the hell’s going on here?” he snaps, hands stuffed into his jeans. “This some kind of fun house or something?”

  I keep my tone empty, even. “Not really, no.”

  “Well, it blows,” he says, a thin layer of bravado masking the fear in his voice. Fear is dangerous. “I want to get out of here.”

  He shifts his weight, as solid as flesh and blood on the stained floor. Well, as solid as flesh, anyway. Histories don’t bleed. He shifts again, restless, and then his blackening eyes drift down to my hand, to the place where my key dangles from the cord wrapped around my wrist. The metal glints.

  “You got a key.” Jackson points, gaze following the key’s small, swinging movements. “Why don’t you just let me out? Huh?”

  I can hear the change in tone. Fear twists into anger.

  “All right.” Da would tell me to stay steady. The Histories will slip; you can’t afford to. I glance around at the nearest doors.

  But they all have chalk X’s.

  “What are you waiting for?” he growls. “I said, let me out.”

  “All right,” I say again, sliding back. “I’ll take you to the right door.”

  I steal another step away. He doesn’t move.

  “Just open this one,” he says, pointing to the nearest outline, X and all.

  “I can’t. We need to find one with a white circle and then—”

  “Open the damn door!” he yells, lunging for the key around my wrist. I dodge.

  “Jackson,” I snap, and the fact that I know his name causes him to pause. I try a different approach. “You have to tell me where you want to go. These doors all go to different places. Some don’t even open. And some of them do, but the places they lead are very bad.”

  The anger written across his face fades into frustration, a crease between his shining eyes, a sadness in his mouth. “I just want to go home.”

  “Okay,” I say, letting a small sigh of relief escape. “Let’s go home.”

  He hesitates.

  “Follow me,” I press. The thought of turning my back on him sends off a slew of warning lights in my head, but the Narrows are too, well, narrow for us to pass through side by side. I turn and walk, searching for a white circle. I catch sight of one near the end of the hall, and pick up my pace, glancing back to make sure Jackson is with me.

  He’s not.

  He’s stopped, several feet back, and is staring at the keyhole of a door set into the floor. The edge of an X peeks out beneath his shoe.

  “Come on, Jackson,” I say. “Don’t you want to go home?”

  He toes the keyhole. “You aren’t taking me home,” he says.

  “I am.”

  He looks up at me, his eyes catching the thin stream of light coming from the keyhole at his feet. “You don’t know where my home is.”

  That is, of course, a very good point. “No, I don’t.” A wave of anger washes over his face when I add, “But the doors do.”

  I point to the one at his feet. “It’s simple. The X means it’s not your door.” I point to the one just ahead, the filled-in circle drawn on its front. “That one, with the chalk circle. That’s your door. That’s where we’re going.”

  Hope flickers in him, and I might feel bad about lying if I had any choice. Jackson catches up, then pushes past me.

  “Hurry up,” he says, waiting by the door, running a finger over the chalk as his gaze continues down the hall. I reach out to slide the key into the lock.

  “Wait,” he says. “What’s that?”

  I look up. He’s pointing at another door, one at the very end of the hall. A white circle has been drawn above the keyhole, large enough to see from here. Damn.

  “Jackson—”

  He spins on me. “You lied. You’re not taking me home.” He steps forward, and I step back, away from the door.

  “I didn’t—”

  He doesn’t give me a chance to lie again, but lunges for the key. I twist out of the way, catching his sleeved wrist as he reaches out. I wrench it behind his back, and he yelps, but somehow, by some combination of fighter’s luck and sheer will, twists free. He turns to run, but I catch his shoulder and force him forward, against the wall.

  I keep my arm firmly around his throat, pulling back and up with enough force to make him forget that he is six inches taller than I am, and still has two arms and two legs to fight with.

  “Jackson,” I say, trying to keep my voice level, “you’re being ridiculous. Any door with a white circle can take you—”

  And then I see metal, and jump back just in time, the knife in his hand arcing through the air, fast. This is wrong. Histories never have weapons. Their bodies are searched when they’re shelved. So where did he get it?

  I kick up and send him reeling backward. It only buys a moment, but a moment is long enough to get a good look at the blade. It gleams in the dark, well-kept steel as long as my hand, a hole drilled in the grip so it can be spun. It is a lovely weapon. And there is no way it belongs to a punk teen with a worn-out hoodie and a bad attitude.

  But whether it’s his, or he stole it, or someone gave it to him—a possibility I don’t even want to consider—it doesn’t change the fact that right now he’s the one holding a knife.

  And I’ve got nothing.

  SEVEN

  I AM ELEVEN, AND you are stronger than you look.

  You take me out into the summer sun to show me how to fight. Your limbs are weapons, brutally fast. I spend hours figuring out how to avoid them, how to dodge, roll, anticipate, react. It’s get out of the way or get hit.

  I’m sitting on the ground, exhausted and rubbing my ribs where you got a touch, even though I saw you try to pull back.

  “You said you’d teach me how to fight,” I say.

  “I am.”

  “You’re only showing me how to defend.”

  “Trust me. You need to know that first.”

  “I want to learn how to attack.” I cross my arms. “I’m strong enough.”

  “Fighting isn’t really about using your strength, Kenzie. It’s about using theirs. Histories will always be stronger. Pain doesn’t stick, so you can’t hurt them, not really. They don’t bleed, and if you kill them, they don’t stay dead. They die, they come back. You die, you don’t.”

  “Can I have a weapon?”

  “No, Kenzie,” you snap. “Never carry a weapon. Never count on anything that’s not attached to you. It can be taken. Now, get back up.”

  There are times when I wish I’d broken Da’s rules. Like right now, staring at the sharp edge of a knife in the hands of a slipping History. But I don’t break Da’s rules, not ever. Sometimes I break the Archive’s rules, or bend them a bit, but not his. And they must work, because I’m still alive.

  For now.

  Jackson fidgets with the knife, and I can tell by the way he holds it he’s not used to the weapon. Good. Then at least I stand a chance of getting it away from him. I tug the yellow bandana from my hair and pull it tight between my hands. And I force my mouth to smile, because he might have the advantage as far as sharp things go, but even when the game turns physical, it never stops being mental.

  “Jackson,” I say, pulling the fabric taut. “You don’t need to—”

  Something moves in the hall beyond him. A shadow there and then
gone, a dark shape with a silver crown. Sudden enough to catch my attention, dragging it from Jackson for only a second.

  Which is, of course, the second he lunges.

  His limbs are longer than mine, and it’s all I can do to get out of the way. He fights like an animal. Reckless. But he’s holding the knife wrong, too low, leaving a gap on the hilt between his hand and the blade. The next slice comes blindingly quick, and I lean back but hold my ground. I have an idea, but it means getting close, which is always risky when the other person has a knife. He jabs again, and I try to twist my body to get my arms to one side, one above and one below the knife; but I’m not fast enough, and the blade skims my forearm. Pain burns over my skin, but I’ve almost got this—and sure enough, on the next try he jabs wrong and I dodge right, lifting one arm and lowering the other so the knife slices into the circle of space made by my limbs and the bandana. He sees the trap too late, jerks back; but I swing my hand down, looping the fabric around the knife, the gap on the hilt. I snap it tight and bring my boot to the front of his green hoodie as hard as I can, and he stumbles, losing his hold on the knife.

  The fabric goes slack and the blade tumbles into my grip, handle hitting my palm right as he dives forward, tackling me around the waist and sending us both to the floor. He knocks the air from my lungs like a brick to the ribs, and the blade goes skittering into the dark.

  At least it’s a fair fight now. He might be strong, made stronger by slipping, but he clearly didn’t have a grandfather who saw combat training as a bonding opportunity. I free my leg from under him and manage to get my foot against the wall, for once thankful that the Narrows are so narrow. Pushing off, I roll on top of Jackson, just in time to dodge a clumsily thrown fist.

  And then I see it on the floor, right above his shoulder.

  A keyhole.

  I never marked it, so I don’t know where it leads, or if my key will even work, but I have to do something. Ripping my wrist and my key free of his grip, I drive the metal teeth down into the gap and turn, holding my breath until I hear it click. I look down into Jackson’s wild eyes just before the door falls open, plunging us both downward.