The Dark Vault

by Victoria Schwab

But the name is gone. The paper is blank.

  “You look like you could use a muffin.”

  I shove the paper back in my jeans and look up to find Wesley Ayers at the other end of the hall, tossing a still-wrapped Welcome! muffin up and down like a baseball. I don’t feel like doing this right now, like putting on a face and acting normal.

  “You still have that?” I ask wearily.

  “Oh, I ate mine,” he says, heading toward me. “I swiped this one from Six B. They’re out of town this week.”

  I nod.

  When he reaches me, his face falls. “You all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I lie.

  He sets the muffin on the carpet. “You look like you need some fresh air.”

  What I need are answers. “Is there a place here where they keep records? Logs, anything like that?”

  Wesley’s head tilts when he thinks. “There’s the study. Mostly old books, classics, anything that looks, well, like it belongs in a study. But it might have something. It’s kind of the opposite of fresh air, though, and there’s this garden I was going to show—”

  “Tell you what. Point me to the study, and then you can show me whatever you want.”

  Wesley’s smile lights up his face, from his sharp chin all the way to the tips of his spiked hair. “Deal.”

  He bypasses the elevator and leads me down the flight of concrete steps to the grand staircase, and from there down into the lobby. I keep my distance, remembering the last time we touched. He’s several steps below me, and from this angle, I can just see beneath the collar of his black shirt. Something glints, a charm on a leather cord. I lean, trying to see—

  “Where are you going?” comes a small voice. Wesley jumps, grabs his chest.

  “Jeez, Jill,” he says. “Way to scare a guy in front of a girl.”

  It takes me several seconds to find Jill, but finally I spot her in one of the leather high-backed chairs in a front corner, reading a book. The book comes up to the bridge of her nose. She skims the pages with sharp blue eyes, and every now and then turns her attention up, as if she’s waiting for something.

  “He spooks easily,” she calls behind her book.

  Wesley runs his fingers through his hair and manages a tight laugh. “Not one of my proudest traits.”

  “You should see what happens when you really surprise him,” offers Jill.

  “That’s enough, brat.”

  Jill turns a page with a flourish.

  Wesley casts a glance back at me and offers his arm. “Onward?”

  I smile thinly but decline to take it. “After you,” I say.

  He leads the way across the lobby. “What are you looking for, anyway?”

  “Just wanted to learn about the building. Do you know much about it?”

  “Can’t say I do.” He guides me down a hall on the other side of the grand stairs.

  “Here we are,” he says, pushing open the door to the study. It’s stuffed to the brim with books. A corner desk and a few leather chairs furnish the space, and I scan the spines for anything useful. My eyes trail over encyclopedias, several volumes of poetry, a complete set of Dickens….

  “Come on, come on,” he says, crossing the room. “Keep up.”

  “Study first,” I say. “Remember?”

  “I pointed it out.” He gestures to the room as he reaches a pair of doors at the far side of the study. “You can come back later. The books aren’t going anywhere.”

  “Just give me a—”

  He flings the doors open. Beyond them, there’s a garden flooded with twilight and air and chaos. Wesley steps out onto the moss-covered rocks, and I drag my attention from the books and follow him out.

  The dying light lends the garden a glow, shadows weaving through vines, colors dipping darker, deeper. The space is old and fresh at once, and I forget how much I’ve missed the feel of green. Our old house had a small yard, but it was nothing like Da’s place. He had the city at his front but the country at his back, land that stretched out in a wild mass. Nature is constantly growing, changing, one of the few things that can’t hold memories. You forget how much clutter there is in the world, in the people and things, until you’re surrounded by green. And even if they don’t hear and see and feel the past the way I do, I wonder if normal people feel this too—the quiet.

  “‘The sun retreats,’” Wes says softly, reverently. “‘The day, outlived, is o’er. It hastens hence and lo, a new world is alive.’”

  My eyebrows must be creeping up, because when he glances over his shoulder at me, he gives me his slanted smile.

  “What? Don’t look so surprised. Beneath this shockingly good hair is something vaguely resembling a brain.” He crosses the garden to a stone bench woven over with ivy, and brushes away the tendrils to reveal the words etched into the rock.

  “It’s Faust,” he says. “And it’s possible I spend a good deal of time here.”

  “I can see why.” It’s bliss. If bliss had gone untouched for fifty years. The place is tangled, unkempt. And perfect. A pocket of peace in the city.

  Wesley slides onto the bench. He rolls up his sleeves and leans back to watch the streaking clouds, blowing a blue-black chunk of hair from his face.

  “The study never changes, but this place is different every moment, and really best at sun fall. Besides”—he waves a hand at the Coronado—“I can give you a proper tour some other time.”

  “I thought you didn’t live here,” I say, looking up at the dimming sky.

  “I don’t. But my cousin, Jill, does, with her mom. Jill and I are both only children, so I try to keep an eye on her. You have any siblings?”

  My chest tightens, and for a moment I don’t know how to answer. No one’s asked that, not since Ben died. In our old town, everyone knew better, skipped straight to pity and condolences. I don’t want either from Wesley, so I shake my head, hating myself even as I do, because it feels like I’m betraying Ben, his memory.

  “Yeah, so you know how it is. It can get lonely. And hanging around this old place is better than the alternative.”

  “Which is?” I find myself asking.

  “My dad’s. New fiancée. Satan in a skirt, and all. So I end up here more often than not.” He arches back, letting his spine follow the curve of the bench.

  I close my eyes, relishing the feel of the garden, the cooling air and the smell of flowers and ivy. The horror hidden in my room begins to feel distant, manageable, though the question still whispers in my mind: Did he get away? I breathe deep and try to push it from my thoughts, just for a moment.

  And then I feel Wesley stand and come up beside me. His fingers slide through mine. The noise hits a moment before his rings knock against mine, the bass and beat thrumming up my arm and through my chest. I try to push back, to block him out, but it makes it worse, the sound of his touch crushing even though his fingers are feather-light on mine. He lifts my hand and gently turns it over.

  “You look like you lost a fight with the moving equipment,” he says, gesturing to the bandage on my forearm.

  I try to laugh. “Looks like it.”

  He lowers my hand and untangles his fingers. The noise fades, my chest loosening by degrees until I can breathe, like coming up through water. Again my eyes are drawn to the leather cord around his neck, the charm buried beneath the black fabric of his shirt. My gaze drifts down his arms, past his rolled sleeves, toward the hand that just let go of mine. Even in the twilight I can see a faint scar.

  “Looks like you’ve lost a couple fights of your own,” I say, running my fingers through the air near his hand, not daring to touch. “How did you get that?”

  “A stint as a spy. I wasn’t much good.”

  A crooked line runs down the back of his hand. “And that?”

  “Scuff with a lion.”

  Watching Wesley lie is fascinating.

  “And that?”

  “Caught a piranha bare-handed.”

  No matter how absurd the tale, he says
it steady and simple, with the ease of truth. A scratch runs along his forearm. “And that?”

  “Knife fight in a Paris alley.”

  I search his skin for marks, our bodies drawing closer without touching.

  “Dove through a window.”

  “Icicle.”

  “Wolf.”

  I reach up, my fingers hovering over a nick on his hairline.

  “And this?”

  “A History.”

  Everything stops.

  His whole face changes right after he says it, like he’s been punched in the stomach. The silence hangs between us.

  And then he does an unfathomable thing. He smiles.

  “If you were clever,” he says slowly, “you would have asked me what a History was.”

  I am still frozen when he reaches out and brushes a finger over the three lines etched into the surface of my ring, then twists one of his own rings to reveal a cleaner but identical set of lines. The Archive’s insignia. When I don’t react—because no fluid lie came to me and now it’s too late—he closes the gap between us, close enough that I can almost hear the bass again, radiating off his skin. His thumb hooks under the cord around my throat and guides my key out from under my shirt. It glints in the twilight. Then he fetches the key from around his own neck.

  “There,” he says cheerfully. “Now we’re on the same page.”

  “You knew,” I say at last.

  His forehead wrinkles. “I’ve known since the moment you came into the hall last night.”

  “How?”

  “Your eyes went to the keyhole. You did a decent job of hiding the look, but I was watching for it. Patrick told me there would be a new Keeper here. Wanted to see for myself.”

  “Funny, because Patrick didn’t tell me there was an old one.”

  “The Coronado isn’t really my territory. It hasn’t been anyone’s for ages. I like to check in on Jill, and I keep an eye on the place while I’m at it. It’s an old building, so you know how it goes.” He taps a nail against his key. “I even have special access. Your doors are my doors.”

  “You’re the one who cleared my list,” I say, the pieces fitting together. “There were names on my list, and they just disappeared.”

  “Oh, sorry.” He rubs his neck. “I didn’t even think about that. This place has been shared for so long. They always keep the Coronado doors unlocked for me. Didn’t mean any harm.”

  A moment of quiet hangs between us.

  “So,” he says.

  “So,” I say.

  A smile begins to creep up the side of Wesley’s face.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Oh, come on, Mac…” He blows at a chunk of hair hanging in his face.

  “Come on, what?” I say, still sizing him up.

  “You don’t think it’s cool?” He gives up and fixes his hair with his fingers. “To meet another Keeper?”

  “I’ve never met one except for my grandfather.” It sounds naive, but it never occurred to me to think of others. I mean, I knew they existed, but out of sight, out of mind. The territories, the branches of the Archive—I think they’re all designed to make you feel like an only child. Unique. Or solitary.

  “Me either,” Wes is saying. “What a broadening experience this is.” He squares his shoulders toward me. “My name is Wesley Ayers, and I am a Keeper.” He breaks out into a full grin. “It feels good to say it out loud. Try.”

  I look up at him, the words caught in my throat. I have spent four years with this secret bottled in me. Four years lying, hiding, and bleeding, to hide what I am from everyone I meet.

  “My name is Mackenzie Bishop,” I say. Four years since Da died, and not a single slip. Not to Mom or Dad, not to Ben, or even to Lynds. “And I am a Keeper.”

  The world doesn’t end. People don’t die. Doors don’t open. Crew don’t pour out and arrest me. Wesley Ayers beams enough for both of us.

  “I patrol the Narrows,” he says.

  “I hunt Histories,” I say.

  “I return them to the Archive.”

  It becomes a game, whispered and breathless.

  “I hide who I am.”

  “I fight with the dead.”

  “I lie to the living.”

  “I am alone.”

  And then I get why Wes can’t stop smiling, even though it looks silly with his eyeliner and jet-black hair and hard jaw and scars. I am not alone. The words dance in my mind and in his eyes and against our rings and our keys, and now I smile too.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “My pleasure,” he says, looking up at the sky. “It’s getting late. I’d better go.”

  For one silly, nonsensical moment, I’m scared of his leaving, scared he’ll never come back and I’ll be left with this, this…loneliness. I swallow the strange panic and force myself not to follow him to the study door.

  Instead I keep still and watch him tuck his key beneath his shirt, roll his ring so the three lines are hidden against his palm. He looks exactly the same, and I wonder if I do too and how that’s possible, considering how I feel—like some door in me has been opened and left ajar.

  “Wesley,” I call after him, instantly berating myself when he stops and glances back at me.

  “Good night,” I say lamely.

  He smiles and closes the gap between us. His fingers brush over my key before they curl around it, and guide it under the collar of my shirt, the metal cold against my skin.

  “Good night, Keeper,” he says.

  And then he’s gone.

  TEN

  I LINGER A MOMENT in the garden after Wes is gone, savoring the taste of our confessions on my tongue, the small defiance of sharing a secret. I focus on the coolness creeping into the air around me, and the hush of the evening.

  Da took me onto the stretch of green behind his house once and told me that building walls—blocking out people and their noise—should feel like this. An armor of quiet. Told me that walls were just like a ring but better because they were in my head, and because they could be strong enough to silence anything. If I could just learn to build them.

  But I couldn’t. I sometimes think that maybe, if I could remember what it felt like, touching people and feeling nothing but skin…But I can’t, and when I try to block out their noise, it just gets worse, and I feel like I’m in a glass box under the ocean, the sound and pressure cracking in. Da ran out of time to teach me, so all I have are frustrating memories of him wrapping his arm around people without even flinching, making it look so easy, so normal.

  I would give anything to be normal.

  The thought creeps in, and I force it away. No I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t give anything. I wouldn’t give the bond I had with Da. I wouldn’t give the time I have with Ben’s drawer. I wouldn’t give Roland, and I wouldn’t give the Archive, with its impossible light and the closest thing I’ve ever felt to peace. This is all I have. This is all I am.

  I head for the study doors, thinking of the murdered girl and the bloodstained boy. I have a job. SERVAMUS MEMORIAM. I push the doors open, and stiffen when I see the large woman behind the desk in the corner.

  “Ms. Angelli.”

  Her eyebrows inch into a nest of hair I strongly suspect is a wig, and a moment of surprise passes before recognition spreads across her broad face. If she’s upset to see me after this morning, she doesn’t show it, and I wonder for once if I read too much into her rush to leave. Maybe she really was late for an appraisal.

  “Mackenzie Bishop, of the baked goods,” she says. Her voice is quieter here in the study, almost reverent. Several large texts are spread before her, the corners of the pages worn. A cup of tea sits nestled in the space between two books.

  “What are you reading?” I ask.

  “Histories, mostly.” I know she only means the kind in books, the little h kind, as Da would say. Still, I flinch.

  “Where did they all come from?” I ask, gesturing toward the volumes stacked on the table and lining the walls.


  “The books? Oh, they appeared over time. A resident took one and left two behind. The study simply grew. I’m sure they stocked it when the Coronado was first converted, leather-bound classics and atlases and encyclopedias. But these days it’s a delightful mix of old and new and odd. Just the other night I found a romance novel mixed in with the directories! Imagine.”

  My pulse skips. “Directories?”

  Something nervous shifts in her face, but she points a ringed finger over her shoulder. My eyes skim the walls of books behind her until they land on a dozen or so slightly larger than the rest, more uniform. In the place of a title, each spine has a set of dates.

  “They chronicle the residents?” I ask casually, eyes skimming the years. The dates go all the way back to the earliest parts of the past century. The first half of the books are red. The second half are blue.

  “They were first used while the Coronado was still a hotel,” she explains. “A kind of guestbook, if you will. Those red ones, those are from the hotel days. The blue ones are from the conversion on.”

  I round the table to the shelf that bears the books’ weight. Pulling the most recent one from the wall and flipping through, I see that each directory comprises five years’ worth of residential lists, an ornate page dividing each year. I go to the last divider, the most recent year, and turn until I get to the page for the third floor. In the column for 3F, someone has crossed out the printed word Vacant and added Mr. and Mrs. Peter Bishop in pencil. Flipping back through, I find that 3F has been vacant for two years, and was rented before that to a Mr. Bill Lighton. I close the book, return it to the shelf, and immediately take up the previous directory.

  “Looking for something?” Ms. Angelli asks. There’s a subtle tension in her voice.

  “Just curious,” I say, again searching for 3F. Still Mr. Lighton. Then Ms. Jane Olinger. I pause, but I know from reading the walls that it was more than ten years ago, and besides, the girl was too young to be living alone. I reshelve the book and pull the next one down.

  Ms. Olinger again.

  Before that, Mr. and Mrs. Albert Locke. Still not far enough.

  Before that, Vacant.

  Is this how normal people learn the past?