The Dark Vault

by Victoria Schwab

  “Yes, I know, but—”

  “And are you not busy enough, Miss Bishop? Because last time I checked, you had”—he lifts a pad of paper from the table, flicks through several pages—“five Histories on your list.”

  Five?

  “You do know why you have a list, correct?”

  “Yes,” I manage.

  “And why it’s imperative that you clear it?”

  “Of course.” There’s a reason we constantly patrol, hoping to keep the numbers down, instead of just walking away, letting the Histories pile up in the Narrows. It’s said that if enough Histories woke and got into the space between the worlds, they wouldn’t need Keepers and keys to get through. They could force the doors open. Two ways through any lock, said Da.

  “Then why are you still standing in front of—”

  “Roland summoned me,” I say, holding up my Archive paper.

  Patrick huffs and sits back in his seat, examining me for a long moment.

  “Fine,” he says, returning to his work with little more than a gesture to the doors behind him.

  I round the desk, slowing to watch him write in the ancient ledger sprawled open before him, and then, barely lifting his pen, in one of a half dozen smaller books. This is the first time I’ve ever seen the desk look cluttered.

  “You seem busy,” I say as I pass.

  “That’s because I am,” he answers.

  “Busier than usual.”

  “How astute.”

  “I’m busier too, Patrick. You can’t tell me five names is standard, even for the Coronado.”

  He doesn’t look up. “We’re experiencing some minor technical difficulties, Miss Bishop. So sorry to inconvenience you.”

  I frown. “What kind of technical difficulties?” Glitching names? Armed Histories? Boys who don’t slip?

  “Minor ones,” he snaps, making it clear as day that he’s done talking.

  I put the list away as I pass through the main doors in search of Roland.

  Crossing into the warm light of the atrium, my spirits lift, and I feel that sense of peace Da always spoke of. The calm.

  And then something crashes.

  Not here in the atrium but down one of the branching halls, the metal sound of a shelf falling to the floor. Several Librarians rise from their work and hurry toward the noise, closing the doors behind them; but I stand very, very still, remembering that I am surrounded by the sleeping dead.

  I hold my breath and listen. Nothing happens. The doors stay closed. No sound comes through.

  And then a hand lands on my shoulder and I spin, twisting the arm back behind the body. In one fluid move, the arm and body are both gone, and somehow I’m the one being pinned, facedown, against a table.

  “Easy, there,” says Roland, letting go of my wrist and shoulder.

  I take a few steadying breaths and lean against the table. “Why did you summon me? Did you find something? And did you hear that crash—”

  “Not here,” he murmurs, motioning toward a wing. I follow him, rubbing my arm.

  The farther we get from the atrium, the older the Archive seems. Roland leads me down corridors that begin to twist and coil and shrink, laid out more like the Narrows than the stacks. The ceilings shift from arching overhead to dipping low, and the rooms themselves are smaller, cryptlike and dusty.

  “What was that sound?” I ask as Roland leads the way; but he doesn’t answer, only ducks into an oddly shaped alcove and turns again under a low stone arch. The room beyond is dim, and its walls are lined with worn, dated ledgers, not Histories. It is a cramped and faded version of the chamber in which I faced my trial.

  “We have a problem,” he says as soon as he’s closed the door. “I looked through that list of names you sent. Most of them didn’t tell me anything, but two of them did. Two more people died in the Coronado, both in August, both within a month of Marcus Elling. And both Histories were altered, their deaths removed.”

  I sink into a low leather chair, and Roland begins to pace. He looks exhausted, the lilt in his voice growing stronger as he talks. “I didn’t find them at first because they’d been mis-shelved, the entry ledgers saying one place but the catalogs saying another. Someone didn’t want them found.”

  “Who were they?”

  “Eileen Herring, a woman in her seventies, and Lionel Pratt, a man in his late twenties. Both lived in the Coronado, and both lived alone, just like Elling, but that’s the only connection I can find. I can’t even be certain they died in the Coronado, but their last intact memories are of the building. Eileen leaving her apartment on the second floor. Lionel sitting on the patio, having a smoke. The moments are mundane to a fault. Nothing about them gives any indication of what caused their deaths, and yet both have been blacked out.”

  “Marcus, Eileen, and Lionel died in August. But Regina was murdered in March.”

  His eyes narrow. “I thought you didn’t know her name.”

  The air snags in my lungs. I didn’t. Not until Owen told me. But I can’t exactly explain that I’ve been sheltering her brother.

  “You’re not the only one doing research, remember? I tracked down a resident of the Coronado, Ms. Angelli, who’d heard about the murder.”

  It’s not a lie, I reason. Just a manipulation.

  “What else did she know?” he presses.

  I shake my head, trying to keep the spin as clean as I can. “Not much. She didn’t seem eager to swap stories.”

  “Does Regina have a last name?”

  I hesitate. If I give it, Roland will cross-reference her with Owen, who’s notably absent. I know I should tell him about Owen—we’re already breaking rules—but there are rules and there are Rules, and while Roland has gone far enough to break the former, I don’t know how he’d handle my breaking the latter and harboring a History in the Narrows. And I’ve still got so many questions for Owen.

  I shake my head. “Angelli wouldn’t say, but I’ll keep pressing.” At least that lie will buy me a little time. I try to shift the focus back to the second set of deaths.

  “Five months between Regina’s murder and these three deaths, Roland. How do we even know they’re related?”

  He frowns. “We don’t. But it’s a suspicious number of filing errors. At first I thought it might be a cleanup, but…”

  “A cleanup?”

  “Sometimes, if things go badly—if a History does commit atroci-ties in the Outer, and there are victims as well as witnesses—the Archive does what it can to minimize the risk of exposure.”

  “Are you saying the Archive actively covers up murders?”

  “Not all evidence can be buried, but most can be twisted. Bodies can be disposed of. Deaths can be made to appear natural.” I must look as appalled as I feel, because he keeps talking. “I’m not saying it’s right, Miss Bishop; I’m just saying the Archive cannot afford to have people learning about Histories. About us.”

  “But would they ever hide evidence from their own?”

  He frowns again. “I’ve seen certain measures taken in the Outer. Surfaces altered. I’ve known members of the Archive who think the past should be sheltered here, in these walls, but not beyond them. People who think the Outer isn’t sacred. People who think there are things that Keepers and Crew should not see. But even they would never approve of this, of altering Histories, keeping the truth from us.” When he says us, he doesn’t mean me. He means the Librarians. He looks wounded. Betrayed.

  “So someone here went rogue,” I say. “The question is why.”

  “Not just why. Who.” Roland slides down into a chair. “Remember when I said we had a problem? Right after I found Eileen and Lionel, I went back to review Marcus’s History. I couldn’t. Someone had tampered with him. Erased him entirely.”

  I grip the arms of my chair. “But that means it was done by a current Librarian. Someone in the Archive now.”

  Suddenly I’m glad I’ve kept Owen a secret. If he is connected, then there’s one big difference
between the other victims and him: he’s awake. I stand a better chance of learning what he knows by listening than by turning him back into a corpse. And if he is connected, then the moment I turn him in, our rogue Librarian will almost certainly erase what’s left of his memories.

  “And judging by the rush job,” says Roland, “they know we’re digging.”

  I shake my head. “But I don’t get it. You said that Marcus Elling’s death was first altered when he was brought in. That was more than sixty years ago. Why would a current Librarian be trying to cover up the work of an old one?”

  Roland rubs his eyes. “They wouldn’t. And they’re not.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Alterations have a signature. Memories that have been hollowed out by different hands both register as black, but there’s a subtle dif-ference in the way they read. The way they feel. The way Marcus Elling’s History reads now is the same way it read before. The same way the other two read. They were all altered by the same person.”

  One person over the course of sixty-five years. “Can Librarians even serve that long?”

  “There’s not exactly mandatory retirement,” he says. “Librarians choose the duration of their term. And since, as long as we’re stationed here, we don’t age…” Roland trails off, and I make a mental list of everyone I’ve seen in the branch. There have to be a dozen, two dozen Librarians here at any one time. I know only a few by name.

  “It’s clever,” Roland says, half to himself. “Librarians are the one element of the Archive that isn’t—can’t be—fully recorded, kept track of. If they stayed too long in one place, a rogue action would have drawn attention, but Librarians are in a constant state of flux, of transfer. The staff is never together for very long. People come and go. They move freely through the branches. It’s conceivable…”

  I think of Roland, who’s been here since my induction; but the others—Lisa and Patrick and Carmen—all came later.

  “You stuck around,” I say.

  “Had to keep you out of trouble.”

  Roland’s Chucks bounce nervously.

  “What do we do now?” I ask.

  “We aren’t going to do anything.” Roland’s head snaps up. “You’re going to stay away from this case.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Mackenzie, that’s the other reason I summoned you. You’ve already taken too many chances—”

  “If you’re talking about the list of names—”

  “You’re lucky I’m the one who found it.”

  “It was an accident.”

  “It was reckless.”

  “Maybe if I’d known the paper could do that, maybe if the Archive didn’t keep everything so damn secret—”

  “Enough. I know you only want to help, but whoever is doing this is dangerous, and they clearly don’t want to get caught. It’s imperative that you stay out of—”

  “—the way?”

  “No, the crosshairs.”

  I think of Jackson’s knife and Hooper’s attack. Too late.

  “Please,” says Roland. “You have a lot more to lose. Let me take it from here.”

  I hesitate.

  “Miss Bishop…”

  “How long have you been a Librarian?” I ask him.

  “Too long,” he says. “Now, promise me.”

  I force myself to nod, and I feel a pinch of guilt as his shoulders visibly loosen because he believes me. He gets to his feet and heads to the door. I follow, but halfway there, I stop.

  “Maybe you should let me see Ben,” I say.

  “Why’s that?”

  “You know, as a cover-up. In case our rogue Librarian is watching.”

  Roland almost smiles. But he still sends me home.

  EIGHTEEN

  MOM SAYS THERE’S NOTHING a hot shower can’t fix, but I’ve been steaming up the bathroom for half an hour and I’m no closer to fixing anything.

  Roland sent me home with a last glance and a reminder not to trust anyone. Which isn’t hard when you know that someone is trying to bury the past and possibly you with it. My mind immediately goes to Patrick, but as much as I dislike him, the fact is he’s a model Librarian, and there are at least a dozen other Librarians in the Archive on a given day. It could be any of them. Where do you even start?

  I turn the water all the way hot and let it burn my shoulders. After Roland, I went hunting. I wanted to clear my head. It didn’t work, and I only managed to return the youngest two Histories, cut-ting my list in half for all of five minutes before three new names flashed up.

  I hunted for Owen too, but without any luck. I’m worried now that I’ve scared him away, though away is a relative term in the Narrows. There can be only so many places to hide, but I haven’t found them yet, and apparently he has. I’ve never met a History who didn’t want to be found. And why shouldn’t he hide? His bartered day is up, and I’m the one who means to send him back. And I will…but first I need to know what he knows, and to get that, I need to gain his trust.

  How do you gain a History’s trust?

  Da would say you don’t. But as the water scalds my shoulders, I think of the sadness in Owen’s eyes when he spoke of Regina—not of her death, when his voice went hollow, but the time before, when he talked about the games she’d play, the stories she’d hide throughout the building.

  One time she wrote me a story and scattered it all across the Coronado, wedged in garden cracks and under tiles, and in the mouths of statues….It took me days to recover the fragments, and even then I never found the ending….

  I snap the water off.

  That’s my shot at Owen’s trust. A token. A peace offering. Something to hold on to. My spirits start to sink. What are the odds of anything left for sixty-five years still being here? And then I think of the Coronado, its slow, unkempt decay, and I realize that maybe, maybe. Just maybe.

  I dress quickly, glancing at the Archive paper on my bed (and grimacing at the five names, the oldest—18). I used to wait days in hopes of getting a name, relished the moment of reveal. Now I shove the slip into my pocket. A stack of books sits on a large box, Dante’s Inferno on top of the pile. I tuck the paperback under my arm and head out.

  Dad is still at the kitchen table, on his third or fourth cup of coffee, judging by the near-empty pot beside him. Mom is sitting beside him, making lists. She has at least five of them in front of her, and she keeps writing and rewriting and rearranging as if she can decode her life that way.

  They both look up as I walk in.

  “Where are you off to?” asks Mom. “I bought paint.”

  One of the cardinal rules of lying is to never, if it can be prevented, involve someone else in your story, because you can’t control them. Which is why I want to punch myself when the lie that falls from my lips is, “To hang out with Wesley.”

  Dad beams. Mom frowns. I cringe, turning toward the door. And then, to my amazement, lie becomes truth when I open it to find a tall, black-clad shape blocking my way.

  “Lo and behold,” says Wesley, slouching in the doorway, holding an empty coffee cup and a brown paper bag. “I have escaped.”

  “Speak of the devil,” says Dad. “Mac was just on her way—”

  “Escaped what?” I ask, cutting Dad off.

  “The walls of Chez Ayers, behind which I have been confined for days. Weeks. Years.” He rests his forehead against the door frame. “I don’t even know anymore.”

  “I just saw you yesterday.”

  “Well. It felt like years. And now I come begging for coffee and bearing sweets with the intent of rescuing you from your indentured servitude in the pit of…” Wesley’s voice trails off as he sees my mother, arms crossed, standing behind me. “Oh, hello!”

  “You must be the boy,” says Mom. I roll my eyes, but Wesley only smiles. Not crookedly, either, but a genuine smile that should clash with his black spiked hair and dark-rimmed eyes, but doesn’t.

  “You must be the mom,” he says, sliding past m
e into the room. He transfers the paper bag to his left hand and extends his right to her. “Wesley Ayers.”

  Mom looks caught off guard by the smile, the open, easy way he does it. I know I am.

  He doesn’t even flinch when she takes his hand.

  “I can see why my daughter likes you.”

  Wesley’s smile widens as his hand slips back to his side. “Do you think she’s falling for my dashing good looks, my charm, or the fact I supply her with pastries?”

  Despite herself, Mom laughs.

  “’Morning, Mr. Bishop,” says Wesley.

  “It’s a beautiful day,” says Dad. “You two should go. Your mom and I can handle the painting.”

  “Great!” Wes swings his arm around my shoulder, and the noise slams into me. I push back, try to block him out, and make a mental note to punch him when we’re alone.

  Mom gets us two fresh coffees and walks us to the door, watching as we go. As soon as the door closes behind us, I knock Wesley’s arm off my shoulders and exhale at the sudden lack of pressure. “Ass.”

  He leads the way down to the lobby.

  “You, Mackenzie Bishop,” he says as we hit the landing, “have been a very bad girl.”

  “How so?”

  He rounds the banister at the base of the staircase. “You involved me in a lie! Don’t think I didn’t catch it.”

  We pass through the study to the garden door, and he throws it open and leads me into the dappled morning light. The rain has stopped, and as I look around, I wonder if Regina would hide a bit of story in a place like this. The ivy is overgrown and might keep a token safe, but I doubt a scrap of paper would survive the seasons, let alone the years.

  Wes drops onto the Faust bench and takes a cinnamon roll out of the paper bag. “Where were you really going, Mac?” he asks, holding out the bag.

  I drag my thoughts back to him, taking a roll as I perch on the arm of the bench.

  “Oh, you know,” I say dryly, “I thought I’d lie in the sun for a few hours, maybe read a book, savor my lazy summer.”

  “Still trying to clear your list?”