The Dark Vault

by Victoria Schwab

  I weave through the stone bodies, laying my hands on each one, reaching, hoping one of them will hum. But they are all silent, empty. I’m nearly back to the rusted door when I hear it. I pause midstep, my fingers resting on an especially toothy gargoyle to my right.

  He’s whispering.

  The sound is little more than an exhale through clenched teeth, but there it is, the faintest hum against my skin. I close my eyes and roll time back. When I finally reach the memory, it’s faded, a pattern of light blurred to nearly nothing. I sigh and pull away, when something snags my attention—a bit of metal in the gargoyle’s mouth. Its face is turned up to the sky, and time has worn away the top of its head and most of its features, but its fanged mouth hangs open an inch or two, intact, and something is lodged behind its teeth. I reach between stone fangs and withdraw a slip of rolled paper, bound by a ring.

  One time she wrote me a story and scattered it across the Coronado, wedged in garden cracks and under tiles, and in the mouths of statues…

  Regina.

  My hands shake as I slide the metal off and uncurl the brittle page.

  I let the paper curl in on itself and look at the ring that held it closed. It’s not jewelry—it’s too big to fit a finger or a thumb—and clearly not the kind a young girl would wear anyway, but a perfect, rounded thing. It appears to be made of iron. The metal is cold and heavy, and one small hole has been drilled into the side of it; but other than that, the ring is remarkably undisturbed by scratches or imperfections. I slide it gently back over the paper and send up a silent thank-you to the long-dead girl.

  I can’t give Owen much time, and I can’t give him closure.

  But I can give him this.

  “Owen?”

  I wince at the sound of my own voice echoing through the Narrows.

  “Owen!” I call again, holding my breath as I listen for something, anything. Still hiding, then. I’m about to reach out and read the walls—though they failed to lead me to him last time—when I hear it, like a quiet, careful invitation.

  The humming. It is thin and distant, like threads of memory, just enough to take hold of, to follow.

  I wind through the corridors, letting the melody lead me, and finally find Owen sitting in an alcove, a doorless recess, the lack of key light and outlines rendering the space even dimmer than the rest of the Narrows. No wonder I couldn’t find him. My eyes barely register the space. Pressed against the wall, he is little more than a dark shape crowned in silver-blond, his head bowed as he hums and runs his thumb over the small dark line on his palm.

  He looks up at me, the song trailing into the nothing. “Mackenzie.” His voice is calm but his eyes are tense, as if he’s trying to steel himself. “Has it been a day?”

  “Not quite,” I say, stepping into the alcove. “I found something.” I sink to my knees. “Something of yours.”

  I hold out my hand and uncurl my fingers. The slip of paper bound by the iron ring shines faintly in the dark.

  Owen’s eyes widen a fraction. “Where did you…?” he whispers, voice wavering.

  “I found it in a gargoyle’s mouth,” I say. “On the Coronado roof.” I offer him the note and the ring, and when he takes it, his skin brushes mine and there is a moment of quiet in my head, a sliver, and then it’s gone as he pulls back, examining my gift.

  “How did you—”

  “Because I live there now.”

  Owen lets out a shuddering breath. “So that’s where the numbered doors lead?” he asks. Longing creeps into his voice. “I think I knew that.”

  He slides the fragile paper from its ring and reads the words despite the dark. I watch his lips move as he recites them to himself.

  “It’s from the story,” he whispers. “The one she hid for me, before she died.”

  “What was it about?”

  His eyes lose focus as he thinks, and I don’t see how he can draw up a story from so long ago, until I remember that he’s passed the decades sleeping. Regina’s murder is as fresh to him as Ben’s is to me.

  “It was a quest. A kind of odyssey. She took the Coronado and made it grand, not just a building, but a whole world, seven floors full of adventure. The hero faced caves and dragons, unclimbable walls, impassable mountains, incredible dangers.” A faint laugh crosses his lips as he remembers. “Regina could make a story out of anything.” He closes his hand over the note and the ring. “Could I keep this? Just until the day’s over?”

  I nod, and Owen’s eyes brighten—if not with trust, then with hope. Just like I wanted. And I hate to steal that flicker of hope from him so soon, but I don’t have a choice. I need to know.

  “When I was here before,” I say, “you were going to tell me about Robert. What happened to him?”

  The light goes out of Owen’s eyes as if I blew out a candle’s flame.

  “He got away,” he says through clenched teeth. “They let him get away. I let him get away. I was her big brother and I…” There’s so much pain in his voice as it trails off; but when he looks at me, his eyes are clear, crisp. “When I first found my way here, I thought I was in Hell. Thought I was being punished for not finding Robert, for not tearing the world apart in search of him, for not tearing him apart. And I would have. Mackenzie, I really would have. He deserved that. He deserved worse.”

  My throat tightens as I tell Owen what I’ve told myself so many times, even though it never helps. “It wouldn’t bring her back.”

  “I know. Trust me, I do. And I would have done far worse,” he says, “if I’d thought there was a way to bring Regina back. I would have traded places. I would have sold souls. I would have torn this world apart. I would have done anything, broken any rule, just to bring her back.”

  My heart aches. I can’t count the times I’ve sat beside Ben’s drawer and wondered how much noise it would take to wake him up. And I can’t deny how hard I’ve wished, since I met Owen, that he wouldn’t slip: because if he could make it through, why not Ben?

  “I was supposed to protect her,” he says, “and I got her killed….” He must take my silence for simple pity, because he adds, “I don’t expect you to understand.”

  But I do. Too well.

  “My little brother is dead,” I say. The words get out before I can stop them. Owen doesn’t say I’m sorry. But he does shift closer, until we’re sitting side by side.

  “What happened?” he asks.

  “He was killed,” I whisper. “Hit and run. They got away. I would give anything to rewrite that morning, to walk Ben all the way to school, take an extra five seconds to hug him, to draw on his hand, do anything to change the moment when he crossed the street.”

  “And if you could find the driver…” says Owen.

  “I would kill him.” There is no doubt in my voice.

  A silence falls around us.

  “What was he like?” he asks, knocking his knee against mine. There is something so simple in it, as if I am just a girl, and he is just a boy, and we are sitting in a hallway—any hallway, not the Narrows—and I’m not talking about my dead brother with a History I’m supposed to have sent back.

  “Ben? He was too smart for his own good. You couldn’t lie to him, not even about things like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. He’d put on these silly glasses and cross-examine you until he found a crack. And he couldn’t focus on anything unless he was drawing. He was really great at art. He made me laugh.” I’ve never spoken this way about Ben, not since he died. “And he could be a real brat sometimes. Hated sharing. Would break something before he’d let you have it. This one time he broke an entire box of pencils because I wanted to borrow one. As if breaking pencils made them useless. So I pulled out this sharpener, one of those little plastic ones, and sharpened all the pencil halves and then we each had a set. Half as long as they were to start, but they still worked. It drove him mad.”

  A small laugh escapes, and then my chest tightens. “It feels wrong to laugh,” I whisper.

  “Isn’t it st
range? It’s like after they die, you’re only allowed to remember the good. But no one’s all good.”

  I feel the scratch of letters in my pocket, but leave it.

  “I’ve gone to see him,” I say. “In the stacks. I talk to him, to his shelf, tell him what he’s missing. Never the good stuff, of course. Just the boring, the random. But no matter how I hold on to his memory, I’m starting to forget him, one detail at a time. Some days I think the only thing that keeps me from prying open his drawer, from seeing him, from waking him, even, is the fact it’s not him. Not really. They tell me there’s no point because it wouldn’t be him.”

  “Because Histories aren’t people?” he asks.

  I cringe. “No. That’s not it at all.” Even though most Histories aren’t people, aren’t human, not the way Owen is. “It’s just that Histories have a pattern. They slip. The only thing that hurts me more than the idea of the thing in that drawer not being my brother is the idea of its being him, and my causing him pain. Distress. And then having to send him back to the stacks after all of it.”

  I feel Owen’s hand drift toward mine, hover just above my skin. He waits to see if I’ll stop him. When I don’t, he curls his fingers over mine. The whole world quiets at his touch. I lean my head against the wall and close my eyes. The quiet is welcome. It dulls the thoughts of Ben.

  “I don’t feel like I’m slipping,” says Owen.

  “That’s because you aren’t.”

  “Well, that means it’s possible, right? What if—”

  “Stop.” I pull free of his touch and push myself to my feet.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, standing. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “I’m not upset,” I say. “But Ben’s gone. There’s no bringing him back.” The words are directed at myself more than at him. I turn to go. I need to move. Need to hunt.

  “Wait,” he says, taking my hand. The quiet floods in as he holds up the note in his other hand. “If you find any more of Regina’s story, would you…would you bring it to me?” I hover at the edge of the alcove. “Please, Mackenzie. It’s all I have left of her. What wouldn’t you give, to have something, anything, of Ben’s to hold on to?”

  I think of the box of Ben’s things, overturned on my bed, my hands shaking as I picked up each item and prayed there would be a glimpse, a fractured moment, anything. Clinging to a silly pair of plastic glasses with nothing more than a single, smudged memory.

  “I’ll keep an eye out,” I say, and Owen pulls me into a hug. I flinch but feel nothing, only steady quiet.

  “Thank you,” he whispers against my ear, and my face flushes as his lips graze my skin. And then his arms slide away, taking the quiet and the touch, and he retreats into the alcove, the darkness swallowing everything but his silvery hair. I force myself to turn away, and hunt.

  As nice as his touch was, it’s not what lingers with me while I work. It’s his words. Two words I tried to shut out, but they cling to me.

  What if echoes in my head as I hunt.

  What if haunts me through the Narrows.

  What if follows me home.

  TWENTY

  I PEER OUT THE Narrows door and into the hall, making sure the coast is clear before I step through the wall and back onto the third floor of the Coronado, sliding my ring on. I got the list down to two names before it shot back up to four. Whatever technical difficulty the Archive is experiencing, I hope they fix it soon. I am a horrible hollow kind of tired; all I want is quiet and rest.

  There is a mirror across from me, and I check my reflection in it before heading home. Despite the bone-deep fatigue and the growing fear and frustration, I look…fine. Da always said he’d teach me to play cards. Said I’d take the bank, the way things never reach my eyes. There should be something—a tell, a crease between my eyes, or a tightness in my jaw.

  I’m too good at this.

  Behind my reflection I see the painting of the sea, slanting as if the waves crashing on the rocks have hit with enough force to tip the picture. I turn and straighten it. The frame makes a faint rattling sound when I do. Everything in this place seems to be falling apart.

  I return home to 3F, but when I step through the door, I stop, eyes widening.

  I’m braced for vacant rooms and scrounging through a pile of takeout flyers for dinner. I’m not braced for this. The moving boxes have been broken down and stacked in one corner beside several trash bags of packing material, but other than that, the apartment looks strikingly like, well, an apartment. The furniture has been assembled and arranged, Dad is stirring something on the stove, a book open on the counter. He pauses and pulls a pen from behind his ear to make a margin note. Mom is sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by enough paint swatches to suggest that she thoroughly raided that aisle of the home improvement store.

  “Oh, hi, Mac!” she says, looking up from the chips.

  “I thought you already painted.”

  “We started to,” says Dad, making another note in his book.

  Mom shakes her head, begins to stack the chips. “It’s just wasn’t quite right, you know? It has to be right. Just right.”

  “Lyndsey called,” says Dad.

  “How was Wes?” asks Mom.

  “Fine. He’s helping me with the Inferno.”

  “Is that what they call it?”

  “Dad!”

  Mom frowns. “Didn’t you have it with you when you left?”

  I look down at my empty hands, and rack my brain. Where did I leave it? The garden? The study? Nix’s place? The roof? No, I didn’t have it on the roof—

  “Told you they weren’t reading,” whispers Dad.

  “He has…character,” adds Mom.

  “You should see Mac around him. I swear I saw a smile!”

  “Are you actually cooking?” I ask.

  “Don’t sound so surprised.”

  “Mac, what do you think of this green?”

  “Food’s up.”

  I carry plates to the table, trying to figure out why my chest hurts. And somewhere between pouring a glass of water and taking a bite of stir-fry, I realize why. Because this—the banter and the joking and the food—this is what normal families do. Mom isn’t smiling too hard, and Dad isn’t running away.

  This is normal. Comfortable.

  This is us moving on.

  Without Ben.

  My brother left a hole, and it’s starting to close. And when it does, he’ll be gone. Really and truly gone. Isn’t this what I wanted? For my parents to stop running? For my family to heal? But what if I’m not ready to let Ben go?

  “You okay?” asks Dad. I realize I’ve stopped with the fork halfway to my mouth. I open my mouth to say the three small words that will shatter everything. I miss Ben.

  “Mackenzie?” asks Mom, the smile sliding from her face.

  I blink. I can’t do it.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I was just thinking….”

  Think think think.

  Mom and Dad watch me. My mind stumbles through lies until I find the right one. I smile, even though it feels like a grimace. “Could we make cookies after dinner?”

  Mom’s brows peak, but she nods. “Of course.” She twirls her fork. “What sort?”

  “Oatmeal raisin. The chewy kind.”

  When the cookies are in the oven, I call Lyndsey back. I slip into my room and let her talk. She tunes her guitar and rambles about her parents and the boy at the gym. Somewhere between her description of her new music tutor and her lament over her mother’s attempt to diet, I stop her.

  “Hey, Lynds.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ve been thinking. About Ben. A lot.”

  Oddly enough, we never talk about Ben. By some silent understanding he’s always been off-limits. But I can’t help it.

  “Yeah?” she asks. I hear the hollow thud of the guitar being set aside. “I think about him all the time. I was babysitting a kid the other night, and he insisted on drawing with a green crayon. Wouldn’t u
se anything else. And I thought about Ben and his love of blue pencils, and it made me smile and ache at the same time.”

  My eyes burn. I reach out for the blue stuffed bear, the pair of black glasses still perched on its nose.

  “But you know,” says Lyndsey, “it kind of feels like he’s not gone, because I see him in everything.”

  “I think I’m starting to forget him,” I whisper.

  “Nah, you’re not.” She sounds so certain.

  “How do you know?”

  “If you mean a few little things—the exact sound of his voice, the shade of his hair, then okay, yeah. You’re going to forget. But Ben isn’t those things, you know? He’s your brother. He’s made up of every moment in his life. You’ll never forget all of that.”

  “Are you taking a philosophy course too?” I manage. She laughs. I laugh, a hollow echo of hers.

  “So,” she says, turning up the cheer, “how’s Guyliner?”

  I dream of Ben again.

  Stretched out on his stomach on my bedroom floor, drawing with a blue pencil right on the hardwood, twisting the drops of blood into monsters with dull eyes. I come in, and he looks up. His eyes are black, but as I watch, the blackness begins to draw inward until it’s nothing but a dot in the center of his bright brown eyes.

  He opens his mouth to speak, but he only gets halfway through saying “I won’t slip” before his voice fades away. And then his eyes fade, dissolving into air. And then his whole face fades. His body begins to fade, as if an invisible hand is erasing him, inch by inch.

  I reach out, but by the time I touch his shoulder, he’s only a vague shape.

  An outline.

  A sketch.

  And then nothing.

  I sit up in the dark.

  I rest my head against my knees. It doesn’t help. The tightness in my chest goes deeper than air. I snatch the glasses from the bear’s nose and reach for the memory, watching it loop three or four times, but the faded impression of a Ben-like shape only makes it worse, only reminds me how much I’m forgetting. I pull on my jeans and boots, and shove the list in my pocket without even looking at the names.