The Dark Vault

by Victoria Schwab

  I know this is a bad idea, a horrible idea, but as I make my way through the apartment, down the hall, into the Narrows, I pray that Roland is behind the desk. I step into the Archive, hoping for his red Chucks, but instead I find a pair of black leather boots, the heels kicked up on the desk before the doors, which are now closed. The girl has a notebook in her lap and a pen tucked behind her ear, along with a sweep of sandy blond hair, impossibly streaked with sun.

  “Miss Bishop,” says Carmen. “How can I help you?”

  “Is Roland here?” I ask.

  She frowns. “Sorry, he’s busy. I’m afraid I’ll have to do.”

  “I wanted to see my brother.”

  Her boots slide off the desk and land on the floor. Her green eyes look sad. “This isn’t a cemetery, Miss Bishop.” It feels weird for someone so young to refer to me this way.

  “I know that,” I say carefully, trying to pick my angle. “I was just hoping…”

  Carmen takes the pen from behind her ear and sets it in the book to mark her place, then puts the book aside and interlaces her fingers on top of the desk. Each motion is smooth, methodical.

  “Sometimes Roland lets me see him.”

  A faint crease forms between her eyes. “I know. But that doesn’t make it right. I think you should—”

  “Please,” I say. “There’s nothing of him left in my world. I just want to sit by his shelf.”

  After several long moments, she picks up a pad of paper and makes a note. We wait in silence, which is good, because I can barely hear over my pulse. And then the doors behind her open, and a short, thin Librarian strides through.

  “I need a break,” says Carmen, rolling her neck. The Librarian—Elliot, I remember—nods obediently and takes a seat. Carmen holds her hand toward the doors, and I pass through into the atrium. She follows and tugs them shut behind her.

  We make our way through the room and down the sixth wing.

  “What would you have done,” she asks, “if I’d said no?”

  I shrug. “I guess I would have gone home.”

  We cross through a courtyard. “I don’t believe that.”

  “I don’t believe you would have said no.”

  “Why’s that?” she asks.

  “Your eyes are sad,” I say, “even when you smile.”

  Her expression wavers. “I may be a Librarian, Miss Bishop, but we have people we miss, too. People we want back. It can be hard to be so far from the living, and so close to the dead.”

  I’ve never heard a Librarian talk that way. It’s like light shining through armor. We start up a short set of wooden stairs.

  “Why did you take this job?” I ask. “It doesn’t make sense. You’re so young—”

  “It was an honor to be promoted,” she says, but the words have a hollow ring. I can see her drawing back into herself, into her role.

  “Who did you lose?” I ask.

  Carmen flashes a smile that is at once dazzling and sad. “I’m a Librarian, Miss Bishop. I’ve lost everyone.”

  Before I can say anything, she opens the door to the large reading room with the red rug and the corner chairs, and leads me to the wall of cabinets on the far side. I reach out and run my fingers over the name.

  BISHOP, BENJAMIN GEORGE

  I just want to see him. That’s all. I need to see him. I press my hand flat against the face of the drawer, and I can almost feel the pull of him. The need. Is this the way the Histories feel, trapped in the Narrows with only the desperate sense that something vital is beyond the doors, that if they could just get out—

  “Is there anything else, Miss Bishop?” Carmen asks carefully.

  “Could I see him?” I ask quietly. “Just for a moment?”

  She hesitates. And to my surprise, she steps up to the shelves and produces the same key she used to disable Jackson Lerner. Gold and sharp and without teeth, but when she slides it into the slot on Ben’s drawer and turns, there is a soft click within the wall. The drawer opens an inch, and sits ajar. Something in me tightens.

  “I’ll give you a few minutes,” Carmen whispers, “but no more.”

  I nod, unable to take my eyes off the sliver of space between the front of the drawer and the rest of the stacks, a strip of deep shadow. I listen to the sound of Carmen’s withdrawing steps. And then I reach out, wrap my fingers over the edge, and slide my brother’s drawer open.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I’M SITTING ON THE swings in our backyard, rocking from heel to toe, heel to toe, while you pick slivers of wood off the frame.

  “You can’t tell anyone,” you say. “Not your parents. Not your friends. Not Ben.”

  “Why not?”

  “People aren’t smart when it comes to the dead.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “If you told someone that there was a place where their mother, or their brother, or their daughter, still existed—in some form—they’d tear the world apart to get there.”

  You chew a toothpick.

  “No matter what people say, they’d do anything.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I’d do it. Trust me, you’d do it too.”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “Maybe not anymore, because you know what a History is. And you know I’d never forgive you if you tried to wake one up. But if you weren’t a Keeper…if you lost someone and you thought they were gone forever, and then you learned you could get them back, you’d be there with the rest of them, clawing at the walls to get through.”

  My chest turns to stone when I see him, crushing my lungs and my heart.

  Benjamin lies on the shelf, still as he was beneath the hospital sheet. But there’s no sheet now, and his skin isn’t bruised or blue. He’s got the slightest flush in his cheeks, as if he’s sleeping, and he’s wearing the same clothes he had on that day, before they got ruined. Grass-stained jeans and his favorite black-and-red-striped shirt, a gift from Da the summer he died, an emblematic X over the heart because Ben always used to say “cross my heart” so solemnly. I was with him when Da gave it to him. Ben wore it for days until it smelled foul and we had to drag it off of him to be washed. It doesn’t smell like anything now. His hands are at his sides, which looks wrong because he used to sleep on his side with both fists crammed under the pillow; but this way I can see the black pen doodle on the back of his left hand, the one I drew that morning, of me.

  “Hi, Ben,” I whisper.

  I want to reach out, to touch him, but my hand won’t move. I can’t will my fingers to leave my side. And then that same dangerous thought whispers into the recesses of my mind, at the weak points.

  If Owen can wake without slipping, why not Ben?

  What if some Histories don’t slip?

  It’s fear and anger and restlessness that make them wake up. But Ben was never afraid or angry or restless. So would he even wake? Maybe Histories who wouldn’t wake wouldn’t slip if they did…But Owen woke, a voice warns. Unless a Librarian woke him and tried to alter his memories. Maybe that’s the trick. Maybe Owen isn’t slipping because he didn’t wake himself up.

  I look down at Ben’s body and try to remember that this isn’t my brother.

  It was easier to believe when I couldn’t see him.

  My chest aches, but I don’t feel like crying. Ben’s dark lashes rest against his cheeks, his hair curling across his forehead. When I see that hair tracing its way across his skin, my body unfreezes, my hand drifting up to brush it from his face, the way I used to do.

  That’s all I mean to do.

  But when my fingers graze his skin, Ben’s eyes float open.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I GASP AND JERK my hand back, but it’s too late.

  Ben’s brown eyes—Mom’s eyes, warm and bright and wide—blink once, twice.

  And he sits up.

  “Mackenzie?” he asks.

  The ache in my chest explodes into panic. My pulse shatters the calmness I know I need to show.

  �
��Hi, Ben,” I choke out, the shock making it hard to breathe, to speak.

  My brother looks around at the room—the stacked drawers reaching to the ceiling, the tables and dust and oddness—then swings his legs over the edge of the shelf.

  “What happened?” And then, before I can answer: “Where’s Mom? Where’s Dad?”

  He hops down from the shelf, sniffles. His forehead crinkles. “I want to go home.”

  My hand reaches for his.

  “Then let’s go home, Ben.”

  He moves to take my hand, but stops. Looks around again.

  “What’s going on?” he asks, his voice unsteady.

  “Come on, Ben,” I say.

  “Where am I?” The black at the center of his eyes wobbles. No. “How did I get here?” He takes a small step back. Away from me.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I say.

  When his eyes meet mine, they are tinged with panic. “Tell me how I got here.” Confusion. “This isn’t funny.” Distress.

  “Ben, please,” I say softly. “Let’s just go home.”

  I don’t know what I’m thinking. I can’t think. I look at him, and all I know is that I can’t leave him here. He’s Ben, and I pinkie-swore a thousand times I’d never let anything hurt him. Not the ghosts under the bed or the bees in the yard or the shadows in his closet.

  “I don’t understand.” His voice catches. His irises are darkening. “I don’t…I was…”

  This isn’t supposed to happen. He didn’t wake himself. He’s not supposed to—

  “Why…” he starts.

  I step toward him, kneeling so I can take his hands. I squeeze them. I try to smile.

  “Ben—”

  “Why aren’t you telling me what happened?”

  His eyes hover on me, the black spreading too fast, blotting out the warm, bright brown. All I see in those eyes is the reflection of my face, caught between pain and fear and an unwillingness to believe that he’s slipping. Owen didn’t slip. Why does Ben have to?

  This isn’t fair.

  Ben begins to cry, hitching sobs.

  I pull him into a hug.

  “Be strong for me,” I whisper in his hair, but he doesn’t answer. I tighten my grip as if I can hold the Ben I know—knew—in place, can keep him with me; but he pushes me away. A jarring strength for such a small body. I stumble, and another pair of arms catches me.

  “Get back,” orders the man holding me. Roland.

  His eyes are leveled on Ben, but the words are meant for me. He pushes me out of his way and approaches my brother. No, no, no, I think, the word playing in my head like a metronome.

  What have I done?

  “I didn’t…”

  “Stay back,” Roland growls, then kneels in front of Ben.

  That’s not Ben, I think. Looking at the History—its eyes black, where Ben’s were brown.

  Not Ben, I think, clutching my hands around my ribs to keep from shaking.

  Not Ben, as Roland puts a hand on my brother’s shoulder and says something too soft for me to hear.

  Not Ben. Metal glints in Roland’s other hand and he plunges a toothless gold key into Not Ben’s chest and turns it.

  Not Ben doesn’t cry out, but simply sinks. His eyes fall shut and his head falls forward, and his body slumps toward the ground but never hits because Roland catches him, scoops him up, and returns him to his drawer. The pain goes out of his face, the tension goes out of his limbs. His body relaxes against the shelf, as if settling into sleep.

  Roland slides the door shut, the dark devouring Not Ben’s body. I hear the cabinet lock, and something in me cracks.

  Roland doesn’t look at me as he pulls a notepad from his pocket.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Bishop.”

  “Roland,” I plead. “Don’t do this.” He scratches something onto the paper. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but please don’t—”

  “I don’t have a choice,” he says as the card on the front of Ben’s drawer turns red. The mark of the restricted stacks.

  No, no, no come the metronome cries, each one causing a crack that splinters me.

  I take a step forward.

  “Stay where you are,” orders Roland, and whether it’s his tone or the fact that the cracks hurt so much I can’t breathe, I do as he says. Before my eyes, the shelves begin to shift. Ben’s red-marked drawer pulls backward with a hush until it’s swallowed by the wall. The surrounding drawers rearrange themselves, gliding to fill the gap.

  Ben’s drawer is gone.

  I sink to my knees on the old wood floor.

  “Get up,” orders Roland.

  My body feels sluggish, my lungs heavy, my pulse too slow. I haul myself to my feet, and Roland grabs my arm, forcing me out of the room into an empty hall.

  “Who opened the drawer, Miss Bishop?”

  I won’t rat out Carmen. She only wanted to help.

  “I did,” I say.

  “You don’t have a key.”

  “‘Two ways through any lock,’” I answer numbly.

  “I warned you to stay away,” growls Roland. “I warned you not to draw attention. I warned you what happens to Keepers who lose their post. What were you thinking?”

  “I wasn’t,” I say. My throat hurts, as if I’ve been screaming. “I just had to see him—”

  “You woke a History.”

  “I didn’t mean to—”

  “He’s not a goddamn puppy, Mackenzie, and he’s not your brother. That thing is not your brother, and you know that.”

  The cracks are spreading beneath my skin.

  “How can you not know that?” Roland continues. “Honestly—”

  “I thought he wouldn’t slip!”

  He stops. “What?”

  “I thought…that maybe…he wouldn’t slip.”

  Roland brings his hands down on my shoulders, hard. “Every. History. Slips.”

  Not Owen, says a voice inside me.

  Roland lets go. “Turn in your list.”

  If there’s any wind left in my lungs, that order knocks it out.

  “What?”

  “Your list.”

  If she proves herself unfit in any way, she will forfeit the position.

  And if she proves unfit, you, Roland, will remove her yourself.

  “Roland…”

  “You can collect it tomorrow morning, when you return for your hearing.”

  He promised me he wouldn’t. I trusted…but what have I done with his trust? I can see the pain in his eyes. I force one shaking hand into my pocket and pass him the folded paper. He takes it and motions toward the door, but I can’t will myself to leave.

  “Miss Bishop.”

  My feet are nailed to the floor.

  “Miss Bishop.”

  This isn’t happening. I just wanted to see Ben. I just needed—

  “Mackenzie,” says Roland. I force myself forward.

  I follow him through the maze of stacks. There is no warmth and there is no peace. With every step, every breath, the cracks deepen, spread. Roland leads me through the atrium to the antechamber and the front desk, where Elliot sits diligently.

  When Roland turns to look at me, anger has dulled into something sad. Tired.

  “Go home,” he says. I nod stiffly. He turns and vanishes back into the stacks.

  Elliot glances up from his work, a vague curiosity in the arch of his brows.

  I can feel myself breaking.

  I barely make it through the door and into the Narrows before I shatter.

  It hurts.

  Worse than anything. Worse than noise or touch or knives. I don’t know how make it stop. I have to make it stop.

  I can’t breathe.

  I can’t—

  “Mackenzie?”

  I turn to find Owen standing in the hall. His blue eyes hangs on me, the smallest wrinkle between his brows.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks.

  Everything about him is calm, quiet, level. Pain t
wists into anger. I push him, hard.

  “Why haven’t you slipped?” I snap.

  Owen doesn’t fight back, not even reflexively, doesn’t try to escape, the slightest clenching of his jaw the only sign of emotion. I want to push him over. I want to make him slip. He has to. Ben did.

  “Why, Owen?”

  I push him again. He takes a step away.

  “What makes you so special? What makes you so different? Ben slipped. He slipped right away, and you’ve been here for days and you haven’t slipped at all and it isn’t fair.”

  I shove him again, and his back hits the wall at the end of the corridor.

  “It isn’t fair!”

  My hands dig into his shirt. The quiet is like static in my head, filling the space. It is not enough to erase the pain. I am still breaking.

  “Calm down.” Owen wraps his hands around mine, pinning them to his chest. The quiet thickens, pours into my head.

  My face feels wet, but I don’t remember crying. “It’s not fair.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “Please calm down.”

  I want the pain to stop. I need it to stop. I won’t be able to claw my way back up. There is all this anger and this guilt and—

  And then Owen kisses my shoulder. “I’m so sorry about Ben.”

  The quiet builds like a wave, drowning anger and pain.

  “I’m sorry, Mackenzie.”

  I stiffen, but as his lips press against my skin, the silence flares in my head, blotting something out. Heat ripples through my body, pricking my senses as the quiet deadens my thoughts. He kisses my throat, my jaw. Each time his lips brush my skin, the heat and silence blossom side by side and spread, drowning a little bit of the pain and anger and guilt, leaving only warmth and want and quiet in their place. His lips brush my cheek, and then he pulls back, his pale eyes leveled cautiously on mine, his mouth barely a breath from mine. When he touches me, there is nothing but touch. There is no thought of wrong and no thought of loss and no thought of anything, because thoughts can’t get through the static.

  “I’m sorry, M.”

  M. That drags me under. That one little word he can’t possibly understand. M. Not Mackenzie. Not Mac. Not Bishop. Not Keeper.

  I want that. I need that. I cannot be the girl who broke the rules and woke her dead brother and ruined everything….