The Dark Vault

by Victoria Schwab

  “You ready?”

  I pull away from the photograph to find Cash standing there, holding a short stack of pamphlets.

  “Yeah,” I say, my voice a little shakier than I’d like, as I cast another glance at the photo.

  You and I are not so different.

  I frown. So what if Owen went here? He’s gone. This is nothing more than a faded photograph, a glimpse of the past—a perfectly reasonable place for a dead boy to be.

  “Let’s go,” I say as I take the papers.

  Cash walks me out.

  “Where’s your car?” he asks, surveying the parking lot, which has already emptied out quite a bit.

  I cross to the bike rack and give Dante a sweeping gesture. “My ride.”

  He blushes. “I didn’t mean to assume—”

  I wave him off. “It’s like a convertible, really. Wind through my hair. Leather seats…well, seat.” I dig my workout pants out of my bag and tug them on under my skirt.

  He smiles, gold eyes drifting down to the sidewalk. “Maybe we could do this again tomorrow.”

  “You mean school?” I ask, unlocking the bike and swinging my leg over. “I think that’s the idea. Doesn’t work very well if you only go once.” I try to say it straight-faced, but the smile slips through.

  Cash breaks into a warm laugh as he turns to go. “Welcome to Hyde, Mackenzie Bishop.”

  His easy joy is contagious, and I feel myself still grinning as I watch him retreat through the gates. Then I look back out over the parking lot and all the warmth goes cold.

  The man from this morning, the one with gold hair and gold skin, is leaning back against a tree at the edge of the lot, sipping coffee out of a to-go cup, and he’s looking at me. This time he doesn’t even try to hide it. The sight of him is like a brick through a glass window, shattering the mundane. It’s a reminder that life couldn’t be further from normal. Normal is a thing I might dream about, if I weren’t too busy having nightmares.

  There’s one thing scarier than the fact I’m being followed. And that’s who is following me. Because there’s only one possible answer: the Archive. The thought makes my blood run cold. I can’t imagine it’s a good thing, being tailed by Crew. And that’s exactly what he is. What he has to be.

  The way he sips his coffee and shifts his weight and his unguarded body language create an illusion of boredom that’s dampened only by his gaze, which is sharp, alert. But that’s not what gives him away. It’s the confidence. A very specific and dangerous kind of confidence. The same kind Owen had.

  The confidence exuded by someone who knows they can hurt you before you hurt them.

  The golden man’s eyes meet mine, and he smiles with half his mouth. He takes another sip of his coffee, and I take a step toward him just as a horn goes off in the parking lot. The sound steals my attention for a second, even less, but by the time I look back at the man, he’s gone.

  Great.

  I wait a second to see if he’ll reappear, but he doesn’t, and I’m left with only a sinking feeling in my stomach and the nagging question: why is the Archive having me followed?

  The worry eats at the last of my energy as I pedal home. By the time I get there, my vision is starting to blur from fatigue. When I dismount, the world rocks a little. I have to stand still a moment, wait for the dizziness to pass before I drag myself through the doors and up the stairs.

  I want sleep.

  I need sleep.

  Instead, I go hunting.

  SIX

  I STIFLE ANOTHER YAWN as I step out of the stairwell and into the third floor hall, grateful that Harker’s still the only name on my list. After stashing my skirt in my schoolbag and shoving that behind a table halfway down the hall, I straighten my ponytail in the mirror above the table and fetch the key out from under my collar. The transformation is complete: student to Keeper in under a minute.

  Across from the mirror is a painting of the sea, and just beside that is a crack in the wall. A seam where the worlds don’t quite line up. No one else sees it, but I do, and when I tug off my ring, the crack becomes clearer, the keyhole tucked into the fold. I slot my key, and the Narrows door blossoms like a stain, the faded wallpaper darkening as the frame presses against the surface. A thread of light carves the outline of the door, and I turn the key, hear the hollow click, and step through into the dark. I’m lifting my fingers to the nearest wall, about to read the surface for signs of Harker, when I think I hear it.

  Humming.

  My heart starts to race as I pull away from the wall and turn toward the noise, panic flooding through me. And then between one pulse—one step—and the next, the world disappears.

  Everything goes away.

  Goes black.

  And then, just as suddenly, it comes back—I come back—and the humming is gone and my head is killing me and I’m running. Sprinting. Chasing. A boy sprints several yards ahead of me.

  “Harker, stop!” The words tumble out before I even realize they’re mine. “There’s nowhere to run!” I add, which isn’t strictly true, since we’re both covering plenty of ground. There’s just nowhere to run to.

  My lungs are burning and my legs ache and I don’t have enough sleep in my bones for this, but adrenaline fills in the place where sleep should be as the Narrows echo with the sounds of the hunt. Heavy breath and pumping limbs and shoes hitting hard against the concrete, his as he flees, mine as I chase.

  And I’m catching up.

  The kid loses a stride when he looks back, and then another when he takes a corner too fast and slides into the wall. Harker springs off, keeps going. I cut the corner sharp, too, shoes skidding a fraction on the slick ground of the Narrows, but I know these halls, these walls, these floors, and I’m off again, closing the gap.

  He’s between one sprinting step and the next when my hand finally tangles in his collar, catching him off balance. I pull hard, and Harker goes sprawling backward to the floor, a few feet from the nearest Returns door, marked by a white chalk circle shaded in. He starts to scramble away, but I haul him to his feet and pin him back against the wall as I get my key into the lock and turn. The door opens, showering us both in glaring white light.

  I get a good look at his eyes as they go wide—the pupils wavering, about to slip—right before I shove him into the glaring white, but it’s not until after he’s through the door, the light is gone, and I’m left alone in the dark with my slamming pulse that I process the look he gave me and realize what it was.

  Fear.

  Not of the Narrows or of the glaring Returns, but of me.

  It’s like being doused with cold water, that thought, and it leaves me feeling breathless and dizzy. I bring a hand up to the wall for balance. A shallow pain draws my eyes to my arm, and for the first time I see the scratches there, raked across my skin, and a sick feeling spreads through me.

  When did this happen?

  When did Harker fight back?

  I rack my brain, trying to rewind my own mind, trying to remember when he scratched me, or what made him run in the first place, or how we met, and panic coils around me as I realize that I can’t.

  I remember stepping through the door and into the Narrows. I remember the sound of humming, and then…nothing. Nothing until halfway through the chase. The time between is just missing. I squeeze my eyes shut, scrambling for the memories and finding only a blur. I sink down to the floor and rest my forehead against my knees, forcing air into my lungs.

  One of Da’s lessons plays in my head, his voice low and steady and smooth: Keep your head on, Kenzie. Can’t think straight when you’re all worked up. Histories panic. Look at all the good it does them.

  I take another breath and try to calm down. What was I doing? I was reading the walls…I was about to read the walls when I heard the humming, and then…and then I lick my lips and taste blood, and just like that, the memories rush back.

  Someone was humming.

  Just like Owen used to do. My heart started to race as I
followed the melody through the halls. It sounded so much like humming at first, but then it didn’t—the Narrows does distort things—growing louder and harsher until it wasn’t anything like humming, wasn’t music at all, but a hard and steady thud thud thud.

  Harker kicking a door halfway down the hall, so loud he didn’t hear me coming until I was there behind him, head pounding, and then he spun and, before I could even lie my way into his good graces, caught me off guard with his fist.

  It comes back like still frames, glimpses in a strobe.

  My hand tangled in his shirt.

  Shoving him back.

  A mess of thrashing limbs.

  His shoe coming up against my stomach.

  His hands clawing his way free.

  Both of us running.

  I feel sick with relief. The memory’s shaky, but it’s there.

  As I pull the list from my pocket and watch Harker’s name bleed off the page, one question claws its way through my spinning thoughts: why did I black out in the first place?

  If I had to guess, I’d say sleep. Or rather, the lack of it.

  This—blacking out, losing time, whatever it is—happened once before. A few days after Owen. Last time—which was the first time, and I’d hoped the only time—I hadn’t been sleeping, either. I was so tired, I could barely see straight. One moment I was trying to talk down a History, a teenage girl, and the next I was alone in the hall and my knuckles were raw and her name was gone from my list. When I finally calmed down, the memories came back, blurry and stilted, but there. She’d already slipped, thought I was someone else. Called me M (probably Em, like Emily or Emma). That’s all it had taken to make my hands shake and my heart race and my mind skip. A sliver of Owen.

  I told myself then it wasn’t a big deal. It only happened once—unlike the nightmares that came every night like clockwork—so I didn’t tell Roland. I didn’t want him to worry. Da used to say you had to see patterns, but not go looking for them, and I didn’t want to make something out of nothing. But Da also used to say that one mistake was an accident, but two was a problem.

  As I look down at the scratches on my arms, I know.

  This is officially a problem.

  I will myself to get back to my feet. I consider the door beside the one I just sent Harker through, the one marked with the hollow white circle I use to denote the Archive. I should tell Roland. And I will—later. Right now, I have to get home. Last time I lost a minute, maybe two, but now I can tell I’ve lost more than that. I dig my nails into my palms, hoping the sting will keep me awake as I head back for the numbered doors.

  The key dangles from its cord around my wrist, and I swing it up into my grip and slide the teeth into the lock on the door that leads back to the third floor. It opens, the hall beyond nothing but shadow from this side, and my shoe is halfway through when I hear a familiar voice on the other side and jerk back sharply, heart hammering in my chest.

  Stupid, stupid mistake.

  The doorway isn’t visible to normal people. If I’d passed through into the Coronado, I would have walked straight through the wall itself—at least it would have appeared that way—and into my mother.

  “It’s going well, I think….” The Coronado may be lost from sight, but her voice reaches through the veiled space, muffled, yet audible. “Right, it takes time, I know.”

  I can hear her coming down the hall, nearing the Narrows door as she talks, the long pauses making it clear she’s on the phone. And then her footsteps stop right in front of me. Maybe she’s looking in the mirror across from the invisible door. I think of the schoolbag stashed behind the table under the mirror, and hope she hasn’t discovered it.

  “Oh, Mackenzie?”

  I stiffen, until I realize she’s answering the person on the line.

  “I don’t know, Colleen,” she says.

  I roll my eyes. Her therapist. Mom’s been seeing Colleen since Ben died last year. I’d hoped the sessions would end with the move. Apparently, they haven’t. Now I brace my hands on either side of the doorway and listen to one half of the conversation. I know I shouldn’t leave the Narrows door open, but my list is clear and my curiosity is piqued.

  “It hasn’t come up,” says Mom. “Yes, okay, I haven’t brought it up. But she seemed better. Seems. Seemed. It’s so hard to tell with her. I’m her mother. I should be able to tell, and I can’t. I can tell something’s wrong. I can tell she’s wearing this mask, but I can’t see past it.” My chest tightens at the pain in her voice. “No. It’s not drugs.”

  I clench my teeth against a curse. I hate Colleen. Colleen’s the one who told Mom to throw out Ben’s things. The one time we met face-to-face, she saw a scratch on my wrist from a pissed-off History and was convinced I did it to myself to feel things.

  “I know the symptoms,” says Mom, ticking off a list that pretty well sums up my current behavior—evasion, moodiness, troubled sleep, being withdrawn, inexplicable disappearances…though in my defense, I do my best to explain them. Just not using the truth. “But it’s not. Yes, I’m sure.” I’m glad she’s sticking up for me, at least on this front. “Okay,” she says after a long pause, starting down the hall again. “I will. I promise.” I listen to her trail off, wait for the jingling sound of her keys, the apartment door opening and closing, and then I sigh and step out into the hall.

  The Narrows door dissolves behind me as I slide my ring back on. The skirt and the bag seem undisturbed behind the table, and in a few short steps I’ve transformed back into an ordinary Hyde School junior. My reflection stares back at me, unconvinced.

  I can tell something’s wrong. I can tell she’s wearing this mask, but I can’t see past it.

  I practice my smile a few times, checking my mask to make sure it’s free of cracks before I turn down the hall and head home.

  That evening, I put on a show.

  I picture Da clapping in his slow, lazy way as I tell Mom and Dad about my day, injecting as much enthusiasm into my voice as I can without tipping my parents from pleasant surprise to suspicion.

  “Hyde’s pretty incredible,” I say.

  Dad lights up. “I want to hear all about it.”

  So I tell him. I’m basically feeding the pamphlet propaganda back to him, line by line, but while I may be amping up the excitement, the sentiment isn’t a total lie. I did enjoy it. And it feels good to tell something that even vaguely resembles the truth.

  “And you’ll never guess who goes there!” I say, stealing a carrot as Mom chops them.

  “You can tell us during dinner,” she says, shooing me away with a pile of placements and silverware. “Set the table first.” But she smiles as she says it.

  Dad clears some books from the table so I can set it and retreats to the couch to watch the news.

  “Who’s closing the coffee shop tonight?” I ask.

  “Berk’s got it.”

  Berk is Betty’s husband, and Betty is Nix’s caretaker. Nix is ancient and blind and lives up on the seventh floor and won’t come down because he’s wheelchair-bound and doesn’t trust the rickety metal elevators.

  Berk and Betty moved into one of the vacants on the sixth floor two weeks ago after Nix finally succeeded in lighting his scarf on fire with his cigarette. I was shocked—not about the fire, that was inevitable, but that they would move in for him, not being related in any way. But apparently Nix was like a father to Betty once, and now she’s acting like a daughter. It’s sweet, and it all worked out because Berk—who’s a painter—was looking for a social fix, and Mom was looking for a hand at Bishop’s. She can’t pay him yet, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He only asked to be able to hang his pieces in the coffee shop for sale.

  “I’ll take him down some dinner later,” says Mom, setting aside a plate.

  I’m carrying water glasses to the table when the headline on the TV catches my attention, and I look over Dad’s shoulder at the screen. It’s the same news story from early this morning, about the missing person. A room in
disarray flashes across the screen, and I’m about to ask Dad to turn the volume up when Mom says, “Turn that off. Dinner’s ready.”

  Dad obediently clicks the TV off, but my eyes linger on the blackened screen, holding the image of the room in my mind. It looked familiar….

  “Mackenzie,” Mom warns, and I blink, losing the image as I turn to find my parents both already at the table. They look like they’ve been waiting.

  I shake my head and manage a smile. “Sorry. Coming.”

  But sitting down turns out to be a bad idea.

  The moment I do, the fatigue catches back up, and I spend most of dinner rambling about Hyde just to stay awake. As soon as the dishes are cleared, I retreat to my room in the name of homework, but I’ve barely gotten through a page of reading before my eyes unfocus, the words on the paper blurring together. I try standing, then I try pacing while holding my textbook, but my mind can’t seem to grab hold of anything. I feel like my bones are made of lead.

  My gaze wanders to the bed. All I can think of is how much I want to lie down…

  The book slips through my fingers, hitting the ground with a soft thunk.

  …how badly I want to sleep…

  I reach the bed.

  …how certain I am…

  I tug back the covers.

  …that when I do…

  I sink into the sheets.

  …I won’t dream of anything.

  SEVEN

  THE ROOF IS FULL of monsters, and they are all alive.

  They perch on stone claws and watch with stone eyes as Owen stalks me through the maze of bodies.

  “Stop running, Miss Bishop,” his voice echoes across the rooftop.

  And just like that, the concrete floor crumbles beneath me and I plunge seven stories through the bones of the building to the Coronado lobby, hitting the floor so hard my bones sing. I roll onto my back and look up in time to see the gargoyles tumbling toward me. I throw my hands up, bracing for the weight of stone. It never comes. I blink and find myself in a cage made from the broken statues, a web of crossing arms and legs and wings. And standing in the middle is Owen, his knife dangling from his fingers.