The Dark Vault

by Victoria Schwab

  “I’m fine,” Wes cuts him off, even though I’d really like to hear the end of that sentence. “Just sorry to hear it,” he adds.

  “Yeah,” adds Cash. “Though I can’t say I’m surprised.”

  “Why’s that?” I ask.

  Behind my eyes, the memory from the pendant echoes: a distraught Bethany clutching the steering wheel, willing herself to go. But what happened? What led up to that moment?

  Cash hesitates, then looks to Wes, who says only, “She was having a hard time at home.”

  And then, before any of us can say more, the bell rings, and we pour through the gates with the rest of the students. Cash and Wes branch off and the conversation dies, but the questions follow me to class. Did Bethany really run away? Why? And if she did, why did she wait until now? She had all summer. What was it about yesterday?

  A darker thread runs through my thoughts.

  First Mr. Phillip, and now Bethany.

  They both have something in common. Me.

  A sinking feeling follows me through the halls and into class.

  Da said you had to see patterns but not go searching for them. Am I drawing lines where they shouldn’t be, or am I missing something right in front of me?

  No text from Jason.

  I check my phone before Precalc and then again before Lit Theory. Finally, on my way to Wellness, I shoot him a message.

  Did you get home safe?

  I try to calm my nerves as I shove my phone and my bag into my locker, aware that the noise in the room is different. It’s still loud, still full of slamming metal and the shuffle of bodies and voices, but those voices aren’t full of laughter. They’re full of gossip, and gossip is the kind of thing told in fake whispers rather than shouts, lending the locker room a kind of false quiet.

  I only catch snippets of the gossip itself, but I know who it’s about.

  Bethany.

  Popular girl. Small school. The students are latching on to the story. A clump of juniors thinks she was kidnapped for ransom. Another thinks she ran away with a boy. A handful of seniors echo Wes and Cash, saying they’re not surprised, after what happened—but they never say exactly what happened. Instead they trail off into silence. One junior thinks she got pregnant. Another thinks she’s dead. A few talk under their breaths and shoot dirty looks at the girls who don’t have the grace to gossip quietly.

  Whatever the story, one thing’s for sure: Bethany is missing.

  “I don’t think it’s that simple,” says Amber, turning the corner.

  “You can’t turn everything into a crime,” says Safia, following on her heels. “It’s morbid.”

  They slump down onto the bench beside me while I tug on my workout shirt, wishing it were long-sleeved so I could hide my cut-up knuckles. Instead I shove my hands into the pockets of my workout shorts.

  “I’m just saying—there’s evidence, and it contradicts.”

  “Admit it, you just want it to be more dramatic than it is.”

  “I’d say it’s already dramatic enough. Bethany’s life was like a bad soap opera.”

  “Ugh,” says Safia, shuddering. “You just said was. Like she’s dead. Don’t do that.”

  “You’re talking about that girl who ran away?” I ask as casually as possible.

  Amber nods. “If she ran away.”

  I frown. “What makes you think she didn’t?”

  “Because that wouldn’t be as exciting,” says Safia, rolling her eyes.

  Amber waves her away. “There’s evidence that she was going to run away, I’ll give you that. But there’s also evidence that something happened. That she changed her mind.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, closing my locker.

  “Well, my dad told me that—”

  “They got your dad involved? Already?”

  “Not officially,” says Amber. “But he knows Bethany’s mom, so he agreed to look into it.”

  My chest tightens. Make that two things the cases have in common. Me. And the detective. It’s nothing, I tell myself as I follow Amber and Safia into the gym. It’s nothing, because I didn’t do anything. I was nice. I was helpful. I made two people’s days better. And those two people just happened to disappear.

  “Anyway,” says Amber, “Bethany’s backpack and purse were missing, too. But the car was still there, and there was a suitcase tucked in the back, and the car door was open. Either she was grabbed, or she got halfway through leaving and then decided to just walk away instead.”

  She and Safia head for the mats, and even though I want to run—want to do something to clear my head and calm my nerves—I follow.

  “Which would be smart,” Amber is saying, “if she really wanted to disappear, since cars are so easy to track.”

  “Why is everyone convinced she wanted to disappear?” I ask, sinking down onto the mat. “People keep saying they’re not surprised, that it was only a matter of time. What do they mean?”

  Amber sighs. “Over the summer, my dad was called out to Bethany’s house on a noise complaint. There’d been a screaming match, and when he got there, he found Bethany in the driveway with all her things.”

  “Back up,” says Safia. “You’re skipping all the good bits.” She turns to me. “Okay, so Bethany’s mom is a leech. That’s what we call it when you only marry someone for their money. Then Beth’s dad’s company hits a bump or something, and her mom drops him like that.” She snaps her fingers. “Takes as much as she can, including the house, and then turns around and finds this new beau to leech off of. He moves in after, like, three weeks.”

  “Girls,” shouts one of the gym teachers. “More work, less chat.”

  “Stretching is an essential part of wellness!” Safia shouts back. She proceeds to exaggerate every one of her motions, which almost makes me smile.

  “So,” she continues, “sleazy dude has been there all of a week when he’s home alone with Bethany and takes a go at her.”

  My stomach turns. “What happened?”

  “She did what any self-respecting Hyde School girl would do. She punched him in the face. But when she tried to tell her mom what happened, she said it was Bethany’s fault.”

  Behind my eyes the woman pitches the glass at Bethany’s head.

  “And the sleaze totally twisted it to fit,” says Safia. “He claimed Bethany tried to seduce him. I’m surprised Bethany didn’t leave that night. I know she thought about it.”

  “Dad reported it, but it was word against word. Nothing happened. But he told Bethany to call him if the jerk ever tried anything again. If she didn’t feel safe.”

  “So your dad believed her.”

  Amber’s forehead crinkles. “Of course. He’s not an idiot. We all thought Bethany would bail, but she didn’t. I guess I get it. She just had to get through this year, and then she’d be free.” She shakes her head. “I don’t know what happened. But it feels off. And why was that suitcase still in the back?”

  Safia chews her lip. “Bethany told Wesley once that she kept a bag ready. In case she couldn’t take it anymore. That when it got bad she’d sit out in the car, all ready to go. I heard him tell Cash. That still doesn’t explain why she left it.”

  “Did Wes and Bethany have a thing?” I ask.

  Safia arches a perfect eyebrow. “Why? Jealous?”

  “I’m just trying to get on the same page.”

  “They had as much of a thing as Wesley has with anyone,” says Amber. “Which is not much.”

  “He’s a jerk and a tease,” says Safia, even as her gaze wanders over to the track where he and a handful of other guys are running. She gets to her feet. “Look, not that this hasn’t been morbid, girl-bonding fun, but I’ve got to scout a date for Fall Fest so I don’t die alone. Cheers, kids.”

  Safia bounces off across the gym. Amber watches her go. She looks as unsettled as I feel.

  “You don’t think she ran away.”

  Amber shakes her head. “I know it’s really early to jump to conclusions,
I just have a bad feeling.”

  “Is the sleazy guy a suspect?” I ask.

  “He alibied out, but it’s not like he hasn’t bought his way out of trouble before. I just…I don’t trust anything about this. Do you ever get that gut feeling that something’s off?”

  “All the time.”

  “Yeah, well, I have it now. And it’s not the car abandoned in the driveway, or the fact her mom and Mr. Sleaze pretended to care she was gone,” says Amber, pushing to her feet. “It’s something else, and it’s going to sound small, or stupid, but she had this necklace, and she always wore it.”

  My blood runs cold. “What about the necklace?”

  “They found it on the driver’s seat.”

  Lunch, and still no text from Jason.

  I send him another message and lean back against the Alchemist statue in the Court. The rest of the group talks about Fall Fest next week and college applications and the Nazi gym teacher, but I can’t stop thinking about Mr. Phillip and Bethany. Two people who went missing right after I saw them.

  I grip my phone.

  What if it’s about to be three? What if it already is?

  I try to clear the thought. It’s ridiculous. This doesn’t have anything to do with me. I didn’t know these people. We crossed paths. People cross paths all the time. Bethany could have run away. Maybe something spooked her—a call from her mom, a passing car—and she gave up on the suitcase and the car and bolted on foot before she lost her nerve. It’s easy enough to disappear if you have the money and the need.

  But she wouldn’t leave the necklace. She’d leave the house and the car and the life, but not the piece of silver. I know that just from holding it.

  So if she didn’t leave it, what happened? Another abduction?

  “Waiting for a call?”

  Wesley sits down beside me. I put the phone away.

  “I’m sorry about Bethany.”

  “Me too,” says Wes. “Did you two meet?”

  “Once. Do you really think she ran away?”

  “Do you think she didn’t?”

  I take a deep breath. “It’s just…it’s the second time this week someone’s gone missing.”

  “It’s a city, Mac. Bad things happen.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I say softly. “But these two bad things have something in common.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Me.” I look down at my hands. “I think I was the last person to see them. Both of them.”

  He frowns, and I explain about Mr. Phillip and the cookies, and about Bethany and the necklace. And then I dig out my phone and tell him about the runner this morning.

  “So you meet these people, and then they just, what? Vanish? Why? How?”

  “I don’t know. But this is a bad case of coincidence, Wes.”

  “This is really bugging you, isn’t it?”

  I tug my sleeves over my hands.

  “Look,” he says. “It’s weird, the way it lines up, but the simple fact is none of this is your fault. You haven’t done anything wrong. Pretty sure you’d remember if you had.”

  A dark pit forms in the center of my stomach.

  Would I?

  I spend the rest of the day racking my brain for lost time, trying to remember if I’ve forgotten anything, which is as hard as it sounds. While Mr. Lowell goes on about social unrest, I scour my memory for patches of mental black ice, chunks of missing time, but I can’t find any.

  I went straight home from Mr. Phillip’s.

  I went straight home after meeting Bethany.

  I came straight to school from the bike accident with Jason.

  So why are they disappearing?

  “These are the building blocks of revolution,” says Mr. Lowell, tapping the board. “It’s not enough to engender discontent, to weaken the people’s faith. A revolution isn’t a game of might so much as a game of skill. There has to be a strategy…”

  It just doesn’t make any sense.

  “…a method…”

  I don’t know these people. We just crossed paths.

  “…a plan of attack.”

  And then a dark thought occurs to me.

  What if I’m being set up? What if these people are being targeted because I crossed paths with them?

  But why?

  Roland’s words echo through my head.

  For someone to deem you unfit, they would need a case. They would need evidence.

  I swallow hard and dig my nails into my palms. I’m jumping again, drawing threads where maybe I shouldn’t; it’s getting me so tangled, I nearly miss the simple solution.

  Start at the beginning.

  Judge Gregory Phillip.

  Nobody knows what happened to him, but I can find out. After all, the abduction happened inside his house, in a room with four walls. Walls that I can read.

  All I have to do is break into the crime scene.

  FOURTEEN

  AS SOON AS THE bell rings, I’m out the doors and making my way toward the parking lot. But I pull up short when I reach the gates and see Eric standing at the corner, past the last row of cars, pretending to read a book. Great. Now he shows up.

  He hasn’t seen me yet, and I shuffle back several feet, bumping into students and getting caught in the tide of their grinding static as I retreat through the gates and out of his line of sight.

  I don’t know what’s happening to these people, but whether or not Eric’s looking for proof, the last thing I need is the Archive watching while I break into a crime scene. I leave Dante in its place at the bike rack and go in search of another route home, wondering how long Eric will stick around waiting for me to show.

  Mr. Phillip’s house is only a few blocks past the Coronado, so I can make it there on foot once I’m home. And luckily for me, I know someone who can get me there.

  I just hope he’s still here.

  I weave through the main building with its glass lobby and walls of former students, forcing my eyes to skim over Owen’s photo, and check the dining hall and the Court, but both are empty. Then I remember the boys dragging sports equipment toward the gym. Halfway down the path to the Wellness Center, I see a shoe-worn trail branching off the main one, and I follow it around the back of the building to find the outdoor fields.

  There in the middle of the green, kicking a soccer ball around with a dozen other seniors, is Wesley.

  All the guys are dressed in the same black-and-gold school clothes—half still in full uniform and half only in slacks—all moving and shouting, lobbing good-natured insults, calling for the ball. Even though I only get a look at his shirtless back, I recognize him instantly.

  Not just by his height or the slope of his shoulders or the tapering muscles of his back—I vividly remember running my fingers down the curve of his spine, pulling slivers of glass from his skin—but by the way he moves. The fluid ease with which he sways and feints, calm giving way to sudden bursts of speed and dissolving back to calm. He plays the way he fights: always in control.

  There’s a set of low metal bleachers at the edge of the field, and I hop up onto a bench and dig the phone out of my bag. Still no text from Jason. I take a long, steadying breath, then dial his number. It rings and rings and rings, and as it does, the maybes play through my head.

  Maybe Jason gave me the wrong number by accident.

  Maybe Bethany dropped the necklace, like she did in the locker room.

  Maybe Mr. Phillip made enemies.

  Maybe—

  And then the phone cuts to voice mail and I hear Jason’s voice telling me to leave a message, and the maybes come falling down. I slide the phone into my shirt pocket and notice Cash down on the field, less elegant than Wes, and louder. He beams as he steals the ball, bounces it into the air, and drives it toward a makeshift goal. But Wesley is there at the last moment, lunging into the ball’s path and plucking it out of the air with his hands. Cash laughs and shakes his head.

  “What the hell was that, Ayers?” demands one of th
e other boys.

  He shrugs. “We needed a goalie.”

  “You can’t play all the parts,” calls Cash, and for some reason that makes me laugh. It’s the smallest sound—there’s no way anyone could have heard it—but at that moment, Wesley’s eyes flick up past the players to the metal bleachers. To me. He smiles, and punts the ball back into play before abandoning the pickup match and jogging over to the bleachers. A moment later, Cash ducks out, too.

  “Hey, you,” says Wes, running a hand through his hair to slick it back. Muscles twine over his narrow frame—Look up, Mac, look up—and the scar on his stomach is healing fast and well. It’s now little more than a dark line.

  Before I can tell him why I’m here, Cash catches up.

  “Have to admit, Mackenzie,” says Cash, “you never struck me as a bleacher girl.”

  I raise a brow. “What? I don’t look like a sports fan to you?”

  Wes laughs. “Bleacher girls,” he says, gesturing down the metal rows to a cluster of green- and silver-striped girls, eyes trained hungrily on the pickup match and the collection of shirtless and otherwise sweaty seniors. A couple of faces have drifted over to me. Or rather, to Wes and Cash. I roll my eyes.

  “No offense, boys, but I’m not here to fawn over you.”

  Cash clutches a hand to the school emblem over his heart. “Hopes dashed.”

  Wes brings his shoe up to the lowest bleacher and leans forward, resting his elbow on his knee. “Then what are you doing here?”

  “I came to find you,” I say; this time, Cash seems to genuinely deflate a little.

  Wes, on the other hand, gives me a strangely guarded look, as if he thinks it’s a trap. “Because…?”

  “Because you told me to,” I lie, adding an impatient sigh for good measure. “You said I could borrow your Inferno, since it’s a better version than mine.”

  Wesley relaxes visibly. Now that we’re both back in our element—both lying—he knows what to do. And I have to hand it to him. Even without knowing what I really want or where I’m going with this, he doesn’t miss a beat.

  “If by ‘better version,’” he says, “you mean it’s marked up based on past pop quizzes, tests, and final exams, then yes. And sorry, I totally forgot. It’s in my locker.”