The Dark Vault

by Victoria Schwab

  Cash frowns and opens his mouth, but Wes cuts him off.

  “It’s not cheating, Mr. Student Council. Everyone knows they change the tests each year. It’s just a very thorough study aid.”

  “That wasn’t what I was going to say,” snaps Cash. “But thank you for clarifying.”

  “Apologies, Cassius,” says Wesley, digging his bag out from under the bleachers. “Continue.”

  Cash toes the grass. “I was just going to point out that Wes copied off me for half that class—”

  “Lies,” says Wes, aghast. “False accusations, all.”

  “—so if you want any help—”

  “Really, as if I wouldn’t find more creative ways to cheat,” continues Wes.

  “—I’m probably your best bet.”

  I smile and push to my feet. “That’s very good to know.”

  Wes is still grumbling as the soccer ball gets lobbed our way and Cash plucks it out of the air. “Just here to help,” he says brightly, turning back toward the field.

  “I’ll add it to your feedback card,” I call after him as he jogs away. My attention drifts back to Wes, who is standing there, shirtless and staring.

  “I’m going to need you to put your shirt back on,” I say.

  “Why?” he says, arching a brow. “Having trouble concentrating?”

  “A little,” I admit. “But mostly you’re just sweaty.”

  His smile goes mischievous.

  “Ugh no, wait—” I start, but it’s too late. He’s already closing the gap between us, snaking his arms around my back and pulling me into a hug. I manage to get my hands up as he wraps himself around me, and my fingers splay across his chest, the rock band sound washing over me, pouring in wherever our skin meets. And through his chest and his noise—or maybe in it—I can feel his heart beating, the steady drum of it hitting my palms. And as it echoes through my own chest, all I can think is: Why can’t things be this simple?

  I mean, nothing is ever going to be simple for us—not the way it is for other people—but couldn’t we have this? Couldn’t I have this? A boy and a girl and a normal life?

  He brings his damp forehead against my dry one, and a bead of sweat runs down my temple and cheek before making its way toward my chin.

  “You are so gross,” I whisper. But I don’t pull away. In fact, I have to fight the urge to slide my hands down his chest, over his bare stomach, and around his back. I want to pull our bodies closer and stretch onto my toes until my lips find his. I don’t have to read his mind to know how badly he wants to kiss me, too. I can feel it in the way he tenses beneath my touch, taste it in the small pocket of air that separates his mouth from mine.

  I force myself to remember that I’m the one who said no. That I’m the thing keeping us apart. Not because I don’t feel what he feels, but because I’m afraid.

  I’m afraid I’m losing my mind.

  Afraid the Archive will decide I’m not worth the risk and erase me.

  Afraid I will give Wesley a part of me he can’t keep.

  Afraid that if we go down this road, it will ruin us.

  I will ruin him.

  “Wes,” I plead, and he spares me the pain of pulling away by letting go. His arms slip back to his sides and he retreats a step, taking his music with him as he crouches and digs his key out of his bag. He slips the metal back around his neck before he straightens, polo in hand.

  “So,” he says, tugging the shirt over his head. “Why did you really come?”

  “Actually, I was hoping you could give me a ride home.”

  His brow crinkles. “I wasn’t joking, Mac. I don’t have a car.”

  “No,” I say slowly, “but you have something better. Fastest way around the city, you told me, and I happen to know it leads right to my door.”

  “The Narrows?” His hand drifts to the key against his sternum. “What’s wrong with Dante?”

  “Nothing.” Except for the bike’s current proximity to Eric. I tilt my head back. “It just looks like rain.” To be fair, it is kind of cloudy.

  He looks up, too. “Uh-huh.” Not that cloudy. His eyes drop back to mine. “Be honest. You just want to get inside my halls.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I say, teasing. “Creepy corridors are such a turn-on.”

  The corner of his mouth tugs up. “Follow me.”

  Wes leads me around the back of campus to an abandoned building. Abandoned might be too severe a phrase; the building is small and old and elegant and draped with ivy, but it doesn’t look anywhere near structurally sound, let alone usable. Wes makes another sweeping gesture at the door set into the building’s side.

  “I don’t understand,” I say. “Your nearest Narrows door is…an actual door?”

  Wes beams. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  The paint has all flaked off, and the small glass inserts that once occupied the upper middle have broken and been replaced by cobwebs. Even so, it is strange and lovely. I knew that Narrows doors all started out as real doors—wood and hinges and frames—but over time, walls change, buildings come down, and the portals stay. Every Narrows door I’ve ever seen has been nothing more than a crack in the world, a seam you can barely see. An impossible entrance that takes shape only when summoned by a key.

  But here this is: this small, wood-and-metal door. I tug off my ring, the world shifting subtly around me as I tuck the metal band into my skirt pocket and reach out. Pressing my palm flat against the door, I can feel the strangeness, the hum of two worlds meeting and reverberating through the wood. It makes my fingertips go numb. Wesley fishes his key out from under his polo; he slides it into the rusted lock—a real, metal lock—and turns.

  “Anything I should know about?” I ask as the door swings open onto darkness.

  “Keep your eyes peeled for someone named Elissa,” he says. I cast a last glance around for Eric, then follow Wesley through.

  The Narrows are the Narrows are the Narrows.

  The fact that Wesley’s territory looks and smells and sounds like mine—dark and dank and full of distant echoes, like groaning pipes—is just a reminder of how vast the Archive system is. The only differences are the markings he’s made on the doors—I use Xs and Os, but Wes has drawn broad red slashes over every locked door, green checks over every usable one. And of course there’s the fact I have no idea where I’m going. It looks so much like my territory that I feel like I should know every turn, but the halls and doors are a disorienting almost-mirror.

  “Which way home?”

  “Your home is this way,” he says, pointing down the hall.

  “And yours?” I ask.

  He gestures vaguely behind him.

  Curiosity tugs at me. “Can I see?”

  “Not today,” says Wes, his voice strangely tense.

  “But we’re so close. How can I pass up the opportunity to see inside the life of the mysterious Wesley Ayers?”

  “Because I’m not offering,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “Look, it’s a big house. Soulless. And I hate it. That’s all you need to know.” He seems genuinely annoyed, so I let it go. He’s so quick to defend the school, even with all its pretention, but whatever’s at his house must be worse. The image of Wesley sitting on some grand patio with a butler shudders and breaks.

  He starts walking away, and I follow. We move in silence through the Narrows, our senses tuned to the dimly lit corridors around us. I try to make a mental map of these new halls. It’s not enough to know the number of rights and lefts—Da taught me how to learn a space, make a memory of it so I could find my way through in both directions and correct my course if I strayed. It’s harder this time, since there’s already a nearly identical territory mapped in my head.

  “Are you going to tell me what happened to your hands?” asks Wes.

  “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

  “You promised me a story.”

  “It isn’t a very nice one,” I say, but I still tell him. His steps slow. Even in the dark, I can see him pale a
s he listens.

  “I would have killed them,” he says under his breath.

  “I nearly did,” I say. I carved Eric out of the story. I don’t want Wesley to worry, not until there’s a good reason to. Luckily the appearance of the territory wall saves me from having to say more.

  The boundary between Wesley’s territory and mine looks like a dead end, bare except for the keyhole set into it. It’s strange, I think, how separate Keepers are kept. Crew may be paired up, but we’re isolated. Each on his own page.

  Wes slides his key into the small, glowing mark on the otherwise bare wall; as he does, the door takes shape around the lock, the stony surface rippling into wood. The lock turns over with a soft metallic click, and he pulls the door open to reveal my section of the Narrows. The same—a mirror image—and yet different. More familiar.

  I free my own key from under my collar and wrap the cord around my wrist. Wes smiles and gives a sweeping bow before stepping aside to let me pass.

  “Be safe,” he says, holding the door open as I cross through.

  I hear it swing shut behind me; by the time I look back, there is nothing but a smooth stone wall and a tiny keyhole filled with light. A shadow crosses it briefly, and then it’s gone, and when I press my ear to the wall, I imagine I can hear Wesley’s footsteps fading. I feel the scratch of letters on my list, but I don’t pull the paper out. The History will have to wait. It might not be happy or sane, but I’ll deal with it when I get back.

  I head straight through the territory to the numbered doors, my mind already on Mr. Phillip’s house as I slot the key into the first door and step out onto the third floor hall, and stop.

  Eric is leaning up against the faded yellow wallpaper, reading his book.

  “If I didn’t know better,” he says, turning a page, “I’d think you were avoiding me.”

  “Flat tire,” I say, sliding my ring back on as the Narrows door dissolves behind me.

  “I’m sure.” He closes the book and pockets it.

  “You know,” I say, “there’s a word for guys who lurk outside schools.”

  Eric almost smiles. “When you sneak off, it makes one think you’re up to no good.”

  “When you follow people without telling them why, it makes one think the same.”

  Eric winks. “How are your hands?”

  I hesitate. He sounds like he actually cares. Maybe I was wrong about him. I hold them up for his inspection.

  “Good,” he says. “Fast healer.”

  “Comes in handy.”

  “Thank your genes, Miss Bishop. Your recovery rate comes with the territory, just like your sight.”

  I look down at my mending knuckles. I’d never thought much about it before, but I guess it makes sense.

  Just then, the stairwell door bangs open and a woman strides through, a Crew key dangling from her fingers. She’s tall, her black eyes fringed with dark lashes, a black ponytail plunging between her shoulders and down her back, straight and knife-sharp. In fact, everything about her is sharp, from the line of her jaw and her shoulders to her fingernails and the heeled boots at the ends of her long, thin legs. I recognize her from that day in the Archive.

  Eric’s partner.

  “There you are,” she says, eyes flicking between us.

  “Sako, my love.” There’s a warmth to his voice that matches the cold in hers. “I’ve just been educating our young Keeper here. They don’t teach them anything these days.”

  I’m willing to bet I know more than Eric thinks about the ways of the Archive, but I hold my tongue.

  “Well, school’s out. We have work to do.”

  Eric smiles, his eyes alight. “Wonderful.”

  My chest loosens. Wonderful indeed. That should keep him off my tail long enough for me to pay Mr. Phillip’s house a visit.

  He starts toward Sako, and I’m halfway through letting out a breath of relief when he stops and glances back at me.

  “Miss Bishop?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do try to stay out of trouble.”

  I smile and spread my arms. “Do I look like a troublemaker to you?”

  Sako snorts and vanishes into the stairwell, Eric on her heels.

  The moment they’re gone, I duck into my apartment and unearth Da’s box of things from the back of my closet, rooting around until I find what I’m looking for: a lock pick set. I ditch the school skirt for a pair of jeans and pocket the metal picks, and I’m halfway back to the front door when my phone goes off.

  My heart lurches.

  In the second between hearing the sound and digging the phone out of my pocket, all my fears feel suddenly silly.

  The text will be from Jason, telling me he’s fine, and he’s sorry his phone was dead, and that he couldn’t find the cord, and I’ll realize how much I was making out of nothing, piling theory on theory on theory when for once Da was wrong, and it was in fact all coincidence. Maybe Bethany just found the strength to leave her necklace along with the rest of her life. Maybe Eric was hired to protect me, not get me erased. Maybe Mr. Phillip…But that’s the problem. There is no explanation for Mr. Phillip.

  And the text isn’t from Jason.

  It’s from Lyndsey, just saying hi.

  My hope collapses, because there are no easy outs—only more questions. And only one place to go. A place that has to have answers.

  I take the steps two at a time all the way down to the lobby. Then I cut right down the hall beside the staircase, through the study, and into the garden. I hoist myself up and over the stone wall, hit the pavement in a crouch, and take off running.

  FIFTEEN

  DA AND I ARE walking back to his house one scorching summer day, eating lemon ices, when he gets a call. His phone makes that certain sound it only makes when he’s being called to a scene. Unofficially, of course—Da never does anything on the books—and he hands me the last of his lemon ice and says, “You go on, Kenzie. I’ll catch up.” So of course I dump both ices and follow at a distance. He makes his way three streets over to a house that’s roped off, but clearly unattended. He goes to the back door, not the front, and proceeds to stand there until I get within earshot. Then he says, without turning, “Your ears broken? I told you to go on home.”

  But when he glances back, he doesn’t look angry, only amused. He knows I’m good at keeping my hands to myself, so he nods me up onto the step and tells me to watch closely. Then he pulls a set of picks from his back pocket and shows me how to line them up, one above the other, and lets me press my ear to the lock to listen for the clicks. Da says every lock will speak to you, if you listen right. When he’s done, he rests his hand on the knob and says, “Open sesame.” The door swings open.

  He tugs off his boots and knots the laces and hangs them on his shoulder before stepping in. I do everything he does and nothing he doesn’t, and together we head inside.

  It’s a crime scene.

  I can tell because everything is very still.

  Still in that undisturbed-on-purpose way.

  I stand by the door and watch him work, amazed by the way he touches things without leaving any mark.

  From the street, Mr. Phillip’s house looks almost normal.

  The plants are still in their pots, the doormat still clean and even at the top of the steps, and I’m willing to bet that inside the door, several pairs of shoes are lined up against the wall. But the illusion of calm order is interrupted by the bright strip of yellow tape crisscrossing the front door and the police cruiser parked on the street.

  I’m leaning against a fence a few houses down, assessing the situation. There’s one cop in the cruiser, but his seat’s kicked back and his hat is over his eyes. Halfway down the block a woman is walking a dog; other than that, the street is empty.

  There’s a high wooden fence jutting out to either side of Mr. Phillip’s house, but his neighbor’s lawn is open, and I make my way across the street behind the cop car and into the yard, heading for their backyard like it’s my
own. Luckily, they’re not home to contradict me—as soon as I’m out of the cop car’s line of sight, I press my ear to Mr. Phillip’s fence and listen. Nothing. The wood barely groans as I hoist myself up and over and land in a crouch in the manicured backyard.

  Plastic has been taped over the two shattered windows at the back of the house, and the grass beneath them is sprinkled with glass, which is strange itself. Normally in a break-in, the windows would be broken inward, but the glass out here suggests the windows were broken from the inside out.

  I keep my eyes on the ground, careful to step where others have obviously stepped rather than in the untouched patches.

  When I reach the back door, I press my ear to the wood and listen. Still nothing—no voices, no footsteps, no sounds of life. I check the lock, but it doesn’t budge, so I pull the set of picks from my backpack and kneel in front of the lock. From there I maneuver the two metal bars until the lock shifts and clicks under my touch.

  “Open sesame,” I whisper.

  I turn the handle and the door falls open. I slip the lock pick set back into my pocket and step inside, tugging the door shut behind me. At first, everything looks normal—a small room with a tiled floor, a pair of shoes neatly by the door, an umbrella in a holder, that same sense of everything in its place. Then I look into the room on my left and see the damage. The plastic on the windows has left the space dark, but even without the light I can make out the debris scattered across the hardwood floor. A set of floor-to-ceiling bookcases are built into the wall opposite the broken windows. Most of the debris seems to have come from there—the shelves are practically empty, and a trail of books and odd trinkets litters the floor, thinning as it nears the windows.

  I hold my breath. There’s a horrible stillness to the room. It’s only been three days, but the air is starting to feel stale. It’s eerie—a crime scene without a body, like a movie set without the actors.

  I tug off my ring and set it on the table by the door. The air shifts around me, humming faintly with life. I’m just bringing my hand to the nearest wall when something happens.