Текст книги "The Archived"

Автор книги: Victoria Schwab

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

SEVEN

I

AM ELEVEN,

and you are stronger than you look.

You take me out into the summer sun to show me how to fight. Your limbs are weapons, brutally fast. I spend hours figuring out how to avoid them, how to dodge, roll, anticipate, react. It’s get out of the way or get hit.

I’m sitting on the ground, exhausted and rubbing my ribs where you got a touch, even though I saw you try to pull back.

“You said you’d teach me how to fight,” I say.

“I am.”

“You’re only showing me how to defend.”

“Trust me. You need to know that first.”

“I want to learn how to attack.” I cross my arms. “I’m strong enough.”

“Fighting isn’t really about using your strength, Kenzie. It’s about using theirs. Histories will always be stronger. Pain doesn’t stick, so you can’t hurt them, not really. They don’t bleed, and if you kill them, they don’t stay dead. They die, they come back. You die, you don’t.”

“Can I have a weapon?”

“No, Kenzie,” you snap. “Never carry a weapon. Never count on anything that’s not attached to you. It can be taken. Now, get back up.”

There are times when I wish I’d broken Da’s rules. Like right now, staring at the sharp edge of a knife in the hands of a slipping History. But I don’t break Da’s rules, not ever. Sometimes I break the Archive’s rules, or bend them a bit, but not his. And they must work, because I’m still alive.

For now.

Jackson fidgets with the knife, and I can tell by the way he holds it he’s not used to the weapon. Good. Then at least I stand a chance of getting it away from him. I tug the yellow bandana from my hair and pull it tight between my hands. And I force my mouth to smile, because he might have the advantage as far as sharp things go, but even when the game turns physical, it never stops being mental.

“Jackson,” I say, pulling the fabric taut. “You don’t need to—”

Something moves in the hall beyond him. A shadow there and then gone, a dark shape with a silver crown. Sudden enough to catch my attention, dragging it from Jackson for only a second.

Which is, of course, the second he lunges.

His limbs are longer than mine, and it’s all I can do to get out of the way. He fights like an animal. Reckless. But he’s holding the knife wrong, too low, leaving a gap on the hilt between his hand and the blade. The next slice comes blindingly quick, and I lean back but hold my ground. I have an idea, but it means getting close, which is always risky when the other person has a knife. He jabs again, and I try to twist my body to get my arms to one side, one above and one below the knife; but I’m not fast enough, and the blade skims my forearm. Pain burns over my skin, but I’ve almost got this—and sure enough, on the next try he jabs wrong and I dodge right, lifting one arm and lowering the other so the knife slices into the circle of space made by my limbs and the bandana. He sees the trap too late, jerks back; but I swing my hand down, looping the fabric around the knife, the gap on the hilt. I snap it tight and bring my boot to the front of his green hoodie as hard as I can, and he stumbles, losing his hold on the knife.

The fabric goes slack and the blade tumbles into my grip, handle hitting my palm right as he dives forward, tackling me around the waist and sending us both to the floor. He knocks the air from my lungs like a brick to the ribs, and the blade goes skittering into the dark.

At least it’s a fair fight now. He might be strong, made stronger by slipping, but he clearly didn’t have a grandfather who saw combat training as a bonding opportunity. I free my leg from under him and manage to get my foot against the wall, for once thankful that the Narrows are so narrow. Pushing off, I roll on top of Jackson, just in time to dodge a clumsily thrown fist.

And then I see it on the floor, right above his shoulder.

A keyhole.

I never marked it, so I don’t know where it leads, or if my key will even work, but I have to do something. Ripping my wrist and my key free of his grip, I drive the metal teeth down into the gap and turn, holding my breath until I hear it click. I look down into Jackson’s wild eyes just before the door falls open, plunging us both downward.

Space changes, suddenly, and instead of falling down we fall forward, sprawling onto the cold marble of the Archive’s antechamber floor.

I can see the front desk in the corner of my eye, a QUIET PLEASE sign and a stack of papers and a green-eyed girl looking over it.

“This is not the Returns room,” she says, her voice edged with amusement. She has hair the color of sun and sand.

“I realize that,” I growl as I try to pin a hissing, cussing, clawing Jackson to the floor. “A little help?”

I’ve got him down for all of two seconds before he somehow gets his knee and then his shoe between our bodies.

The young Librarian stands up as Jackson uses his boot to pry me off, sending me backward to the hard floor. I’m still on the ground, but Jackson is halfway to his feet when the Librarian rounds the desk and cheerfully plunges something thin and sharp and shining into his back. His eyes widen, and when she twists the weapon there’s a noise, like a lock turning or a bone breaking, and all the life goes out of Jackson Lerner’s eyes. She withdraws, and he crumples to the floor with the sickening thud of dead weight. I can see now that what she holds is not a weapon exactly, but a kind of key. It’s gleaming gold and has a handle and a stem, but no teeth.

“That was fun,” she says.

There’s something like a giggle in the corners of her voice. I’ve seen her around the stacks. She always catches my eye because she is so young. Girlish. Librarian is top rank, so the vast majority are older, seasoned. But this girl looks like she’s twenty.

I drag myself to my feet. “I need a key like that.”

She laughs. “You couldn’t handle it. Literally.” She holds it out, but the moment my fingers touch the metal, they go pins-and-needles numb. I pull back, and her laugh trails off as the key vanishes into the pocket of her coat.

“Stumble through the wrong door?” she asks just before the large doors behind the desk fly open.

“What is going on?” comes a very different voice. Patrick storms in, the eyes behind his black glasses flicking from the Librarian to Jackson’s body on the floor to me.

“Carmen,” he says, his attention still leveled on me. “Please take care of that.”

The girl smiles and, despite her size, hauls the body up and through a pair of doors built right into the curving walls of the antechamber. I blink. I never noticed those before. And the moment they’ve closed behind her, I can’t seem to focus on them. My eyes roll off.

“Miss Bishop,” Patrick says tersely. The room is quiet except for my heavy breathing. “You’re bleeding on my floor.”

I look down and realize he’s right. Pain rolls up my arm as my eyes slide over the place where Jackson’s knife cut through fabric and grazed skin. My sleeve is stained red, a narrow line running down my hand and over my key before dripping to the floor. Patrick is gazing distastefully at the drops as they hit the granite.

“Did you have a problem with the doors?” asks Patrick.

“No,” I say, aiming for a joke. “The doors were fine. I had a problem with the History.”

Not even a smile.

“Do you need medical attention?” he asks.

I feel dazed, but I know better than to show it. Certainly not in front of him.

Every branch staffs a medically trained Librarian in the interest of keeping work-related injuries quiet, and Patrick is the man for this branch. If I say yes, then he’ll treat me; but he’ll also have an excuse to report the incident, and there won’t be anything Roland can do to keep it off the books. I don’t have a clean record, so I shake my head.

“I’ll live.” A swatch of yellow catches my eye, and I recover my bandana from the floor and wrap it around the cut. “But I really liked this shirt,” I add as lightly as possible.

He frowns and I think he’s going to chew me out or report me, but when he speaks it’s only to say, “Go clean up.”

I nod and turn back to the Narrows, leaving a trail of red behind.

EIGHT

I  AM A MESS.

I scoured the Narrows, but Jackson’s knife was nowhere to be found. As for the strange shadow I saw during the fight, the one with the silvery crown…maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me. That happens, now and then, with the ring off. Press against a surface wrong and you can see the present and past at once. Things can get tangled.

I wince, focusing on the task at hand.

The cut on my arm is deeper than I thought, and it bleeds through the gauze before I can get the bandage on. I toss another ruined wrap into the plastic bag currently serving as the bathroom trash bin and run the cut under cool water, digging through the extensive first-aid kit I’ve assembled over the years. My shirt is sitting in a heap on the floor, and I take in my reflection, the web of fine scars across my stomach and arms, and the bruise blossoming on my shoulder. I am never without the marks of my job.

Pulling my forearm from the water, I dab the cut, finally getting it gauzed and wrapped. Red drops have made a trail along the counter and into the sink.

“I christen thee,” I mutter to the sink as I finish bandaging the cut. I take the trash bag and add it to the larger one in the kitchen, making sure all evidence of my first aid is buried, just as Mom appears, a slightly smooshed but still cellophaned muffin in one hand, and the basket in the other. The muffins inside have cooled, a film of condensation fogging up the wrappers. Damn. I knew I forgot something.

“Mackenzie Bishop,” she says, dropping her purse on the dining room table, which is the only fully assembled piece of furniture. “What is this?”

“A Welcome muffin?”

She drops the basket with a thud.

“You said you would deliver them. Not drop them on people’s doormats and leave the basket in the stairwell. And where have you been?” she snaps. “This couldn’t have taken you all morning. You can’t just disappear.…” She’s an open book: anger and worry too thinly veiled behind a tight-lipped smile. “I asked for your help.”

“I knocked, but nobody was home,” I snap back, pain and fatigue tightening around me. “Most people have jobs, Mom. Normal jobs. Ones where they get up and go to the office and come home.”

She rubs her eyes, which means that she’s been rehearsing whatever she’s about to say. “Mackenzie. Look. I was talking to Colleen, and she said that you’d need to grieve in your own way—”

“You’re kidding me.”

“—and when you add that to your age, and the natural desire for rebellion—”

“Stop.” My head is starting to hurt.

“—I know you need space. But you also need to learn discipline. Bishop’s is a family business.”

“But it wasn’t a family dream.”

She flinches.

I want to be oblivious to the hurt written on her face. I want to be selfish and young and normal. M would be that way. She would need space to grieve. She would rebel because her parents were simply uncool, not because one was wearing a horrifying happy mask and the other was a living ghost. She’d be distant because she was preoccupied with boys or school, not because she’s tired from hunting down the Histories of the dead, or distracted by her new hotel-turned-apartment, where the walls are filled with crimes.

“Sorry,” I say, adding, “Colleen’s right, I guess.” The words try to crawl back down my throat. “Maybe I just need a little time to adjust. It’s a lot of change. But I didn’t mean to bail.”

“Where were you?”

“Talking to a neighbor,” I say. “Ms. Angelli. She invited me in, and I didn’t want to be rude. She seemed kind of lonely, and she had this amazing place full of old stuff, and so I just stayed with her for a while. We had tea, and she showed me her collections.”

Da would call that an extrapolation. It’s easier than a straight lie because it contains seeds of truth. Not that Mom would be able to tell if I told her a blatant lie, but it makes me feel a fraction less guilty.

“Oh. That was…sweet of you,” she says, looking wounded because I’d rather have tea with a stranger than talk to her.

“I should have kept better track of time”—and then, feeling guiltier—“I’m sorry.” I rub my eyes and begin to lean toward the bedroom. “I’m going to go unpack a little.”

“This will be good for us,” she promises. “This will be an adventure.” But while it sounded cheerful coming from Dad, it leaves her lips like a breath being knocked out of her. Desperate. “I promise, Mac. An adventure.”

“I believe you,” I say. And because I can tell she wants more, I manage a smile and add, “I love you.”

The words taste strange, and as I make my way to my room and then to my waiting bed, I can’t figure out why. When I pull the sheet over my head, it hits me.

It’s the only thing I said that wasn’t a lie.

I’m twelve, six months shy of becoming a Keeper, and Mom is mad at you because you’re bleeding. She accuses you of fighting, of drinking, of refusing to age gracefully. You light a cigarette and run your fingers through your shock of peppered hair and let her believe it was a bar fight, let her believe you were looking for trouble.

“Is it hard?” I ask when she storms out of the room. “Lying so much?”

You take a long drag and flick ash into the sink, where you know she’ll see it. You’re not supposed to smoke anymore.

“Not hard, no. Lying is easy. But it’s lonely.”

“What do you mean?”

“When you lie to everyone about everything, what’s left? What’s true?”

“Nothing,” I say.

“Exactly.”

The phone wakes me.

“Hey, hey,” says Lyndsey. “Daily check-in!”

“Hey, Lynds.” I yawn.

“Were you sleeping?”

“I’m trying to fulfill your mother’s image of me.”

“Don’t mind her. So, hotel update? Found me any ghosts yet?”

I sit up, swing my legs off the bed. I’ve got the bloodstained boy in my walls, but I don’t think that’s really shareable. “No ghosts yet, but I’ll keep looking.”

“Look harder! A place like that? It’s got to be full of creepy things. It’s been around for, like, a hundred years.”

“How do you know that?”

“I looked it up! You don’t think I’d let you move into some haunted mansion without scoping out the history.”

“And what did you find?”

“Weirdly, nothing. Like, suspiciously nothing. It was a hotel, and the hotel was converted into apartments after World War Two, a big boom time moneywise. The conversion was in a ton of newspapers, but then a few years later the place just falls off the map…no articles, nothing.”

I frown, getting up from the bed. Ms. Angelli admitted that this place was full of history. So where is it? Assuming she can’t read walls, how did she learn the Coronado’s secrets? And why was she so defensive about sharing them?

“I bet it’s like a government conspiracy,” Lynds is saying. “Or a witness protection program. Or one of those horror reality films. Have you checked for cameras?”

I laugh, but silently wonder—glancing at the blood-spotted floor—if the truth is worse.

“Have you at least got tenants who look like they belong in a Hitchcock film?”

“Well, so far I’ve met a morbidly obese antiques hoarder, and a boy who wears eyeliner.”

“They call that guyliner,” she says.

“Yes. Well.” I stretch and head for the bedroom door. “I’d call it stupid, but he’s rather nice to look at. I can’t tell if the eyeliner makes him attractive, or if he’s good-looking in spite of it.”

“At least you’ve got nice things to look at.”

I step around the ghostly drops on the floor and venture out into the apartment. It’s dusk, and none of the lights are on.

“How are you doing?” I ask. Lyndsey possesses the gift of normalcy. I bathe in it. “Summer courses? College prep? Learning new languages? New instruments? Single-handedly saving countries?”

Lyndsey laughs. It’s so easy for her. “You make me sound like an overachiever.”

I feel the scratch of letters and pull the list from my jeans.

Alex King. 13.

“That’s because you are an overachiever,” I say.

“I just like to stay busy.”

Come over here, then, I think, pocketing the list. This place would keep you busy.

I distinctly hear the thrum of guitar strings. “What’s that noise?” I ask.

“I’m tuning, that’s all.”

“Lyndsey Newman, do you actually have me on speaker just so you can talk and tune a guitar at the same time? You’re jeopardizing the sanctity of our conversations.”

“Relax. The parents have vacated. Some kind of gala. They left in fancy dress an hour ago. What about yours?”

I find two notes on the kitchen counter.

My mother’s reads: Store! Love, Mom.

My father’s reads: Checking in at work. –D

“Similarly out,” I say, “but minus the fancy dress and the togetherness.”

I retreat to the bedroom.

“The place to yourself?” she says. “I hope you’re having a party.”

“I can barely hear over the music and drinking games. I better tell them to quiet down before someone calls the cops.”

“Talk soon, okay?” she says. “I miss you.” She really means it.

“I miss you, Lynds.” I mean it too.

The phone goes dead. I toss it onto the bed and stare down at the faded spots on my floor.

Questions eat at me. What happened in this room? Who was the boy? And whose blood was he covered in? Maybe it’s not my job, maybe it’s an infraction to find out, a misuse of power, but every member of the Archive takes the same oath.

We protect the past. And the way I see it, that means we need to understand it.

And if neither Lyndsey’s search engines nor Ms. Angelli are going to tell me anything, I’ll have to see for myself. I tug the ring from my finger, and before I can chicken out, I kneel, press my hands to the floor, and reach.

NINE

THERE IS A GIRL sitting on a bed, knees pulled up beneath her chin.

I run the memories back until I find the small calendar by the bed that reads MARCH, the blue dress on the corner chair, the black book on the table by the bed. Da was right. Bread crumbs and bookmarks. My fingers found their way.

The girl on the bed is thin in a delicate way, with light blond hair that falls in waves around her narrow face. She is younger than I am, and talking to the boy with the bloodstained hands, only right now his hands are still clean. Her words are a murmur, nothing more than static, and the boy won’t stand still. I can tell by the girl’s eyes that she’s talking slowly, insistently, but the boy’s replies are urgent, punctuated by his hands, which move through the air in sweeping gestures. He can’t be much older than she is, but judging by his feverish face and the way he sways, he’s been drinking. He looks like he’s about to be sick. Or scream.

The girl sees it too, because she slides from the bed and offers him a glass of water from the top of the dresser. He knocks the glass away hard and it shatters, the sound little more than a crackle. His fingers dig into her arm. She pushes him away a few times before he loses his grip and stumbles back into the bed frame. She turns, runs. He’s up, swiping a large shard of glass from the floor. It cuts into his hand as he lunges for her. She’s at the door when he reaches her, and they tumble into the hall.

I drag my hand along the floor until I can see them through the doorway, and then I wish I couldn’t. He’s on top of her, and they are a tangle of glass and blood and fighting limbs, her slender bare feet kicking under him as he pins her down.

And then the struggle slows. And stops.

He drops the shard beside her body and staggers to his feet, and I can see her, the lines carved across her arms, the far deeper cut across her throat. The shard pressed into her own palm. He stands over her a moment before turning back toward the bedroom. Toward me. He is covered in blood. Her blood. My stomach turns, and I have to resist the urge to scramble away. He is not here. I am not there.

You killed her, I whisper. Who are you? Who is she?

He staggers into the room, and for a moment he breaks, slides into a crouch, rocking. But then he gets back up. He looks down at himself, the glitter of broken glass at his feet, and over at the body, and begins to wipe his bloody hands slowly and then frantically on his bloody shirt. He scrambles over to the closet and yanks a black coat from a hook, forcing it on and pulling it closed. And then he runs, and I’m left staring at the girl’s body in the hall.

The blood is soaking into her pale blond hair. Her eyes are open, and in that moment, all I want is to cross to her and close them.

I pull my hands from the floor and open my eyes, and the memory shatters into the now, taking the body with it. The room is my room again, but I still see her in that horrible light-echo way, like she’s burned into my vision. I shove my ring on, tripping over half the boxes as I focus on the simple need to get the hell out of this apartment.

I slam the door to 3F behind me and sag against it, sliding to the floor and pressing my palms to my eyes, breathing into the space between my chest and knees.

Revulsion claws up my throat and I swallow hard and picture Da taking one look at me and laughing through smoke, telling me how silly I look. I picture the council who inducted me seeing straight through the worlds and declaring me unfit. I am not M, I think. Not some silly squeamish girl. I am more. I am a Keeper. I am Da’s replacement.

It’s not the blood, or even the murder, though both turn my stomach. It’s the fact that he ran. All I can think is, did he get away? Did he get away with that?

Suddenly I need to move, to hunt, to do something, and I get up, steadying myself against the door, and pull the list from my pocket, thankful to have a name.

But the name is gone. The paper is blank.

“You look like you could use a muffin.”

I shove the paper back in my jeans and look up to find Wesley Ayers at the other end of the hall, tossing a still-wrapped Welcome! muffin up and down like a baseball. I don’t feel like doing this right now, like putting on a face and acting normal.

“You still have that?” I ask wearily.

“Oh, I ate mine,” he says, heading toward me. “I swiped this one from Six B. They’re out of town this week.”

I nod.

When he reaches me, his face falls. “You all right?”

“I’m fine,” I lie.

He sets the muffin on the carpet. “You look like you need some fresh air.”

What I need are answers. “Is there a place here where they keep records? Logs, anything like that?”

Wesley’s head tilts when he thinks. “There’s the study. Mostly old books, classics, anything that looks, well, like it belongs in a study. But it might have something. It’s kind of the opposite of fresh air, though, and there’s this garden I was going to show—”

“Tell you what. Point me to the study, and then you can show me whatever you want.”

Wesley’s smile lights up his face, from his sharp chin all the way to the tips of his spiked hair. “Deal.”

He bypasses the elevator and leads me down the flight of concrete steps to the grand staircase, and from there down into the lobby. I keep my distance, remembering the last time we touched. He’s several steps below me, and from this angle, I can just see beneath the collar of his black shirt. Something glints, a charm on a leather cord. I lean, trying to see—

“Where are you going?” comes a small voice. Wesley jumps, grabs his chest.

“Jeez, Jill,” he says. “Way to scare a guy in front of a girl.”

It takes me several seconds to find Jill, but finally I spot her in one of the leather high-backed chairs in a front corner, reading a book. The book comes up to the bridge of her nose. She skims the pages with sharp blue eyes, and every now and then turns her attention up, as if she’s waiting for something.

“He spooks easily,” she calls behind her book.

Wesley runs his fingers through his hair and manages a tight laugh. “Not one of my proudest traits.”

“You should see what happens when you really surprise him,” offers Jill.

“That’s enough, brat.”

Jill turns a page with a flourish.

Wesley casts a glance back at me and offers his arm. “Onward?”

I smile thinly but decline to take it. “After you,” I say.

He leads the way across the lobby. “What are you looking for, anyway?”

“Just wanted to learn about the building. Do you know much about it?”

“Can’t say I do.” He guides me down a hall on the other side of the grand stairs.

“Here we are,” he says, pushing open the door to the study. It’s stuffed to the brim with books. A corner desk and a few leather chairs furnish the space, and I scan the spines for anything useful. My eyes trail over encyclopedias, several volumes of poetry, a complete set of Dickens.…

“Come on, come on,” he says, crossing the room. “Keep up.”

“Study first,” I say. “Remember?”

“I pointed it out.” He gestures to the room as he reaches a pair of doors at the far side of the study. “You can come back later. The books aren’t going anywhere.”

“Just give me a—”

He flings the doors open. Beyond them, there’s a garden flooded with twilight and air and chaos. Wesley steps out onto the moss-covered rocks, and I drag my attention from the books and follow him out.

The dying light lends the garden a glow, shadows weaving through vines, colors dipping darker, deeper. The space is old and fresh at once, and I forget how much I’ve missed the feel of green. Our old house had a small yard, but it was nothing like Da’s place. He had the city at his front but the country at his back, land that stretched out in a wild mass. Nature is constantly growing, changing, one of the few things that can’t hold memories. You forget how much clutter there is in the world, in the people and things, until you’re surrounded by green. And even if they don’t hear and see and feel the past the way I do, I wonder if normal people feel this too—the quiet.

“‘The sun retreats,’” Wes says softly, reverently. “‘The day, outlived, is o’er. It hastens hence and lo, a new world is alive.’”

My eyebrows must be creeping up, because when he glances over his shoulder at me, he gives me his slanted smile.

“What? Don’t look so surprised. Beneath this shockingly good hair is something vaguely resembling a brain.” He crosses the garden to a stone bench woven over with ivy, and brushes away the tendrils to reveal the words etched into the rock.

“It’s Faust,” he says. “And it’s possible I spend a good deal of time here.”

“I can see why.” It’s bliss. If bliss had gone untouched for fifty years. The place is tangled, unkempt. And perfect. A pocket of peace in the city.

Wesley slides onto the bench. He rolls up his sleeves and leans back to watch the streaking clouds, blowing a blue-black chunk of hair from his face.

“The study never changes, but this place is different every moment, and really best at sun fall. Besides”—he waves a hand at the Coronado—“I can give you a proper tour some other time.”

“I thought you didn’t live here,” I say, looking up at the dimming sky.

“I don’t. But my cousin, Jill, does, with her mom. Jill and I are both only children, so I try to keep an eye on her. You have any siblings?”

My chest tightens, and for a moment I don’t know how to answer. No one’s asked that, not since Ben died. In our old town, everyone knew better, skipped straight to pity and condolences. I don’t want either from Wesley, so I shake my head, hating myself even as I do, because it feels like I’m betraying Ben, his memory.

“Yeah, so you know how it is. It can get lonely. And hanging around this old place is better than the alternative.”

“Which is?” I find myself asking.

“My dad’s. New fiancée. Satan in a skirt, and all. So I end up here more often than not.” He arches back, letting his spine follow the curve of the bench.

I close my eyes, relishing the feel of the garden, the cooling air and the smell of flowers and ivy. The horror hidden in my room begins to feel distant, manageable, though the question still whispers in my mind: Did he get away? I breathe deep and try to push it from my thoughts, just for a moment.

And then I feel Wesley stand and come up beside me. His fingers slide through mine. The noise hits a moment before his rings knock against mine, the bass and beat thrumming up my arm and through my chest. I try to push back, to block him out, but it makes it worse, the sound of his touch crushing even though his fingers are featherlight on mine. He lifts my hand and gently turns it over.

“You look like you lost a fight with the moving equipment,” he says, gesturing to the bandage on my forearm.

I try to laugh. “Looks like it.”

He lowers my hand and untangles his fingers. The noise fades, my chest loosening by degrees until I can breathe, like coming up through water. Again my eyes are drawn to the leather cord around his neck, the charm buried beneath the black fabric of his shirt. My gaze drifts down his arms, past his rolled sleeves, toward the hand that just let go of mine. Even in the twilight I can see a faint scar.

“Looks like you’ve lost a couple fights of your own,” I say, running my fingers through the air near his hand, not daring to touch. “How did you get that?”

“A stint as a spy. I wasn’t much good.”

A crooked line runs down the back of his hand. “And that?”

“Scuff with a lion.”

Watching Wesley lie is fascinating.

“And that?”

“Caught a piranha bare-handed.”

No matter how absurd the tale, he says it steady and simple, with the ease of truth. A scratch runs along his forearm. “And that?”

“Knife fight in a Paris alley.”

I search his skin for marks, our bodies drawing closer without touching.

“Dove through a window.”

“Icicle.”

“Wolf.”

I reach up, my fingers hovering over a nick on his hairline.

“And this?”

“A History.”

Everything stops.

His whole face changes right after he says it, like he’s been punched in the stomach. The silence hangs between us.

And then he does an unfathomable thing. He smiles.

“If you were clever,” he says slowly, “you would have asked me what a History was.”

I am still frozen when he reaches out and brushes a finger over the three lines etched into the surface of my ring, then twists one of his own rings to reveal a cleaner but identical set of lines. The Archive’s insignia. When I don’t react—because no fluid lie came to me and now it’s too late—he closes the gap between us, close enough that I can almost hear the bass again, radiating off his skin. His thumb hooks under the cord around my throat and guides my key out from under my shirt. It glints in the twilight. Then he fetches the key from around his own neck.