The Unbound Page 17

I shake my head. “Did Amber tell you?”

  “That you got arrested? Yeah.”

  “It doesn’t count as an arrest unless they book you.”

  Wesley arches a brow. “Spoken like a true criminal. What did you get picked up for?”

  “Oh, Amber didn’t share that part?”

  “She didn’t know.”

  “Ah, well. Remember the guy who disappeared before Bethany? Judge Phillip? I went back to check out his house, since that’s where he vanished from. And I might have entered the place using less than legal methods.”

  Wes hits the table. “You broke into a crime scene without me?”

  “Be glad, Wes, or we both would have been caught.”

  “We’re a team, Mac. You don’t go committing a crime without your partner in crime. Besides, if I’d been with you, we probably wouldn’t have been caught. I could have stood at the door and made wild bird sounds or something when the cops came back. And if we did get caught, our mug shots would look fabulous.”

  I can’t help but smile at the thought.

  “Tell me you at least found something.”

  The smile slides off my lips. “I did,” I say slowly. “A void.”

  Wesley’s brow knits. “I don’t understand.”

  “A void. Like the one on the roof.”

  “In the middle of Phillip’s living room? That doesn’t make any sense. The only way there’d be a void there is if someone made one. And they’d need a Crew key to do that.”

  “Exactly.” I run my good hand through my hair and tell him about breaking into Judge Phillip’s and seeing the void, and the way it made the memories unreadable. I tell him about Eric and Sako following me. I tell him what Roland said about evidence, and that I know it sounds crazy, but I think I’m being set up.

  “You have to tell the Archive,” he says.

  “I know.” I know. But tell them what? I know how ludicrous it all sounds. I can see the skepticism in Wesley’s eyes, and he’s far more forgiving than Agatha will be. I can’t just walk in there and announce they have another traitor in their midst. Not after what happened with Owen and Carmen. I need to talk to Roland, but I’ll have to get past Agatha first. I know I can’t keep ignoring the summonses, but after everything I’ve put my parents through, I can’t just disappear. I think about sending Wesley to the Archive on my behalf, but the last thing I want to do is get him tangled up in this, especially now that Agatha’s involved. Besides, we’re not really partners. Wesley’s not supposed to be helping me.

  He looks at me hard. “You didn’t feel like mentioning any of this last night?”

  I pick at a fraying bit of tape on my hand. “It wouldn’t translate well to text,” I say. “And I was a little busy.”

  He reaches out and takes my wrapped hand and runs his fingers lightly over the tape. “What happened, Mac?”

  I pull away and roll up my left sleeve for him to see the bandage. I unwrap it so he can see the fourteen little red X’s beneath.

  “Who did this to you?” he growls.

  I wish that were an easier question to answer. I take a breath and hold it for several long seconds before finally saying, “I did.”

  Confusion flickers across Wesley’s face, followed by worry. I go to push my sleeve back down, but he catches my hand and draws my arm closer. His fingers hover over the cut. “I don’t understand.”

  “I didn’t mean to do it,” I explain. “It started as a dream. Owen was… He was the one with the knife, and then I…” Wesley pulls me into a hug. He holds me so tight it hurts, so tight his noise pounds through my head, but I don’t pull away.

  “I don’t know what’s happening to me,” I whisper into his shirt.

  Wes pulls back just enough to look at me. “Tell me how I can help.”

  Go away, I think. Stay away from me and whatever bad is circling. But I know him well enough to know that he won’t. “For one, you could ask Amber not to tell the whole school I got arrested.”

  “It doesn’t count as an arrest unless they book you,” echoes Wes, adding, “She won’t tell anyone.”

  “She told you.”

  “Because she knows I…” He trails off.

  “You what?”

  “She knows I care,” says Wes. “About you. By the way, you look like hell. Have you slept at all since…”

  I rub my eyes. “I can’t.”

  “You can’t stay awake forever, Mac.”

  “I know…but I’m scared.” Words Da taught me never to say. He thought saying it was halfway to surrendering. Now the confession hangs between us. The room settles and thickens, and I can feel the cracks in my armor as it loosens around me.

  Wes pushes up from the table. He pours himself a cup of coffee and rests against the counter.

  “Okay,” he says. “If you’re determined to stay awake, I can help. But this”—he gestures down at the spread of precalc and lit theory on the table—“isn’t going to do.” He digs the physiology book out from the bottom of the pile and flashes me a mischievous smile. “Here we go.”

  By the time Dad gets back, Wes has managed to cover himself in an impressive number of Post-it notes, each labeling a muscle (I don’t have the heart to tell him we’re studying blood flow right now). Dad takes one look at him and almost smiles. And when it takes Wes half a dozen tries to affix a yellow sticker to the place between his shoulders, I end up laughing until my chest hurts, and for a while I forget how much trouble I’m in and how tired I am and how much my arm hurts.

  I make it to dusk, but even with Wesley’s company, I’m starting to fade. Mom is back home and making no attempt to hide the fact that she’s hovering. Every time I yawn, she tells me I should go to bed. Tells me I need to sleep. But I can’t. I know Dallas said I had to confront my problems, but I just don’t have the strength to face another nightmare right now. Especially now that I know I’m capable of doing actual damage to myself. And maybe to others. I would rather be exhausted and awake than a danger and asleep, so I brush off her concern and crack open a soda. It’s halfway to my lips when she catches my hand, filling my head with her high, worried static as she pries the can away and replaces it with a glass of water.

  I sigh and take a long sip. She passes the soda to Wes, who makes the mistake of yawning as he takes it.

  “You should head home,” Mom tells him. “It’s getting late, and I’m sure your father is wondering where you are.”

  “I doubt that,” he says under his breath, then adds, “He knows I’m over here.”

  “Mom,” I say, finishing the glass of water, “he’s helping me study.”

  “Does he know you’re here here?” she presses, ignoring me. “Or does he think you’re upstairs with Jill?”

  Wesley’s brow furrows. “Frankly, I don’t think he cares.”

  “Parents always care,” she snaps.

  “Honey,” says Dad, looking up from a book.

  They’re talking, all three of them, but the words begin to run together in my ears. I’m just thinking about how strange it is when my vision slides out of focus.

  The room sways, and I grip the counter.

  “Mac?” Wes’s voice reaches me. “Are you okay?”

  I nod and set the glass down; or at least I mean to, but the countertop’s not where I thought it was, and the glass goes crashing to the floor. It shatters. The sound is far away. At first I think I’m about to have another blackout, but those happen fast, and this is slow like syrup.

  “What have you done?” Wes snaps, but I don’t think he’s talking to me.

  I close my eyes, but it doesn’t help. The world sways even in darkness.

  “The doctor said she needed to—”

  Everything else is far away.

  “Allison,” growls Dad. I drag my eyes open. “How could you—”

  And then my legs go out from under me, and I feel Wesley’s arms and his noise wrap around me before the world goes black.

  NINETEEN

  AT FIRST, everythi
ng is dark and still.

  Dark and still, but not peaceful.

  The world is somehow empty and heavy at the same time, the nothing weighing me down, pinning my arms and legs. And then, little by little, the details begin to come back, to descend, rise up, wrap around me.

  The open air.

  My racing heart.

  And Owen’s voice.

  “There’s nowhere to run.”

  Just like that, the darkness thins from absolute black into night, the nothingness into the Coronado roof. I am racing through the maze of gargoyles, and I can hear Owen behind me, the sound of his steps and the grind of metal on stone as he drags his blade along the statues. The roof stretches to every side, forever and ever, the gargoyles everywhere, and I am running.

  And I am tired of it.

  I have to stop.

  The moment the thought hits me, I slam to a halt on the rooftop. My lungs burn and my arm aches, and I look down to find the full word—B R O K E N—carved in bloody, bone-deep letters from elbow to wrist. I search my pockets and come up with a piece of cloth, and I’m halfway through tying it around my forearm, covering the cuts, when I realize how quiet the roof has gotten. The footsteps have stopped, the metallic scratching has stopped, and all I can hear is my heart. Then, the knife.

  I turn just in time to dodge Owen’s blade as it slashes through the air, putting a few desperate steps between our bodies. The gargoyles have shifted to form walls, no gaps to get through: no escape. And that’s okay, because I’m not running.

  He slashes again, but I grab his wrist and twist hard, and the knife tumbles from his grip into mine. This time I don’t hesitate. As his free hand goes for my throat, I bury the blade in Owen’s stomach.

  The air catches in his throat, and I think it’s finally over—that I’ve finally done it, I’ve beat him, and it’s going to be okay. I’m going to be okay.

  And then he looks down at me, at the place where my hand meets the knife and the knife meets his body. He brings his hand to mine and holds the knife there, buried to the hilt, and smiles.

  Smiles as his hair goes black, and his eyes go hazel, and his body becomes someone else’s.

  “No!” I cry out as Wesley Ayers gasps and collapses against me, blood spreading across his shirt. “Wesley. Wesley, please, please don’t…” I try to hold him up, but we both end up sinking to our knees on the cold concrete, and I feel the scream rising in my throat.

  And then something happens.

  Wesley’s noise—that strange chaotic beat—pours into the dream like water, washing over his body and mine and the rooftop, filling it up until everything begins to dim and vanish.

  I’m plunged into a new kind of darkness, warm and full and safe.

  And then I wake up.

  It’s the middle of the night, and Wesley’s hand is tangled with mine. He’s in a chair pulled up to my bed, slumped forward and fast asleep with his head cradled on his free arm on the comforter. The memory of him crumpling to the concrete almost makes me pull away. But here, now, with his hand warm and alive in mine, the scene on the roof feels like it was just a dream. A horrible dream, but a dream—already fading away as his noise washes over me softer and steadier than usual, but still loud enough to quiet everything else.

  My head is still filled with fog, and the hours before the nightmare trickle back first in glimpses.

  Mom pushing the water into my hand.

  The tilting room.

  The breaking glass.

  Wesley’s arms folding around me.

  I look down at him, sleeping with his head on my covers. I should wake him up. I should send him home. I slide my fingers from his, and for a moment he rouses, drags himself from sleep long enough to mutter something about storms. Then he’s quiet again, his breathing low and even. I sit there, watching him sleep, discovering yet another of his many faces: one without armor.

  I decide to let him sleep, and I’m just about to lie back down when I hear it: the sound of someone in the room behind me. Before I can turn, an arm wraps around my shoulders, and a woman’s hand closes over my mouth.

  Her noise crashes through my head, all metal and stone, and all I can think as her grip tightens is that it takes a cruel person to sound like this. It’s how I imagine Owen would have sounded when he was alive, before his life was compiled and his noise replaced by silence.

  When she leans in to whisper in my ear, I catch sight of the blue-black fringe that sweeps just above her black eyes. Sako.

  “Don’t scream, little Keeper,” she whispers as she hauls me backward, out of the bed and to my feet. “We don’t want to wake him.”

  Her hand falls away from my mouth, her arm away from my shoulders, and I spin on her in the dark.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I hiss, almost soundless, still dizzy from whatever Mom put in my water.

  “Trust me,” growls Sako as she grabs my arm and drags me across the room. “I’d rather be a thousand other places.”

  “Then get out,” I snap, pulling free. “Shouldn’t you be hunting down Histories?”

  “Haven’t you figured it out yet, little Keeper?” she says, driving her Crew key into my closet door. “We hunt down people for the Archive. Only some of them are Histories.”

  I barely have time to pull off my ring before she turns the key, opens the door, and shoves me into darkness.

  Agatha is waiting.

  She’s sitting behind the front desk in her cream-colored coat, her red hair sweeping perfectly around her face. One gloved hand turns through the ledger like it’s a magazine, while Roland stands at her side, looking stiff and pale. His attention snaps up when Sako drags me in, but Agatha continues to play with the pages of the massive book.

  “See, Roland?” she says, the heavy paper crinkling under her touch. “I told you Sako would find her.”

  Sako nods a fraction. Her hand is still a vise on my shoulder, but nothing filters in with her touch now. The silent buffer of the Archive surrounds us. Only the Librarians can read people here.

  “She was asleep,” says Sako. “With a boy.”

  Agatha raises a brow. “I’m so sorry to disturb you,” she says in that milky voice.

  “Not at all,” I say tightly. “I would have come sooner, but I was indisposed, and my doors were out of reach.” Only Crew can turn any door into an Archive door. I turn to Sako. “Thanks for the lift.”

  Sako smiles darkly. “Don’t mention it.”

  Roland’s eyes have locked onto the bandage wrapping around my right hand and up my wrist—You should see my other arm, I think—and they hover there as Agatha quietly shuts the ledger and rises to her feet.

  “If you’ll excuse us, I think it’s time for Mackenzie and me to have a little chat.”

  “Requesting permission to be present,” says Roland.

  “Denied,” she says casually. “Someone needs to watch the front desk. And Sako, please stay. You might be needed.” Agatha points to one of the two sentinels by the door. “With me, please.” I stiffen.

  “I really don’t think that’s necessary,” says Roland as one of the two black-clad figures steps forward. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen one move.

  “I hope it’s not,” says Agatha, “but one should always come prepared.”

  She turns toward the open doors behind the desk, and I scramble to pull my thoughts together as I follow. Roland catches my shoulder as I pass.

  “Do not grant her permission,” he whispers before the sentinel gives me a push through the doors.

  I pad barefoot through the atrium of the Archive, the white of Agatha’s coat in front of me, the black of the sentinel’s cloak trailing behind, and for the first time, I feel like a prisoner. As we turn down one of the halls, I catch sight of Patrick standing at the edge of a row of stacks. His eyes follow us—curious, but otherwise unreadable.

  Agatha leads me into a room with no shelves and two chairs.

  “Have a seat,” she tells me, waving at one as s
he takes the other. When I hesitate, the sentinel forces me down. His hands stay pressed onto my shoulders, holding me in place until Agatha says, “That won’t be needed,” and then he takes a step back. I can feel him looming like a shadow behind the chair.

  “Why am I here?” I ask.

  Agatha crosses her legs. “It’s been nearly a month since our last meeting, Miss Bishop. I thought it time for a checkup. Why?” she says, tilting her head innocently. “Can you think of any other reasons I’d summon you?”

  A pit forms in my stomach as she pulls a small black notebook from the pocket of her coat and opens it with a small sigh.

  “Preceding the obvious failure to report when summoned…” I bite back the urge to cut in, to call her out on the fact she knew I couldn’t come. “…I’ve compiled a rather concerning list of irregularities,” she says, dragging a gloved finger down the page. “We have nights spent in the Archive.”

  “Roland’s been training me.”

  “The assault of two humans in the Outer.”

  “They assaulted me. I merely defended myself.”

  “And the Archive had to clean up the mess.”

  “I didn’t ask the Archive to.”

  She sighs. “An arrest for breaking and entering a crime scene?”

  “I was never processed.”

  “Then how about crimes more pertinent to the Archive?” she challenges. “Such as failure to return Histories.” I open my mouth, but she holds up a hand. “Do not insult me by claiming you were the one to send those lost souls back, Miss Bishop. I happen to know that Mr. Ayers’s key was used to access the Returns in your territory. The simple fact is that you have been neglecting your job.”

  “I’m sorry. I was indisposed.”

  “Oh, I know. Hospitalized. For self-harm.” She taps the paper thoughtfully. “Do you understand why I find that so troublesome?”

  “It’s not what you—”

  “This is a stressful job, Miss Bishop. I am aware of that. The mind bears as many scars as the body. But the mind also keeps our secrets. A weak mind is a threat to the Archive. It is why we alter those who leave. And those who are removed.” Agatha’s eyes hold mine. “Now tell me, what happened?”