The Unbound (22 page)

“I know the official missing person mark is forty-eight hours,” someone is saying, “but what with all the disappearances, I thought it best to let you know.”

“I’m glad you did,” replies a gruff voice I recognize at once. Detective Kinney. I press myself against the wall beside the door as the footsteps draw closer. Owen doesn’t try to hide, but doesn’t move, either.

“His wife called me this morning,” says the first man. “Apparently, he never picked up their son from preschool yesterday, and he never went home last night.”

“Does he have a habit of wandering off?”

“No. And then, when he didn’t show this morning, I figured I’d better call. I wish I could tell you more.”

The footsteps come to a stop on the other side of the door.

“He was last seen here?” asks Kinney, peering in through the glass.

“Coach Kris saw him in his office before the bell rang.”

Kinney pulls away from the door. “We’ll start there, then,” he says.

The footsteps fade along with the voices as the two walk away. I let out a deep breath, resting my hands on my knees.

“This is all your fault,” I say. “If you hadn’t dragged those people through—”

“Really it’s yours,” counters Owen, “since you pushed me into the void. But who’s counting crimes?”

The bell rings in the distance, and I check to make sure the coast is clear before pushing the door open.

“The detective is,” I say, Owen falling into step beside me. I have to remind myself as I step onto the quad that no one else can see him. And even if they could, he’d blend in. His silver-blond hair glitters in the sunlight, and I can almost imagine what he must have looked like as a student here. His simple black attire lacks any gold piping, but otherwise he’d look just like any other senior. I don’t know how much of that has to do with the fact that he is—was—Crew and how much is the fact that, even though he seems old, he’s not.

Within seconds of entering the tide of students, I realize how hard it will be to keep my ring off. The path is crowded, and I’m instantly buffeted by a chorus of
what color tights should I wear tonight
will Geoffrey even notice
I’ll never pass x to the ninth is what how many
references do I need should have added art
Coach Metz better not make us do
sprints I’m still sore from Mom is going to kill me
I’m going to kill Amelia I
hate this place Wesley Ayers better dance with me why did I agree to so weird
sometimes metatarsal is connected to the I wish I had cookies get it right
empty house Dad is being such an ass stressed silver horns or black streaks
can I pull off wings
and it’s all tangled up in stress and fear and want and teenage hormones.

I grit my teeth against the crush of people’s lives.

“It’s time to let the world in,” presses Owen beside me. He brings his hand down on my shoulder, his quiet pressing through me, and instead of talking—ostensibly to myself—I
think
the next question.

And what happens once you’ve done that?
I challenge.
The living
would, what? Be free to visit the dead?

“Why not?” says Owen aloud. “They already do—in graveyards.”

Yeah,
I think,
but in graveyards the dead can’t wake.

I roll my shoulder, shaking him off before he can hear my thoughts spinning.

People aren’t smart when it comes to the dead.
That’s what Da said, and he was right.

How many would claw their way toward their loved ones, rip them from sleep to keep them close? How long would it take for the walls to come down as well as the doors and the world to tear itself apart?

How can he not see that this is madness? Is he truly that blind to the consequences? Or is he really willing to tear the world apart just to get his way? Either way, I have to stop him. But how? Even in his weakened state, the odds aren’t in my favor. Owen cannot die. I can.

I pause on the path and pretend to look through a notebook. Owen rests his chin on top of my head, hushing everything but his voice. “Penny for your thoughts?”

If you’re so convinced that everyone else will follow you, why do you
need me?

Owen pulls away, and by the time he comes around to face me, his features have grayed into something unreadable. “Before I can call on anyone, there’s something I need,” he says. “The Archive has it, and I have a plan to take it—but that plans requires two.”

My pulse quickens. But it’s not fear that makes it race, it’s excitement. Because Owen has just handed me the way to beat him. I might not be able to drag him back to the Archive, but I can follow him in. No one else has to get hurt. No one else has
to die.

I start walking again, and Owen follows in my wake, a swell of students carrying us into the building on a wave of
was there a test
what was I thinking please let this day be over
.

We move in silence through the crowded hall, and come to a stop outside my class.

“What is it we need to steal?” I ask under my breath.

Owen smiles at my use of
we
. He tucks a strand of dark hair behind my ear. I can feel the quiet spreading through me with his fingertips, feel him reading me for lies, but I’ve learned his tricks, and I’m learning my own. As he reaches through my mind, I focus on a simple truth:
Something has to change.

“I’m glad I have your attention,” he says, his hand falling away. “And I appreciate the collective pronoun. But before our partnership goes any further, I need to know that your heart’s in it.”

My heart sinks a little. A test. Of course it wouldn’t be as easy as saying yes. Owen Chris Clarke doesn’t gamble. He only plays games when he thinks he’ll win. Am I willing to play? Do I really have a choice?

I hold his gaze as the second bell rings and the hall empties around us.

My voice is barely a whisper, but my words are firm.

“What do you want me to do?”

“
G
O TO THE ARCHIVE,”
says Owen, “and steal me something.”

“What kind of something?” I ask, clenching my fingers around my backpack strap. Pain flickers through my wrist. It helps me focus.

“Something small,” says Owen. “Just a show of good faith. If you succeed, I’ll tell you what we’re really going to take from them. If you fail, there’s no point. You’ll just be in my way.” His eyes go to a clock on the wall. “You have until lunch,” he says, turning away. “Good luck.”

I stand there, watching him go, until someone clears his throat behind me.

“Avoiding my class, Miss Bishop?”

I turn to find Mr. Lowell holding the door open for me.

“Sorry, sir,” I say, and follow him inside. His hand grazes against my shoulder as he guides me through, and I’m hit with
worry strange
girl distant trouble at home I see the bruises quiet clutter ink stains
before I continue forward out of his reach and take my seat. Sixteen people in a classroom without the buffer of a ring make the air feel like it’s singing. I sit there, wincing faintly every time a student gets too close, Owen’s warped ideas playing through my head while Lowell lectures on the warped ideas of others. I’m not paying much attention until something Lowell says echoes Owen.

“Every uprising starts with a spark,” says Lowell. “Sometimes that spark is a moment, tipping the scale. And sometimes that spark is a decision. In the case of the latter, there is no doubt that it takes a certain amount of madness to tip that first domino—but it also takes courage, vision, and an all-encompassing belief, even misguided, in their mission.…”

Owen sees himself as a revolutionary, exposing the Archive his cause. That single-minded focus acts both as his strength and his weakness. But is it a weakness I can use?

He’s so fixated on his goal that he can’t see the flaws. It’s proof that even someone as cold and calculating as Owen was once human. People—the living and the dead alike—see what they want to see and believe what they want to believe. Owen wants to believe in this mission, and he also wants to believe that I am salvageable.

All I have to do is prove it.

The moment the bell rings I’m on my feet, moving through the halls and their mess of
sum total of silver or gold silver or gold Saturday
school for purple laces if he ever hits me again I’ll
out the doors and across the quad to the Narrows door set into the side of the shed, where I pull the key out from under my collar and pass through. Wesley’s coding system is different from mine, but I soon figure out that he’s labeled Returns with a white plus sign and the Archive with a white
X
, and I slot my key, take a breath, and step through into the antechamber.

Patrick is seated behind the desk, turning through the pages of the ledger. He pauses to write a note, then continues leafing through.

“Miss Bishop,” he says, my name little more than a grumble. “Here to confess?”

“Not yet,” I say. It’s still hard for me to believe he’s not the one responsible for the voids. I was sure he was out to get me removed. Erased. But he’s not—at least, not this time, this way.

“I need to see Roland. Just for a few minutes.” Patrick’s eyes move up from the ledger to mine. “Please, Patrick. It’s important.”

He closes the book slowly. “Second hall, third room,” he says, adding, “Be quick about it.”

I set off through the open doors and into the atrium, but I don’t follow Patrick’s directions. Instead of cutting down the second hall to the third room, I head down the sixth hall, following it to the very end the way Roland did when he first showed me to his room. I half expect the corridors to change around me, the way they seem to when I trail him through the maze, but the straight line stays straight. I press my ear to the small set of doors at the end, listening for steps, then slip through into the smaller, dimly lit hall that holds the Librarians’ quarters.

Halfway down the hall, I find his simple, dark-paneled door. It’s unlocked. The room is as cozy as it was before, but the lack of music whispering from the wall—and the lack of Roland sitting in his chair—makes the space seem too vulnerable. I whisper an apology for what I’m about to do.

I cross to the table by the chair and slide open the drawer. The silver pocket watch is gone—surely Roland has it on him—but the old, palm-sized notebook is there. It sings beneath my fingers as I slip it gently into my back pocket, my heart twisting. I scour the rest of the drawer for a scrap of paper and pen, and when I find them, I write a note. I do not say I’m sorry, or that I will bring it back, only jot down two small words.

Trust me.

I don’t even look at the paper, since lives are messy and it will be easier to hide this small deviation from the theft if it’s subtle. If Owen goes looking, I want it to be a mere whisper in my head instead of an image. Instead I focus on the very real guilt I feel as I fold the note, put it in the drawer, and duck out. My heart thuds in my chest all the way back into the atrium.

Wood and stone and colored glass, and all throughout, a sense of peace.

That’s how Da described the Archive to me when I was young. As I walk through the stacks now, I grasp the calm that used to come so easily. These days it feels like a memory, one I’m reaching for and can’t quite grab. Wood and stone and colored glass. That’s all he told me. He didn’t mention the fact I could never leave, or that the Librarians were dead, or that Histories weren’t the only things to fear.

Your life is only made of secrets and lies because the Archive is.

I smother Owen’s voice in my head before it can become my own. I cross back through the doors into the antechamber, sensing that something is wrong the moment I move from wood to stone, but it’s too late. The massive doors swing shut behind me, and I turn to see Agatha in front of them, her hair the color of blood and her cream-colored coat like a splash of paint against the dark wood.

My eyes flick to the desk, where Patrick is sitting. Of course he would call her.

“My list is clear,” I say as calmly as possible.

“But I’m out of Crew,” says Agatha. Her voice has lost its velvet calm. “And out of patience.” She takes a step forward. “You’ve run me on a chase, Miss Bishop, and I am sick of it. I want you to answer me honestly. How did you make the voids?”

“I didn’t make them,” I say, fighting to keep my voice steady even as I take a step back toward the door and the sentinels guarding it.

“I don’t believe you,” she says, tugging off a black glove as she comes toward me. “If you are innocent, then show me.” I shake my head. “Why don’t you want me in your head? Afraid of what I’ll find? The innocent have nothing to hide, Miss Bishop.” She pulls off the other glove.

“You don’t have permission.”

“I don’t
care
,” she growls, her bare hands tangling in my shirt.

“Agatha,” warns Patrick, but she doesn’t listen.

“Do you know how small you are?” she hisses. “You are one cog in one wheel in one corner of an infinite machine, and you have the audacity to deny
me
? To defy
me
? Do you know what that’s called?”

“Freedom,” I challenge.

A cold smile touches the edge of her mouth. “Treason.”

I feel the two sentinels move behind me, and before I can turn, their hands clench around my shoulders and wrists. Their movements are fast and efficient, wrenching my arms behind my back, twisting up hard until my knees buckle. My pulse races in my ears and my vision starts to go dark, but before I can fight back against the men or the encroaching tunnel moment, Agatha’s hands are there, pressing against my temples.

At first, all I hear is the quiet that comes with her touch.

And then the pain starts.

T
HE PAIN IS
like hot nails in my head, but a moment after it starts it’s gone, along with Agatha’s touch. The sentinels let go of my arms, and I fall forward to my hands and knees on the Archive floor. When I look up, Roland’s hand is wrapped around Agatha’s wrist, and Patrick is standing at the mouth of the atrium, holding one of the doors open.

“What are you doing?” snaps Roland.

“My job,” says Agatha icily.

“Your job is not to torture Keepers in my antechamber.”

“I have every reason to believe that—”

“If you truly have every reason, then get permission from the board.” There’s a challenge in his voice, and Agatha stiffens at it, the smallest shadow of fear flickering across her perfect skin. Appealing to the board of directors means admitting she’s not only allowed more traitorous behavior in the Archive, but that she’s failed to uncover the source. “You will not touch her again without approval.”

Roland lets go of Agatha’s wrist, but doesn’t take his eyes off her.

“Miss Bishop,” he says as I get to my feet, “I think you’d better get back to class.”

I nod shakily, and I’m about to turn toward the door when Agatha says, “She has something of yours, Roland.” I stiffen, but he doesn’t. His face is a perfect blank as Agatha adds, “A notebook.”

I can’t bring myself to look at him, but I can feel his gray eyes weighing me down. “I know,” he lies. “I gave it to her.”

Only then do I look up, but his attention has already shifted back to Agatha. I’m halfway through the door when she says to him, “You can’t protect her.” But whatever he says back is lost as I slip into the dark.

I don’t stop moving until I reach Dallas’s office. I’m early, and she’s not there, but I sink down onto the couch, my heart pounding. I can still feel Agatha’s hands against my temples, the pain of the memories being dragged forward toward her fingers.
Too close.
I pull Roland’s journal from my pocket. The memories hum against my skin as I cradle it in my palm, but I don’t reach for them—I’ve taken enough from him already. Instead I close my eyes and lean my head back against the couch.

“I’m impressed.”

I look up to find Owen sitting in Dallas’s low-back chair, twirling his knife absently on the leather arm while he watches me intently.

“I have to admit,” he says, “I wasn’t sure you’d do it.”

“I’m full of surprises,” I say drily. He holds out his hand for the journal, and I hesitate before relinquishing it. “It’s very important to someone.”

“Everything in the Archive is,” he says, taking it from me. His hand lingers a moment around mine, and I recognize the touch for what it is: a reading. His quiet slides through my mind while my life slides through his. I can almost see the struggle with Agatha play out in his eyes, the way they widen, then narrow.

“She’s angry because I won’t grant her access to my mind.”

“Good,” he says, pulling away. He pages through Roland’s notebook, and I’m surprised by how gentle he is with it. “It’s strange,” he adds under his breath, “the way we hold on to things. My uncle couldn’t part with his dog tags. He had them on him always, looped around his neck along with his key, a reminder. He served in both wars, my uncle. He was a hero. And he was Crew. As loyal as they come. When he got back from the second war, I had just turned thirteen, and he began to train me. He was never the kind and gentle type—the Archive and the wars made sure of that—but I believed in him.” He closes Roland’s journal and runs his thumb over the cover. “I was initiated into the Archive when I was only fourteen—did you know that?” I didn’t. “That night,” he continues, “after my induction, my uncle went home and shot himself in the head.”

The air catches in my throat, but I will myself to say nothing.

“I couldn’t understand,” he says, almost to himself, “why a man who’d lived through so much would do that. He left a note.
As I am.
That’s all he wrote. It wasn’t until two years later, when I learned about the Archive’s policy to alter those who live long enough to retire, that it made sense. He would rather have died whole than let them take his life apart and cut out everything that mattered just to keep its secrets.” His eyes drift up from the journal. There is a light in them, narrow and bright. “But change is coming. Soon there will be no secrets for them to guard. You accused me once of wanting to create chaos, but you’re wrong. I am only doing my job. I am protecting the past.”

He offers me the journal back, and I take it, relieved.

“It’s rather fitting that you chose to take that,” he says as I slip it into my bag. “The thing we’re going to steal is not so different.”

“What is it?” I ask, trying to stifle some of the urgency in my voice.

“The Archive ledger.”

I frown. “I don’t under—” But I’m cut off as the door clatters open and Dallas comes in, juggling her journal, a cell phone, and a mug of coffee. Her eyes land on me, and for a moment—the smallest second—I think they take in Owen, too. Or at least the space around him. But then she blinks and smiles and drops her stuff on the table.

“Sorry I’m late,” she says. Owen rises to his feet and retreats to a corner of the room as she collapses into the abandoned chair. “What do you want to talk about? Who you’re taking to Fall Fest? That seems to be all anyone
else
wants to talk about.” She fetches up her journal and begins to turn through pages, and I’m surprised to see she’s actually taken notes. I’ve only ever seen her doodle flower patterns in the corners of the page. “Oh, I know,” she says, landing on a page. “I want to talk a little about your grandfather.”

I stiffen. Da is the last person I want to talk about right now, especially with Owen in the audience. But when I meet his gaze over Dallas’s shoulder, there is a new interest—an
intensity
—and I remember something he said last night:

The Archive is broken. Da knew—he
had
to know—and he still let
them have you.

I’m just beginning to earn Owen’s trust (or at least his interest). If this is going to work, I need to keep it. Maybe I can use Da.

“What about him?” I ask.

Dallas shrugs. “I don’t know. But you quote him a lot. I guess I want to know why.”

I frown a little, and take a moment to choose my words, hoping they both read the pause as emotion rather than strategy.

“When I was little,” I say, looking down at my hands, “I worshipped him. I used to think he knew everything, because he had an answer to every question I could think up. It never occurred to me that he didn’t always know. That he would lie or make it up.” I consider the place between two knucklebones where my ring should be. “I assumed he knew. And I trusted him to tell the truth.…” My voice trails off a little as I glance up. “I’m just now starting to realize how little he told me.”

I’m amazed to hear myself say the words. Not because the lies come easily, but because they’re not lies at all. Dallas is staring at me in a way that makes me feel exposed.

I tug my sleeves over my hands. “That was probably too much. I should have just said that I loved him. That he was important to me.”

Dallas shakes her head. “No, that was good. And the way we feel about people should never be put in past tense, Mackenzie. After all, we continue to feel things about them in the present tense. Did you stop loving your brother when he died?”

I can feel Owen’s gaze like a weight, and I have to bring my fingers to the edge of the couch and grip the cushion to steady them. “No.”

“So it’s not that you
loved
him,” she continues. “You
love
him. And it’s not that your grandfather
was
important to you. He
is
. In that way, no one’s ever really gone, are they?”

Da’s voice rings out like a bell in my head.

What are you afraid of, Kenzie?

Losing you.

Nothing’s lost. Ever.

“Da didn’t believe in Heaven,” I find myself saying, “but I think it scared him, the idea of losing all the things—people, knowledge, memories—he’d spent his life collecting. He liked to tell me he believed in someplace. Someplace calm and peaceful, where your life was kept safe, even after it was over.”

“And do you believe in that place?” she asks.

I let the question hang in the air a few long seconds before answering. “I wanted to.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Owen’s mouth tug into a smile.

Hook. Line. Sinker.

“Why the ledger?” I ask as soon as we’re out.

Everyone else is going to lunch, and I’ve chosen a path that rings the campus—a large, circuitous route few students use when they can cut across the quad—so that we can talk in private.

“How much do you know about it?” he asks.

“It sits on the desk in the antechamber. It has one page for every member of the branch. It’s how the Archive communicates with its Keepers and Crew.”

“Exactly,” says Owen. “But at the front of it, before the pages for the Keepers and the Crew, there is one page labeled
ALL
. A message written on that page would go out to
everyone
in the book.”

“Which is why you need it,” I say. “You need to be able to contact everyone at once.”

“It is the only connector in a world divided,” says Owen. “The Archive can silence one voice, but not if it’s written on that page. They cannot stop the message from spreading.”

“It’s your match,” I whisper. “To start the fire.”

Owen nods, his eyes bright with hope. “Carmen was supposed to take it, but she obviously failed.”

“When do
we
take it?”

“Tonight,” he says.

“Why wait?”

Owen gives me a pitying look. “We can’t just walk up to the front desk and rip the page out of the book. We need something to distract the Archive. We don’t need something long, but we need something bright.” He gestures to the quad, where the stalls and booths and decorations are still being erected.

“Fall Fest?” I ask. “But how will something in the Outer distract the Archive?”

“It will,” he says. “Trust me.” Trust. Something I will never feel for Owen. Warning lights go off inside my head. The more factors, the less I can control.

“You and I, Mackenzie, we are the same.” I attacked him once for that very idea, but this time I hold my tongue. “Everyone in the Archive has doubts, but theirs whisper and ours shout. We are the ones who question. We are the bringers of change. Those who run the Archive, who cling to their rules, are terrified of us. And they should be.”

Something sparks inside me at the thought of being feared instead of afraid. I smother it.

“And tonight we will…” He trails off, eyes fixed on something down the path. Not something, I realize. Some
one
.

Wesley.

He’s standing on the path, holding his lunch tray and talking to Amber. I’ve been clinging to the hope that even if he saw him, Owen might not recognize Wes—the boy he stabbed on the roof of the Coronado had spiked hair and lined eyes and a different manner—but Owen frowns and says, “Didn’t I kill him?”

“You tried,” I say as, to my horror, Wesley catches sight of me and waves before turning back to Amber.

“I saw him written on your skin, but I didn’t realize the marks were so fresh,” says Owen, withdrawing his knife from its holster with one hand, gripping my arm with the other. “You’ve been keeping a secret,” he growls, quiet forcing through my head.

He has nothing to do with our plans,
I think as calmly as possible. But this time, the plural pronoun does nothing to placate Owen.

“He is a tether to the life you’re leaving,” he says, tightening his grip. “A rope to be cut.” He twirls the knife.

No
. My mind spins with his blade.
He can be salvaged. If your
grand scheme is for the Keepers and Crew to rise up against the Archive,
you’ll need every one of them you can get. And when the call goes out, he’ll
stand with me. Killing him would be a waste.

“I’m not convinced of that,” says Owen. “And don’t pretend to be pragmatic where he’s concerned.”

“Fine,” I say, pulling free of his touch, “if you don’t want to listen to logic, then listen to this: this isn’t Wesley’s fight. I haven’t dragged him into it, and neither will you. If you hurt him in any way, you will
never
get my help.
Trust me.
”

Owen’s eyes harden. The knife stops spinning, snapping into his grip. For a second his fingers tighten on the handle. Then, to my relief, he puts the weapon away and falls in step behind me.

“Hey, you,” says Wesley, waiting for me to reach him before setting off again toward the Court. My eyes go to his hands to make sure he’s wearing his ring. He is.

“Why weren’t you in Physiology?” asks Amber.

“Doctor’s appointment,” I lie.

“We were just talking about the cops on campus,” says Wesley. “Did you see them?” He’s asking another question underneath the words:
Do you know why they’re here?

I shake my head. “No. Amber, do you know what’s up?”

“No idea,” she says with a groan. “Dad’s not giving me
anything
.”

“The elusive Mackenzie Bishop!” calls Cash as we reach the Court. “No lunch?”

“Not hungry,” I say. Owen wanders over to the Alchemist and watches the scene unfold, and it’s all I can do to keep from looking at him.

“Missed you again in gym,” he says. “Another meeting?”

I’m about to go with “doctor’s appointment” again, but Saf cuts in.

“Gee, what kind of meeting forces you to miss gym multiple days in a row?”

“Don’t be an ass, Saf,” shoots her brother. “You were sent to Dallas, like,
seven times
last year.”

“It was three, jerk.”

Cash turns his attention to me. “Point is, no big deal. We’ve all been there. Eventually your parents come up with an excuse, or the school does.”

“What did they send you for?” I ask, eager to turn the attention on someone else.

“Hyperactivity,” he announces proudly.

“Perfectionism,” says Saf.

“Stress-induced anxiety,” adds Amber.

“Antisocial tendencies,” says Gavin.