“Wow,” I say.
She looks up suddenly. “Mackenzie, I didn’t see you there.”
She gets to her feet. She looks like a human cleaning rag, as if she simply transferred all the dirt from the café onto herself. On one of the counters a bag of groceries sits, forgotten. Condensation makes the plastic bag cling to the once-cold contents.
“It’s amazing,” I say. “There’s actually something underneath the dust.”
She beams, hands on her hips. “I know. It’s going to be perfect.”
Another pop song starts up on the radio, but I reach over and turn it off.
“How long have you been down here, Mom?”
She blinks several times, looks surprised. As if she hadn’t thought about time and its penchant for moving forward. Her eyes register the darkness beyond the windows, then travel back to the neglected groceries. Something in her sags. And for a moment, I see her. Not the watts-too-bright, smile-till-it-hurts her, but the real one. The mother who lost her little boy.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mac,” she says, rubbing the back of her hand across her forehead. “I completely lost track of time.” Her hands are red and raw. She isn’t even wearing plastic gloves. She tries to smile again, but it falters.
“Hey, it’s fine,” I say. I hoist the soap-filled bucket onto the counter, wincing as the weight sends pain through my bandaged arm, and dump its contents into the sink. The sink, by the looks of it, could use it. I hook the empty container on my elbow. “Let’s go upstairs.”
Mom suddenly looks exhausted. She picks up the groceries from the counter, but I take them from her.
“I got it,” I say, my arm aching. “Are you hungry? I can heat you up some dinner.”
Mom nods wearily. “That would be great.”
“All right,” I say. “Let’s go home.”
Home. The word still tastes like sandpaper in my mouth. But it makes Mom smile—a tired, true smile—so it’s worth it.
I’m so tired my bones hurt. But I can’t sleep.
I press my palms against my eyes, going through the fight with Hooper over and over and over again, scouring the scene for what I could have—should have—done differently. I think of Owen, the swift, efficient movements, the breaking of the History’s neck, the plunging of the knife into his chest. My fingers drift to my sternum, then inch down until they rest on the place where it ends.
I sit up, reach beneath the bed, and free the knife from the lip of bed frame, where I hid it. Once Mom was settled, I went back to the lobby and rescued it from the planter. Now it glints wickedly in the darkened room, the Archive mark like ink on the shining metal. Whose was it?
I slide off my ring, letting it fall to the comforter, and close my hand over the hilt. The hum of memories buzzes against my palm. Weapons, even small ones, are easy to read because they tend to have such vivid, violent pasts. I close my eyes and catch hold of the thread inside. Two memories roll backward, the more recent one with Hooper—I watch myself pressed against the wall, eyes wide—and the older one with Jackson. But before Jackson brought it into the Narrows, there’s…nothing. Only flat black. This blade should be filled to the brim with stories, and instead it’s like it doesn’t have a past. But the three marks on the metal say otherwise. What if Jackson didn’t steal it? What if someone sent him into the Narrows armed?
I blink, trying to dispel my growing unease along with the matte black of missing memories.
The only bright side is that, wherever this weapon came from, it’s mine now. I hook my finger through the hole in the handle and twirl the blade slowly. I close my hand around the handle, stopping its path, and the hilt hits my palm with a satisfying snap, the metal tracing the line up my forearm. I smile. It is an amazing weapon. In fact, I’m fairly certain I could kill myself with it. But having it, holding it, makes me feel better. I’ll have to find a way to bind it to my calf, to keep it from sight, from reach. Da’s warnings echo in my head, but I quiet them.
I put my ring back on and return the knife to its hidden lip beneath the bed, promising myself I won’t use it. I tell myself I won’t need to. I lie back, less shaken, but no closer to sleep. My eyes settle on the blue bear propped on my side table, the black glasses perched on its nose. Nights like this I wish I could sit and talk to Ben, wear my mind out, but I can’t go back to the stacks so soon. I think of calling Lyndsey, but it’s late, and what would I say?
How was your day?… Yeah? Oh, mine?
I got attacked by a Keeper-Killer.
I know! And saved by a stranger who just vanished—
And that guyliner boy, he’s a Keeper!
…No, Keeper with a capital K.
And there’s the murder in my room. Someone tried to cover it up, ripped the pages right out of the history books.
Oh, and I almost forgot. Someone in the Archive might be trying to get me killed.
I laugh. It’s a strained sound, but it helps.
And then I yawn, and soon, somehow, I find sleep.
TWELVE
THE NEXT DAY Melanie Allen. 10. has been joined by Jena Freeth. 14. but the moment I emerge from my room to hunt, Mom appears with an apron and a revived high-wattage smile, thrusts a box of cleaning supplies into my hands, and drops a book on top.
“Coffee shop duty!”
She says it like I’ve been given a prize, a reward. My forearm still aches dully, and the box bulges in my arms, threatening to crumble.
“I have a vague idea of what cleaning supplies do, but what’s with the book?”
“Your father picked up your school’s reading list.”
I look at my mother, then at the calendar on the kitchen wall, then at the sunlight streaming in the window. “It’s summer.”
“Yes, it’s a summer reading list,” she says cheerfully. “Now, off with you. You can clean or you can read, or you can clean and then read, or read and then clean, or—”
“I got it.” I could beg off, lie, but I’m still feeling shaky from last night and I wouldn’t mind a couple hours as M right now, a taste of normalcy. Besides, there’s a Narrows door in the coffee shop.
Downstairs, the overhead lights blink sleepily on. I drop the box on the counter, letting it regain its composure as I dig out the book. Dante’s Inferno. You’ve got to be kidding me. I consider the cover, which features a good deal of hellfire and proudly announces that this is the SAT prep edition, complete with starred vocabulary. I turn to the first page and begin to read.
In the midway of this our mortal life, I found me in a gloomy wood, astray…
No, thank you.
I toss Dante onto a pile of folded sheets by the wall, where it lands with a plume of dust. Cleaning it is, then. The whole room smells faintly of soap and stale air, and the stone counters and floor make it feel cold, despite the summer air beyond the windows. I throw them open, then switch the radio on, crank up the volume, and get to work.
The soapy mixture I concoct smells strong enough to chew right through my plastic gloves, to peel back skin and polish bone. It is beautiful bluish stuff, and when I smear it across the marble, it shimmers. I think I can hear it chewing away at the grime on the floor. A few vigorous circles and my corner of the floor even begins to resemble Mom’s.
“I don’t believe it.”
I look up to find Wesley Ayers sitting backward on a metal chair, a relic unearthed from beneath one of the folded sheets. Most of the furniture has been moved onto the patio, but a few chairs dot the room, including this one. “There’s actually a room under all this dust!” He drapes his arms over the chair and rests his chin on the arching metal. I never heard him come in.