If he didn’t jump, what happened?
A death is traumatic. Vivid enough to mark any surface, to burn in like light on photo paper.
I slide the ring from my finger, kneel, and press my hands flat to the weathered roof. My eyes slide shut, and I reach and reach. The thread is so thin and faint, I can barely grab hold. A distant tone tickles my skin, and finally I catch what little is left of the memory. My fingers go numb. I spin time back, past years and years of quiet. Decades and decades of nothing but an empty roof.
And then the rooftop plunges into black.
A flat, matte black I recognize immediately. Someone has reached into the roof itself and altered the memories, leaving behind the same dead space I saw in Marcus Elling’s History.
And yet it doesn’t feel the same. It’s just like Roland said. Black is black, but it doesn’t feel like the same hand, the same signature. And that makes sense. Elling was altered by a Librarian in the Archive. This roof was altered by someone in the Outer.
But the fact that multiple people tried to erase this piece of past is hardly comforting. What could have possibly happened to merit this?
…there are things that even Keepers and Crew should not see.…
I rewind past the black until the roof appears again, faded and unchanging, like a photo. And then finally, with a lurch, the photo flutters into life and lights and muddled laughter. This is the memory that hummed. I let it roll forward and see a night gala, with fairy lights and men in coattails and women in dresses with tight waists and A-line skirts, glasses of champagne and trays balanced on gargoyles’ wings. I scan the crowd in search of Owen or Regina or Robert, but find none of them. A banner strung between two statues announces the conversion of the Coronado from hotel to apartments. The Clarkes don’t live here yet. It will be a year until they move in. Three years until the string of deaths. I frown and guide the memory backward, watching the party dissolve into a faded, empty space.
Before that night there is nothing loud enough to hum, and I let go of the thread and blink, wincing in the sunlight on the abandoned roof. A stretch of black amidst the faded past. Someone erased Owen’s death, carved it right out of this place, buried the past from both sides. What could have possibly happened that year to make the Archive—or someone in it—do this?
I weave through the stone bodies, laying my hands on each one, reaching, hoping one of them will hum. But they are all silent, empty. I’m nearly back to the rusted door when I hear it. I pause midstep, my fingers resting on an especially toothy gargoyle to my right.
He’s whispering.
The sound is little more than an exhale through clenched teeth, but there it is, the faintest hum against my skin. I close my eyes and roll time back. When I finally reach the memory, it’s faded, a pattern of light blurred to nearly nothing. I sigh and pull away, when something snags my attention—a bit of metal in the gargoyle’s mouth. Its face is turned up to the sky, and time has worn away the top of its head and most of its features, but its fanged mouth hangs open an inch or two, intact, and something is lodged behind its teeth. I reach between stone fangs and withdraw a slip of rolled paper, bound by a ring.
One time she wrote me a story and scattered it across the Coronado, wedged in garden cracks and under tiles, and in the mouths of statues…
Regina.
My hands shake as I slide the metal off and uncurl the brittle page.
And then, having reached the top, the hero faced the gods and monsters that meant to bar his path.
I let the paper curl in on itself and look at the ring that held it closed. It’s not jewelry—it’s too big to fit a finger or a thumb—and clearly not the kind a young girl would wear anyway, but a perfect, rounded thing. It appears to be made of iron. The metal is cold and heavy, and one small hole has been drilled into the side of it; but other than that, the ring is remarkably undisturbed by scratches or imperfections. I slide it gently back over the paper and send up a silent thank-you to the long-dead girl.
I can’t give Owen much time, and I can’t give him closure.
But I can give him this.
“Owen?”
I wince at the sound of my own voice echoing through the Narrows.
“Owen!” I call again, holding my breath as I listen for something, anything. Still hiding, then. I’m about to reach out and read the walls—though they failed to lead me to him last time—when I hear it, like a quiet, careful invitation.
The humming. It is thin and distant, like threads of memory, just enough to take hold of, to follow.
I wind through the corridors, letting the melody lead me, and finally find Owen sitting in an alcove, a doorless recess, the lack of key light and outlines rendering the space even dimmer than the rest of the Narrows. No wonder I couldn’t find him. My eyes barely register the space. Pressed against the wall, he is little more than a dark shape crowned in silver-blond, his head bowed as he hums and runs his thumb over the small dark line on his palm.
He looks up at me, the song trailing into the nothing. “Mackenzie.” His voice is calm but his eyes are tense, as if he’s trying to steel himself. “Has it been a day?”
“Not quite,” I say, stepping into the alcove. “I found something.” I sink to my knees. “Something of yours.”
I hold out my hand and uncurl my fingers. The slip of paper bound by the iron ring shines faintly in the dark.
Owen’s eyes widen a fraction. “Where did you…?” he whispers, voice wavering.
“I found it in a gargoyle’s mouth,” I say. “On the Coronado roof.” I offer him the note and the ring, and when he takes it, his skin brushes mine and there is a moment of quiet in my head, a sliver, and then it’s gone as he pulls back, examining my gift.
“How did you—”
“Because I live there now.”
Owen lets out a shuddering breath. “So that’s where the numbered doors lead?” he asks. Longing creeps into his voice. “I think I knew that.”
He slides the fragile paper from its ring and reads the words despite the dark. I watch his lips move as he recites them to himself.
“It’s from the story,” he whispers. “The one she hid for me, before she died.”
“What was it about?”
His eyes lose focus as he thinks, and I don’t see how he can draw up a story from so long ago, until I remember that he’s passed the decades sleeping. Regina’s murder is as fresh to him as Ben’s is to me.
“It was a quest. A kind of odyssey. She took the Coronado and made it grand, not just a building, but a whole world, seven floors full of adventure. The hero faced caves and dragons, unclimbable walls, impassable mountains, incredible dangers.” A faint laugh crosses his lips as he remembers. “Regina could make a story out of anything.” He closes his hand over the note and the ring. “Could I keep this? Just until the day’s over?”
I nod, and Owen’s eyes brighten—if not with trust, then with hope. Just like I wanted. And I hate to steal that flicker of hope from him so soon, but I don’t have a choice. I need to know.
“When I was here before,” I say, “you were going to tell me about Robert. What happened to him?”
The light goes out of Owen’s eyes as if I blew out a candle’s flame.
“He got away,” he says through clenched teeth. “They let him get away. I let him get away. I was her big brother and I…” There’s so much pain in his voice as it trails off; but when he looks at me, his eyes are clear, crisp. “When I first found my way here, I thought I was in Hell. Thought I was being punished for not finding Robert, for not tearing the world apart in search of him, for not tearing him apart. And I would have. Mackenzie, I really would have. He deserved that. He deserved worse.”
My throat tightens as I tell Owen what I’ve told myself so many times, even though it never helps. “It wouldn’t bring her back.”
“I know. Trust me, I do. And I would have done far worse,” he says, “if I’d thought there was a way to bring Regina back. I would have traded places. I would have sold souls. I would have torn this world apart. I would have done anything, broken any rule, just to bring her back.”