My heart aches. I can’t count the times I’ve sat beside Ben’s drawer and wondered how much noise it would take to wake him up. And I can’t deny how hard I’ve wished, since I met Owen, that he wouldn’t slip: because if he could make it through, why not Ben?
“I was supposed to protect her,” he says, “and I got her killed.…” He must take my silence for simple pity, because he adds, “I don’t expect you to understand.”
But I do. Too well.
“My little brother is dead,” I say. The words get out before I can stop them. Owen doesn’t say I’m sorry. But he does shift closer, until we’re sitting side by side.
“What happened?” he asks.
“He was killed,” I whisper. “Hit and run. They got away. I would give anything to rewrite that morning, to walk Ben all the way to school, take an extra five seconds to hug him, to draw on his hand, do anything to change the moment when he crossed the street.”
“And if you could find the driver…” says Owen.
“I would kill him.” There is no doubt in my voice.
A silence falls around us.
“What was he like?” he asks, knocking his knee against mine. There is something so simple in it, as if I am just a girl, and he is just a boy, and we are sitting in a hallway—any hallway, not the Narrows—and I’m not talking about my dead brother with a History I’m supposed to have sent back.
“Ben? He was too smart for his own good. You couldn’t lie to him, not even about things like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. He’d put on these silly glasses and cross-examine you until he found a crack. And he couldn’t focus on anything unless he was drawing. He was really great at art. He made me laugh.” I’ve never spoken this way about Ben, not since he died. “And he could be a real brat sometimes. Hated sharing. Would break something before he’d let you have it. This one time he broke an entire box of pencils because I wanted to borrow one. As if breaking pencils made them useless. So I pulled out this sharpener, one of those little plastic ones, and sharpened all the pencil halves and then we each had a set. Half as long as they were to start, but they still worked. It drove him mad.”
A small laugh escapes, and then my chest tightens. “It feels wrong to laugh,” I whisper.
“Isn’t it strange? It’s like after they die, you’re only allowed to remember the good. But no one’s all good.”
I feel the scratch of letters in my pocket, but leave it.
“I’ve gone to see him,” I say. “In the stacks. I talk to him, to his shelf, tell him what he’s missing. Never the good stuff, of course. Just the boring, the random. But no matter how I hold on to his memory, I’m starting to forget him, one detail at a time. Some days I think the only thing that keeps me from prying open his drawer, from seeing him, from waking him, even, is the fact it’s not him. Not really. They tell me there’s no point because it wouldn’t be him.”
“Because Histories aren’t people?” he asks.
I cringe. “No. That’s not it at all.” Even though most Histories aren’t people, aren’t human, not the way Owen is. “It’s just that Histories have a pattern. They slip. The only thing that hurts me more than the idea of the thing in that drawer not being my brother is the idea of its being him, and my causing him pain. Distress. And then having to send him back to the stacks after all of it.”
I feel Owen’s hand drift toward mine, hover just above my skin. He waits to see if I’ll stop him. When I don’t, he curls his fingers over mine. The whole world quiets at his touch. I lean my head against the wall and close my eyes. The quiet is welcome. It dulls the thoughts of Ben.
“I don’t feel like I’m slipping,” says Owen.
“That’s because you aren’t.”
“Well, that means it’s possible, right? What if—”
“Stop.” I pull free of his touch and push myself to my feet.
“I’m sorry,” he says, standing. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I’m not upset,” I say. “But Ben’s gone. There’s no bringing him back.” The words are directed at myself more than at him. I turn to go. I need to move. Need to hunt.
“Wait,” he says, taking my hand. The quiet floods in as he holds up the note in his other hand. “If you find any more of Regina’s story, would you…would you bring it to me?” I hover at the edge of the alcove. “Please, Mackenzie. It’s all I have left of her. What wouldn’t you give, to have something, anything, of Ben’s to hold on to?”
I think of the box of Ben’s things, overturned on my bed, my hands shaking as I picked up each item and prayed there would be a glimpse, a fractured moment, anything. Clinging to a silly pair of plastic glasses with nothing more than a single, smudged memory.
“I’ll keep an eye out,” I say, and Owen pulls me into a hug. I flinch but feel nothing, only steady quiet.
“Thank you,” he whispers against my ear, and my face flushes as his lips graze my skin. And then his arms slide away, taking the quiet and the touch, and he retreats into the alcove, the darkness swallowing everything but his silvery hair. I force myself to turn away, and hunt.
As nice as his touch was, it’s not what lingers with me while I work. It’s his words. Two words I tried to shut out, but they cling to me.
What if echoes in my head as I hunt.
What if haunts me through the Narrows.
What if follows me home.
TWENTY
I PEER OUT the Narrows door and into the hall, making sure the coast is clear before I step through the wall and back onto the third floor of the Coronado, sliding my ring on. I got the list down to two names before it shot back up to four. Whatever technical difficulty the Archive is experiencing, I hope they fix it soon. I am a horrible hollow kind of tired; all I want is quiet and rest.
There is a mirror across from me, and I check my reflection in it before heading home. Despite the bone-deep fatigue and the growing fear and frustration, I look…fine. Da always said he’d teach me to play cards. Said I’d take the bank, the way things never reach my eyes. There should be something—a tell, a crease between my eyes, or a tightness in my jaw.
I’m too good at this.
Behind my reflection I see the painting of the sea, slanting as if the waves crashing on the rocks have hit with enough force to tip the picture. I turn and straighten it. The frame makes a faint rattling sound when I do. Everything in this place seems to be falling apart.
I return home to 3F, but when I step through the door, I stop, eyes widening.
I’m braced for vacant rooms and scrounging through a pile of takeout flyers for dinner. I’m not braced for this. The moving boxes have been broken down and stacked in one corner beside several trash bags of packing material, but other than that, the apartment looks strikingly like, well, an apartment. The furniture has been assembled and arranged, Dad is stirring something on the stove, a book open on the counter. He pauses and pulls a pen from behind his ear to make a margin note. Mom is sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by enough paint swatches to suggest that she thoroughly raided that aisle of the home improvement store.
“Oh, hi, Mac!” she says, looking up from the chips.
“I thought you already painted.”
“We started to,” says Dad, making another note in his book.
Mom shakes her head, begins to stack the chips. “It’s just wasn’t quite right, you know? It has to be right. Just right.”
“Lyndsey called,” says Dad.
“How was Wes?” asks Mom.
“Fine. He’s helping me with the Inferno.”
“Is that what they call it?”
“Dad!”
Mom frowns. “Didn’t you have it with you when you left?”
I look down at my empty hands, and rack my brain. Where did I leave it? The garden? The study? Nix’s place? The roof? No, I didn’t have it on the roof—