Victoria Schwab - The Unbound

MY BODY BEGS for sleep.

I sit on the roof of the Coronado, and it pleads with me, begs me to climb down from my perch on the gargoyles broken shoulder, to creep back inside and down the stairs and through the still-dark apartment into my bedto sleep.

But I cant.

Because every time I sleep, I dream. And every time I dream, I dream of Owen. Of his silvery hair, his cold eyes, his long fingers curling casually around his favorite knife. I dream of him dragging the jagged side of the blade across my skin as he murmurs that the real Mackenzie Bishop must be hidden somewhere under all that flesh.

Ill find you, M, he whispers as he cuts. Ill set you free.

Some nights he kills me quickly, and some nights he takes his time; but every night I bolt up in the dark, clutching my arms around my ribs, heart pounding as I search my skin for fresh cuts.

There arent any, of course. Because there is no Owen.

Not anymore.

Its been three weeks, and even though its too dark to make out anything more than outlines on the night-washed roof, my eyes still drift to the spota circle of gargoyleswhere it happened. Or, at least, where it ended.

Stop running, Miss Bishop. Theres nowhere to go.

The memory is so vivid: Wesley bleeding out on the other side of the roof while Owen pressed the blade between my shoulders and gave me a choice that wasnt really a choice because of the metal biting into my skin.

It doesnt have to end like this.

Words, promises, threats that hung between us only long enough for me to turn the key in the air behind his back and make a tear in the world, a door out of nothing, to nothingto nowhereand send him through.

Now my eyes find the invisibleimpossiblemark. Its barely a scratch on the air, all thats left of the void door. Even though I cant see the mark, I know exactly where it is: the patch of dark where my eyes slide off, attracted and repelled at once by the out of place, the unnatural, the wrong.

The void door is a strange, corrosive thing.

I tried to revisit that day, to read what happened in the statues on the roof, but the memories were all ruined. The opening of the void had overexposed them like film, eaten through solid minutesthe most important of my lifeand left only white noise.

But I dont need to read the images in the rocks: I remember.

A stone crumbles off a statue on the far side of the roof and I jump, nearly losing my balance on top of the gargoyle. My head is starting to feel heavy in that dangerous, drifting-off way, so I get down before I fall down, rolling my neck as the first slivers of light creep into the sky. I tense when I see it. I am in no way ready for today, and not just because I havent slept. Im not ready for the uniform hanging on my chair, or the new face Ill have to wear with it. Im not ready for the campus full of bodies full of noise.

Im not ready for Hyde School.

But the sun keeps rising anyway.

Several feet away, one of the gargoyles stands out from the others. Its stone body is bundled in old cushions and duct tape, the former stolen from a closet off the Coronado lobby, the latter from a drawer in the coffee shop. Its a poor substitute for a boxing dummy, but its better than nothingand if I cant sleep, I might as well train.

Now, as dawn spills over the roof, I gingerly unwind the boxing tape that crisscrosses both my hands, wincing as the blood returns to my right wrist. Pain, dull and constant, radiates down into my fingers. Its another relic from that day. Owens grip like a vise, tightening until the bones crack and the knife in my fingers clatters to the Narrows floor. My wrist would probably heal faster if I didnt spend my time punching makeshift dummies, but I find the pain strangely grounding.

Im almost done rolling up the tape when I feel the familiar scratch of letters on the piece of paper in my pocket. I dig the slip out and in the spreading light of day I can just make out the name in the middle of the page.

Ellie Reynolds. 11.

I run my thumb over the name, as if expecting to feel the grooves made by the pen, but the strange writing never leaves a real impression. A hand in the Archive writes in a book in the Archive that echoes its words onto the paper here. Find the History, and the name goes away. (No lasting mark. I thought of keeping a list of the people Id found and returned, but my grandfather, Da, would have told me theres no point in dwelling. Stare too long at anything, hed say, and you start to wonder. And where does wondering get you? Nowhere good.)

I head for the rusty rooftop door. Finding Ellie Reynolds should keep me busy, at least until its a more acceptable hour to be awake. If I told my parents how Id been spending my nightshalf in nightmares and half up here on the rooftheyd send me to a shrink. Then again, if I told my parents how Id spent the last four and a half years of my lifehunting down and returning the Histories of the deadtheyd lock me in a psych ward.

I make my way down four flights of concrete stairs, intensely aware of the silence and the way my steps knife through it. At the third floor, the stairwell spits me out into a hall adorned with worn yellow wallpaper and dusty crystal lights. Apartment 3f waits at the far end, and part of me wants so badly to go home and sleep, but another part of me isnt willing to risk it. Instead I stop halfway, just past the metal cage-like elevators at the spot framed between an old mirror and a painting of the sea.

Next to the painting, I can make out the crack, like a ripple in the wallpaper, simultaneously pushing and pulling my gaze. Its a pretty easy way to tell if something doesnt belong, when your eyes cant quite find it because its something youre not supposed to see. Like on the roof. But unlike on the roof, when I slide the silver ring off my finger, the discomfort disappears and I can see the shape crystal clear in the middle of the crack.

A keyhole.

A door to the Narrows.

I run my fingers over the small, dark spot, hesitating a moment. The walls between worlds used to feel like they were made of stoneheavy and impenetrable. These days, they feel too thin. The secrets, lies, and monsters bleed through, ruining the clean lines.

Keep your worlds apart, warned Da. Neat and even and solidly separate.

But everything is messy now. My fear follows me into the Narrows. My nightmares follow me out.

I fetch the leather cord from around my neck, tugging it over my head. The key on the end shines in the hallways artificial light. It isnt mineisnt Das, that isand the first time I used it to open a Narrows door, I remember feeling bitter that it could so easily replace my grandfathers key. As if they were the same.

I weigh this one in my palm. Its too new and a fraction too light, and its not just a piece of metal, but a symbol: a warning that keys and freedom and memories and lives can all be taken away. Not that I need a reminder. Agathas interrogation is carved into my memory.

It had only been a few days. Enough time for the bruises to color on my skin, but not enough for my wrist to heal. Agatha sat there in her chair, smiling pleasantly, and I sat in mine, trying not to let her see how badly my hands were shaking. I had no keyshed taken itand no way out of the Archive without it. The problem, as Agatha explained it, was that Id seen behind the curtain, seen the systems cogs and cracks. The question was, should I be allowed to remember? Or should the Archive carve out everything Id ever seen and done within its jurisdiction, leaving me full of holes, free of the weight of it all?