MOM SAYS there’s nothing a hot shower can’t fix, but I’ve been steaming up the bathroom for half an hour and I’m no closer to fixing anything.
Roland sent me home with a last glance and a reminder not to trust anyone. Which isn’t hard when you know that someone is trying to bury the past and possibly you with it. My mind immediately goes to Patrick, but as much as I dislike him, the fact is he’s a model Librarian, and there are at least a dozen other Librarians in the Archive on a given day. It could be any of them. Where do you even start?
I turn the water all the way hot and let it burn my shoulders. After Roland, I went hunting. I wanted to clear my head. It didn’t work, and I only managed to return the youngest two Histories, cutting my list in half for all of five minutes before three new names flashed up.
I hunted for Owen too, but without any luck. I’m worried now that I’ve scared him away, though away is a relative term in the Narrows. There can be only so many places to hide, but I haven’t found them yet, and apparently he has. I’ve never met a History who didn’t want to be found. And why shouldn’t he hide? His bartered day is up, and I’m the one who means to send him back. And I will…but first I need to know what he knows, and to get that, I need to gain his trust.
How do you gain a History’s trust?
Da would say you don’t. But as the water scalds my shoulders, I think of the sadness in Owen’s eyes when he spoke of Regina—not of her death, when his voice went hollow, but the time before, when he talked about the games she’d play, the stories she’d hide throughout the building.
One time she wrote me a story and scattered it all across the Coronado, wedged in garden cracks and under tiles, and in the mouths of statues.… It took me days to recover the fragments, and even then I never found the ending.…
I snap the water off.
That’s my shot at Owen’s trust. A token. A peace offering. Something to hold on to. My spirits start to sink. What are the odds of anything left for sixty-five years still being here? And then I think of the Coronado, its slow, unkempt decay, and I realize that maybe, maybe. Just maybe.
I dress quickly, glancing at the Archive paper on my bed (and grimacing at the five names, the oldest—18). I used to wait days in hopes of getting a name, relished the moment of reveal. Now I shove the slip into my pocket. A stack of books sits on a large box, Dante’s Inferno on top of the pile. I tuck the paperback under my arm and head out.
Dad is still at the kitchen table, on his third or fourth cup of coffee, judging by the near-empty pot beside him. Mom is sitting beside him, making lists. She has at least five of them in front of her, and she keeps writing and rewriting and rearranging as if she can decode her life that way.
They both look up as I walk in.
“Where are you off to?” asks Mom. “I bought paint.”
One of the cardinal rules of lying is to never, if it can be prevented, involve someone else in your story, because you can’t control them. Which is why I want to punch myself when the lie that falls from my lips is, “To hang out with Wesley.”
Dad beams. Mom frowns. I cringe, turning toward the door. And then, to my amazement, lie becomes truth when I open it to find a tall, black-clad shape blocking my way.
“Lo and behold,” says Wesley, slouching in the doorway, holding an empty coffee cup and a brown paper bag. “I have escaped.”
“Speak of the devil,” says Dad. “Mac was just on her way—”
“Escaped what?” I ask, cutting Dad off.
“The walls of Chez Ayers, behind which I have been confined for days. Weeks. Years.” He rests his forehead against the door frame. “I don’t even know anymore.”
“I just saw you yesterday.”
“Well. It felt like years. And now I come begging for coffee and bearing sweets with the intent of rescuing you from your indentured servitude in the pit of…” Wesley’s voice trails off as he sees my mother, arms crossed, standing behind me. “Oh, hello!”
“You must be the boy,” says Mom. I roll my eyes, but Wesley only smiles. Not crookedly, either, but a genuine smile that should clash with his black spiked hair and dark-rimmed eyes, but doesn’t.
“You must be the mom,” he says, sliding past me into the room. He transfers the paper bag to his left hand and extends his right to her. “Wesley Ayers.”
Mom looks caught off guard by the smile, the open, easy way he does it. I know I am.
He doesn’t even flinch when she takes his hand.
“I can see why my daughter likes you.”
Wesley’s smile widens as his hand slips back to his side. “Do you think she’s falling for my dashing good looks, my charm, or the fact I supply her with pastries?”
Despite herself, Mom laughs.
“’Morning, Mr. Bishop,” says Wesley.
“It’s a beautiful day,” says Dad. “You two should go. Your mom and I can handle the painting.”
“Great!” Wes swings his arm around my shoulder, and the noise slams into me. I push back, try to block him out, and make a mental note to punch him when we’re alone.
Mom gets us two fresh coffees and walks us to the door, watching as we go. As soon as the door closes behind us, I knock Wesley’s arm off my shoulders and exhale at the sudden lack of pressure. “Ass.”
He leads the way down to the lobby.
“You, Mackenzie Bishop,” he says as we hit the landing, “have been a very bad girl.”
“How so?”
He rounds the banister at the base of the staircase. “You involved me in a lie! Don’t think I didn’t catch it.”
We pass through the study to the garden door, and he throws it open and leads me into the dappled morning light. The rain has stopped, and as I look around, I wonder if Regina would hide a bit of story in a place like this. The ivy is overgrown and might keep a token safe, but I doubt a scrap of paper would survive the seasons, let alone the years.
Wes drops onto the Faust bench and takes a cinnamon roll out of the paper bag. “Where were you really going, Mac?” he asks, holding out the bag.
I drag my thoughts back to him, taking a roll as I perch on the arm of the bench.
“Oh, you know,” I say dryly, “I thought I’d lie in the sun for a few hours, maybe read a book, savor my lazy summer.”
“Still trying to clear your list?”
“Yep.” And question Owen. And find out why a Librarian would want to cover up deaths that are decades upon decades old. All without letting the Archive know.
“You brought the book just to throw your folks off the trail? How very thorough of you.”
I take a bite of the cinnamon roll. “I am, in fact, a master of deceit.”
“I believe it,” Wes says, taking another bite. “So, about your list…”
“Yes?”
“I hope you don’t mind, but I took care of the History in your territory.”
I stiffen. Owen. Is that why I couldn’t find him this morning? Did Wesley already send him back? I force my voice level. “What do you mean?”
“A History? You know? One of those things we’re supposed to be hunting?”
I fight to keep my shock from showing. “I told you. I didn’t. Need. Help.”
“A simple thanks will suffice, Mac. Besides, it’s not like I went looking for her. She kind of ran into me.”
Her? I dig the list from my pocket. Susan Lank. 18. is gone. A sigh of relief escapes, and I sag back against the bench.
“Luckily, I was able to use my charm,” he’s saying. “That, and she thought I was her boyfriend. Which, I’ll admit, facilitated things a bit.” He runs his hand through his hair. It doesn’t move.
“Thanks,” I say softly.
“It’s a hard word to say, I know. It takes practice.”
I throw the last bite of my roll at him.
“Hey,” he warns, “watch the hair.”
“How long does it take to make it stick up like that?” I ask.
“Ages,” he says, standing. “But it’s worth it.”
“Is it really?”
“I’ll have you know, Miss Bishop, that this”—he gestures from his spiked black hair all the way down to his boots—“is absolutely vital.”
I raise an eyebrow and stretch out across the weather-pocked stone. “Let me guess,” I say with a pout. “You just want to be seen.” I give the line a dramatic flair so that he knows I’m teasing. “You feel invisible in your skin, and so you dress yourself up to get a reaction.”
Wes gasps. “How did you know?” But he can’t keep the smile off his face. “Actually, much as I love seeing my father’s tortured expression, or his trophy soon-to-be wife’s disdain, this does serve a purpose.”
“And what purpose would that be?”
“Intimidation,” he says with a flourish. “It scares the Histories. First impressions are very important, especially in potentially combative situations. An immediate advantage helps me control the situation. Many of the Histories don’t come from the here and now. And this”—again he gestures to the length of himself—“believe it or not, can be intimidating.”
He straightens and steps toward me, into a square of sunlight. His sleeves are rolled up, revealing leather bracelets that cut through some scars and cover others. His brown eyes are alive and warm, and the contrast between his tawny irises and his black hair is stark but pleasant. Beneath it all, Wesley Ayers is actually quite handsome. My eyes pan down over his clothes, and he catches me before I can look away.
“What’s the matter, Mac?” he says. “Are you finally falling victim to my devilish good looks? I knew it was only a matter of time.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s it.…” I say, laughing.
He leans down, rests his hand on the bench beside my shoulder.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.”
“You okay?”
The truth sits on my tongue. I want to tell him. But Roland warned me not to trust anyone; and though it sometimes feels like I’ve known Wes for months instead of days, I haven’t. Besides, even if I could tell Wesley parts but not the whole, partial truths are so much messier than whole lies.
“Of course,” I say, smiling.
“Of course,” he parrots, and pulls away. He collapses onto his own bench and tosses an arm over his eyes to block the sun.
I look back at the study doors and think of the directories. I’ve been so focused on the early years, I haven’t taken a close look at the current roster. I’ve been focused on the dead, but I can’t forget about the living.
“Who else lives here?” I ask.
“Hm?”
“Here in the Coronado,” I press. I might not be able to tell Wes what’s going on, but that doesn’t mean he can’t help. “I’ve only met you and Jill and Ms. Angelli. Who lives here?”
“Well, there’s this new girl who just moved in on floor three. Her family’s re-opening the café. I hear she likes to lie, and hit people.”
“Oh yeah? Well, there’s that strange goth guy, the one who’s always lurking around Five C.”
“Strangely hot in a mysterious way, though, right?”
I roll my eyes. “Who’s the oldest person here?”
“Ah, that distinction goes to Lucian Nix up on the seventh floor.”
“How old is he?”
Wes shrugs. “Ancient.”
Just then, the study door flies open and Jill appears on the threshold.
“I thought I heard you,” she says.
“How goes it, strawberry?” asks Wes.
“Your dad has been calling us nonstop for half an hour.”
“Oh?” he says. “I must have forgotten.” The way he says it suggests he knows exactly what time it is.
“That’s funny,” Jill says as Wes drags himself to his feet, “because your dad seems to think you snuck out.”
“Wow,” I chime in, “you weren’t kidding when you said you escaped Chez Ayers.”
“Yeah, well. Fix it.” Jill turns and closes the study door on both of us.
“She’s charming,” I say.
“She’s like my aunt Joan, but in miniature. It’s spooky. All she needs is a cane and a bottle of brandy.”
I follow him into the study, but stop, eyes drifting to the directories.
“Wish me luck,” he says.
“Good luck,” I say. And then, as he vanishes into the hall, “Hey, Wes?”
He reappears. “Yeah?”
“Thanks for your help.”
He smiles. “See? It’s getting easier to say.”
And with that he’s gone, and I’m left with a lead. Lucian Nix. How long has he lived in the building? I tug down the most recent directory, flipping through until I reach the seventh floor.
7E. Lucian Nix.
I pull down the next directory.
7E. Lucian Nix.
And the next.
7E. Lucian Nix.
All the way back, past the missing files, to the very first year of the first blue book. 1950.
He’s been here all along.
I press my ear against the door of 7e.
Nothing. I knock. Nothing. I knock again, and I’m about to tug my ring off and listen for the sounds of any living thing when, finally, someone knocks back. There is a kind of scuffle on the other side of the door, joined by muttered cursing, and moments later the door swings open and collides with the metal side of a wheelchair. More cursing, and then the chair retreats enough so that the door can fully open. The man in the chair is, as Wesley put it, ancient. His hair is shockingly white, his milky eyes resting somewhere to my left. A thin stream of smoke drifts up from his mouth, where a narrow cigarette hangs, mostly spent. A scarf coils around his neck, and his clawlike fingers pluck at the fringe on the end.
“What are you staring at?” he asks. The question catches me off guard, since he’s clearly blind. “You aren’t saying anything,” he adds, “so you must be staring.”
“Mr. Nix?” I ask. “My name is Mackenzie Bishop.”
“Are you a kiss-a-gram? Because I told Betty I didn’t need girls being paid to come see me. Rather have no girls at all than that—”
I’m not entirely sure what a kiss-a-gram is. “I’m not a kiss—”
“There was a time when all I had to do was smile.…” He smiles now, flashing a pair of fake teeth that don’t fit quite right.
“Sir, I’m not here to kiss you.”
He adjusts his direction at the sound of my voice, pivoting in his chair until he’s nearly facing me, and lifts his chin. “Then what are you knocking on my door for, little lady?”
“My family is renovating the coffee shop downstairs, and I wanted to introduce myself.”
He gestures to his wheelchair. “I can’t exactly go downstairs,” he says. “Have everything brought up.”
“There’s…an elevator.”
He has a sandpaper laugh. “I’ve survived this long. I’ve no plans to perish in one of those metal death traps.” I decide I like him. His hand drifts shakily up to his mouth, removes the stub of his cigarette. “Bishop. Bishop. Betty brought in a muffin that was sitting in the hall. Suppose you’re to blame for that.”
“Yes, sir.”
“More of a cookie person, myself. No offense to the other baked goods. I just like cookies. Well, suppose you want to come in.”
He slides the wheelchair back several feet into the room, and it catches the edge of the carpet. “Blasted device,” he growls.
“Would you like a hand?”
He throws both of his up. “I’ve got two of those. Need some new eyes, though. Betty’s my eyes, and she’s not here.”
I wonder when Betty will be back.
“Here,” I say, crossing the threshold. “Let me.”
I guide the chair through the apartment to a table. “Mr. Nix,” I say, sitting down beside him. I set the copy of the Inferno on the worn table.
“No Mr. Just Nix.”
“Okay…Nix, I’m hoping you can help me. I’m trying to find out more about a series of”—I try to think of how to put this politely, but can’t—“a series of deaths that happened here a very long time ago.”
“What would you want to know about that for?” he asks. But the question lacks Angelli’s defensiveness, and he doesn’t feign ignorance.
“Curiosity, mostly,” I say. “And the fact that no one seems to want to talk about it.”
“That’s because most people don’t know about it. Not these days. Strange things, those deaths.”
“How so?”
“Well, that many deaths so close together. No foul play, they said, but it makes you wonder. Weren’t even in the paper. It was news around here, of course. For a while it looked like the Coronado wouldn’t make it. No one would move in.” I remember the string of vacancy listings in the directories. “Everyone thought it was cursed.”
“You didn’t, obviously,” I say.
“Says who?”
“Well, you’re still here.”
“I may be stubborn. Doesn’t mean I have the faintest idea what happened that year. String of bad luck, or something worse. Still, it’s strange, how badly people wanted to forget about it.”
Or how badly the Archive wanted them to.
“All started with that poor girl,” says Nix. “Regina. Pretty thing. So cheerful. And then someone went and killed her. So sad, when people die so young.”
Someone? Doesn’t he know it was Robert?
“Did they catch the killer?” I ask.
Nix shakes his head sadly. “Never did. People thought it was her boyfriend, but they never found him.”
Anger coils inside me at the image of Robert trying to wipe the blood off his hands, pulling on one of Regina’s coats, and running.
“She had a brother, didn’t she? What happened to him?”
“Strange boy.” Nix reaches out to the table, fingers dancing until they find a pack of cigarettes. I take up a box of matches and light one for him. “The parents moved out right after Regina’s death, but the boy stayed. Couldn’t let go. Blamed himself, I think.”
“Poor Owen,” I whisper.
Nix frowns, blind eyes narrowing on me. “How did you know his name?”
“You told me,” I say steadily, shaking out the match.
Nix blinks a few times, then taps the space between his eyes. “Sorry. I swear it must be going. Slowly, thanks be to God, but going all the same.”
I set the spent match on the table. “The brother, Owen. How did he die?”
“I’m getting there,” says Nix, taking a drag. “After Regina, well, things started to settle at the Coronado. We held our breaths. April passed. May passed. June passed. July passed. And then, just when we were starting to let out our air…” He claps his hands together, showering his lap with ash. “Marcus died. Hung himself, they said, but his knuckles were cut up and his wrists were bruised. I know because I helped cut the body down. Not a week later, Eileen goes down the south stairs. Broke her neck. Then, oh, what was his name, Lionel? Anyway, young man.” His hand falls back into his lap.
“How did he die?”
“He was stabbed. Repeatedly. Found his body in the elevator. Not much use calling that one an accident. No motive, though, no weapon, no killer. No one knew what to make of it. And then Owen…”
“What happened?” I ask, gripping my chair.
Nix shrugs. “No one knows—well, I’m all that’s left, so I guess I should say no one knew—but he’d been having a hard time.” His milky eyes find my face and he points a bony finger up at the ceiling. “He went off the roof.”
I look up and feel sick. “He jumped?”
Nix lets out a long breath of smoke. “Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on how you want to spin things. Did he jump or was he pushed? Did Marcus hang himself? Did Eileen trip? Did Lionel…well, there ain’t much doubt about what happened to Lionel, but you see my point. Things stopped after that summer, though, and never started up again. No one could make sense of it, and it don’t do any good to be thinking morbid thoughts, so the people here did the one thing they could do. They forgot. They let the past rest. You probably should too.”
“You’re right,” I say softly, but I’m still looking up, thinking about the roof, about Owen.
I used to go up on the roof and imagine I was back on the cliffs, looking out. It was a sea of brick below me.…
My stomach twists as I picture his body going over the edge, blue eyes widening the instant before the pavement hits.
“I’d better be going.” I push myself to my feet. “Thank you for talking to me about this.”
Nix nods absently. I head for the door, but stop, turn back to see him still hunched over his cigarette, dangerously close to setting his scarf on fire.
“What kind of cookies?” I ask.
His head lifts, and he smiles. “Oatmeal raisin. The chewy kind.”
I smile even though he can’t see. “I’ll see what I can do,” I say, closing the door behind me. And then I head for the stairs.
Owen was the last to die, and one way or another, he went off the roof.
So maybe the roof has answers.