The Unbound (9 page)

She nods and rubs the pendant absently, and we stand there a moment, awkward and alone on the sidewalk, before I finally say, “Hey…is everything okay?”

She stiffens and stands straighter. I can see her mentally adjusting her mask.

“Of course.” She flashes me a perfect, practiced smile.

Smiling is the worst thing you can do if you want the world to think you’re okay when you’re not. Some people can’t help it—it’s like a tic, a tell—and others do it on purpose, thinking people will buy whatever they’re selling if it comes with a flash of teeth. But the truth is, smiling only makes a lie harder to pass off. It’s like a giant crack in the front of a mask. But I don’t know Bethany, not really, and she doesn’t know what I saw. And since she’s doing a pretty decent impression of a healthy person—much better than mine—I say, “Okay. Just checking.”

I’m about to pedal off when she says, “Wait. I’ve never seen you at Hyde.”

“New student,” I tell her. “Mackenzie Bishop.”

Bethany chews her lip, and I can imagine her mom yelling at her for such a nasty habit.

“Welcome to Hyde,” she says, “and thanks again, Mackenzie. You’re right about the necklace, you know. It’s not worthless. I’m really glad you found it.”

“So am I,” I say. I feel like I should say something else, something
more
, but I can’t, not without sounding trite or creepy, so I just say, “See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” she says, “see you.”

We head our separate ways. When I reach the main road, I think for a second I see the golden man standing at the corner, but by the time I cross the street and steal a glance back, there’s no one there.

I’m just parking Dante in front of the Coronado when I feel the scratch of letters in my pocket and find a new name on my list, but I don’t get the chance to hunt it down, because Mom heads me off in the lobby.

“Oh, good, you’re home,” she says, which is never a good opening line, because it means she needs something. Considering she’s got a bakery box, a slip of paper, and a frazzled look, I’d say it’s a guarantee.

“I am,” I say cautiously. “What’s up?”

“Last-minute delivery,” she says.

My bones groan in response. “Where’s Berk?”

She blows a stray chunk of hair out of her eyes. “He’s got some kind of art opening, and he already left. I know you’ve got homework and I wouldn’t normally ask, but with the business being so new, I really need every order I can get and…”

A headache is starting to form behind my eyes, but the way I see it, anything that convinces Mom I am
okay
and
normal
and a
good daughter
is worth it. I take the box and the slip of paper from her hands, and she responds in the worst way possible. She throws her arms around my neck, engulfing me in a hug full of breaking glass and twisting metal and boxes of plates being pushed down stairs and all the other piercing sounds that make up her noise. My headache instantly gets worse.

“I’d better get going,” I say, pulling away.

Mom nods and bounces back toward the coffee shop, and I drag myself back toward Dante, reading over the slip of paper. Beneath the order name, Mom has drawn a rudimentary map. The delivery is only a few miles away, if her chicken scratch can be trusted, but I’ve never been to that part of the city before.

For the first time in ages, I get lost.

I zone out a little while riding and end up overshooting the apartment complex by several blocks, and I’m forced to double back. By the time I’ve found the right building, climbed several flights of stairs—the elevator is broken—dropped off the bakery box to a housewife, and gotten back to my bike, the sun is sinking. My whole body is starting to ache from fatigue.

I swing my leg over the bike and hope Mom’s on the phone with Colleen right this moment, telling her how
okay
I am.

But as I speed toward the Coronado, I don’t feel very okay. My hands are shaking and I just want to get home and through tonight and back to Roland’s room, so I take a shortcut through a park. I don’t know the park, but if the map in my head is even close to correct, it’ll be faster than the streets.

It
is
faster, until I see a guy crouching in the middle of the path and have to hit the brakes hard to keep from slamming into him. I nearly lose my balance as the bike comes to a jarring stop a few feet in front of him.

The moment I put my foot on the ground, I know I’ve made a mistake. Something moves behind me, but I don’t dare take my eyes off the guy in front of me as he straightens and pulls one hand from the pocket of his hoodie. I hear a metal
snick
sound, and a switchblade flashes in his fingers.

“Hey there, pretty thing,” he coos.

I bring my foot back to the pedal, but it doesn’t move; I twist in my seat to find a second guy with a pipe threaded through my back wheel, pinning it still. His breath smells like oil.

“Let go,” I say, using the tone Da taught me to use with difficult Histories. But these aren’t Histories, they’re humans—and they’re both armed.

One of them chuckles. The other one whistles.

“Why don’t you come off that toy and play with us instead?” says the one with the knife. He saunters forward, and the one holding the wheel reaches for my hair. I’m at enough of a disadvantage without straddling a bike, so I dismount.

“See?” says the one with the pipe. “She
wants
to play.”

“There’s a good girl,” coos the one with the knife.

“Good
school
girl,” chimes the other.

My pulse is starting to race.

…residual trauma and extreme fatigue, paired with the influx of
adrenaline…

“Get out of my way,” I say.

The one with the knife wiggles the blade back and forth like a finger, tsk-tsking.

“You should ask nicely. In fact,” he says, taking another step forward, “maybe you should beg.”

“Get out of my way,
please
,” I growl, my pulse thudding in my ears.

The one with the pipe chuckles behind me.

The one with the knife smiles.

They keep shifting so I can only see one of them at a time. When I try to cheat a step to the side, the pipe appears, barring my path.

“Where you going, sweetheart?” says the one with the knife. “The fun hasn’t even started yet.”

They’re both closing in.

My head is pounding and my vision is starting to blur, and then the one with the pipe shoves me forward into the one with the knife, and he grabs my bad wrist
hard
, and the pain shoots through me like a current—and then it happens.

The world stops.

Vanishes.

Goes black.

A long, lovely, silent moment of black.

And then it comes back, and I’m standing there in the park, just like before, and my head is killing me and my hands feel damp, and when I look down at them, I see why.

They’re covered in blood.

T
HE MAN
with the knife is lying at my feet.

His nose is broken. Blood is gushing down his face, and one of his legs looks like it’s bent at the wrong angle. His switchblade is jutting out of his thigh. I don’t remember stabbing him or even touching him, but my hands say I did. My knuckles are torn up, and I have a shallow cut on one palm—probably from the switchblade. At first, I’m only aware of how numb I feel and how slowly time is moving. And then it slams into me, along with the pain radiating across my hands and through my head.
What have
I done?
I close my eyes and take a few steadying breaths, hoping the body will just disappear—this will all just disappear—but it doesn’t, and this time the breathing doesn’t help me remember. There’s just more panic and a wall of black.

And then I hear sounds of a struggle and remember the guy with the metal pipe, and I turn to see him being strangled by the golden man.

The golden man is standing there with his arm calmly wrapped around the thug’s throat, pulling back and up until his shoes skim the ground. The thug is flailing silently, swinging his arms—the pipe is lying on the path a few feet away—as he runs out of breath. As the golden man tightens his grip, his sleeve slides up and I can see three lines cut into his skin.

Crew marks.

I was right.… Oh, god, I was
right
. And that means a member of Crew just saw me do…this. I don’t even know what I did, but he saw it. Then again, he’s currently strangling someone in front of me. But I bet he at least remembers doing it.

The thug stops struggling, and the golden man lets his body fall to the ground.

“I hate fighting humans,” he says, brushing off his pants. “You have to work so hard not to kill them.”

“Who are you?” I ask.

His brow crinkles. “What, not even a
thanks
?”

“Thanks,” I say shakily.

“Welcome. Wouldn’t be much of a gentleman if I didn’t lend a hand.” His eyes drift down to the man at my feet. “Not sure you needed it, though. That was quite a show.”
Was it?
He reaches out. “Let me see those hands.”

His fingers nearly brush my skin when I jerk away. He’s not wearing a ring.

“Ah,” he says, reading my distrust. He produces a silver band from his pocket, holding it up so I can see the three lines etched on its surface before he slides it on. This time when he holds out his hands, I reluctantly give him mine. His noise is low and steady as a heartbeat through my head.

“How did you know?” he asks, turning over my hands to check for broken bones.

“Posture. Attention. Ego.”

He smiles that half smile. “And here I figured you just saw the marks.” He runs his thumbs over my knuckles. “Or, you know, there’s the fact that we’ve met.”

I wince as he traces the bones in my hands.

“In your defense,” he adds, “we weren’t formally introduced.”

And suddenly it clicks. When Wesley and I were summoned to the Archive last month to explain how we’d allowed a teenage History to escape into the Coronado, the golden man was there. He came in late and flashed me a lazy smile. When he heard how long Wesley and I had been paired up before we let the History escape—three hours—he actually
laughed
. The woman with him didn’t.

“I recognized you,” I lie.

“No you didn’t,” he says simply, testing my fingers. “You thought I looked familiar, but there’s a big difference between knowing a face and placing it. Stare at anyone long enough and you’ll start to think you’ve seen them before. The name’s Eric, by the way.” He lets go of my hands. “And nothing’s broken.”

“Why have you been following me?”

He arches a brow. “Just be glad I was.”

“That’s not a good enough answer,” I snap. “Why have you been following me?”

Again, that lazy smile. “Why does anyone do anything for the Archive? Because they’re told to.”

“But why?” I press. “And who told you to?”

“Miss Bishop, I don’t think now’s the time for an interrogation,” he says, gesturing to the bodies and then back to me. I look down again at my blood-covered hands. They’re shaking, so I curl them into fists, even though it sends sparks of pain across my skin.

“I want an answer.”

Eric shrugs. “Even if it’s a lie?”

The man with the knife in his leg begins to stir.

“You should go home now,” says Eric, fetching the piece of pipe and wiping the prints with his sleeve before tossing it back to the ground. “I’ll take care of these two.”

“What are you going to do with them?”

He shrugs. “Make them disappear.” He rights my bike and walks it toward me.

“Go,” he says. “And be careful.”

My hands are still shaking as I wipe them on my shirt, mount the bike, and leave.

On the way home, as my body calms and my mind clears, the memories begin to trickle back in flashes of color and sound.

The crack of bone as my free palm came up under his nose.

The cry and the cursing and the blind slashing of the switchblade.

The snap of his knee as my shoe slammed into the side of it.

The silent moment when the switchblade tumbled from his hand into mine.

The scream as I drove it down into his thigh.

The crunch of my fist across his face as he crumbled forward. Again. And again.

Seconds,
I marvel. It took only seconds to break so many things.

And even though I couldn’t remember at first, I’m not sorry I did it. Not even a little. I
wanted
to hurt him. I wanted to make him regret the way he looked at me, like I wouldn’t be able to fight back, like I was weak. I look down at my raw knuckles as I ride. I’m not weak anymore…but what am I becoming instead?

“What happened to your hands?” shrieks Mom when I walk into the apartment. She has her phone to her ear and she says a hurried “We’ll talk later” to whoever’s on the other end before hanging up and rushing over.

“Biking accident,” I say tiredly, shrugging off my bag. It’s not a total lie, and I’m not about to tell her that I got assaulted on the way back from
her
delivery. She’d implode.

“Are you all right?” she asks, taking my arm. I wince, less from my wounded hands than the sudden high-pitched crackle that comes with her touch. Still, I manage not to pull free as she guides me into the kitchen.

“I’m fine,” I lie, holding my hands under the sink while she pours cool water over them. I managed to wipe off most of the blood, but the knuckles are red and raw. “You’re home early,” I say, changing the subject. “Slow day at the coffee shop?”

Mom gives me a quizzical look. “Mackenzie,” she says, “it’s nearly seven o’clock.”

My eyes drift to the windows. It’s halfway to dark. “Huh.”

“You were late, and I started to get worried. Now I see I had a good reason to be.”

“I’m fine, really.”

She cuts off the water and sets to towel-drying my hands, tutting as she unearths a bottle of rubbing alcohol from beneath the sink. It feels nice—not the rubbing alcohol, that hurts like hell, but having Mom patch me up. When I was little, I came home with all kinds of scrapes—the products of more normal childhood escapades, of course—and I’d sit on the counter and let Mom fix them. Whatever it was, she could fix it. After I became a Keeper and started hiding my wounds instead of proudly presenting them, I’d watch her fix Ben, the same worshipping expression in his eyes as she tended to his battle scars.

These days, I’m so used to hiding my cuts and bruises—so used to telling Mom I don’t need her and telling her I’m fine when I’m not—that it’s a relief not being able to hide an injury. Even if I have to lie about how it happened.

Then Dad walks in.

“What happened?” he asks, dropping his briefcase. It’s almost funny, in a sick way, their level of concern over a few cut knuckles. I hate to think how they’d react if they could see some of my larger scars, what they’d say if they knew the truth behind my broken wrist. I nearly laugh before I remember that it’s not
that
kind of funny.

“Biking accident,” I repeat. “I’m fine.”

“And the bike?” he asks.

“The bike’s fine, too.”

“I’d better check it out,” he says, turning toward the door.

“Dad, I said it’s fine.”

“No offense, Mac, but you don’t know much about bikes, and—”

“Leave it,” I snap, and Mom looks up from her first aid kit long enough to give me a warning look. I close my eyes and swallow. “The paint might be nicked in a couple places”—I had the sense to scuff it up on the sidewalk—“but it’ll live to ride another day. I took the worst of it,” I say, displaying my hands.

For once, Dad’s not having it. He crosses his arms. “Explain to me the physics of this biking accident.”

And doubt,
Da said,
is like a current you have to swim against.

“Peter,” starts Mom, but he puts up a hand to stop her.

“I want to know exactly how it happened.”

My heart is pounding as I hold his gaze. “The sidewalk was cracked,” I say, fighting to keep my voice steady. “The front wheel of the bike caught. I threw my hands out when I went down, but rolled and caught the street with my knuckles instead of my palms. Now, if the Inquisition and the infirmary are both done,” I finish, pulling free of Mom and pushing past Dad, “I have homework.”

I storm down the hall and into my room, slamming the door for good measure before slumping against it as the last of the fight goes out of me. It feels like a poor take on a teen tantrum, but apparently it works.

Neither one of them bothers me the rest of the night.

Roland frowns. “What happened to your hands?”

He’s waiting in the atrium, perched on the edge of a table with his folder in his lap. When I walk up, his eyes go straight to my knuckles.

“Biking accident,” I say automatically.

Something flashes in his eyes. Disappointment. Roland pushes off the table. “I’m not your parents, Miss Bishop,” he says, crossing the room. “Don’t insult me by lying.”

“Sorry,” I say, following him out of the atrium and down the hall toward the Librarians’ quarters. “There was an incident.”

He glances back over his shoulder. “With a History?”

“No. A human.”

“What kind of incident?”

“The kind that’s taken care of.” I consider telling Roland about Eric, but when I form the words in my head—
someone in the Archive
is having me followed
—they make me sound cracked. Paranoid. The worry’s already showing in Roland’s eyes. The last thing I want is to make it worse. Plus, I can’t prove anything, not without letting Roland into my head, and if I do that, if he sees the state I’m in, he’ll… No, I won’t rat out Eric, not until I know what he was doing there or why he’s been following me.

“Did our lovely new doormen see your hands?”

“The sentinels? No.” Patrick did, though. He didn’t say anything, just looked at me like I was that useless kid again.
Bloody nose
or bloody knuckles, can’t hold her own.
If only he knew how the other guy looked.

“Was it another tunnel moment?” asks Roland.

I look down at my hands. “I remember what happened.”

We walk the rest of the way to his room in silence. He lets me in, and I see him pull his watch from his pocket and run his thumb over the surface once before setting it on top of the table. Something tugs at me. It’s the same set of motions he did last night. The exact same set. It’s so hard to think of Roland as a History, but the repetition reminds me that his appearance isn’t the only static thing about him.

He gestures to the daybed, and I sink gratefully onto the soft surface, my body begging for rest.

“Sleep well,” he says, folding into his chair. I close my eyes and listen to the sound of him making notes, the scratch of letters on paper low and comforting, like rain. I feel myself sinking, and there’s a moment—one brief, terrifying moment—where I remember the nightmares that wait. But then the moment is gone and I’m drawn down into sleep.

The next thing I feel is Roland shaking me awake.

I sit up, stiff from the fight and from sleep. I study the fresh bruises that color my hands as Roland moves about the room. The relief at having slept is dampened by dread as I think of the slice of conversation I overheard beyond the door.

It’s not a permanent solution.

Roland’s right. I cannot keep doing this. I cannot come here every night. But it’s the only place the nightmares don’t follow me.

“Roland,” I say softly. “If it keeps getting worse…if
I
keep getting worse…will Agatha…?”

“As long as you keep doing your job,” he says, “she can’t hurt you.”

“I want to believe you.”

“Miss Bishop, Agatha’s job is to
assess
members of the Archive. Her greatest concern is making sure that things run smoothly, that everyone is doing his job. She is not the bogeyman. She cannot just sweep down and snatch you up and take your mind away. Even though she’d like you to think that.”

“But last time—”

“Last time you confessed to involvement in a
crime
, so yes, your future was left to her discretion. This is different. She cannot even look inside your mind without permission, let alone take your memories.”

“Consent. How forward-thinking.” But something eats at me. “Did Wesley give permission?”

Roland’s brow crinkles. “What?”

“That day…” We both know which day I’m talking about. “He doesn’t remember it. Any of it.” Did he want to forget? Or was he made to? “Did he give the Archive permission to take those memories?”

Roland seems surprised to hear this. “Mr. Ayers was in very bad shape,” he says. “I doubt he was conscious.”

“So he couldn’t give permission.”

“That would have broken protocol.” Roland hesitates. “Maybe it wasn’t the Archive’s doing, Miss Bishop. You know more than most what trauma does to the mind. Maybe he does remember. Or maybe he’s chosen to forget.”

I cringe. “Maybe.”

“Mackenzie, the Archive has rules, and they are followed.”

“So as long as I don’t grant Agatha permission, I’m supposedly safe? My mind is my own?”