I’m just tired.
Can’t keep running.
Or hiding.
Have to face my bad dreams sooner or later.
The grim truth is, I’m not afraid to fall asleep, because my nightmare is already coming true. I sit at the table waiting for his reply. Finally it comes.
I’ll miss your noise.
The numbness in my chest begins to thaw, and I turn the phone off before I can break down and write back. It takes everything I have to sit through dinner, to muster up some semblance of poise and scrounge together words about school. I only bother because skipping would lead to more worry, but the instant the dishes are clear, I escape to my room. My chest tightens when I see the open window, and I move to slide it shut. I hesitate, my fingers still wrapped around the lip.
There are three names on the list in my pocket. Part of me thinks they are the least of my problems, but the other part clings to this last vestige of duty, or at least control. I consider the climb to the apartment above, and then the drop.
“Mackenzie?” I turn to find my mother in the doorway. She’s looking directly at me. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” I answer automatically.
She continues to look me in the eyes. Her mouth opens and closes like a fish, and I can tell she’s still trying to form the words: I’m sorry. But when she finally speaks up, all she says is, “Better shut the window. It’s supposed to rain.”
My attention drifts back to the drop—what was I thinking? I barely made it up that wall last night with Wesley helping me—and I pull the window closed, and say good night. Mom surprises me by pulling the door shut behind her. It’s a small step, but it’s something.
As soon as she’s gone, I collapse onto the bed. Beyond the walls of my room, I can hear my parents talking in low voices as they shuffle through the apartment, and past them, the far-off sounds of the Coronado shutting down, the tenants retreating, the traffic on the street ebbing to a trickle and then to nothing. I realize how quiet it is in this room, without sleep and without Wesley. Some people might find it peaceful. Maybe I would, too, if my head weren’t so cluttered.
Still, the quiet is heavy, and eventually it drags me down toward sleep.
And then, just as my eyes are starting to unfocus, the radio on my desk turns on by itself.
My head snaps up as a pop song fills the room. A glitch, I tell myself. I get to my feet to turn the radio off when the tuner flicks forward to a rock station, all metal and grind. And then a country song. I stand there in the middle of the room, holding my breath as the radio turns through half a dozen stations—no more than a few lines of each piping through—before landing on an oldies channel. The signal’s weak, and I shiver as the wavering melody of a staticky crooner floats toward me.
The volume begins to turn up.
My hand’s halfway to the power switch when the window next to the desk begins to fog. Not the whole window, but a small cloud in the middle of the glass. My heart hammers in my chest as a series of letters writes itself across the misted surface.
R I N G
I glance down at my silver band and then back up as a line draws itself through the word.
I stare at the message, torn between confusion and disbelief before finally tugging off the metal band and setting it on the sill. When I look up again, Owen’s there, his reflection hovering right behind mine in the glass. I spin, ready to strike, but he catches my fist and forces me up against the window, resting his knife under my chin.
“Violence isn’t always the answer,” he says calmly.
“Says the one holding a knife to my throat,” I hiss.
I can see the outline of the Crew key beneath his black shirt. If I can get it away from him and reach the closet door without him slitting my throat, I can—
He presses down on the blade in warning, and I wince, the knife’s sharp edge denting the skin under my jaw. A little harder and it will slice.
“That would be a bad idea,” says Owen, reading the thoughts in my skin. “Besides, the key beneath my shirt isn’t the one you need.” He leaves the knife against my throat and uses his other hand to pull the cord free of his collar, so I can see the too-familiar piece of rusted metal hanging from the end. It’s not a Crew key at all. It’s Da’s key. Mine.
“Maybe, if you can be civilized, I’ll give it back.”
The knife begins to retreat, and the moment it shifts away from my skin, I catch his wrist and wrench hard. The blade tumbles to the hardwood floor, but before I can lunge for it, Owen sends it skittering across the room with his shoe. Then he catches my shoulders and pins me back against the wall beside the window.
“You really are a handful,” he says.
“Then why haven’t you killed me?” I challenge. He pulled back earlier and again just now. The Owen in my nightmares never hesitated.
“If you really want me to, I’ll oblige, but I was hoping we could talk first. Your father is sitting in your living room, asleep in a chair with a book. I’m going to let go of you,” he says, “but if you try anything, I’ll slit his throat.” I stiffen under his touch. “And even if you scream and wake him,” adds Owen, “he can’t see me, so he won’t stand a chance.”
Owen’s hands retreat from my shoulders, and I will myself not to attack.
“What’s going on?” I say. “Why can’t he see you?”
Owen looks down at his hands, flexing them. “The void. It seems to have a few side effects. You helped confirm that when you first came into the storage room. I was standing right there, and you didn’t even see me until you took off—”
“My ring,” I say under my breath. It’s a buffer, after all. A set of blinders.
“It comes in handy, I suppose,” says Owen. “And all that matters is I’m here.”
“But how are you here?” I growl. “You said you just tore your way through, but I don’t understand. The doors you made, they weren’t random. Why did you attack those people?”
Owen rests his shoulder against the wall. He still looks…drained. “I didn’t mean to hurt them. I was looking for you.”
My chest tightens. “What do you mean?”
The song on the radio ends and another picks up, this one slower, sadder.
“It turns out,” says Owen, “the vast infinite emptiness you pitched me into isn’t really empty. It’s more like a shortcut without a destination. Half a door. But you can’t have half a door,” he says, blue eyes dancing. “You have to give it a place to go. Or a person to go to. Someone you can focus on with all your strength. I chose you.”
“But you didn’t find me, Owen. You found five innocent people.”
Owen frowns. “Five people who crossed paths with you. There’s a saying in the Archive: ‘Strange things shine brighter.’ You notice it when you read the memories in objects. But the same thing happens to the memories up here.” He taps his temple. “We stand out in the minds of others more than in our own. Whoever they were, you must have made an impression. Left a mark.”
My stomach turns. Behind my eyes I see them:
Judge Phillip on the verge of tears when he smelled the cookies in the oven.
Bethany clutching the silver necklace I returned.
A dazed Jason flirting to get my name and number.
Coach Metz with his gruff good, good when I agreed to try out for track.
And Cash? I wasn’t paying attention, he said, because I was thinking about you. Truth be told, I can’t stop thinking about you.