I stiffen. Da is the last person I want to talk about right now, especially with Owen in the audience. But when I meet his gaze over Dallas’s shoulder, there is a new interest—an intensity—and I remember something he said last night:
The Archive is broken. Da knew—he had to know—and he still let them have you.
I’m just beginning to earn Owen’s trust (or at least his interest). If this is going to work, I need to keep it. Maybe I can use Da.
“What about him?” I ask.
Dallas shrugs. “I don’t know. But you quote him a lot. I guess I want to know why.”
I frown a little, and take a moment to choose my words, hoping they both read the pause as emotion rather than strategy.
“When I was little,” I say, looking down at my hands, “I worshipped him. I used to think he knew everything, because he had an answer to every question I could think up. It never occurred to me that he didn’t always know. That he would lie or make it up.” I consider the place between two knucklebones where my ring should be. “I assumed he knew. And I trusted him to tell the truth.…” My voice trails off a little as I glance up. “I’m just now starting to realize how little he told me.”
I’m amazed to hear myself say the words. Not because the lies come easily, but because they’re not lies at all. Dallas is staring at me in a way that makes me feel exposed.
I tug my sleeves over my hands. “That was probably too much. I should have just said that I loved him. That he was important to me.”
Dallas shakes her head. “No, that was good. And the way we feel about people should never be put in past tense, Mackenzie. After all, we continue to feel things about them in the present tense. Did you stop loving your brother when he died?”
I can feel Owen’s gaze like a weight, and I have to bring my fingers to the edge of the couch and grip the cushion to steady them. “No.”
“So it’s not that you loved him,” she continues. “You love him. And it’s not that your grandfather was important to you. He is. In that way, no one’s ever really gone, are they?”
Da’s voice rings out like a bell in my head.
What are you afraid of, Kenzie?
Losing you.
Nothing’s lost. Ever.
“Da didn’t believe in Heaven,” I find myself saying, “but I think it scared him, the idea of losing all the things—people, knowledge, memories—he’d spent his life collecting. He liked to tell me he believed in someplace. Someplace calm and peaceful, where your life was kept safe, even after it was over.”
“And do you believe in that place?” she asks.
I let the question hang in the air a few long seconds before answering. “I wanted to.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Owen’s mouth tug into a smile.
Hook. Line. Sinker.
“Why the ledger?” I ask as soon as we’re out.
Everyone else is going to lunch, and I’ve chosen a path that rings the campus—a large, circuitous route few students use when they can cut across the quad—so that we can talk in private.
“How much do you know about it?” he asks.
“It sits on the desk in the antechamber. It has one page for every member of the branch. It’s how the Archive communicates with its Keepers and Crew.”
“Exactly,” says Owen. “But at the front of it, before the pages for the Keepers and the Crew, there is one page labeled ALL. A message written on that page would go out to everyone in the book.”
“Which is why you need it,” I say. “You need to be able to contact everyone at once.”
“It is the only connector in a world divided,” says Owen. “The Archive can silence one voice, but not if it’s written on that page. They cannot stop the message from spreading.”
“It’s your match,” I whisper. “To start the fire.”
Owen nods, his eyes bright with hope. “Carmen was supposed to take it, but she obviously failed.”
“When do we take it?”
“Tonight,” he says.
“Why wait?”
Owen gives me a pitying look. “We can’t just walk up to the front desk and rip the page out of the book. We need something to distract the Archive. We don’t need something long, but we need something bright.” He gestures to the quad, where the stalls and booths and decorations are still being erected.
“Fall Fest?” I ask. “But how will something in the Outer distract the Archive?”
“It will,” he says. “Trust me.” Trust. Something I will never feel for Owen. Warning lights go off inside my head. The more factors, the less I can control.
“You and I, Mackenzie, we are the same.” I attacked him once for that very idea, but this time I hold my tongue. “Everyone in the Archive has doubts, but theirs whisper and ours shout. We are the ones who question. We are the bringers of change. Those who run the Archive, who cling to their rules, are terrified of us. And they should be.”
Something sparks inside me at the thought of being feared instead of afraid. I smother it.
“And tonight we will…” He trails off, eyes fixed on something down the path. Not something, I realize. Someone.
Wesley.
He’s standing on the path, holding his lunch tray and talking to Amber. I’ve been clinging to the hope that even if he saw him, Owen might not recognize Wes—the boy he stabbed on the roof of the Coronado had spiked hair and lined eyes and a different manner—but Owen frowns and says, “Didn’t I kill him?”
“You tried,” I say as, to my horror, Wesley catches sight of me and waves before turning back to Amber.
“I saw him written on your skin, but I didn’t realize the marks were so fresh,” says Owen, withdrawing his knife from its holster with one hand, gripping my arm with the other. “You’ve been keeping a secret,” he growls, quiet forcing through my head.
He has nothing to do with our plans, I think as calmly as possible. But this time, the plural pronoun does nothing to placate Owen.
“He is a tether to the life you’re leaving,” he says, tightening his grip. “A rope to be cut.” He twirls the knife.
No. My mind spins with his blade. He can be salvaged. If your grand scheme is for the Keepers and Crew to rise up against the Archive, you’ll need every one of them you can get. And when the call goes out, he’ll stand with me. Killing him would be a waste.
“I’m not convinced of that,” says Owen. “And don’t pretend to be pragmatic where he’s concerned.”
“Fine,” I say, pulling free of his touch, “if you don’t want to listen to logic, then listen to this: this isn’t Wesley’s fight. I haven’t dragged him into it, and neither will you. If you hurt him in any way, you will never get my help. Trust me.”
Owen’s eyes harden. The knife stops spinning, snapping into his grip. For a second his fingers tighten on the handle. Then, to my relief, he puts the weapon away and falls in step behind me.
“Hey, you,” says Wesley, waiting for me to reach him before setting off again toward the Court. My eyes go to his hands to make sure he’s wearing his ring. He is.