“I didn’t have a choice,” he says, following. “I tried to keep Regina in the room, but she was upset—”

“She was slipping,” I say.

“I tried so hard to help her, but I couldn’t always be there. Those people saw her. They would have ruined everything.”

“So you murdered them?”

He smiles grimly. “What do you think the Archive would have done?”

“Not this, Owen.”

“Don’t be naïve,” he snaps, anger flashing through his eyes like light.

The bend in the hall is only a few steps behind me, and I break into a run as he says, “I wouldn’t go that way,” and I don’t grasp why until I round the corner and come face-to-face with a vicious-looking History. Beyond him there are a dozen more. Standing, staring, black-eyed.

“I told them they had to wait,” he says as I retreat into his stretch of hall, “and I would let them out. But they must be losing patience. So am I.” He extends his hand. “The ending, please.”

He says it softly, but I can see his stance shifting, the series of minute changes in his shoulders and knees and in his hands. I brace myself.

“I don’t have it,” I lie.

Owen lets out a low, disappointed sigh.

And then the moment collapses. In a blink, he closes the gap between us, and I crouch, free the knife from my leg, and bring it up to his chest as his hand catches my wrist and slams it into the wall hard enough to crack the bones. He catches my free hand, and before I can get my boot up, he forces me against the wall, his body flush with mine. My ribs ache beneath his weight. The quiet pushes in, too heavy.

“Miss Bishop,” he says, tightening his grip on my hands. “Keepers should know better than to carry weapons.” Something crunches inside my wrist, and I gasp as my grip gives way, the knife tumbling toward the floor. Owen lets go of me, and I lunge to the side, but he catches the falling knife with one hand and my arm with the other, and rolls me back into his arms, bringing the blade up beneath my chin. “I’d stay still, if I were you. I haven’t held my knife in sixty years. I might be a little rusty.”

His free hand runs over my stomach and down the front of my jeans, sliding into the pocket. His fingers find the note and the metal square, and he sighs with relief as he pulls both free. He kisses the back of my hair, the knife still against my throat, and holds the two things up so I can see. “I was beginning to worry that the painting wasn’t there anymore. I didn’t expect to be gone so long.”

“You hid the story.”

“I did, but it’s not the story I was trying to hide.”

The knife vanishes from my throat and he shoves me forward. I spin and find him putting away the note, and lining up the metal pieces in his palm. A ring, a bar, a square.

“Want to see a magic trick?” he asks, gesturing to the pieces.

He palms the square and holds up the ring and the bar. He slides the tapered point of the bar into the small hole drilled into the ring and twists the two pieces together. He produces the square and slides the notched edge of it along the groove in the bar.

And then he holds it up for me to see, and my blood runs cold. It’s not as ornate as the one Roland gave me, but there’s no mistaking what it is.

The ring, the bar, the square.

The handle, the stem, the teeth.

It’s a Crew key.

“I’m not impressed,” I say, cradling my wrist. When I flex my fingers, pain sears through my hand. But my key hangs around my good wrist, and if I can find a Returns door…I scan the hall, but the nearest white chalk circle is several yards behind Owen.

“You should be,” he says. “But if it’s credit you want, I’m happy to give it. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“I don’t believe that,” I say.

“I couldn’t risk it myself. What if the Crew found me before I found the pieces? What if the pieces weren’t where they should be? No, this”—he holds up the key—“this was all you. You delivered the key that makes doors between worlds, the key that will help me tear the Archive down, one branch at a time.”

Anger ripples through me. I wonder if I can break his neck before he stabs me. I chance a step forward. He doesn’t move.

“I won’t let that happen, Owen.” I have to get the key back before he starts throwing open doors. And then, as if he can read me from here, the key vanishes into his pocket.

“You don’t have to stand in my way,” he says.

“Yes I do. That is exactly my job, Owen. To stop the Histories, however deranged they are, from getting out.”

“I just wanted my sister back,” he says, still spinning his knife. “They made it worse than it had to be.”

“It sounds like you made it pretty bad yourself.” I steal another step toward him.

“You don’t know anything about it, little Keeper,” he growls. Good. He’s getting mad, and angry people make mistakes. “The Archive takes everything and gives nothing back. I just wanted one thing—”

The sound of a scuffle echoes down the hall, a shout, a scream, and Owen’s attention wavers for an instant. I attack, shifting my weight forward. The toe of my boot catches the bottom of his knife midspin and sends it up into the ceilingless dark of the Narrows. My next kick knocks him backward as the knife falls and clatters to the floor several feet behind me. Owen hits the ground, too, and rolls over into a crouch, somehow straightening in time to dodge another blow. He catches my leg, pulls me forward, and brings his arm to my chest, slamming me to the floor. Pain burns across my injured ribs.

“It’s too late,” he says as I try to force air back into my lungs. “I will tear the Archive down.”

“The Archive didn’t kill Regina,” I gasp, rolling up onto my hands and knees. “Robert did.”

His eyes darken. “I know. And I made him pay for that.”

My stomach turns. I should have known.

He got away. They let him get away. I let him get away. I was her big brother.…

Owen took everything I felt and mimicked it, twisted it, used it. Used me.

I spring to my feet, lunging for him, but he’s too fast, and I barely touch him before his hand wraps around my throat and he slams me back into the door. I can’t breathe. My vision blurs as I claw at his arm. He doesn’t even flinch.

“I didn’t want to do this,” he says.

And then his free hand drifts to the leather cord around my wrist. My key. He pulls sharply, snapping the cord, and drives the key into the door behind me.

He turns it, and there’s click before the door swings open behind me, showering us both in crisp white light. And then he leans in close enough to rest his cheek on mine as he whispers in my ear.

“Do you know what happens to a living person in the Returns room?”

I open my mouth, but no words come out.

“Neither do I,” he says, just before he pushes me back, and through, and slams the door.

TWENTY-NINE

T

HE WEEK

before you die, I can see it coming.

I see the good-bye in your eyes. The too-long looks at everything, as if by staring you can make memories strong enough to last you through.

But it’s not the same. And those lingering looks scare me.

I am not ready.

I am not ready.

I am not ready.

“I can’t do this without you, Da.”

“You can. And you have to.”

“What if I mess up?”

“Oh, you will. You’ll mess up, you’ll make mistakes, you’ll break things. Some you’ll be able to piece together, and others you’ll lose. That’s all a given. But there’s only one thing you have to do for me.”

“What’s that?”

“Stay alive long enough to mess up again.”

The moment the Returns door closes, there is no door, and the white is so bright and shadowless that it makes the room look like infinite space: no floor, no walls, no ceiling. Nothing but dizzying white. I know I have to focus, have to find the place where the door was and get out and find Owen—and I can do that, the rational Keeper part of me reasons, if I can just breathe and make my way to the wall.