Between Shadows: Chapter 01-C (The Drowned Archive)
1333 Words
The archive was warm, quiet, and faintly dusty in a way that felt lived-in. One of the long tables had become their command center, covered in ledgers sorted by year and stacked in staggered columns: the cleanest in one row, the water-warped in another. Evelyn stood at one end, thumbing through a stack of mid-1925 records.
Lorian was across from her, sleeves rolled to the elbow, a pen tucked behind one ear as he paged through a volume marked ‘JAN–MAR 1925.’ He sorted with quiet efficiency, cross-checking against a printed list he’d brought with him, typewritten and annotated in red pen. He was far too interested for someone pretending not to need the official records.
Evelyn set down a guest ledger, rubbed the heel of her hand against her brow.
He abandoned his list, instead flipping idly through a guestbook without really looking at it. “You know,” he said, “you’ve got that four-hours-of-sleep look. Kind of wrecked. Still works, though.”
She didn’t look up. “That generous, huh?”
“Bad night?”
“Not my best,” she said, scanning a page and making a quick note.
“Something happen?”
“I’m just tired, Lorian.” She adjusted the collar of her sweater, her scarf still wrapped around her neck despite the warmth of the room. “Haven’t had coffee.”
“Right,” he said, drawing the word out. “You used that one yesterday. So what is it this time? Hotel too loud? Ghosts rearranging the furniture?”
Evelyn exhaled through her nose, just short of a laugh. “Close. Dreams, actually. Of that restaurant—velvet booths, gold chandeliers, nice view from the mezzanine.” She passed him a ledger. “Here. April through June, no index.”
He took it. “Dreams plural?”
“Three in a row. Same one every night.”
Lorian set the book down. “I’m listening.”
“No, you’re prying.”
“Also true.”
She rubbed the corner of one eye, then dropped her hand to the table. “It’s always the same—the non-existent restaurant floods, the ceiling caves in, and I’m in evening wear, drowning. Very dramatic. Drown a little differently each time.”
Lorian didn’t blink. “Evening wear. That’s what you wear in your subconscious?”
“Don’t start.”
“Bold choice. I like it.”
She passed him another ledger, shaking her head. “You’re enjoying this way too much.”
“Only because you’re so specific.”
She smiled at that—small, unguarded—but it didn’t last. Her fingers stilled on the next cover, and her voice lost some of its usual dryness. “It’s hard not to be. It’s the same every time. Same room. Same feeling. Same man standing on the mezzanine.”
That pulled Lorian back in. “What man?”
“Silas Linwood,” she said, too casually. “Just watching. Awfully calm for someone watching a woman drown.”
“That’s new. Why Linwood?”
“Probably just my subconscious processing too many black-and-white photos and not enough daylight. He kind of makes it a point to be noticed.” She gestured to the growing stack of newspapers in the corner containing articles about Silas Linwood and the Filagree. “Not quite Silas Linwood, though. Some weird, twisted, younger version of Linwood. Only vaguely like what’s in the newspapers. Distant relative—kind of modern, aside from the 20s attire.”
He was quiet for a beat too long.
She looked up. “What?”
He didn’t answer right away—just studied her in that same unreadable way he had yesterday, when he first guessed she’d been avoiding sleep.
“So you knew about the restaurant before I gave you those photos?”
Evelyn hesitated, then gave a small shrug. “I guessed. I don’t know, maybe I came across it somewhere.”
Lorian raised an eyebrow. “You guessed that a non-existent, subterranean restaurant had gold chandeliers, velvet booths, and a nice view from the mezzanine? Which, I might add, aren’t common hotel features.”
“My whole job is piecing together stories of historic buildings,” she said. “Or maybe I’m just haunted by good interior design.”
He leaned on the table, studying her more openly now. “You’re not the slightest bit curious about why you’d dream up a room that was supposedly wiped off the map a hundred years ago?”
“I’m curious about a lot of things,” she said, returning to her stack of ledgers. “Most of them don’t involve letting strange men talk me into ghost theories before I’ve finished organizing 1925.”
Lorian let that sit for a second. “So you didn’t recognize it when you saw the photo?”
She glanced up. “Of course I recognized it.”
He went quiet again, fingers drumming once against the edge of the table. “You didn’t say anything.”
Evelyn didn’t answer. She focused on a faded name at the top of the page, penciling it onto a sticky note with practiced detachment. She didn’t owe him explanations, and she certainly didn’t want to admit to him how familiar it felt.
She stopped when she noticed him staring.
“Because it doesn’t mean anything. People have dreams. Brains stitch things together. It’s not a message from beyond. And I didn’t want to have this discussion with a total stranger before I was even halfway through my cup of coffee. Maybe that was a mistake, because now we’re having it before I’ve had any coffee.”
Lorian put his hands up, then reached for a new ledger. “Just promise me,” he said, “that if your dream version of Linwood tries to give you decorating tips, you’ll write them down. I’d kill for a chandelier rec for the bookstore lobby.”
She snorted and shook her head. “Incredible.”
—
By the time they packed up, the archive looked less like an unsolvable mess and more like the beginning of a system, with clean paths cleared around the table. The air felt lighter for it.
Lorian returned a final ledger to its spot on the shelf and turned to her, brushing his hands together. “You know,” he said, “I think we might have actually done something productive.”
She gave a tight smile. “Don’t get used to it.”
Lorian grinned. “Too late. I’m already planning Monday’s labor assignments.”
She rolled her eyes and headed toward the door. He kept pace easily, slinging his bag over one shoulder. They reached the stairs and started up into the dimming light of the lobby.
At the landing, just before the exit, he said, almost offhand, “There’s a diner a block over. I was thinking waffles. You in?”
Evelyn blinked. “Seriously?”
He glanced over. “Why not?”
She stared longer than she meant to. He wasn’t pushing—it didn’t feel like that. If anything, he looked relaxed, like they’d already settled into something easy without discussing it. That part threw her more than the invitation itself.
She gave him a long, flat look. “We just spent the whole day together.”
Lorian shrugged, unbothered. “You look like you could use a break. And I wouldn’t mind not eating alone.”
His straightforwardness tugged a laugh from her. “Confident. I can respect that.”
He tilted his head. “Is that a yes?”
She didn’t answer immediately, but something about the darkened street and quiet chill outside made the thought of eating alone feel heavier than usual. She pulled her scarf into place.
“Only if you don’t talk about ghost theories over pancakes.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Lorian said, holding the door open with a mock flourish. “Tonight, we’re strictly among the living.”
- Writer
