The Conspiracy of Us

by Maggie Hall

  To my surprise, it lifted off easily. Jack grabbed the bracelet and pocketed it.

  I set the glass back down with a low thunk and held my breath. Nothing. No alarm. A smile tugged at the corners of Jack’s mouth.

  And then the darkness exploded with a shriek of a siren. It was so shrill, I clapped my hands over my ears, but I still knew what Jack was saying.

  Run.

  We ran down the same stairs we’d come up, but halfway down, pounding feet and shouts turned us back. Before we made it ten feet down the gallery, shouts came from that direction, too.

  Jack grabbed my hand and we froze, spotlighted by the squares of moonlight on the floor. Trapped.

  The shouts reached the top of the staircase.

  Jack took off again, pulling me with him. We were headed to the railing overlooking the main floor.

  I stopped, tugging on his hand. “I’m not jumping off there. There has to be another way.”

  He yanked me close, his face inches from mine, eyes flashing black. “Trust me.”

  He climbed over the railing and hid behind a pillar. Trying to do it my own way hadn’t worked out so well on the fire escape, so even though everything in my body said not to, I took the hand he offered and trusted him.

  Twenty feet away, a second railing would have kept us safe, but orange construction tape told me why there was no railing here. I just had to not look down. If I didn’t look down, it’d be okay. Just don’t— I looked down.

  There was nothing at all between us, huddled on a foot-wide ledge, and the cold marble floor three stories below. I clutched at Jack with both hands. One of his feet cartwheeled in the air.

  I bit back a scream and squeezed my eyes shut, and the next thing I knew, my face was pressed into Jack’s chest, feeling his heart beat frantically, and one of his arms was locked around me. “Don’t move,” he breathed into my hair.

  I wasn’t planning on it. Seconds passed that felt like hours while the voices circled our hiding spot and flashlight beams played over the walls and the floor below.

  A set of heavy footsteps stalked to the railing a few feet away. Jack’s fingers tightened on my back, and I curled farther into him, making us as small as possible.

  I opened one eye in time to see a flashlight beam raking across the floor far below, and sweeping quickly toward us. I felt Jack’s whole body tense.

  Not quite believing I was doing it, I let go of Jack. I took one step away, then another. He followed, and right before the light hit us, we were around the other side of the pillar, hidden.

  Jack held out his arm again, and I sank into him gratefully.

  The voices had finally retreated, and I’d almost started to breathe when a gunshot reverberated through the cavernous space. I jumped so hard, I nearly fell again.

  Jack leaned around the pillar, trying to see.

  More shouts, in a language I couldn’t understand. The sound of something heavy hitting the floor. Another muffled gunshot. Glass breaking.

  “Here! This case is empty,” yelled a new voice with a thick and recognizable British accent. Jack cursed under his breath. Somehow, the Order had followed us, and they’d just taken out all those guards. They weren’t messing around.

  “All right, kids,” another voice called. Scarface. “Let’s all of us be logical now. I don’t know who you are, and I don’t care, which means I don’t care about putting a bullet in your meddling little skulls. We know the old man knew something. We just want to know who the One is.”

  He paused like he actually thought we’d respond. I looked up at Jack and widened my eyes. That really was what Mr. Emerson meant. He knew what the whole Circle—and the Order—were searching for.

  “All right, then,” he said. “I’ll make this easy. Give us what you took here and from the old man’s flat, or he dies.”

  Jack drew a tight breath. I squeezed my eyes shut.

  Would they really kill him? No. I was pretty sure. They’d keep him alive for information, or for bargaining. Or, if they found out, to trade for me.

  I clenched my teeth hard, but shook my head up at Jack. He squeezed my shoulder, and I knew he agreed. Mr. Emerson specifically didn’t want them having it, so we wouldn’t hand it over. At least, not yet.

  “Gonna check downstairs again,” said the voice I knew was the redhead. “The Commander’ll kill us if we lose this stuff to a couple of kids. Like, he might literally kill us.”

  The Commander? I raised my eyebrows at Jack, and he shook his head.

  “We’re not going to lose it,” Scarface retorted. “Chaz, take the front entrance. Jer, find the old man’s office. I’ll look downstairs.”

  We waited until we couldn’t hear their footsteps anymore, then I whispered, “Let’s go.”

  Jack put his hands on my waist and lifted me over the railing. He vaulted over after me, and this time we reached for each other’s hands at the same time as we sprinted down the stairs and out the first emergency exit door we saw.

  CHAPTER 25

  A few blocks away, Jack collapsed against a brick wall on a dark street, and I leaned beside him, panting. Somehow, we’d done it again. We’d gotten away, and we had Mr. Emerson’s first clue. I didn’t mean to, but I started laughing, at the adrenaline, at the relief, at the terror, at the ridiculousness of it all.

  Jack stared at me for a second, then his mouth twitched, and then he was grinning, and I was laughing so hard, there were tears running down my cheeks.

  They said intense situations could bring people closer than knowing each other for years. I suddenly understood what that meant.

  Everything felt sharper, stronger, more intense, too clear, like it had after Prada. Like almost dying made me realize how very alive I was. Right now, I was so alive, it hurt. The tears took a minute to stop after our laughter died out.

  I leaned my head back against the rough stone wall and looked up. My favorite constellation hung low in the sky above the Istanbul skyline. Its real name was the Pleiades, but I always called it the tiny dipper, because it looked like the mini version of the Big and Little Dippers.

  The myths said the Pleiades were seven sisters, daughters of Zeus. Orion loved them all, but Zeus wouldn’t let a lowly hunter have them, so he made his daughters into stars. They said Orion loved them so much, he still followed them across the sky every night, and sure enough, the constellation Orion hung in the sky, not far from the tiny dipper. They looked lower on the horizon than they did at home, but they were still there.

  I’d always loved the stars, and the tiny dipper in particular, because no matter where I was, no matter where we moved, it was always the same. The last time I’d seen it was in Lakehaven, about a week ago. Or maybe a lifetime.

  Jack took a deep breath beside me.

  “How do you think they found us?” he said just as I said, “What’s your star wish?”

  “What?” he said.

  “What?” I said. “Sorry. Yeah. I have no idea how they found us.”

  Jack was quiet for a second, and when I glanced over at him, he was looking at the sky, too. “What’s a star wish?” he said. A garage door down the block ground open and a white car drove out, its headlights blinding me for a second as it went by.

  I was about to say we should get back to the clue, but Jack was still looking up at the stars. “Someone I knew used to say your star wish is the thing you want the most in the world,” I said. “The one thing you always wish. On stars, on birthday candles, when the clock says 11:11.”

  He tilted his head like a question.

  “You don’t have one?” I said. I pushed off the wall, the uneven brick cool under my hands.

  He shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest, his eyes still on the sky.

  I crossed my own arms. “I don’t have one either,” I whispered.

  “Why?” he said after a second
.

  “Because it’s worse to wish for something that’s never going to happen and be disappointed than to never wish for anything at all,” I said, studying my chipped toenail polish.

  “Is that why you said no to prom?”

  I looked up sharply. His eyes went wide like he was just as surprised to have said it as I was to have heard it. “I mean,” he said. “I didn’t mean—never mind. Sorry.”

  He pushed off the wall and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “So, your—um. How are you doing? I never asked if you’re feeling okay after everything? Learning about all this in one day, and Fitz, and the Prada mess . . .”

  I couldn’t help but smile at his rambling. And wonder.

  “I’m fine—” I started to say automatically. But I wasn’t. As much as I said I was “fine,” I almost never meant it. I was such a liar.

  “No,” I said. “I’m not fine. It sucks.” God, that was freeing. “I come here thinking I have family, then I almost get killed, find out I’m going to be used for some insane ritual thing, and someone who matters more than most of my actual family is kidnapped. It’s been a pretty crappy day, actually.” I bit my lip. “So no, I’m not fine.”

  The word echoed in the quiet night air. I stalked down the street. Don’t care. Don’t want. Don’t get attached. I’m fine.

  Jack caught up with me. Without a word, he held out his hand. I stopped and stared at it.

  I wasn’t longing for anything, I’d told Stellan, and it was true, in a way. But maybe that was exactly what I was missing. Letting myself ache for something, even if I wasn’t guaranteed a happy ending. It wasn’t like I’d never wanted things, but I’d always tried to hold it back. I’d always forced myself to remember what a bad idea it was.

  But I couldn’t keep doing that. I did care. I did want. I wanted to save Mr. Emerson. I wanted to hear my mom’s voice. I wanted Jack to say we again. To be part of a “we” at all. To meet my father, my family, even though I knew I shouldn’t want that. Just like I shouldn’t be noticing the flush on Jack’s cheeks, and shouldn’t be remembering how much safer I felt on that ledge when his arms were around me. All the wanting was rushing over me in a wave.

  I grabbed my locket and twisted it. The little picture inside of me and my mom, just us, alone always. We were fine. It was fine. I punctuated the word with a yank on the necklace—and felt a snap.

  The necklace came off in my hand, the delicate clasp twisted and broken.

  I stared at the pretty gold filigree. It had been around my neck almost my whole life. I felt so light all of a sudden. I stuffed the necklace into my bag and took Jack’s hand.

  Toska. Wanting something you might not even understand. How was it that other languages could express things so much better than ours? And how had Stellan, of all people, seen that about me when I didn’t even know it about myself?

  Jack walked next to me, his hand wrapped solidly around mine, until my breathing calmed. Pretty soon we were out of the quiet residential area and onto a bigger road with dried gum splotches all over the sidewalk and storefront after barred storefront. A rat scurried across the road in the orange glow of a streetlamp. I cleared my throat and wiped my eyes with my free hand. I hadn’t even realized they were wet. “I wonder how the Order found us. They didn’t get close enough to plant a tracker.”

  “I was wondering the same thing,” he said. “Maybe our phones somehow? I thought they’d have to know our numbers, but there’s lots of tech out there.”

  “That’s not good. Does that mean we should get rid of them?” Now our linked hands swinging between us felt awkward. I used the excuse of getting my phone out of my bag to extract mine.

  Jack pulled his phone out of his pocket, too. “Probably, since they could be tracking us right now.”

  I shot a paranoid glance over my shoulder, but there was nothing but the occasional car speeding by, taking advantage of the sparse early morning traffic. We stopped at a tall office building with a fountain running along its front wall.

  I typed out a text to my mom about not having my phone anymore, then reluctantly handed it to Jack. That phone had been with me through our last three moves.

  “Sorry,” he said, and hurled both phones so they shattered against the fountain’s edge and fell into the water.

  “I hope it’s the phones,” he said after a minute. “I hope it wasn’t that they got him to talk.”

  I didn’t want to think about that. “If they got him to talk, they’d know everything. They wouldn’t need us anymore.”

  Jack nodded. From not too far away, a low, melodic chanting echoed across the quiet city. “Call to prayer,” Jack said, and looked at his watch. “Is it really almost five thirty? We should probably get going with this.”

  I nodded. “So the bracelet is the first of the three things?”

  Jack pulled it from his pocket and studied it. “Seems that way.”

  “Can I see it?” I plucked the bracelet from his palm. It was heavy and warm in my hand, decorated with a winding vine of words that ran between two rows of small jeweled insects.

  “I think it’s in French. What does it say?” I asked.

  Jack took it back and read, “He watches over our lady, above the sacred site. Where he looks, it will be found. When it is found, my twin and I will reveal all, only to the true.”

  I rubbed my eyes. I was starting to realize how tired I was. “So it doesn’t sound like something about the mandate at all. It sounds like a clue, like maybe it’s directing us to the next of the three things.”

  Jack squinted at the bracelet. “But it says ‘when it is found,’ like you first have to find something to decipher.”

  I felt a flare of exasperation at Mr. Emerson for sending us on this chase rather than just putting the things in the safe and leaving a note about what they meant. But I immediately felt bad. Anybody could have opened the safe. He’d never have us do something this risky if it wasn’t important.

  I watched Jack’s hands turning the bracelet over and over again, and ran through the clue in my mind. Suddenly, something clicked. “Or,” I said, excited, “like the ‘he’ is the next clue, and what he’s looking at is the third. We have to assume this is pointing us somewhere, right? Maybe if we figure out the ‘he,’ we can see where.”

  Jack stopped fidgeting. “You’re right.”

  “‘Our lady,’” I said. “Do you think that refers to the Virgin Mary? There’s probably Virgin Mary artwork in the Hagia Sophia. And maybe there’s some other artwork above it? Watching over it?”

  “We don’t know it’s in the Hagia Sophia. There’s Virgin Mary artwork everywhere. I mean, maybe it’s not even in Istanbul.” Jack sighed. “The inscription is in French, so . . .”

  We started walking again. The scent of incense and the low, sultry strains of sitar music drifted out from an open window at the back of a shop.

  “The bracelet looks old,” I thought out loud, pulling the blazer tighter around me against a sudden briny breeze. “Even the engraving. It’s not like Fitz did it himself. Whoever engraved it assumed the next point would be around for someone to find. So it’s probably more permanent than a museum piece.”

  Jack turned the bracelet over in his hands, and I watched it flash in the headlights of a passing car.

  “Translate it again?” I said.

  He said it in English again, then said, “In French: ‘Il veille sur notre dame, au-dessus du site sacre. Où il regarde, il se trouve. Quand il est constaté, mon jumeau et je vais révéler tous, pour le vrai.’”

  “Wait.” I replayed the words in my head. “Notre-Dame. Like the church in Paris?”

  “‘Notre dame’ just means our lady. It’s not capitalized like it would be if it meant the church . . .” Jack rubbed the back of his neck. “But Fitz’s apartment in Paris is close to Notre-Dame.”

  “That’s something
, I guess, but if he didn’t write the clue, it shouldn’t matter.”

  “You’re right. But . . .” Jack’s face screwed up in a frown, and I could see the wheels turning in his head. “Wait. I just remembered something. The insects all over the bracelet. Do they look like they could be bees?”

  They were small and winged. I couldn’t tell much beyond that. “I guess.”

  “We got this from a Napoleon exhibit. Bees were Napoleon’s symbol. He wore them on his clothes, decorated his residences with them . . .”

  “A symbol he wore and decorated with? That sounds familiar.” I gestured to his tattoo.

  “Oh,” he said. “Yes. Napoleon was a Dauphin, but he liked to differentiate himself from the others in the Circle, so he used bees as a symbol of his own along with the Dauphins’ sun symbol.”

  “What does it have to do with the inscription?” I said.

  Jack took the bracelet back, read the inscription again, shaking his head. “Of course. You know how I told you it said ‘the sacred site’? Sacré, with an accent over the e, means ‘sacred.’ Sacre without an accent, like it is here, means ‘coronation.’ It actually says ‘the coronation site.’”

  “So?”

  “So, Napoleon was crowned at Notre-Dame.”

  My heart skipped. “Notre-Dame. We’re going back to Paris.”

  Back to Paris meant back to the Circle. Back into the clutches of this hugely powerful group who would lock me up in a second if they discovered who I was.

  But it might also mean finding my mom, if she really was headed there. And it meant being closer to whichever of the Circle was my family.

  I looked up at the sky. “I used to have a star wish,” I said.

  Jack looked up.

  “My father. I wanted him to come back more than I wanted anything else in the world. My mom told me he left us when I was a baby, but still, he was every wish when I was little.”

  We’d made our way back to the water. A lone fisherman leaned on the railing over the river, his rod propped beside him.

  “You said Alistair Saxon and Mr. Emerson were almost like fathers to you.” I hesitated. “What’s it like?”