by Maggie Hall
ALSO BY MAGGIE HALL
The Conspiracy of Us
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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Copyright © 2016 by Margret Hall.
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eBook ISBN 978-0-698-17397-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hall, Maggie, 1982– author.
Title: Map of fates / Maggie Hall.
Description: New York, NY : G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, 2016.
Summary: “Heiress to the powerful secret society known as the Circle, Avery West crosses continents following a trail of clues she hopes will lead to Alexander the Great’s Tomb—and the earth shattering secret it holds—before it’s too late”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015032476 | ISBN 9780399166518 (hardback)
Subjects: | CYAC: Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. | Secret societies—Fiction. | Kidnapping—Fiction. | Love—Fiction. | Voyages and travels—Fiction. | Mystery and detective stories. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Love & Romance. | JUVENILE FICTION / Historical / Europe. | JUVENILE FICTION / Mysteries & Detective Stories.
Classification: LCC PZ7.H14616 Map 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015032476
ISBN 978-0-399-16651-8
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
COVER PHOTOS: MICHAEL FROST; JOHNER IMAGES
COVER DESIGN BY THERESA M. EVANGELISTA
Version_1
For Dahlia.
I feel sorry for people who have to navigate publishing—and life—without you. Lucky for me, I don’t.
And for Sofia,
for overthinking everything right alongside me, then fixing it all with good advice and wine.
Contents
Also By Maggie Hall
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
Acknowledgments
CHAPTER 1
Tourists streamed up the steep staircase toward the wedding-cake contours of the Sacré-Coeur Basilica, and I pressed myself against the railing, out of their way. “Are we sure this is where he said to meet him?”
“First landing on the stairs to the west of the carousel,” Jack said. “That’s here.”
Jolly accordion music started up nearby, like we were in an old-timey Charlie Chaplin movie.
“He’s late,” I said.
“You can’t expect criminals to keep regular hours.” Jack boosted himself onto the low wall lining the landing, and I paced in front of him, searching faces for the heavyset man we’d given our photos to a week ago. All I found was the regular Montmartre Sunday-afternoon crowds.
The accordion in the courtyard down the street stopped, and there was a smattering of applause. At any time of the day here, street performers could be found playing instruments or doing over-the-top mime shows or painting portraits of tourists. This neighborhood had been a haven for authors and artists since groups of expats claimed it in the early 1900s—Montmartre had been home to Hemingway, Picasso, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
And now us.
It had been two weeks since Jack and I had escaped the wedding where I was supposed to marry Luc Dauphin, after which the Order kidnapped my mother and killed my friend and Jack’s mentor, Mr. Emerson. Overall, not a great day.
Two weeks since the chase across Europe that left us with this bracelet I kept on my wrist all the time now, even while I was sleeping. I held up my arm, and it glinted dully in the warm afternoon sun. The wide band of tarnished gold had belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte, and it was part of a string of clues he’d left that led to the tomb of Alexander the Great.
The tomb and the weapon against the Order allegedly inside it—which the Order would do anything to keep the Circle from procuring—were our only bargaining chips for my mom’s release. The bracelet had an inscription on it that referred to my twin and I, indicating that it was part of a matching set. To find the tomb, we had to find the other bracelet.
And so it had been two agonizing weeks of holing up in a tiny apartment and spending the days searching the Internet and scouring museums online and around Paris for the bracelet’s twin.
Two weeks of my heart racing every time the phone rang, wondering if it was the Order calling to say they’d killed my mother because we weren’t fast enough. I hoped that as long as we were actively searching, they wouldn’t do that—why would they want to lose their leverage? But Jack was worried that they might do it on a whim, and then kill or kidnap me. That’d be just as good for them—then no one would find Alexander’s tomb.
They were already working on making sure the Circle would never be able to find it. At first the attacks had seemed random: A Saudi Circle member. Liam Blackstone, an American actor. An attack on the Dauphin family, which killed one of the twins Madame Dauphin was carrying. But it wasn’t random. The baby girl would have been the first girl in the Circle with purple eyes . . . besides me. The rest of the assassinations targeted boys who might be the One, so they couldn’t marry me and fulfill the mandate, which was meant to reveal the way to the tomb.
So it had been two weeks of looking over my shoulder for the Order and for the Circle, who still wanted me for their own and still thought Jack was a traitor.
I rubbed my eyes and scanned the area. Like the rest of Paris, Montmartre straddled the line between dirty big city and fairy tale. At the bottom of these steps was an apartment building that would have been considered a castle anywhere else. It had wide wrought iron balconies and dark stone turrets, which contrasted starkly with the dirty ground-level tourist shops that sold postcards and scarves and fake Dior sunglasses, like the huge pair I was wearing right now as a disguise.
This neighborhood was also the highest point in Paris. One day I’d spent a good half hour looking for Notre-Dame. I found i
t immediately now, even though its twin spires were barely visible among the rest of the cream and gray buildings.
“You didn’t see anything when you did recon, did you?” I said.
Jack shook his head.
I knew he was good at watching out for us, but I couldn’t stop being extra cautious. We never went outside without sunglasses and hats, and tried to stay away from places like Metro stations—which we knew had cameras. “I just keep thinking someone’s going to see us.”
Jack rocked forward on his palms, and the compass tattoo bulged on his forearm. “I know. But they probably think we’re halfway across the world by now. Eating dim sum in Shanghai. Hiding out on a beach in Brazil. We’d never be dumb enough to stay in the Dauphins’ backyard, right?”
That was true, but it was also the problem, and the reason we were waiting here now. As of this week, we’d exhausted every bit of research we could do in Paris, and at the worst possible time.
Scarface, one of the Order’s minions, called to check on our progress every few days. Yesterday, though, he’d sounded agitated. The Commander, his boss, was getting antsy. They’d already given us two weeks to follow these clues, he’d said. Two more seemed sufficient.
So now we had two more weeks to deliver Alexander the Great’s tomb, and that was it. Two weeks to find something archaeologists and treasure hunters had been searching for unsuccessfully for centuries. If we didn’t find it, they’d kill my mother.
Two more weeks.
We had to get out of Paris. We had to figure out where Napoleon might have planted the twin bracelet, and search there. Museums and art collections and historical sites . . . There was a whole world to consider.
The problem was, I had no documents, Jack’s were under tight surveillance, and unless you happened to be on a jet chartered by the Circle, you needed a passport to leave the country. Jack was used to getting what he needed through the Circle, but after a bit of searching, we’d found this seedy dealer of fake passports right in our neighborhood.
Off the landing was a narrow street lined with cafes, their rickety tables spilling onto the cobblestones, and finally, between them, lumbered a familiar stocky guy in a stained gray T-shirt and khakis. Jack hopped down from the wall, brushing dust off his dark jeans. “There he is.”
I readjusted my wide-brimmed hat over my face, and we made our way down the steps to a bench next to the carousel. The music stopped, and a round of kids got off while another hopped on.
“Have you got them?” Jack said.
The guy wheezed, pushing greasy red hair back from his face. “It is taking longer than I anticipated,” he said in a heavy French accent. “Complications.”
“You told us it would be this week,” I said, my voice rising. “How much longer?”
“One week longer.” He wiped his nose. “Perhaps two.”
I gritted my teeth. Over Jack’s shoulder, an opera singer had replaced the accordion player.
“That’s too long,” I said. “Is there any way to rush it? We’ll pay more.” I was trying to make my voice sound annoyed, but it came out somewhere between defeated and panicked.
“Non,” he said. “There is no way.”
I felt like cursing, and throwing things, and crying. Instead, I said, “Forget it, then.” We walked away from the guy’s protests, and I took the flight after flight of steep steps into the hills of Montmartre two at a time. I think I’d almost been expecting this. It couldn’t be that easy.
“Hey,” Jack said, catching up to me. “It’ll be okay, yeah? We’ll figure something out.”
I nodded silently, but didn’t slow down. I felt Jack watching me. There was one other way to get around Europe, and he hadn’t been subtle about the fact that he thought it was the best idea.
The Saxons could help us. My newfound family.
It had also been two weeks since we’d seen them.
If I was being honest with myself, I was practically obsessed with the idea of my father, and the brother and sister I’d just learned about. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to get to know them, and to give them the chance to help. But with so much on the line, I couldn’t take any chances. Could I trust these strangers when my mother’s life hung in the balance?
Jack stopped me at the top landing and pulled off his sunglasses. I tensed, not ready to have this conversation again right now. But he just said, “There have got to be other delinquents in this city who can get us fake passports on short notice. We’ll just pop in to every dodgy bar we pass until we find them. All right?”
A desperate laugh escaped my throat, but I nodded, and actually did relax a bit. Maybe there was another way. He took my hand, dragging a thumb across my palm. Goose bumps rose on my arms, like they always did when he touched me like that.
Jack noticed and dropped my hand so abruptly, it fell to my side. He pushed the sunglasses back over his face and turned away from the stairs, down a side street. “We should go to the market on the way home. We’re out of coffee.”
I rubbed my arms to banish the chills and caught up with him. I wasn’t allowed to feel like that.
Despite everything that had happened, Jack and I were not together. Not dating. Certainly not boyfriend and girlfriend.
Early on, we’d talked. It would be too distracting. He didn’t want to put me in an uncomfortable position. No matter what we felt for each other, it would be best to put our relationship on the back burner until we were no longer in a life-or-death situation.
I knew he was right. Besides, it was bad enough that he was helping me hide from the Saxons. If they found out that something inappropriate was going on . . .
Yes, we’d slipped up sometimes. Just last week, we were sitting on the couch, flipping through Napoleon history books, and we thought we’d made a breakthrough about a museum in Austria. Without thinking about it, I’d kissed him. He’d kissed me back like he’d never wanted to do anything more in his life, which only made it more awkward minutes later, when he’d let go of me like he’d just committed a crime. The Austrian museum turned out to be nothing, anyway.
So Jack and I were friends now. Teammates. People who lived together—slept in the same room in our tiny apartment—but in separate beds. People who tried really hard not to remember how it felt to wake up with my head on his chest.
Or maybe that was just me.
I looked up at him, heavy brows over gray eyes like storm clouds, the square line of his jaw, a knit beanie that disguised his dark hair.
We were the definition of it’s complicated.
“Yeah.” I adjusted my own dark glasses. “Coffee. And more Parisian document forgers. It’ll be fine.”
We were almost back to the apartment when my phone rang. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Jack sigh.
It had also been two weeks of Stellan. He was across Paris, at the Dauphins’, but ever since we learned he was part of the lost thirteenth bloodline of the Circle of Twelve, he might as well have been living in our little apartment with us. And though no one besides us knew it, he was also the One. The heir of Alexander the Great. And the person who I, according to the Circle’s ancient mandate, was meant to marry in order to find Alexander’s tomb. Of course, I didn’t believe that part for a second.
I answered the phone. “Do you need something?”
“Only wondering what you’re doing today,” he said casually. A car horn sounded up the street from us just as one honked in the background on the phone, and I could picture Stellan weaving between little black Vespas near the Louvre, out on an errand for the Dauphins.
“Nothing important,” I answered. Jack and I paused on the curb as a red Fiat sped by, then continued across the cobblestones and around the overgrown garden on our corner.
Jack pulled off his hat and ran a hand through his hair. He pretended he thought the whole thing was as ridiculous as I did. That me marry
ing Stellan wouldn’t do anything. But he’d grown up in the Circle. The union in the mandate, between the One and the girl with the purple eyes, meant marriage to him, like it did to the rest of the Circle. I knew it bothered him more than he’d say.
“Where are you?” Stellan asked. Over the past few weeks, his light Russian accent had become as familiar to me as Jack’s British one.
“Why?” I answered suspiciously. “Where are you?”
We stepped onto our street, and there was Stellan, leaning against the wall in front of our apartment, his tall, slim frame clad in his usual uniform of skinny jeans, a close-fitting T-shirt, and boots. He flipped his blond hair out of his eyes and grinned. I sighed and put my phone back in my bag.
“Does he realize he doesn’t have a standing invitation?” Jack grumbled.
“I can hear you,” Stellan called.
Jack pushed past him without a hello and punched in the door code to our building. The now-familiar scent of old wood followed me up the stairs. Jack held the apartment door open for me, then frowned. “We forgot the coffee.”
“I can go out later—”
“I’ll just go. You all right?” His eyes cut to Stellan, who stepped inside the apartment. I nodded. “I’ll be back in a minute,” Jack said, closing the door behind him.
“This playing house you two are doing is adorable.” Stellan flopped onto the couch, stretching his arms along the back. The apartment had only two rooms—a closet-sized bedroom and this one, which contained an efficiency kitchen, one small table, and a couch that backed up to windows overlooking a sunny courtyard.
I tossed my hat and sunglasses on the table and glanced at our wall of clues, where we’d pinned Xeroxes of pages from Napoleon’s diary—which we’d also found from Mr. Emerson’s clues—the wording of the inscription on the bracelet, photos of the gargoyle that had pointed us to the diary, and a map of the world. I’d marked the cities we might want to visit with colorful pins, and tacked up museum brochures and notes. All in all, it looked like crazy conspiracy theorists lived here. I guess that wasn’t far from the truth.