by Maggie Hall
I met Jack’s eye, and he shrugged. I guess we were telling her everything.
“The Order kidnapped my mom,” I said. “I want her back.” Close enough to the truth.
“And they killed Emerson Fitzpatrick,” Stellan said.
“What?” Elodie stopped dead, and Jack nearly ran into her. “Fitz is dead?”
“The Order killed him,” I repeated.
“How—when?”
“A couple weeks ago. Right after the wedding thing with Luc.”
Elodie started walking again, but she looked shell-shocked.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know you knew him that well.”
“Neither did I,” Stellan said.
Elodie pushed her hair behind her ears. “I . . . didn’t. I just didn’t realize that had happened.”
Someday I might be able to think about Mr. Emerson beyond a quick mention without this ache that made it hard to think, but today wasn’t that day. I had to change the subject. “And besides all that, I don’t want to be forced to marry somebody to fulfill the mandate when I seriously doubt it’ll work.”
We headed out of the basilica and back into the night air. A silence had fallen over us as heavy as the fog. Our shoes made hollow clunks across the wooden pathways, and I shivered, wrapping my arms around myself. I wished I’d thought to grab a jacket.
Jack came up beside me and, without even asking if I needed it, shrugged out of his and put it around my shoulders.
“Thanks,” I mouthed. The jacket smelled like him—that combination of earthy and warm and a little sweet that brought back memories of things I shouldn’t be thinking about.
Behind us, the San Marco Basilica rose gleaming white against the dark night. Its facade was an endlessly intricate amalgamation of arches and frescoes and soaring pillars, layered like the architects couldn’t decide when to stop, and behind that, domes that reminded me a little of the Hagia Sophia.
Elodie lit a cigarette and flicked a burning bit of ash into the dark water we were walking over. The little orange ember winked out, and she seemed to compose herself. “So I was saying, I’m here because I saw your texts about the clue you found. ‘A union forged in blood.’”
I still couldn’t believe she’d been spying on us for weeks. I nodded.
“I’d already been working on the other clues, trying to see angles you hadn’t. When you got that clue, I thought of something. Do you remember when I told you about the idea of fate mapping, in the biological sense?”
I nodded. We’d talked about it while she was getting me ready for the wedding to Luc. I’d assumed it was her way of cluing me in to the fact that she was helping me escape. “What does it mean again?”
We stopped to let a line of tourists pass on an intersecting wooden walkway. “A fate map is the developmental history of a cell. Which is important to us first because of the line in the mandate: ‘Their fates mapped together.’”
I glanced at Stellan.
“And second, because Olympias—”
From ahead of me, Stellan sighed.
“Who’s Olympias?” The name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
“Alexander the Great’s mother,” Stellan answered. “Elodie could tell you an encyclopedia’s worth of facts about her.”
“She’s only one of the most fascinating women in history,” Elodie retorted. “People said she was a witch, but really she was just very advanced for her time, scientifically. She and Aristotle. They’re the reason the Circle has purple eyes, you know. She linked them together genetically in a way that’s unheard of even now.” She took a long drag of her cigarette. “Genetics have always been important to the Circle, from the start. And genetics have a lot to do with blood.”
I raised my eyebrows. Of course blood was important to the Circle. Rule by blood. I’d never really thought to consider, though, whether that meant blood as in violence, or blood as in bloodline. I assumed both. “So?”
“So, ‘a union forged in blood.’ That doesn’t sound like a social construct like marriage, does it?”
It didn’t—that was what I’d been saying all along. Marriage as the end-all of the mandate didn’t make sense. And Napoleon had written in his diary that they’re wrong about the mandate. “What else do you think it might mean?”
“My prevailing theory,” Elodie dragged it out, like she was enjoying having an audience, “and one I know some of the Circle share, is that the union has nothing to do with the actual marriage, and more to do with what the marriage can produce. As in,” she said, turning to look over her shoulder at me, “a child.”
A strangled noise came from my throat. Stellan paused in the middle of a step, and I was careful to avert my eyes before he looked my direction. If I couldn’t stop obsessing about having to marry him now, what would the idea that we were supposed to make a baby do?
I swallowed. “I thought you said you had ideas about our clues. Getting me pregnant wouldn’t help us find the second bracelet, or the tomb.”
Elodie stubbed out her cigarette with her boot as we stepped off the wooden walkway at the other end of the Piazza San Marco. “You’re right—a child likely has more to do with uniting two bloodlines than it does with Napoleon’s quest. But you’ve also been looking for ways to unlock the bracelets, right? What I’m proposing is that maybe your clues, in addition to sending you on the hunt for the second bracelet, have to do with that, too. Like if a word related to blood, or DNA, or a child could be the password?”
I slipped the bracelet off my arm, rotating the rows of letters. One step closer to unlocking the secret through a union forged in blood, the clue had read. “How do you say blood in French?” I asked.
“Sang,” Jack answered. “Four letters.”
The password had five. The rest of the way to the museum, we listed off various words related to Elodie’s theory. Baby. Child. Fate. Union. Most of them didn’t have five-letter translations, and the few that did didn’t work.
“It’s a good idea, though,” Stellan admitted. “One we should look into more.”
“See?” Elodie said. “You’re lucky I thought to watch your phone.”
Stellan snorted.
“For now,” Jack reminded us as we approached the entrance to the Museo Correr, in the Napoleonic Wing, “we still have a second bracelet to search for.”
The museum staff was already closing up and didn’t want to let us in. Stellan leaned in close to the window and said something beseeching, and I was about to tell him his charms probably wouldn’t work on the burly museum guard sitting there when he passed a handful of euros across the counter. That worked.
We hurried inside. “He’s only giving us ten minutes, but there aren’t many rooms here,” Stellan said. “Split up.”
Jack and Elodie took off in one direction, and Stellan and I took a room with gleaming marble floors and a soaring ceiling covered in frescoes. I walked through quickly, scanning the walls.
“Do you trust her now?” Stellan said from the other side of the room.
“I don’t know if trust is the right word, but I’m willing to listen to her theories.” I skirted a painting of wood nymphs, then finished looking through the room. Nothing. I stopped, hands on my hips. “What if La Serenissima didn’t even mean Venice?” I said, voicing the worry that had started to creep in even before we came out tonight. “We could be at a dead end.”
“Let’s at least finish searching this place before we jump to any conclusions.”
We made our way into the next room. “What do we do if it’s not here?” I said.
“We—” Stellan stopped, looking over my shoulder.
“What?”
He pointed. “The symbol from your necklace.”
I wheeled around. Sure enough, the symbol was carved into the wall above my head, and above it was a bas-relief of thr
ee women. Between them was an inscription in French.
I ran out into the next room and called for Jack and Elodie. We gathered around Stellan, who was standing, hands in his pockets, reading the inscription. Jack and Elodie joined him.
“Can someone please translate for the girl who doesn’t speak French?” I asked.
“It says, Where Alexander once sought counsel, the spirits of the priestesses guard one twin, but only through the union shall it open,” Stellan said. “Yet another clue, leading somewhere else.”
“But it says ‘one twin,’” I said hopefully. “Maybe this one is actually pointing to the next bracelet.”
Elodie was staring at the carving with narrowed eyes. “‘Only through the union’ . . . ,” she said to herself. “‘Union forged in blood.’” The three of us looked at her, but she just bit her lip and paced across the room, muttering to herself. “Fate mapping. Fates mapped together. Fates.” She looked up, her eyes wide. “Fates.”
I snapped a quick photo of the carving with my phone. “What about fates?”
“You said the clue in India was near a carving of the Moirai, right? The Greek Fates?” she said.
I nodded. I hadn’t realized who the three women in the bas-relief were at first, but we’d seen it later while looking at the photo Jack had taken.
“And this one is, too.” Elodie smiled triumphantly. “The bracelet will be in a place that’s important to Alexander that also has to do with the Greek Fates. This clue says ‘spirits of the priestesses.’ It’s obvious. It’s at the world’s most famous oracle—Delphi.”
CHAPTER 10
“How are we going to convince the Saxons to let me go to Greece?” I said to Jack. We stopped under the portico surrounding the Piazza San Marco. A cheerful, brightly lit cafe called to us, the smell of the slabs of pizza in the window wafting through the open doors. “We can’t wait until after all these visits are over. We have less than eight days left.” And when the visits were over, I’d be expected to choose someone.
“Tell them you need a break,” Elodie said. “Tell them you’re going to a resort. Colette’s there right now, on her yacht. We can stay with her.”
Colette LeGrand. She was a Dauphin cousin and also one of the world’s most famous actresses. It was her boyfriend, Liam, who had been one of the Order’s first victims.
“I don’t think telling them I’m going to a resort will work,” I said.
Elodie wrinkled her nose. “You’re not thinking of telling them the truth, are you?”
I looked at Jack. “We haven’t exactly told them everything.”
“Because you’d give it all to the Order in exchange for your mother.” Elodie leaned against one of the arches, surveying the square. The tourist traffic had thinned out for the night, so it was even easier to see the reflections of the buildings in the mirror surface of the water. Elodie turned to Jack. “And you’re okay with that?”
He didn’t answer, but his mouth pressed into a hard line. He had never liked the idea much, but he knew it was what I had to do.
“I guess we should go,” I said, changing the subject.
“Sneaking back into the hotel will be harder than getting out was,” Jack said. I’d just been thinking the same thing.
“The Dauphins have a staff apartment here,” Stellan said. He handed me the bracelet with a small shake of his head. He’d been twisting it absently, trying new passwords.
“How nice for you,” Jack muttered.
“Obviously what I meant was that you can stay there with us,” Stellan said patiently. “There are plenty of beds at the apartment.”
“And plenty of cameras.” I slipped the bracelet on my arm as we headed back into the labyrinth of narrow streets. “That’d be really smart to let the Dauphins see us, with you.” I turned to Elodie. “How are you even here, anyway? They think Stellan’s spying on the Saxons—”
“And so am I,” Elodie said. “In case you hadn’t noticed, you’re the most important thing going on in the Circle at the moment.”
The light dimmed as we walked deeper between tall buildings and the sidewalk narrowed. Our feet, damp now, squished on the cobblestones.
“The only cameras at the apartment are at the door,” Stellan continued. “So you’ll hide your face until we get inside. If they care enough to be watching right now, which they don’t, they’ll just think . . . well, let’s just say I’ve brought girls back there before.”
Of course he had.
“So you can sneak me in,” I continued. “But—” I shot a look at Jack.
Stellan followed my gaze. “Elodie’s staying there, too. Or maybe they’ll think I’m having an especially wild night.” He gave an exaggerated wink. “The Dauphins have more important things to worry about right now, I promise. I was just trying to be nice, but by all means, have fun sneaking back into your gilded cage.”
It only took a quick consultation with Jack to decide on the Dauphins’ apartment. It would be much easier to get back in in the morning in the rush of tourists checking out. We stopped in front of a four-story building, its facade a crumbling but colorful fresco, and Stellan punched in a door code.
I pulled the collar of Jack’s coat up and hunched my face down into it, and Jack ducked his head, and we followed Stellan and Elodie into a hallway that was well lit but still so damp that I wondered if anything in this city ever really dried.
We got to a door on the third floor, and Elodie paused outside. “There’s one more thing I probably should have told you—”
Before she could finish, the door flew open. Luc Dauphin stood in the doorway, with messy hair and red-rimmed eyes.
Stellan cursed. “Elodie, what is wrong with you—”
Luc cut him off with a stream of chatter in French that, as far as I could tell from the looks passing between Stellan and Elodie, was something along the lines of it was my idea to come and she couldn’t stop me.
“Okay, everybody inside.” Jack bundled us in and locked the door.
“It’s horrible.” Luc scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Eli Abraham and Takumi Mikado both. It’s—oh, cherie.” He cut off and swept me up in a hug so tight he pulled me right off the ground. He set me back down and planted a loud kiss on each of my cheeks. “You had to be there. I’m so sorry. I was going to—” He gestured behind him to where a sumptuous buffet of desserts was set up. “I wanted to apologize, and I know you like pistachio ice cream”—he nodded to Jack—“and I thought I might be able to say I’m sorry my family tried to arrange our marriage against your will with dessert, but then this happened. And now . . .” He sighed dramatically and led me into the living room. “And now my party is a wake.”
He stepped out of the way, and I stopped dead. In the center of the darkened living room was what I could only call a shrine.
Between when he heard the news and now, Luc must have raided every newsstand in Venice, and half the religious paraphernalia shops. He’d arranged Virgin Mary statues, crosses, and flickering candles with unidentifiable saints painted on the front in an elaborate diorama around a collage of magazine photos of Eli and Takumi. Eli kissing a Brazilian supermodel. Takumi shirtless on a beach. In the center was the cover of Sunday Six’s most recent album.
Luc fell into a chair set in front of the shrine and made an awkward sign of the cross over his chest. We all stared. Somehow all that came out of my mouth was, “Are you even Catholic?”
“No.” Luc sighed again. “But it seemed appropriate, non? And it was all I could find on short notice. When in Rome.”
“When in Venice, actually,” Elodie murmured.
My mouth was still hanging open. “I’m sorry,” Jack said low in my ear. “He doesn’t mean to be disrespectful—”
“And this is the only jacket I have with me dark enough to be appropriate for mourning.” Luc plucked at the shoulder of his blazer, purple
velvet with a subtle floral pattern, if you could really call anything about it subtle. “But I think they both would have liked it. I only met Eli once, and Takumi a few times, but I felt like we had a connection.”
Luc picked up a bottle of wine he already had open on the shrine and took a swig, then passed it back to us. Elodie shrugged and took a drink.
I rubbed my forehead. I’d seen them both die. It was horrible for everyone. But still, it felt weird. “Even if the Order coerced him, Eli murdered somebody,” I said. “Isn’t it strange to look at him as if he were as much of a victim as Takumi?”
They all looked at me, a grim set to each of their mouths. “You don’t understand the Order,” Stellan said. “They do terrible things. Eli had younger siblings. Maybe the Order threatened them. He obviously felt like he had no choice.”
“But to kill someone—”
“Aren’t you planning to give up the thing that could stop these murders to save your mom?” Elodie cut in. “How is it so different?”
“I—” I suddenly felt sick. I studied the shrine again, the happy, smiling faces of two people I’d seen die just hours ago. The lump in my throat that maybe should have been there all night was rising.
I pulled out my phone. In a few seconds, I had pulled up a photo of Dev Rajesh. I leaned the phone against a candle on the shrine. “He was a victim, too.”
Elodie set down the bottle of wine and found a picture of Liam Blackstone to go next to Dev. On Jack’s phone, Malik Emir. Stellan rested a hand on Luc’s shoulder, and I knew they were thinking about Luc’s baby sister.
“And to the rest of them, all our brothers killed by the Order,” Luc said quietly.
Jack took out his wallet and pulled out the photo of him and Mr. Emerson on Mont Blanc, the photo Mr. Emerson had left as a clue. He set it in the shrine, too, then squeezed my hand.
“There’s a tradition I know of,” Elodie said. “You open a window to let the spirits of the dead out, like smoke.”