Map of Fates

by Maggie Hall

  I hissed and elbowed him in the side to wake him up. “You have to walk.” He mumbled something in Russian. The head injury was way worse than I’d realized, or maybe he’d lost too much blood, but he was heavy, and slipping.

  I half dragged him toward the window, where Elodie was dangling from the sill and ready to drop into the hedge below. Just as she fell and jumped up, Jack climbed out after her, and then the lights flicked back on in the house. A shadow entered the room where Jack was hanging.

  The guard who’d been outside my room earlier appeared in the window, shouting back over his shoulder. He saw us first, then Jack. He raised his gun.

  Something silver swished through the air. Elodie’s knife hit the guard in the shoulder, but not before he squeezed the trigger. Jack managed to swing his body in toward the wall, and the bullet missed him, but he lost his grip, and then he was falling, crashing headlong into the brush below.

  I threw Stellan’s limp form onto Elodie and rushed to the hedge. Jack was sitting up, dazed. “I’m all right,” he said, holding his shoulder.

  “Allons-y,” Elodie called, and I hauled Jack to his feet as shouts came from overhead. Jack took Stellan’s other side, and we hurried to a car hidden behind the chateau. Elodie jumped in the driver’s seat, and we sped away.

  CHAPTER 22

  Earlier in the day, we’d reserved train tickets to Cannes under fake names. Elodie took Stellan into one of our two first-class suites to do some first aid on his head, and Jack and I trudged silently into the other, exhausted and lost in thought now that the adrenaline was wearing off. The suite was small but elegant, all the walls dark wood, with just a few feet of space on either side of a double bed made up in maroon brocade, and a lone armchair in a small sitting area by the bathroom door. Fresh yellow carnations brightened the space on both bedside tables.

  I didn’t know how it was possible that the rest of the world was just going on like normal. I felt like nothing would ever be okay again.

  Jack came up behind me and surveyed the platform, then yanked the heavy curtains shut. I kept staring at them like I could still see out.

  “Elodie thinks we need to tell the whole Circle what they’re doing,” Jack said.

  I turned from the window. I figured this would come up. “Not until we get my mom back.” I told him what Alistair had said, and he nodded. “Assuming Alistair keeps his end of the bargain,” I went on. “Do you think he will?”

  Jack’s eyes looked hollow. “Until today, I would have said yes.” I recognized his expression. I was sure it was mirrored on my face. Shock. Helplessness. Anger. Doubt. Neither of us had any idea what they were capable of. “Now, I can only say that I hope so.”

  I hoped so, too. I wouldn’t have left if I didn’t think he would, but honestly, what did I know?

  Jack’s normally rugged face looked drawn. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “Lydia is a lot of things, and Alistair’s not perfect, but I never would have thought . . .”

  “I know.” I fiddled with the bracelet. I’d gotten it back from Elodie on the way to the station, and it felt weird on my arm with its newly raised inset. “At least there’s one upside to all this,” I said. “It’s not the Order out to get us after all. We don’t have to worry about them anymore.”

  Jack laced his hands behind his head. “I can’t believe none of this has been them.”

  “I know. I wonder what the real Order’s been up to this whole time.”

  Jack fiddled with the end of the curtains. “Avery. This is no longer worth it. Any of this. After we get the bracelet, we do whatever we have to do to trade it for your mom, and then we get out. Together. Forget what anyone else thinks.”

  I looked up. “You’d leave the Circle for good?”

  “You wouldn’t? You don’t want this. You don’t care about the Circle.”

  “But you do.” I’d wondered whether he’d actually leave with me if that was what I chose to do. I realized now that, deep down, I hadn’t believed he would.

  Jack palmed his forearm, running his thumb over his compass tattoo. “I thought I did. I cared about the Saxons. I thought staying with them, with the Circle, was the right thing to do. And now—” He shook his head. “Now I feel like the right thing is to get as far from this mess as possible.”

  Did he ever think the right thing to do might not be so simple?

  The thought surprised me. Because, honestly, I should agree. I should want even less to do with the Circle now. My father was willing to swap my freedom for the tomb, and now Jack was saying he’d come with me. I no longer had to consider how I felt about leaving my newfound family. I should be ecstatic.

  But that wasn’t what was going on inside me right now. Of course there was part of me that wanted to run away, but there was another part of me that felt like I had the whole Circle on my shoulders now. Like I could earn that hopeful look they kept giving me: Dev’s people, and Takumi’s. Even Scarface.

  That I could be thinking anything like this hadn’t even crossed Jack’s mind. For good reason—it was crazy. I thought of Stellan’s words in the apartment in Montmartre. There was no leader of the Circle, but the closest thing to it was me. Us.

  And besides, if Jack and I did run away together, what would that mean? Would we be pledging to be together forever? Yes, I cared about him—a lot—but when I looked at it that way, it was a big commitment.

  The knot inside me felt too tight, on the verge of snapping.

  I still hadn’t answered, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to say. I just smiled and wished I felt it as much as I should. “I’m going to go clean up.”

  When I came back after washing dirt and traces of Stellan’s blood off me, Jack was sitting on the bed. He was shirtless, inspecting his right shoulder in a mirror on the far wall.

  He started to pull his shirt back on, but grimaced.

  “Don’t,” I said. “What is it?” I dropped my towel on the bed and came around in front of him, taking the shirt from his hand. I touched the darkening bruise across his shoulder, and he jerked away.

  “The fall from the window. Landed right on my shoulder. I’ll fix it up tomorrow.”

  I ran my fingers over his cool skin. Now that I felt a bit more settled, there was something else I had to say, something I’d been pushing out of my mind since seeing Lydia at the Arc de Triomphe. Something I really had to know if I was considering running away with Jack. The train jolted. We were moving. I paced to the window and pulled the curtain aside to look out as we slowly left the station behind.

  I didn’t want to ask, but I couldn’t not. “How did Lydia and Cole know where we were today?”

  There was a pause. “I don’t know.”

  The knot tightened even more. It was hanging in the air, implicit, but I had to say it. “Did you tell them?”

  He let out a long breath. “No.”

  I rested my forehead against the cool glass with a thump. Thank God. I don’t know what I would have done if it had turned out that he’d . . . I shook my head.

  “I guess they have sophisticated tracking equipment,” I thought out loud. “We told them we were going to Paris. They must have figured it out somehow. And Scarface—oh.” I stood up straight. I hadn’t told Jack about that part yet. I watched the Paris suburbs go by out the window as I told him the short version of my encounter with Scarface. Branding him with my necklace. The killing of the other guards. How he’d pledged his loyalty to me. I felt strangely detached talking about it.

  The bed springs squeaked, and I felt Jack come up behind me. “I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t have to deal with something like that—”

  “Yes, I should.” I twisted to face him. “This is my fight as much as anyone else’s. More, really. You can’t protect me from everything. Okay?”

  Jack put his good arm around me. He smelled like sweat and blood. I leaned into his cool bare c
hest. “Okay,” he said.

  The door creaked open, and Stellan poked his head in. “Oops, I’m interrupting,” he said. “You should really learn to lock the door.”

  “You’re not interrupting.” I slipped out from under Jack’s arm. “Is your head okay?” He looked a lot better than he had earlier.

  Stellan nodded. He didn’t have a shirt on, either, and wore pajama pants that were a good deal too small for him.

  “Are those Elodie’s?” I said.

  Stellan pouted. He actually pouted. “My clothes, they have blood all over.” His accent was much thicker than usual. “She said I could not sit on the bed unless—” He indicated the pants, and I fought an inappropriate laugh. He surveyed Jack. “Shoulder’s dislocated.”

  Jack nodded.

  “His shoulder, it dislocates if you look at it wrong,” Stellan said to me. A nostalgic smile brightened his face. Far more lighthearted than he should look after tonight. And definitely woozy.

  “Are you drunk?” I said, crawling onto the bed.

  Another inappropriately dreamy smile. “Concussion. Pain medication. Too much pain medication? But they are not working yet. Are they working yet?” He touched his head and winced as if remembering how much it hurt, and then looked up again like he was surprised to find himself in the room. His eyes focused back on Jack. “Lie down,” he ordered, gesturing to the bed.

  Jack frowned. “I’ll take care of it tomorrow. Or Avery can help me.”

  Stellan sniffed. “You know she’s not strong enough. And that’s . . . Ça va faire mal toute la nuit unless you fix it,” he said.

  From where I sat leaning against the headboard, I watched, surprised, as Jack sighed and lay back gingerly. And I was even more surprised when Stellan climbed on the bed, too, and leaned over him.

  “The usual?” he said.

  Jack nodded, grimacing as Stellan’s slim fingers prodded his skin. Then Stellan planted one knee on Jack’s chest, and Jack held out his right arm, squeezing his eyes shut.

  The scene was so odd, I had to wonder for a second whether I was hallucinating. Interesting, I thought clinically, that this is what my brain conjured up under stress.

  With his palm at Jack’s collarbone, Stellan wrenched hard on his elbow.

  Jack tried to stifle a groan. His shoulder moved in an odd, sickening way, and he was breathing hard as Stellan set his arm back down by his side and pressed both palms to his shoulder again, then nodded.

  “You’re welcome,” he said. He climbed off Jack and leaned heavily next to me.

  I stared as Jack sat up, rubbing his collarbone.

  “His shoulder. The bone, it—” Stellan made an exploding gesture with his hands. “I have to—” He gestured the other direction, putting his hands back together.

  “Pop his shoulder back in?” I said.

  Stellan pointed at me. “Yes. Done it many times.”

  “You used to be better at it,” Jack said through clenched teeth.

  “You used to be tougher,” Stellan said cheerfully. He leaned his head back against the headboard. “Tired. But cannot go to sleep. The concussion.”

  Jack surveyed him warily. “Can you go back to Elodie’s room now?”

  Stellan opened one eye. “She wants to talk. The bracelet. Heist. I do not want to talk. You go talk.”

  A giggle tried to bubble up in my throat, even though there was nothing funny about any of it. Not quite knowing what else to do, I patted the spot on the other side of me, gesturing for Jack to sit. I wasn’t going to kick the painkiller-drunk guy with a head injury out into the hall of a moving train right now.

  Stellan grabbed the remote and clicked on the ancient TV bolted to the corner of the cabin. As far as I could tell, it was on a French infomercial selling a blender, and the marketers seemed entirely too excited about it.

  After a second’s hesitation, Jack crawled up the bed on my other side. I saw him glance at Stellan over my head, but all he did was settle back against the headboard. After a second, he took my hand, firmly, like a proclamation. I was surprised at first, but I let it stay. And the three of us sat there, shoulder to shoulder to shoulder, me and these two boys who turned out to be just about all I had left in the world.

  CHAPTER 23

  A short time later, Stellan’s eyes were at half-mast and falling.

  I elbowed him gently in the side. “Wake up.”

  He blinked hard and muttered something in Russian.

  “You’re supposed to stay awake,” I said, but I wasn’t really paying attention. I was watching the news that had come on after the blender infomercial. Every story was still about Eli Abraham, and me holding a dying Takumi Mikado. And my father sitting next to me, Lydia one seat down, both frozen, eyes wide like they had no idea what was going on. A small, disbelieving laugh escaped my lips. They were such liars.

  My hand clenched Jack’s, but he didn’t respond. I looked down to see his head loll into the bookcase next to the bed, his face slack and, if not quite peaceful, at least more relaxed in the flickering blue of the TV. I dislodged my hand gently from his, and he kept sleeping.

  “He’s always been able to sleep so well.” There was more than a hint of jealousy in Stellan’s voice. “Would be nice. But I wish right now I could lie down with him.”

  I took a deep breath. “You guys snuggling would be cute,” I said. “But really, don’t fall asleep yet, okay? I don’t want you dying on my watch.”

  He leaned against me, his head heavy on top of mine, his skin warm against my bare arm. “Keep me awake, then,” he murmured. “Tell me stories.”

  I shoved him gently, and when he gave me a woozy grin, I noticed red running down his forehead. I reached across and handed him a tissue from the bedside table. “I thought Elodie bandaged your head.”

  The TV was casting a dim blue flicker over Jack’s sleeping form. Now they were talking about Prime Minister Mikado, and the anguish on his and his wife’s faces made me clench my teeth. I couldn’t think about this anymore tonight.

  Stellan was dabbing ineffectually at his head.

  “You’re going to bleed on my bed,” I said crossly. “Get up. Bathroom.”

  I took one last glance back at the news and then followed Stellan. He stood squinting at his head in the mirror. He leaned closer, trying to see the wound, and smacked his forehead right into the glass.

  “Ow,” he said, indignant, like the mirror had come out and hit him.

  I stopped in the doorway. He was so tall. His head nearly brushed the train’s low ceilings. Tall and intimidating and carved like a statue of a beautiful half-naked Viking prince, and here he was in this tiny train bathroom, with blood running down his forehead, in ladies’ pajama pants and with a pout like an angry toddler’s. I ducked my head to conceal another inappropriate giggle.

  Stellan rubbed his eye with the back of one hand. “What?” he said petulantly, and I bit down hard on my lip. What was wrong with me? I threw a hand over my mouth, but a snort escaped, and all of a sudden, the giggles that had been trying to come out for the last hour burst the floodgate and I was hysterical.

  “You look . . . ridiculous,” I forced out, and it was high-pitched and desperate, and all of a sudden, I was sure I was about to come fully unhinged. “It’s all . . . Everything is ridiculous.”

  Stellan’s pout turned into concern, and confusion. He reached for me.

  “No.” I stepped out of his grasp. If he tried to hug me or say something reassuring, I would cry. If I cried, I wouldn’t stop. “Sit,” I ordered.

  I pulled a little stool from the vanity, still giggling a little. Stellan sat, his head flopped down until his chin rested on his chest. I inspected his head, where only the top layer of his blond hair was clean, and the mat of blood beneath it hadn’t been touched.

  I started laughing again, hard enough that I hiccuped. “Elodi
e did a horrible job,” I gasped. “What is wrong with her?”

  Stellan raised an eyebrow. I took two rasping breaths and shoved it all down. Compartmentalizing. I’d been doing it all night, and I could keep doing it.

  “You need to wash it the rest of the way tonight, or it’ll never heal right,” I said.

  Stellan eyed me warily, but used my shoulder to stand up, gesturing to the shower stall.

  “I don’t know if you should do it yourself.” In this state, I was afraid he’d kill himself in the train-sized shower. Or at the very least, not be gentle enough with the wound and rip it open again.

  A woozy but wicked grin spread across his face. “Does that mean you’re getting in with me? I never thought you’d take me up on that rain check, but I won’t say no . . .”

  “We’ll wash it in the sink. Sit.”

  I ran warm water in the basin and swished in some orange-scented shampoo from the shower, and he leaned back until his long torso was taking up half the bathroom. I rolled up one of the puffy white towels and wedged it under the back of his neck. He winced almost imperceptibly, like if he’d had his wits about him he would have been able to suppress it.

  “What?” I said. “Did you hurt your shoulder, too?”

  He shook his head.

  “What is with you guys?” I said. “If you have a broken collarbone or something and you just haven’t mentioned it . . .”

  “It’s nothing,” he said, but the lie wasn’t convincing.

  I crossed my arms over my chest. Finally, he took a deep breath, then touched the scars snaking up his neck. Those strange, translucent scars, all up his back and twisting like ghostly vines over the tops of his shoulders and around the sides of his throat.

  “Your scars hurt?” I said. “Did you do something to them?”

  He shook his head slowly, staring up at the ceiling. “Always,” he said, so softly I almost couldn’t hear.

  It took me a second to understand what he meant. When I did, my breath caught. Of their own accord, my fingers reached out to the same scar he was touching. “The scars always hurt?” I said.