The Conspiracy of Us

by Maggie Hall

  CHAPTER 14

  The blood wouldn’t come off, and none of it was a mistake.

  There was non-mistake, not-nothing blood everywhere. The dried blood from my hands and the fresh blood still oozing from my shoulder turned different shades of pink as they swirled down the drain.

  I glanced at the beautiful gold dress balled up in the corner, bloody, ruined. A whole swatch of sequins was ripped off the front, like a gaping wound. I must have grabbed my necklace earlier, because there was a bloody thumbprint on it, and a smear of red where it lay on my chest.

  The shaking that had started in my hands expanded, until my whole body was trembling and I couldn’t stop it.

  I scrubbed my hands until the water ran clear, and then scrubbed some more.

  A rap at the door startled me, and in the mirror I saw Jack slip into the room. The door clicked shut behind him.

  He came up behind me at the sink, and I felt him watching over my shoulder. I opened my mouth, but I didn’t know what to say. Instead, I held up my hands. My skin was pink and scrubbed raw, darker red stains still under my fingernails. I dropped them back under the tap.

  We stood in silence, both watching the water splash over my skin, and after a few seconds, he put his own hands under the faucet, too.

  I tensed, but he didn’t let go. He ran his thumb down my fingers, one by one. I felt myself trying to say it’s fine, I’m fine, I don’t need your help, but it wouldn’t come out. All I could do was stare at his hands, big and strong and scarred and cradling mine so gently.

  “Look away a second,” he murmured.

  The window next to the sink was streaked with dirt and age, so the Paris I saw outside was as hazy and distorted as it was oblivious to what had happened on this side of the glass. My eyes skimmed over the cream buildings, the cobbled street, the dark ironwork of the Eiffel Tower in the distance, lighting on the bursts of red that slashed the neutrals of the city. A little girl’s jacket, a bright store awning, a wide flower bed running down one side of the street.

  The cold scraping under my fingernails told me Jack was cleaning them with a knife, which should have scared me but didn’t. I watched him in the mirror, his dark brows knitted together, his lower lip caught between his teeth. I hadn’t noticed earlier, but a new bruise was spreading under his left eye. When he said I could, I looked back down and the bursts of red on my hands were gone. My heart flared with gratitude.

  And then I realized my hands were still in his, and cradled them to my chest. They left wet blotches on the flowered sundress.

  He watched me in the mirror. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left you alone. You’ve had quite a shock.”

  Absurdly, I couldn’t stop thinking about his perfect, proper British accent.

  “I’m fine.” I grabbed a paper towel and turned away from the mirror, from him.

  While I was changing clothes, he’d gone to a pharmacy down the street. He held out an assortment of painkillers, and I plucked two ibuprofen from his palm. He handed me a third, and I watched him put the rest in a bag. This was Jack Bishop, Lakehaven High new kid. In a Prada store, in Paris, offering me painkillers after I’d almost been murdered.

  A laugh choked up in my throat, and I very nearly lost it again. Instead, I sat on the closed toilet seat and swallowed the ibuprofen dry.

  The music still tinkled out of the speakers. Why had no one stopped it? Someone should have stopped it. “Turn off the music,” I said.

  Jack stared at me, pharmacy bag in hand.

  “Turn off the music,” I said again. “Please. And can I use your phone?” After a second, he handed it to me and left.

  I made myself take a deep breath.

  I probably was close to going into shock. I had this fuzzy, half-there feeling, the constant replay of the knife cutting into my skin, the smell, the squishing noise as the killer’s head hit the marble floor. The thought that I’d seen both Stellan and Luc kill people, which probably meant Jack had killed people, too. That my family killed people. And people wanted to kill them.

  I dialed my mom’s number, then our house. Both rang and rang, and finally clicked over to my mom’s tinny voice on the voice mail again. I couldn’t leave what had just happened on a message.

  The music stopped in the middle of a note. I almost wished I hadn’t told Jack to turn it off. It was too quiet now. My breath echoed, too fast. Too panicky.

  No. I was alive. I was fine. I really wished I could talk to my mom. I took deep breaths over and over, in through my nose, out through my mouth.

  I sat up straight as the door opened and Jack slipped inside. He spread bandages from the plastic pharmacy bag across the sink.

  Would mafia families have somebody bring me bandages when I was hurt? I wasn’t sure why I wasn’t just asking it straight out: Who are you? What are you? Maybe I didn’t really want to know. In the space of one day, I’d turned into what I thought I’d never be: a naive, hopeful idiot. Despite my wariness, I’d convinced myself this was fun. I’d spent all day smiling at famous people and admiring Paris and playing dress-up. I was thinking about going to a ball. All the while I had willfully ignored the ominous signs I didn’t want to see.

  I smoothed the pleats of the dress over my knees. I just had to do it. I had to ask. I opened my mouth just as Jack turned, his gray eyes darker than usual, a deep crease between his brows.

  “Who are you?” he said.

  I closed my mouth. Blinked. “Who am I?”

  He leaned against the sink, spinning the top on the bottle of painkillers. “I agree it wasn’t a mistake. But you don’t fit the pattern in any way, and the Order is more careful than that.”

  “Pattern? Shouldn’t I be the one asking who you are, since it’s so common for all of you to be attacked?” I started to stand, but I felt dizzy. I sat down again, rubbing the knot on my forehead.

  “I just want to know if you’re telling me the truth,” he said, a little more gently. “Are you really as in the dark as you seem?”

  I wanted to be calm. I wanted to be rational. Why was this not making enough sense for me to feel rational? I clenched my hands between my knees and spoke in a slow, measured voice. “What are you talking about? What do you think I’m supposed to know?”

  “I’m talking about the fact that I was sent to small-town America to gather information about a distant family member. Unusual, but nothing unheard of. Considering everything else that’s going on, it wasn’t shocking for the Dauphins to send Stellan to investigate. But then, just as we’d gotten it all sorted and I was about to take you to meet your family, I got this bizarre message from my mentor, telling me to put myself on the line to keep you safe.”

  I squeezed my knees together until my rings dug into my skin. It all made sense—that phone call I’d overheard, Stellan at prom. Even that text Jack had gotten that had made him turn me over.

  “And now, I can’t reach my mentor,” Jack continued. “Fitz. I was on my way here to find out what you know about him, and you’re nearly being killed by the Order.” He pulled a brown bottle from the pharmacy bag. “You tell me—does that not sound suspicious?”

  My mouth felt like sand. “But I don’t know you. I don’t know the Saxons, or the Dauphins, or your mentor. Why would these Order people care about me?”

  “That’s the question, then, isn’t it?” Jack crouched in front of me with a cotton ball soaked in peroxide.

  “Who are the Saxons?” I said finally. “Politicians, or . . . something else?”

  His eyes were directly on level with mine, but carefully avoiding them. He ripped open a packet of gauze. “Politicians, in a sense, and something else.”

  Like I’d suspected, I guess. “The Dauphins, too? All twelve?”

  Jack was so close, I could feel his body tense, but he nodded. With the cotton ball in one hand and a gauze pad in the other, he brushed my hair aside,
and I watched his rough fingers slide the strap of the yellow sundress off my shoulder, carefully avoiding the knife wound.

  I thought about downstairs, where I wanted nothing more than for him to stay with me. At the sink, with my hands cradled in his. Even now, his body was like a magnetic force. I realized I was leaning toward him, and I abruptly pulled back.

  I might be upset, but I wasn’t helpless. And I was not going to let myself start depending on anybody now, especially not here. Especially not him.

  “I don’t need you,” I said. I reached for the cotton ball. “I don’t need you to do this, I mean. I can do it. I’m fine.”

  He held it out of my reach. “This isn’t just a scratch. Unless you happen to know first aid, let me handle it.”

  I glanced down at the cut, and the flap of skin hanging off it. I shivered. “All right,” I said, but I sat stiffly while he leaned in again, careful not to relax into his touch.

  The wound had mostly stopped bleeding, but it throbbed with every beat of my heart. Jack pressed the cotton ball to it, and I hissed at the bright bite of peroxide.

  When he’d cleaned it and smoothed on a bandage, I brushed past him to the sink. I pulled up the strap on my dress, then wet a paper towel to wipe off the blood on my necklace while Jack washed his hands.

  “What did the message say?” I finally asked. “The one your mentor sent.”

  Jack pulled out his phone, pressed some buttons, and handed it to me.

  The girl is in danger. Don’t take her to Saxons. If the worst happens—follow what I’ve left you.

  “That’s it?”

  Behind me, Jack carefully unrolled and rebuttoned the sleeves on the clean white dress shirt he’d changed into, and frowned as he rubbed away a slash of dried blood—probably my blood—from his neck. I wondered what the people at the pharmacy had thought about that. “That’s it,” he said.

  A pang of surprise and unexpected gratitude swelled in my chest. He’d sent me with Stellan to keep me safe—going against a direct order to bring me to the Saxons—all because of this vague message. Maybe he cared a little bit after all.

  I studied the text again. Then I looked at the picture of the sender, and the phone almost fell out of my hands.

  Staring up at me was a familiar face, laughing eyes peering out from behind small, round glasses. A face that couldn’t be on Jack’s phone.

  “This is your mentor?” It suddenly felt chilly in the tiled bathroom.

  Jack finger-combed his dark hair in the mirror and nodded. “Fitz.”

  I stared at the picture. “Jack, I know him. This is Mr. Emerson.”

  Mr. Emerson, my pseudograndfather, whose most recent postcard was sitting on my bedside table.

  Jack was across the room in a second, snatching the phone out of my hand and squinting at the picture. “His name is Emerson Fitzpatrick.”

  “When he lived next door to us years ago, he went by Fitzpatrick Emerson.”

  Jack looked from the phone to me. “There’s no way,” he said. “You must be thinking of someone else—”

  “I’m not.” This time, I wasn’t even going to entertain the possibility of a coincidence. I stalked to the bathroom door. “How do you know him?”

  “He works for the Circle, and has for decades. Which means . . .”

  I ran my hands through my hair and leaned against the mirror on the back of the door. “Mr. Emerson was spying on me?”

  “No.” The single forceful syllable echoed off the walls. Jack paced. “He’s one of the good guys. I just can’t believe you know him.” Jack glanced at me, appraising, and I hadn’t realized how closed off he’d been until he opened up again. It was like me knowing Mr. Emerson made him feel like we were on the same team. I still wasn’t sure.

  I stared at a copy of a Monet water lily painting on the wall above the toilet. “You think he’s in trouble?”

  “He just hasn’t answered his phone since he sent that message.” Jack stared out the window, fiddling with a basket of fake fruit on the sill. He picked up a lemon and tossed it anxiously from palm to palm. “I’ve been to his place here in Paris, and he’s not there. And he’s not answering the phone at his flat in Istanbul.”

  Istanbul. Like his postcard, from the Hagia Sophia. Jack was saying Mr. Emerson lived there, and wasn’t just taking a vacation from Boston.

  I turned and looked at myself in the mirror. “What does this mean?” I whispered.

  I stared into my eyes, still bloodshot and haunted, and it hit me.

  “Luc’s eyes,” I said. “They’re purple.”

  “Yes . . .” Jack turned, letting the plastic lemon rest in his left hand. He met my eyes in the mirror like he heard the question in my voice.

  “That’s a Dauphin family trait?”

  “Many of the Dauphins do have violet eyes, yes.” He set the lemon back in its basket.

  I swallowed. “I know you said I’m distant family of the Saxons, but I think I might be related to the Dauphins instead. Could that be what Mr. Emerson meant?”

  When Jack turned back around, I could see in the mirror that his face was pale. “Why would you think that?” he said.

  I turned slowly. I didn’t know whether they had lied about who my family was, or had bad information, or why it would change anything, but it was suddenly obvious it did. Cold moved up my spine.

  “Avery.” Jack crossed the room and loomed over me. “Your eyes.” He lowered his voice to a murmur. “You don’t mean your eyes are purple, do you?”

  I wished I could back away, but the door pressed into my shoulder blades. “Um. I wear contacts, but yeah. My real eye color’s a lot like Luc’s.”

  Jack brought his fingers to his mouth, dropped them. Started to say something, but stopped. His Adam’s apple moved up and down with a hard swallow. “Your eyes are purple.”

  I nodded. Something was wrong. Something was seriously wrong.

  “Well.” He blinked. “That changes things.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” he said, “I know exactly why someone would want you dead.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Because they want to hurt the Dauphins?” I said. A car horn honked outside, and I jumped more than I should have. I ducked around Jack. “So I am related to them? And not the Saxons?”

  “Shh.” Jack opened the door, peered into the hall, then shut it again. “No. Maybe. God. I don’t know. To them, to the Saxons, to a different family entirely . . . All I know is that you are much, much more than a distant relative.”

  I swallowed hard. “But if I have the same eyes as the Dauphins . . .”

  “All twelve families of the Circle have violet eyes.” He swept all the first aid supplies into the pharmacy bag and stuffed it into his pocket. “That tells us nothing.”

  I leaned over the sink, staring into my eyes again. “How is that possible—”

  “Have you told Stellan and Luc any of this?”

  “No—”

  “Okay, then. Fitz was right. You’re in danger. From a lot of people, and especially the Order. I must have misinterpreted that message. The Saxons won’t hurt you, and I’m taking you to them.” He plucked my bag off the little vanity counter where he’d set it when he’d brought it from the dressing room earlier. He handed it to me. “Let’s go.”

  I hugged it to my chest. “No.” Jack stopped with one hand on the doorknob. “You need to explain exactly what’s going on,” I said.

  Jack ran a hand through his hair, mussing it up, then the other way to smooth it back into place. I could tell he was trying to act normal, but he stared at me with a mix of awe and horror, like I was some dangerous mythical creature. “I’m not the one who should be telling you this. We should really just—”

  “I’m not going anywhere.” I plunked my bag back down on the vanity, toppling a trio of t
iny lotion bottles. “What do my eyes matter? Why would someone try to kill me? What the hell is the Circle?”

  After a second, Jack bit his lip and seemed to come to a decision. “All right,” he said. “Okay. Avery, the Circle are . . . how to put this. The Circle of Twelve are important to the world. We make things happen.”

  “So, politicians,” I said.

  “Not exactly, no.” He paced to the window, back to the door, then to the window again, like a caged animal. “Well, most major government officials are members of one of the twelve families, yes. But—”

  “Most? You rig elections?” My voice rose sharply and Jack shushed me, nodding at the door.

  “No,” he said. “Well, usually we don’t have to. It’s advantageous for leaders in government, business, economics, to be ours, but most of them already are, organically.”

  My shaking fingers twisted the tiny gold cap off one of the lotions, screwed it back on, twisted it back off. A warm rose scent wafted from the bottle. “Business? Economics? What does that mean?”

  Jack frowned uncomfortably. “It wouldn’t be wrong to say that in our modern world, and in much of history, all roads lead back to the Circle. We’re so entwined in society—its history, its present, its future—that even though you don’t know we’re there, your life would be entirely different without us.”

  I took a shaky breath and opened the next lotion. Citrus. “Like what?”

  He glanced at the door again. “You know World War One, and Two?”

  I raised my eyebrows at the stupid question.

  “There are twelve families, and together they form the Circle of Twelve. Occasionally, a family will attempt to win more than their share of power. The Hersch family—they’re the ones currently in Germany—did just that, and it was the driving force behind World Wars One and Two.”

  I paused, the lotion cap halfway off. “You did not just say the Circle started both World Wars.”