by Maggie Hall
Jack ran his thumb over the jeweled engraving. “Not like I exactly have had the normal experience, either, since my real father had no interest in me, but in my mind, it’s the feeling of having someone you know is always there for you. Who wants to protect you.”
For a second Jack’s steely exterior chipped, and I could see another small hint of the person underneath, one more piece to the puzzle of who he really was. And for one more second, I allowed myself to admit that I was kind of starting to like that person. And that, in addition to my own fears about going back to the Circle, I was worried about him.
I glanced up at the bruise under his left eye. He got it somewhere between the prom and Prada, and I was willing to bet it was a punishment for letting me go off with Stellan. And he’d gotten a couple official-sounding calls through the night, like they were starting to get suspicious.
“Luc told me what ‘terminated’ means,” I said. “And about what happened to the Fredericks’ Keeper, and the Rajesh Keeper, and the Emirs’.”
Jack tucked the bracelet into his jacket.
“Saxon wouldn’t . . .” I went on. “If you were caught with me. Helping me, I mean . . .”
He cleared his throat. “The Emir family don’t allow their Keepers as close to them as many families do, but Rocco was different. He was in their inner circle. He was known for being the best at what he did. And still, the second they found out . . . They say Emir made the daughter who was caught with him pull the trigger herself.”
I swallowed. “But not every family is like that.”
Jack rubbed a thumb over the tattoo on his forearm. “I’m aware of the consequences of everything I do.”
When it was clear he wasn’t going to say anything more, I blew out a long breath. I guess it was his choice. “If all of the Circle is going to be at the ball,” I said, “do you think my father will be there?”
“Yes,” Jack said without hesitation.
I curled my hands into fists and watched the first hints of sunrise glint off the Istanbul harbor. “Let’s go to Paris.”
CHAPTER 26
I yawned and squinted into the morning sun, then rooted around in my bag for my sunglasses. It was a languid, hazy morning in Paris, the kind of morning that should be used for a stroll through a garden overflowing with tulips, followed by a picnic along the cobblestoned river walk by the Seine. As we walked over the bridge to Île de la Cité, where Notre-Dame rose against the blue sky, the crowds below made it obvious that half of Paris had the same idea.
I hugged Mr. Emerson’s blazer tighter around me. As tired as I was, I hadn’t been able to sleep much on the small private plane Jack had waiting in Istanbul. I’d had to ask him how many planes each family had. All he’d said was “Enough.”
He hadn’t slept, either. He’d taken off his blazer and hung it in the plane’s closet, then changed into a clean shirt he had stashed there, but that was all the concession he’d made to getting comfortable. He’d spent the whole trip hunched over the bracelet and Mr. Emerson’s note.
The whole flight, he’d caught me staring at him almost every time he’d looked up. Our eyes would meet for a split second, and then I’d go back to pretending to be asleep. I wasn’t sure why, all of a sudden, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. Maybe because my brain was too worn out to worry about real, horrible, dangerous things anymore and somehow, without me quite realizing it, Jack had come to feel safe.
Now he glanced down at me again. We both looked away, but I felt his eyes come back to me immediately. Even through his clean shirt, I could still smell the spices on his skin.
I trained my eyes on Notre-Dame. “‘A vast symphony in stone,’” I said, drowning out my thoughts.
“Victor Hugo,” Jack said, and he didn’t look down at me again. Instead he scanned the square. His head snapped around when a scream sounded from across the road, but it was just a little kid with map-toting parents.
Notre-Dame was much more impressive in person than it was in photographs, its square facade decorated with windows and arches and statues and so much detail, it would take years to see it all.
“Did you know the cathedral might be gone now if it weren’t for The Hunchback of Notre-Dame?” I said. “It was falling into disrepair by the mid-1800s, and the book brought public interest back to it. That’s when they did a lot of the renovations that made it look how it does now.”
Jack nodded. “It’s when they added some gargoyles, and did lots of restoration on others.” He pointed to the stone creatures hanging off the facade. I wasn’t surprised he knew about that. The Hunchback of Notre-Dame was one of Mr. Emerson’s favorites; “Charlie” must have read it, too. “It wasn’t long after Napoleon was crowned, actually. As you might imagine, France—and the Dauphins—had a lot on their minds at that time, but Notre-Dame has always been meaningful to them. It was built to commemorate the Circle’s early cooperation with the Catholic Church, and built here because this area was one of the Circle’s first settlements in northern Europe. This is the historical center of Paris.”
As I stared up at the church, bells pealed out from the tower, announcing that it was 10:00 a.m. We didn’t have much more time. And—I glanced around. The mention of the Dauphins drove home that we had been anonymous in Istanbul, but people here knew who we were. The whole Circle was no more than a mile away at the Louvre.
“Is it safe for you to even be seen with me here?” I asked once more.
“See how the door on the left-hand side is different?” he said. I guess that was my answer.
The door he pointed to had a triangular carving over it that the other two arched doors didn’t have. “It symbolizes the Circle watching over the common people without them realizing it.”
“So do you believe it?” I said. “That the world is a better place because of the Circle?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Of course.” It was amazing how much he seemed to trust them—the Circle as a whole, and the Saxons specifically. Seemed to me like setting yourself up for a fall. “You don’t, I guess?” he said.
Honestly, I didn’t know what I believed anymore.
He steered us toward a line of tourists that stretched from the entrance. We waited for a few minutes, and Jack tossed a euro into the hat of a street performer singing opera. After everything we went through last night, strolling inside behind a family with two crying toddlers felt almost too easy.
Inside, the church hummed with the sound of hundreds of people all trying to speak quietly. School groups perused artwork, camera-toting tourists took pictures of the stained glass, old ladies lit candles. Jack stopped alongside them and dropped a few coins into the collection box, then lit a candle himself, nestling it among the tiers of dancing orange flames that lit the dark foyer.
He cocked his head and I followed him. “We’ll start with the Napoleon angle, I figure,” he murmured. “The clue said ‘above the coronation site,’ which is at the altar. So we’ll check around and above there.”
We got as close as we could to the altar, but the area directly around it was roped off. Its main focus was a giant golden cross looming over a marble pietà, and there were innumerable nooks and crannies around it where a clue could be hidden. Jack circled behind it while I stood near a British tour group and inspected it as best I could from the front, then the sides. I pointed down one aisle and headed to search it, and Jack nodded and took the other.
“‘He watches over our lady,’” Jack said when we came back together, having pored over every inch of this part of the cathedral. “Could we be misinterpreting it? It doesn’t say that something is here. It says ‘watches over.’ Fitz knows this church. I don’t feel like he’d send us somewhere we can’t look properly.”
A guard walked by, listening to his walkie-talkie, and we got quiet. “Is there a statue that’s watching?” I murmured when he passed. “Or guarding?”
Jack
squinted toward the back of the church. “There are a couple paintings that could fit.”
Minutes later, we’d checked paintings of the Crucifixion, of St. Peter curing the sick, of St. Paul preaching to a crowd. Inspected any statue that seemed to be looking down over the nave. Nothing. I fell onto a chair in a multicolored ray of sunlight from a stained-glass window. Jack sat beside me, unbuttoning his blazer. He rested one arm over the back of my chair and one to the other side. He sighed deeply and stared up at the ceiling for just a second before he went back to scanning the church. He never let his guard down for more than a moment.
“Maybe we should try them again,” I said. “We might have missed something.”
“It’s possible,” he conceded, but he showed no signs of getting up again, so I settled into my chair. Jack didn’t move when my shoulder blades rested against his arm, so I didn’t either.
I stared up at the grandeur of the church: tapestries, gold leaf, chandeliers. My eyes kept being drawn to the stained-glass window above us.
“See how there are twelve major sections?” Jack said, jutting his chin at the window I was admiring.
I nodded, counting.
“They represent the twelve families. And just there, in the center? This is one of the only churches in the world to incorporate zodiac symbols.”
“Which there are also twelve of.” I remembered Luc mentioning the Circle’s connection to them.
I’d read my horoscope every morning since I could remember, just for fun. The last one I’d read, on the morning of prom, had said something like, The new moon prompts you to take impulsive action to satisfy your needs. I had had no idea how true that would end up being.
“What’s your sign?” I said. I could see him as a Taurus. The strong, silent type.
“Pisces.” He sat forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “February twenty-third. What’s yours?”
“Hmm. Calm, rational, self-sacrificing. Both emotional and logical,” I said. That actually fit better. It was both sides of him: the poised, proud exterior and the more sensitive parts underneath. “I’m Gemini. June fourteenth.”
“Gemini. Extremely independent.” Jack buttoned and unbuttoned his cuff. “Quick witted. Inquisitive to a fault.” He gave a tiny smile. “Sometimes dual sided or indecisive.”
“Oh really?”
“One of the cooks is into all that astrology stuff,” he said, and I could swear his cheeks got pink.
Astrology buff was not a part of Jack I would’ve expected to find. Especially not the kind of astrology buff who thought I was the dual-sided and indecisive one out of the two of us. Yes, I might have let excitement override caution to come to France in the first place, but I wasn’t the one asking a girl to prom, then making it clear she was just his assignment, then going out of his way to take care of her. Would he have turned me in if we didn’t have Fitz’s clues to follow? Why did I keep caring so much?
But then again, why not? Wrong or not, maybe I could actually admit to myself that I wanted him to care.
We stood up to let a tour group pass in front of us.
“We’d better get back to it,” I said awkwardly. “I wonder if we’re missing something. Like, if ‘watching over’ could mean it’s on the balcony.” I gestured to a second floor that ran the length of the cathedral on both sides. “Is there anything up there?”
“Not artwork or statues, as far as I know.”
A chubby tourist with a camera walked by. “We gotta take a picture of the gargoyles,” he said in a thick Southern accent. “Like in that one movie.”
Jack’s eyes went wide. “The gargoyles. I didn’t like coming to church. Sometimes Fitz would bribe me by promising me we could go up to the bell tower . . . with the gargoyles.” A little smile crossed his face. “We used to joke that one of them looked like a guard dog, like he was watching over the cathedral. Do you think that could be what he meant?”
“If we’re right and these clues are old, it wasn’t him leaving the clue, so I don’t know . . .” I trailed off. “But who knows—he could have been priming you for this for a long time, for all we know. He might have said the guard dog thing just in case. One way to find out.”
Jack offered to go up alone since he’d seen how much I disliked heights, but if we weren’t being chased and there was a solid guardrail, I’d be fine. We passed the gift shop after one flight of stairs, then continued the long trek—444 steps, Jack told me, in a dizzyingly tight spiral—to the top. I was breathing hard by the time we stepped out of the stairwell onto the narrow balcony. A rush of wind cooled the sweat on my face, and all of Paris spread out below us.
A few other tourists leaned out to peer through the wire mesh surrounding the deck like a safety net, and I followed Jack along the balcony. The Seine wound sinuously through the city, and the morning sun glinted off splashes of gold in the distance—the top of a dome here, a rooftop there—and made them stand out from all the cream and gray. Farther away, the Eiffel Tower pierced the haze of the morning.
“There,” Jack said. He pointed down the balcony at one of the gargoyles. A couple about our age cuddled and kissed in front of it while the guy held his phone at arm’s length, snapping pictures.
We both looked at them, then glanced at each other. I hoped he didn’t know how many things were suddenly making me think about almost-kissing him. About what it would be like to really kiss him.
He glanced at my lips.
I turned around before my flaming cheeks were too obvious.
Jack cleared his throat. “Right. We’ll just wait a minute, then—”
“Sure,” I said quickly. “Yeah.”
When they left, we edged our way toward the gargoyle, passing above the steepled roof of the main part of the cathedral. Jack searched the gargoyle and the area around it.
His shoulders tensed, and I leaned in close. “The symbol.”
It was drawn onto one of the gargoyle’s clawed feet in what looked like black marker, hidden well enough to escape the immediate attention of a cleaning crew. I squeezed Jack’s arm excitedly, but just as quickly let go.
“He can’t be telling us to steal the whole gargoyle,” I whispered. “Is there something hidden on it?”
For the next few minutes, we combed the area until a guard noticed and moved to stand just a few feet away, eyeing us suspiciously. I gave him a tense smile, like we were just another couple of interested tourists. “The clue said ‘watch over.’ What about his eyes?” I whispered.
When the guard turned his back, Jack picked up a pebble and heaved it all the way toward the other end of the tower, where it hit and rolled down a drainpipe. The guard perked up, and hurried away to investigate. The only other tourists nearby were three Japanese teenagers making peace signs at their camera phones. Jack climbed onto the ledge and stuck his arm as far as he could through the stiff metal mesh, reaching into the gargoyle’s eyes. He shook his head, and I deflated. Nothing. Not another clue, not another symbol, nothing at all.
“‘He watches over our lady above the coronation site. Where he looks, it will be found,’” I said under my breath once he’d hopped nimbly back down beside me. “‘Where he looks.’” The realization dropped into place with a jolt. “Jack. Where he looks, it will be found. Where is he looking?”
We stared out in the direction of the gargoyle’s gaze.
“Oh God,” I said. “The whole city looks exactly the same.” The matching cream-and-gray buildings weren’t quite as charming when they made it impossible to pick out anything. From the other side of the tower, the guard once again rounded the corner to watch us, a disapproving look on his face.
I got right behind the gargoyle and followed his line of sight as closely as I could. Jack came behind me and peered over my shoulder.
At that moment, the bells of the cathedral pealed out again, the chimes round and clanging and direc
tly behind us. I gasped and jumped—straight back into Jack. He steadied me, and for a second, all I was aware of was the warmth of his body against the chill of the breeze, his hands secure on my shoulders. It was like I could ignore how much I wanted to touch him until it happened, and then I couldn’t think of anything else. I leaned back into his chest involuntarily. He didn’t stop me. In fact, unless I was imagining it, he drew me closer. It was dangerous how safe it made me feel. It was dangerous, period—we were in public, and someone could see us. I shook his hands off and stepped away, to the other side of the gargoyle.
And then I looked back up and saw it immediately.
“That white Ferris wheel.” I pointed. “That’s where he’s looking. Is there anything in that direction that could be significant?”
Jack grasped the railing and stared out over Paris. “Yes, in fact,” he said, a smile in his voice. “That’s the Louvre.”
CHAPTER 27
Luckily, the Louvre was a few short blocks away. Vendors were setting up their stalls of shiny Eiffel Tower postcards and dusty used books and vintage absinthe posters along the Seine, and the rush of traffic scented the air with diesel fumes.
We waited for a light to change, then crossed a busy street into the Louvre courtyard. The glass pyramid in its center gleamed blindingly in the morning sun, a modern contrast to the museum’s classic facade.
“Let me guess,” I said, my flip-flops slapping against the sun-bleached concrete. “The pyramid was put in by another family to spite the Dauphins.”
I laughed, but Jack frowned. “How did you know?”
I stopped, hands on my hips. “Seriously?”
Jack actually grinned. “Seriously,” he said over his shoulder.
I shook my head and hurried to catch up. A quick glance at the Dauphins’ wing of the complex showed that no one was watching, so Jack made a phone call. He’d gotten a new phone from the plane, and had grabbed me one, too, like there was a constant supply of extra equipment just lying around. While he talked to a security guard he knew, I called my mom again. Still no answer.
