The Conspiracy of Us

by Maggie Hall

  He knew I had done that to save us, right? Not that I didn’t want to, but I wasn’t trying to get him in any more trouble, or make things any more complicated. My unsteady breath echoing off the walls was the only sound I could hear, and it was entirely too loud. “Jack—” I said, and he opened his eyes.

  Where I thought I might see exasperation, I saw anything but. There was something wild in his eyes, something desperate in the way his lips parted. But he was not upset. Definitely not upset. My mouth snapped shut.

  Our faces hovered inches apart, frozen but twanging, like magnets we suddenly had to pull on as hard as we could to keep from coming together.

  He started to say something, but stopped. At the look in his eyes—fear, frustration, longing—my end of the magnet got a lot harder to keep in check.

  Then one—or both—of us let go.

  His lips crashed into mine.

  It was nothing like the fake kiss a minute ago. His lips softened to mine immediately, and his hands, usually so cautious, pulled me to him so tight, I molded to his body.

  He was kissing me. Jack Bishop was kissing me. And I was kissing him back like I was drowning and he was air. The brim of the fedora butted up against my forehead, and he shoved it out of the way and onto the ground.

  “Avery, God,” he murmured. He parted my lips, and I grabbed his collar and pulled him closer, closer, closer, and every feeling from the past few days—the pain and the danger and the wanting and the confusion and the need—all tangled together in that kiss, in his mouth on mine, and down my collarbone, and my fingers sliding under the untucked hem of his shirt.

  I tipped my head back and let his lips find their way down my neck, and his neck tasted like salt and spices, and his hands, my hands, all over everywhere, and I was falling, falling, falling, with just his arms holding me up.

  Voices sounded from the street. I didn’t think it was the Order, but over the traffic and our breath echoing off the walls, it was hard to tell. The only thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything. I just didn’t want him to stop kissing me.

  And he didn’t.

  It wasn’t my first kiss, but it felt like it. It felt like how kisses in movies looked, which I’d assumed was just fiction. But this was real. For an irrational moment, I thought we could kiss away the mandate, and the Order, and the rest of the world. A kiss like this could do that.

  Finally we pulled away. Aftershocks of the kiss vibrated through me.

  Jack’s shaky breath mingled with mine, his fingers wrapped around my hips like they were all that was holding him upright. I leaned up to him, my lips, of their own accord, blindly trying to find their way back to his.

  He bent toward me once more and brushed his mouth across mine. That kiss, that last whispered breath of his lips, gave me goose bumps over my whole body.

  Jack suddenly dropped his hands and took a deep, shuddering breath. Without thinking, I reached out to stroke his sleeve. It felt wrong now to not be touching him. But instead of wrapping me up in his arms like I thought he would, he pulled away.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. His hands curled into fists. “God, I’m sorry. I wasn’t supposed to do that. I’ve gone and made it worse.”

  My arm dropped to my side like dead weight. No. Kissing doesn’t make things worse. Kissing makes things better, especially kissing like that. If everyone got kissed like that, there would be no problems in the world.

  I wondered what it would have been like if Jack had been a normal transfer student and there was no Circle, and no Order, and no Saxons, and no fate dictated by the mandate.

  Is it possible to feel nostalgic for something that never actually happened? If it was, it was a shade of toska. A craving for something you couldn’t possibly understand. A craving I was finally letting myself feel, only to wish I hadn’t.

  Jack turned his back to me. He straightened his shirt, put on the blazer I shoved back at him. He was so achingly beautiful with his hair mussed up from having my fingers tangled in it that I could barely breathe.

  As if he’d read my mind, he smoothed his hair back into place.

  I stared at him for a beat more, sure he could feel the longing pulsing out of me—and then I deflated. My heart slammed shut so hard, I shuddered.

  “I’m sorry, too,” I said, as blandly as I could muster. “That was obviously a mistake.”

  He turned around. His eyes didn’t say it had been a mistake. “I’m just trying to do the right thing,” he said. “You know that, right?”

  Of course I did. Whatever else I felt, I knew he always tried to do the right thing. I turned away, pulling my hair back into a ponytail. “How do you know what the right thing is?” I whispered.

  “That’s the problem, then, isn’t it? I don’t anymore. The thing that feels right . . .” He shifted his eyes to me, and back away just as quickly. He paced to the bottom of the ramp. “The only thing that feels right is as wrong as it can get.”

  CHAPTER 29

  We skirted the back side of the museum, past a sidewalk vendor slathering chocolate onto a sizzling circle of crepe batter. Jack led us down a set of stone steps to the bank of the Seine.

  The only thing that feels right, he’d said. What felt right to him was me.

  He wasn’t allowed to say things like that.

  The sun was straight overhead now as we walked under a bridge and down the river, past dozens of Sunday brunch picnickers. All around us was the hum of traffic and the laughter of kids chasing each other and the ding of bike bells, but the silence between us was starting to get too loud. “What’s with all the padlocks?” I finally asked, pointing to a bridge with thousands of glimmering locks attached to its railings.

  Jack shoved his hands into his pockets. “That’s the love locks bridge. If a couple puts a lock on it and throws the key into the river, they’ll be together forever. Supposedly.”

  “They’ve never heard of bolt cutters?” I said. Jack glanced at me out of the corner of his eye.

  I saw a bench in the shade and headed toward it, brushing off a dusting of pale pink petals from the tree overhead before I sat down.

  Jack sat about a foot away, which was too close. I shifted a few more inches.

  Kissing had made things worse.

  I pulled the leather pouch out of my bag like it was the only thing on my mind. At least I was good at lying.

  Inside was a very old, leather-bound book. I felt Jack looking over my shoulder as I slid it out. The cover shed flakes of faded black onto my white dress. I set it gingerly on my knees and paused, feeling the weight of it in my hands, the weight of things far more important than boy drama.

  Mr. Emerson was way more important. This—whatever history I held here in my hands—was way more important.

  “If this says who the One is, and we tell the Order, we’ll be handing that person a death sentence,” I said. It could be somebody my age—somebody like Luc. Or even a little kid.

  “If we don’t, we’ll be handing Fitz a death sentence.” Jack shrugged out of his blazer and rolled the sleeves of his shirt. It had gotten a lot warmer since early this morning. “And the Order’s killing people who they think might be the One anyway. Having it all end with one person dying will actually save lives.”

  I couldn’t believe I was in a place where that was up to us to decide.

  The sun glinted off the river as a line of baby ducks followed their mother in a neat row. Two little blond girls threw them pieces of a baguette.

  “We’d also be stopping the mandate from being fulfilled,” I said. “The Circle would never find the tomb, if it does turn out that the mandate is necessary for that.”

  Jack rubbed the bridge of his nose. That part had to be killing him.

  “And Mr. Emerson said tell no one,” I went on. “He could have texted you where he’d hidden this stuff, or just
left it in his safe, but he really, really didn’t want anyone but us to see it.”

  Jack rested his chin in his hand and looked at me. “Are you saying you don’t think we should turn over the One to save Fitz?”

  The breeze stirred the strands of dark hair that had already escaped my ponytail. “Do you think they’ll actually kill him? They said they would at the Hagia Sophia and didn’t. Wouldn’t it be smarter to keep him alive for information until they get what they want?”

  “Are we willing to risk it?”

  I deflated. “No, I guess not.” At the end of the day, I’d do whatever I had to for Mr. Emerson, even if the thought of deciding someone’s fate made me sick. “I just really don’t like it.”

  “I don’t either.” Jack sat with his elbows on his knees, his shoulders hunched. “But being part of the Circle, you learn that what’s right isn’t usually what’s pleasant.”

  I looked down at the sun-dappled book and opened the front cover. A diary, it looked like. In French.

  Jack reached out a hand. “May I?”

  I watched as he scanned pages. “A lot of it’s about battles.” He turned to a later spot. “And then it seems like the writer got sick.”

  Nothing that sounded useful to us. I watched the stream of people go by on the ornate bridge overhead and hoped the Order wouldn’t think to look down here.

  Jack squinted at a page. “A lot of these battles are Napoleon’s.” He flipped another page, and another, running his index finger down each one. “At first I thought this was one of his soldiers writing, but the way he’s talking . . . this might actually be Napoleon’s diary.”

  I suppose that made sense after the “coronation site” clue.

  Jack turned a few more pages and drew a sharp breath. I sat up straight, and he pointed.

  The Celtic knot symbol from my locket was penciled onto the back endpaper.

  Jack held the book close to his face, inspecting it.

  “Let me check something.” I took the book and my fingers brushed his, zinging sparks through me. I jerked my hand away and leaned over the diary. Close up, I could see a tiny edging of bees interspersed with the Dauphin sun symbol. Definitely Napoleon’s. But just as I was hoping, the leather on the outside of the book wasn’t attached. It was just a sleeve.

  I slid the back cover out, and one corner of the endpaper was loose.

  I worked it open further. After a second, my fingers found the edge of something hidden inside. I pulled it out and unfolded a single sheet of paper, one of its edges ragged.

  “Le trésor . . .” I tried to translate, and then handed it to Jack. “What does it say?” There were two sets of words on the page. One looked like a normal diary entry, and below it, a message was scrawled more shakily, like the writer was having trouble holding the pen.

  We both got quiet while an older couple with a striped picnic blanket tossed an empty wine bottle in the trash can behind our bench.

  I held my breath until Jack started talking again. “It says,

  “The treasure is not what they think. They are wrong about the union.”

  My heart stuttered. Jack glanced up at me, then kept reading.

  “The One’s true identity will shatter the Circle.

  “The One, the true ruler, the new Achilles. Superior to the false twelve.

  “For everyone’s sake, I must pretend I never found any of it.”

  “That kind of sounds like it could be more of the mandate,” I said slowly.

  “Yeah. It does.” Jack pointed to the shakier writing, and I leaned closer, looking over his shoulder. “This part says,

  “I cannot take this to my grave. I’ve left clues to the tomb, and if one of my descendants chooses to follow a path that will renegotiate our fates, it is a braver man than I.”

  “Is he talking about the tomb?” I breathed.

  “It’s always been rumored—even outside the Circle, in regular world history—that Napoleon found Alexander’s tomb.” There was awe in Jack’s voice. “But he denied it, and anyway, there’s never been a union between the One and the girl. How would he have found it?”

  “It says they’re wrong about the union,” I reminded him. “And even if that doesn’t mean anything, maybe he did it the old-fashioned way. By looking.” The sun hit my feet, warming my toes. “Mr. Emerson did say ‘wrong about the mandate,’ and whoever wrote this—whether it’s Napoleon or not—seems to think it’s wrong, too.” I held out my hand for the paper. “Do you think his clues to the tomb are the same as the three things Mr. Emerson wanted us to find? Or since this diary is one of Mr. Emerson’s three things, maybe only the bracelet is Napoleon’s clue?”

  Jack rubbed his forehead. “It’s something to think about eventually, but we can’t get off track now. The One is our immediate concern. And if this riddle really is about the mandate, giving more detail on who the One is . . .”

  It was our key to getting Mr. Emerson back. “It does say that stuff about the One, but it doesn’t give us enough information to tell who it is.” As I shifted on the bench, wrapping the blazer around me, I saw Jack pretending not to watch me out of the corner of his eye. I pretended not to notice. “Was there anything in the other entries about the tomb or the mandate?”

  “Not that I’ve seen. But I also don’t see a ripped-out page.” He held up the hidden paper. “This came from somewhere.”

  I sat up straighter. “Another diary?”

  “If there were any other Napoleonic diaries, they’d be at the Dauphins’.”

  I looked over my shoulder toward the Louvre, right on the other side of this wall.

  “I was thinking.” Jack stood up. “Maybe we should go there anyway. Fitz did leave Stellan’s photo, too.”

  I stiffened. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea for me to go back there at all, and definitely not to talk to Stellan.”

  “I doubt he’s as suspicious as you think—”

  “He’s been calling my phone all night.” I crossed my arms. “Even at the prom—before either of us knew I was anything—he already thought I was something more. Prada made it worse. And then I ran off in Istanbul . . .”

  “He might think it’s odd,” Jack said, grabbing his jacket, “but with the Dauphins hosting the ball tonight, he has other things to worry about. Everyone does.”

  I still didn’t stand up. “Won’t it be suspicious for us to be seen together?”

  “There are loads of family members and Keepers staying there. It’s probably the safest place for us to be together, actually.”

  I finally stood. I didn’t like it, but there was another reason for me to go back to the Dauphins. My mom might be there.

  “Okay,” I said.

  To help smooth things over, I dialed Luc while we climbed back up the steps from the river and crossed into the Louvre courtyard. In the distance, the white Ferris wheel revolved lazily in front of a backdrop of gathering clouds.

  Luc didn’t answer, but I left a message with a quick apology for running off the previous night. Jack and I drifted silently through the throngs of tourists toward the Dauphins’ wing, and only then did I realize the careful distance he was keeping. It wasn’t just me feeling awkward and wrong. The realization didn’t make me feel any better.

  Jack was right—no one inside gave us a second look. There were people conferencing on settees in the sitting room, and Keepers talking into headsets, and attendants with dry-cleaning bags. We were told, to my relief, that Stellan was off preparing security for the ball.

  We headed straight to the library, pausing only for Jack to ask whether an American woman had shown up looking for her daughter. She hadn’t, and I tried not to worry. With plane connections and delays and her phone maybe not working abroad, it wasn’t time to panic yet.

  The Dauphins’ library didn’t actually smell like cigar smoke, but the warm d
ark wood and deep leather armchairs hinted that the smell would be appropriate. We scanned the lower level quickly, but it held mostly fiction and art. I climbed a set of rickety wooden stairs to a second story of books that stretched all around the room, and clicked on the dangling light overhead.

  The must of old paper permeated the air, and I stopped at a history section. Jack climbed to the balcony, too, and touched my shoulder to squeeze past. When I glanced over, he was looking at me. We quickly turned back to our respective shelves.

  “Here,” he said after a few silent minutes. He was crouched on the other side of the balcony, a stack of books in front of him. He held one with a cracked black cover open to a title page, with Napoléon Bonaparte scrawled unmistakably across it, in the same penmanship as the diary in my bag. “Looks like all these are his,” Jack said.

  He handed me the one he was holding and picked up the other three, and we made our way down to the first story and to a heavy oak table.

  “You look for a ripped-out page, and I’ll skim the entries for anything about the One,” Jack said.

  I nodded. As I opened the first book, the library door opened. Instinctively, I shoved the books behind us and stood shoulder to shoulder with Jack, forming a wall, but the woman—in all black, and with a duster in one hand—just muttered something in French and scurried back out the door.

  I let out a breath. “Maybe we should go somewhere else. I have a room here.”

  Jack pursed his lips. “It’s okay for us to be seen together in public, but me in your room? Not so good.”

  I tried to ignore any thoughts that his being in my room conjured up, and the pang that came with them. “A Keeper and a random distant cousin getting caught with a bunch of Napoleon’s diaries and talking about who the One is? That wouldn’t be great either,” I said quickly.

  “Right. Okay, then.” Jack followed me down the hall.

  I made sure there was no one around, then let him in and locked the door behind us. Without the hum of conversation from the hall, the room felt too quiet. “Give me one,” I said.