The Conspiracy of Us (9 page)

And then what? My mom wasn't answering her phone. I couldn't jump in a cab to the airport and fly home without a passport. Maybe I could go to the American embassy?

But the embassy was a government organization. They probably reported to the Circle.

Oh God. Did this mean I believed all of it?

Two sets of footsteps started up the stairs. Too late.

Jack flung open the door. I was surprised to see Stellan in slim dress pants and a button-up shirt, with a jacket slung over his arm. The furious light in his eyes had faded, replaced by a scowling suspicion. Luc was in a light gray suit with the salmon-colored shirt underneath, grinning, and they both smelled too good for what had happened earlier. Behind them, Elodie, Madame Dauphin's supermodel assistant, waited, tapping her foot.

“She's ready to go,” Jack said, with a silencing stare at me, “but I'm going to take her to the Saxons' hotel. She needs some rest, and to meet her family as soon as they arrive.”

Even with all the guards at the Louvre, I'd have a better chance of escaping from Luc and Stellan and the Dauphins—who knew nothing about me—than from Jack.

“Maybe I should stay with them, meet you tomorrow,” I said to Jack. I tried to make my voice breezy. “I already have a room at the Dauphins' and everything. It'll be easier.”

His eyes could have set me on fire, but I knew he couldn't say anything.

Luc threw a lanky arm around my shoulders. I couldn't help but stare at his violet eyes. “Stay. You can come out to the club,” he said, like the whole world hadn't just changed. For them, I supposed, it hadn't.

Stellan pushed open the door, and he and Jack stepped to the landing. I ducked out from under Luc's arm and he headed out, too, leaving me in the bathroom. If I acted fast, I could slam the door and have some chance of escaping before they realized what was happening.

“Where are you going?” I kept my voice light, but my hand crept to the deadbolt.

“Istanbul,” Luc said.

“Istanbul?” I said. “That's a club?”

“It's a
city,
” Elodie said from down the stairs. I could tell the words came with an eye roll.

“I know it's a city,” I said. Luc chuckled. “Wait. You don't mean you're going to Istanbul, the city. In Turkey. To go to a club.”

“Which is why you probably shouldn't go,” Jack said. “You're exhausted.”

I was, but I was far more desperate. And I'd just gotten an idea.

Istanbul. Half in Europe, half in Asia, home to some of the world's most impressive art and architecture. Mr. Emerson's last postcard to me was from Istanbul. Jack said he had an apartment there. If I couldn't reach my mom, maybe I could find him. The two of them were the only people in the world I trusted right now.

My hand fell away from the door.

“The plane's supposed to leave in half an hour and we're grabbing dinner on the way,” Luc said, “so if you're coming, let's go.”

“If she's coming, we have to get her a dress,” Elodie called up. “Something more interesting than what they've got in this store.”

I stepped out onto the landing and let the bathroom door swing closed behind me.

“Istanbul sounds great,” I said, ignoring Jack's death glare. “Let's go.”

S
omewhere between shopping at Prada and clubbing in Istanbul, the rest of the adrenaline had worn off and reality set in. I plucked at the bandage on my shoulder while Luc talked to the club bouncer. Hundreds of people stood in a line that snaked away underneath a white version of the Golden Gate Bridge. I watched them all, paranoid. If the Order could find me at Prada, they could find me here.

Somehow, I had actually come to believe what Jack said about the Circle. It made no sense, but that's why it was the only thing that did. I was standing here in a very expensive dress, after having flown across Europe in a private jet, and I had to get away from some really powerful, really motivated people who wanted me dead.

And that was if Stellan or Luc or Elodie didn't figure out who I was and lock me up first.

I'd also realized on the plane that I had no idea where Mr. Emerson—I couldn't start thinking of him by a different name—lived. Not an address, not even a phone number. As soon as I had a second alone, I'd have to Google him and see if I could find anything.

“If you pick that bandage off, it's going to get infected,” Elodie said, and I jumped. My reflexes were still set on fight-or-flight.

“It's fine.” I crossed my arms.

Elodie went back to studying her tangerine fingernails. “You got
stabbed.
Who knows where that knife had been?” With her light French accent and her throaty voice talking about stabbing, she sounded very femme fatale.

Stellan came up beside us. In contrast to his pointed-but-lighthearted banter this morning, he had barely talked to me since Prada, but he
had
spent the whole plane ride scrutinizing me. He couldn't know the truth yet, but I could tell he hadn't bought Luc's “wrong place wrong time” explanation for my drawing the Order's attention. He'd put two and two together eventually. I had to be out of here before he did.

“She's right,
kuklachka,
” he said. Even the nickname had lost its playful edge. “The Order—and their weapons—are nasty things. It's a shame for a random
innocent
to get mixed up with them.”

I tensed, but gave what I hoped was a noncommittal shrug and busied myself picking at invisible lint on my dress. A Herve Leger bandage dress, Elodie had called it. From afar I would have called the color champagne, but up close, it was white, shot through with shimmering silver and gold threads. It was the exact dress Krissy Silver had worn to the Grammys a couple of months ago—Elodie said she'd chosen this specific dress because the singer and I had the same pale complexion and dark hair. I wasn't sure whether it was supposed to be a compliment or not.

Elodie had paired the dress with four-inch copper Louboutin heels—all the girls at my school in New York had been obsessed with Louboutins, and I never would have expected to have a pair on my feet. We'd stood at the bar mirror in the plane while she teased my hair into wild bed-head waves, all the while making it clear that she was playing stylist only because she didn't trust me to do it properly on my own.

Elodie wore a faux-leather minidress, and had pinned her blond bob half up. Her dangling earrings shimmered when Stellan murmured in her ear, and then she glanced at me and her almond-shaped eyes narrowed. I pretended not to notice, but my stomach flipped nervously.

I was saved from further questioning when Luc gestured, and I followed the three of them past the line and inside.

Mr. Emerson was fascinated by the history of Istanbul, and had taught me about it when I was younger. It had been called Byzantium when it was first founded, then renamed Constantinople when Constantine took it over. It was such an important city politically and geographically that it had been conquered and claimed by empire after empire ever since. It wasn't officially called Istanbul until really recently, in the 1930s.

Istanbul had always been a crossroads city. A crossroads between Europe and Asia. A crossroads of Christianity and Islam, like the Hagia Sophia itself. A crossroads between ancient and conservative, like that museum, and modern and anything but conservative, like this club.

I squeezed the shoulder strap of my bag, wondering what kind of crossroads the city would be for me tonight.

Luc and Stellan disappeared into the crowd. I considered doing the same—I didn't really want to be alone right now, just in case the Order
had
followed me, but I didn't particularly want to be with Elodie, either. And I really needed to look up Mr. Emerson. But it'd probably look suspicious, so I followed Elodie across the dance floor, breathing the humid, heavy air that comes from too many bodies in too small a space. She and Luc had cracked a bottle of champagne on the plane, and even though I hadn't had any, I wasn't sure it was possible to feel entirely sober in a club. Between the lights and the unbuttoned dress shirts and the glistening bare shoulders and the driving beat of the music that got under your skin even if you weren't dancing, I was swaying by the time we got to a tall bar table where the lights flashed a little less brightly.

I took inventory of the club—for anyone who looked sketchy, for my eventual exit, for suspicious glances from Stellan. I found him near the dance floor, already being flirted with by a gorgeous, dark-skinned brunette. As I watched, he searched the room and met my gaze. His smile faded.

“As you can see, you're not special.” Elodie was staring at him, too.

I leaned on the table to hear her over the pulsating techno mix. “What?”

“He has a list of conquests a mile long. The whole
innocent
thing you have going on is just a novelty.” She took a compact out of her bag and touched up a nonexistent imperfection in her lipstick. “He'd corrupt you for fun.”

Even though that was
far
from why I'd been watching him, heat shot to my cheeks. I couldn't suppress a flash of what Stellan
corrupting me
would entail. Maybe Elodie liked him and all this animosity was because she thought I was trying to steal him.

“That's really, really not—” I paused, trying to make it as clear as possible. “I'm not interested in him in that way. At all.”

Elodie rolled her eyes and the copper on her lids shimmered. “
Everyone's
interested in him in that way.”

Before I could answer, an arm went around my shoulders. “What are we talking about, girls?” Luc said, grinning widely. He'd ditched his jacket, popped the collar of his pink shirt, and found a green glowstick necklace.

“The unfortunate attack this afternoon,” Elodie said, smiling sweetly at me.

“Aw, El.” He squeezed my shoulder. “We're having fun now, remember?”

Luc was the only one who'd bothered to ask how I was doing after Prada. He sat by me on the plane and chatted about movies and Paris and the club we were going to, and I could tell he was trying to get my mind off it. His kindness made how quickly he moved on from
killing
someone even more disconcerting.

And I couldn't help glancing at his eyes, like I'd been doing all evening. They were so much like mine.

“It's time for me to do my job,” Elodie said. My ears perked up. I'd assumed they were here to dance.

“Already?” Luc pouted. He bumped Elodie's shoulder with his own. In her towering heels, she was taller than he was.

“We don't want him seeing me with you. I doubt he'd recognize you, but . . .” Elodie leveled a cool stare around the room. The bottom of a tattoo peeked out from under the hair at the nape of her neck. It looked like Stellan's sun symbol.

“I know.” Luc kissed her on the cheek, and she wiped a thumb across her face with a pretend scowl. “Be safe,” he said.

“It's perfectly routine.”

“Then I expect you back by the time we leave, new clue to the mandate in hand,” Luc said with a wry smile.

I covered the sharp breath I drew in with a cough.

“I'll be right back,” Luc said to me, and slipped his arm through Elodie's.

They walked away, and after I made sure no one was watching me, I perched on one of the tall bar stools and pulled out my phone. On the plane, Stellan had turned on my international roaming and entered his, Elodie's, and Luc's phone numbers—and my number in their phones. In case something happened, he said, but it was probably so he could keep track of me. Now I was about to pull up Google when I saw I had a missed call from my mom's cell phone. Thank
God.

I dialed my voice mail and plugged my free ear with my finger to drown out the music. “Avery. Sweetheart.” My mom sounded understandably tense. “Yes, we do have a lot to talk about, and I wish I could have told you sooner. Please stay right where you are and be very careful. I'm coming to get you.”

No. I held the phone in a death grip. She thought I was in France, which meant she probably knew where the Dauphins lived and was headed there. I dialed her number, only to get an immediate chime on her voice mail. “This is Carol West,” her tinny voice said. “I'm not available . . .”

I cursed under my breath. She couldn't go to the Dauphins'. She might be in danger from the Order, too—or she could get recognized by my father, whoever he was.

“Mom,” I said, “don't—” I was poised to leave the whole story on the message, but stopped. What if Stellan had done something else to my phone, like bugged it? I glanced around the club and lowered my voice. I didn't trust anybody anymore.

“Mom, don't come,” I said simply, my voice tight. “Call me back. Or I'll call you. Just
don't come
to France.”

The voice mail picking up on the first ring meant her phone was off. She might be on a plane already. If so, I wouldn't be able to reach her until morning.

I looked over my shoulder again. Besides a couple of guys wearing too much hair product who smiled smarmily at me from the next table, no one was watching me. I Googled “Emerson Fitzpatrick.”

Too many results, none of them him. I added “Istanbul” to the search. “Emerson Fitzpatrick, volunteer docent at the Hagia Sophia,” it said, with a photo of his smiling face. I pictured the postcard. It was like Mr. Emerson was trying to send me clues about who he really was.

But there was nothing else. No personal phone-book entry or anything. I hunched my shoulders over the phone and pulled up a map of Istanbul. If I had to, I could get to the Hagia Sophia, hide until morning, and find someone who knew him. Maybe he'd even be there. If I was going to do that, though, I should probably not try to escape the club quite yet. I'd rather not camp on the street for longer than necessary.

I looked up to find Stellan strolling toward my table. A spasm of adrenaline shot through me, and I stuffed my phone into the bottom of my bag. This was the first time we'd been alone since Prada, and I had a feeling that I wasn't going to like what he had to say.

“All by yourself, little doll?” Stellan set down a glass of something clear and leaned his elbows on the tall bar table. He didn't raise his voice, but the smooth, low tones of his accent easily undercut the electronic beat of the music. “I'm surprised. Aren't you afraid something else might happen?”

Yes.
My fists clenched on my bag and I forced myself not to look over my shoulder. That was one good thing, I guess—I had less of a chance of being killed with Stellan nearby.

I gave him a tight smile. “No,” I said. “Not worried. Luc said it was an accident.”

The DJ, silhouetted against a spill of neon lines cascading down the wall, pumped a fist in the air. Stellan watched him. “I suppose it
is
impressive how easily you got away from that Order operative,” he mused. “Maybe you don't have anything to worry about.”

I touched my bandaged shoulder. If that had been getting away easily, I wouldn't want to find out what “hard” looked like.

“And at least you understand now why I need a weapon for a weekend of meetings and parties.” Stellan's face was half obscured by shadow, half flashing neon blue. I searched for his knife and saw a bulge under the right side of his slate-gray jacket, and another on the left. He saw me looking and flicked the jacket open. A gun.

I swallowed. “Why do you need both? A gun seems pretty effective.”

“It takes more effort to kill with a dagger.” He rebuttoned his jacket. “You have to do it on purpose. Guns make it too easy.”

I was surprised he'd care about that. “It didn't seem very hard for you to kill Frederic at Prada.”

Stellan swirled the drink he hadn't so much as sipped and gave me a thin smile. I couldn't help but remember the rage in his face at Prada.

I folded my arms across my chest. “I still don't know why you killed him. I know you don't care about
me
that much.”

“Ah, but I do care about being punished for something happening to our
guest.
”

Oh.

Stellan pulled out the other bar stool and sat. My feet dangled, but his rested solidly on the floor.

“What's Elodie doing?” I said, because I didn't want to talk about killing anymore.

“There's a wealthy businessman here in Istanbul with an ancient Greek art collection. She's infiltrating.”

That explained the trip to a club on the other side of the continent. I wondered how often Elodie had to “infiltrate.” That was one disadvantage of being ridiculously beautiful.

“Didn't you say she's Madame Dauphin's assistant?” I said. “Is this a normal part of the job?”

Stellan strummed a stack of cocktail napkins with his thumb. “There are no female Keepers. Sometimes a task comes up that's better suited to a girl.”

I felt a sting of indignation. “So guys do the important work, but you bring in girls when you need to seduce somebody? Don't you think that's a little sexist?”

Stellan gave me a one-sided smile, and my jaw clenched in anticipation of the offensive thing about to come out of his mouth.