The Conspiracy of Us (The Conspiracy of Us 1)

Jack didn’t need to be told twice. He hit Stellan with a quick right hook.

Stellan staggered back one step. “More convincing than one little punch.”

Before Jack could do any more, I held up the knife.

Stellan’s eyes widened, more with appreciation than fear.

I gritted my teeth and poked the tip of the knife into Stellan’s arm.

He cursed under his breath in French. “More,” he murmured.

More? I hesitated too long. Stellan took my hand and plunged the knife into his shoulder.

I cried out louder than he did, but he let go of me, and Jack and I sprinted to the second door on the left, slamming it behind us and plunging ourselves into blackness.

“Give me your shoe,” Jack said. I tore both of my heels off, shoving one blindly in his direction. In the bit of light from under the door, I saw him work it underneath like a makeshift doorstop, then gesture toward the stairs.

My eyes needed more time to adjust to the dark, but time was something we didn’t have. I dashed blindly after him up the narrow, steep spiral, holding my wedding dress as high as I could. A couple of flights up I tripped anyway, and felt the wound on my thigh from the fire escape rip open. I didn’t even have time to cry out before Jack was helping me up, urging me forward.

We hadn’t gone more than three flights when we heard the door open with a screech and a bang. The silence exploded with echoing voices, pounding footsteps. I gasped for breath, concentrating on the lighter spot in the dark that was Jack’s gray shirt ahead of me.

We finally emerged into an open space a tiny bit brighter than the stairwell, and I put my hands on my knees, panting. It smelled like wood and damp. Flower-shaped windows let in what little moonlight made its way between the clouds, and illuminated what had to be rafters.

“We’re in the bell tower,” Jack said. Sure enough, there was the vague silhouette of a massive bell.

The guards’ footsteps, and their shouts, came closer.

“If we’re in the bell tower, that’s the front of the cathedral,” Jack said, ducking us under the crisscrossing wooden beams and dragging me toward the wall of windows. “I think there’s a door.”

We both felt frantically along the wall.

“Here!” Jack’s exclamation was punctuated by a child-sized door thrown open to the night.

We jumped out of it into the rain and closed it as quietly as we could. I looked around in surprise. We were on the gargoyle balcony from yesterday.

“Where now?” I panted, dashing rain out of my eyes. We wouldn’t have much time before they figured out where we’d gone.

He ran to the side and peered through the metal fencing. I gulped.

“There’s construction scaffolding all down this side,” he said. “They’d never expect us to escape from up here.” He looked back at me. “I’ll hold on to you. I’ll help you. I know you’re afraid of falling, but—”

I took the hand he offered. “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m not scared anymore.” I realized it was true. Because I’d actually come to terms with the fear or because I’d found scarier things than heights, I wasn’t sure, but I was no longer afraid of falling.

I hiked the dress up around my knees, and Jack helped me over the relative safety of the railing and onto the swaying, slippery scaffolding. I clung to him for a second, then grabbed the railing and moved.

A slim ladder led down between each level. Luckily, my dress was easier to deal with going down than up, and we flew past the cathedral’s stone facade, down down down. With our footsteps and the rain pinging off the scaffolding, I couldn’t hear whether the guards had made it to the balcony. The cut on my thigh, and the new one along my torso, screamed. I could hardly breathe. Finally, when I was sure I couldn’t go any farther, my feet hit solid ground. We’d ended up in a courtyard of what must have been some kind of caretaker’s house next to the church. I gasped for air, and we ran for the cover of a small bunch of trees.

I collapsed against the fence. “Did they see us?” I panted.

Even though we’d been on the side of the bell tower and not the front, a girl in a wedding dress scrambling down the side of NotreDame wouldn’t exactly blend in. Luckily, it looked like the rain had kept most tourists away tonight, and most of the Circle inside the cathedral.

I tried to stand and tripped over my dress again. I batted at it in frustration, and then I remembered the knife in my hand.

I plunged it through the lace and the satin and the layer of crinoline underneath at thigh height, and ripped a hole in it. When Jack saw what I was doing, he helped me rip it the rest of the way around until most of the skirt was around my ankles and my legs were free again. I stepped out of the discarded fabric and Jack stuffed it into a nearby trash can.

“I have a phone,” I said, pulling it out of my dress. “We have to call the Order.”

“We have to get away from here first.”

We did. The second they realized we’d gotten out of the church, it’d be a massive manhunt. But we couldn’t just take off running.

Right as I thought it, one brave tour group hurried toward us under dozens of red umbrellas. On the street across the Seine, I could see their matching red double-decker bus waiting under a streetlamp.

“Time for a tour,” Jack said. He took my hand, and when they passed our hiding place, we inched our way into the middle of their group. We left them at their bus on the other side of the river, then ducked down a side street and under the awning of a tiny frites shop.

A car drove by, splashing through a puddle on the cobblestone street. I pulled out the phone, and paused.

Jack read my mind. “Are we going to tell them about Stellan?”

“We promised him we wouldn’t. And we’re not even sure it’s true.” I stopped when the shop owner peered outside, but Jack waved him off. “Whether it’s true or not, they’d kill him,” I went on.

Jack ran his hands through his hair. The sloppy hoodie looked so out of place on him. “They’ll kill Fitz if we don’t.”

The thought of handing someone over to the Order was bad enough when I didn’t know them. I thought of Stellan taking the bobby pins out of my hair on the plane. Of him talking to his sister on the phone—his sister who had no one else in the world. “Maybe if we tell them we have clues but we’re still working on it, they’ll give us more time,” I said. “Enough time for Saxon to go after them. We could even say we have leads on the tomb if we have to.”