Jack frowned and looked back at the cathedral. The rain came down harder, beating on the plastic awning overhead. “Okay. Let’s try it. You’re right—if they’ve kept Fitz alive this long, he must be their only bargaining chip.”
I dialed the number and put it on speaker.
Scarface picked up on the first ring. “You’re late.”
I clutched Jack’s sweatshirt in my fist.
“We had a bit of a delay,” Jack said over the rush of a car driving by.
“Well?” Scarface said. “Do you have it?”
“We need to know he’s okay first.”
I groped for Jack’s hand, and he grabbed mine and squeezed. A rush of wind sprayed us with cold raindrops.
Scarface gave a derisive sniff. “All right,” he said. And then, Mr. Emerson’s voice came on the phone, and my eyes swam with relieved tears.
“Avery. Jack. Sweet kids. I love you both so much. Don’t—”
The phone was snatched away, and Mr. Emerson’s voice faded into the background. I hugged Jack’s arm and felt a grin taking over my face. He was alive. He was still alive. We weren’t too late.
“Happy?” Scarface said. “Your grandfather or whatever is alive and well. For now. We almost didn’t give you that reprieve when your friend called and said you needed more time, but lucky for you, I was feeling generous.”
Stellan. He had actually called them, and then he helped us escape. We really couldn’t turn him in now.
“All right.” Jack took the phone out of my hand. His voice was thick with emotion. “We do have some information, but we don’t know who the One is yet.”
“That wasn’t our deal,” Scarface interrupted.
“Wait,” Jack said. “Listen. We don’t know who it is, but we have clues. We just need more time. And this way you know we’re not lying and making up a name.”
“The deal was the name of the One for your grandpa’s life.”
“We know. We just need another few days.” Jack looked at me, eyes wide. This wasn’t going well. “The tomb,” I mouthed. Jack nodded. “And we know more, too. We have information about the—”
Mr. Emerson’s voice piped up again from the background. “No! Don’t tell him anyth—”
An explosion cut off his words.
I grabbed at Jack with both hands. His face turned ghost-pale, and the hand holding the phone went slack. No. That wasn’t what I thought it was. It couldn’t be—
“Hope you’re happy,” Scarface said. “Your slipup just got the old man killed.”
“No,” I said. It was like I was talking underwater. Too slow. Too far away. “No. No!”
“If you’d like to try telling the truth again, we have someone else I hear you might be interested in.”
A choked sob escaped my throat. “No!” I cried, not able to believe that had really happened. We’d gotten him killed. They had killed Mr. Emerson. They’d—
“Avery?” said a new voice.
I jerked away from Jack and stared at the phone, caught in the middle of a sob. “Mom?”
“Well,” Scarface said cheerfully. “Lovely reunion. Now would you like to tell us what we want to know?”
My mom’s plane wasn’t delayed. Her cell phone wasn’t dead.
My mom had been kidnapped by the Order.
I grabbed the phone out of Jack’s hand. “We know who the One is,” I said frantically. “We’ll tell you. It’s not somebody in the Circle. It’s someone else—”
“Wrong!” Scarface said.
“No!” I screamed, but no gunshot came.
“Lie to me again and your mother dies,” Scarface said. “If you want to keep her alive, you’ll figure out who it really is. We’ll know if you’re lying. We’ll be in touch.”
“I’m not lying!” I screamed. “Don’t touch her! Mom!” The phone clicked to dead air. I stared at it, helplessly, my hand shaking.
“No,” I sobbed. “No.”
Jack sat down heavily at the small cafe table. He reached blindly for me, and I collapsed into his lap, sobbing. And for that moment, it didn’t matter that we were now fugitives from the most powerful people in the world.
CHAPTER 42
The sun came out the next day, which it had no right to do.
Jack pushed the last of his falafel around with a triangle of pita bread as we sat in the silence that was starting to become deafening.
“Are you sure he’ll find us here?” I said. We couldn’t call Stellan for fear the Circle would trace the call, but Jack said if we came here, to this little falafel place off a back alley in Montmartre at 6:00 p.m. today, the day after we’d escaped the wedding, he’d find us. We’d been here since 5:30. It was now 6:13.
“I’m sure,” he said. “Are you sure we have to talk to him at all?”
I pulled off a corner of pita from our mostly untouched bread basket, just to give myself something to do. I barely tasted it. “If we’re right, and he is the One, we’re probably going to need him. And he helped us get away. He won’t be happy if we leave.”
I bit off the words as the waiter refilled my tiny cracked teacup. The restaurant was busy enough that they hadn’t bothered us much, and we’d gotten the worst table in the place, squished in a nook by the bathrooms on the upper balcony, overlooking the restaurant.
Last night, we’d made our way to a tiny, seedy hotel we knew wouldn’t check ID. Jack had gotten us two separate rooms, and I hadn’t protested. Anything else felt wrong after all that had happened.
We’d thought about calling my father, but decided against it. We didn’t know what he’d do with me now that he knew about my eyes, and we weren’t entirely sure Jack would be pardoned for knowing about it. After what had just happened, we weren’t willing to take any risks.
And that wasn’t even considering that Jack and I were now the two most wanted people in the Circle of Twelve, and therefore in the world. One person the Circle believed to be the worst type of traitor, and another they believed to be their salvation.
I twirled the short lock of hair at the back of my neck. I hadn’t seemed to be able to stop touching it since they’d cut it at the wedding.