The Ends of the World (The Conspiracy of Us 3)

It’s not you, it’s me was surprisingly accurate. “I’m sorry,” I said quietly.

Jack shook his head and opened a bandage. “One more thing, though. Perhaps it’d be less awkward to put it out in the open.”

I knew exactly what he was talking about, of course.

“Are you and Stellan . . .” He trailed off.

“No,” I said, and wondered why, for just a second, I felt like I should qualify that. Probably because we had kissed that time. But it seemed unnecessarily mean to bring up right now, and I did know one thing that was irrefutably true. “You and me were—are—our own thing. It had and has nothing to do with him.” Whatever pull I had to Stellan—destiny or otherwise—and the relationship I’d had with Jack had always felt like entirely separate things: two parallel tracks rather than a collision course.

Jack smoothed on my bandage and threw away all the wrappers left on the sterile tray. “Okay. I hope, though . . .” He shifted uncomfortably, and then said, quickly, “I hope you two can take care of each other. I know there are things only you understand. He needs it, too.”

I blinked at him, surprised. If it were anyone else, I might have thought he was being sarcastic, or trying to manipulate me somehow. But I knew Jack really meant it.

He took a deep breath and let it out. When he looked back up, he looked . . . at ease. More than he had in a long time, and I felt terrible for not doing this earlier. Jack hated gray areas. Now things were black and white again.

“Jack?” I slid off the exam table, the thin sanitary paper crinkling under me. “I know I’m the one who’s been antisocial lately. But I don’t want you to just be our Keeper. I hope we can still be actual friends.”

He smiled. “We’ve been friends since we were eight years old and thought each others’ names were Allie Fitzpatrick and Charlie Emerson. Yes, we can still be friends. Would you like to throw in an I love you but I’m not in love with you for a trifecta of cliché breakup lines?”

“Oh.” I felt myself flush. “I—”

He opened the door for me. “Avery, I’m only joking. Let’s go figure out how to save Fitz.”

• • •

We met back up with Stellan and Elodie and made a plan for the night, and for tomorrow. The combination of painkillers and the numbing injection had finally made my wound feel okay, and the stitches looked good, so Elodie took a handful of the supplies, cleaned the room so no one would know we’d been there, and pressed a huge wad of bills into the hands of the boy who had let us in. And then we were back on the road, out of Alexandria. We had a plan about Fitz, but there was no way we could fly out of here right now—Lydia would have the Saxons watching everywhere. So we were going to spend the night in a nearby town and regroup while things got set in motion behind the scenes.

The van’s fabric seats were damp, and it smelled like blood. I couldn’t believe Mariam hadn’t dumped us out on the side of the road yet. I guess the fact that we obviously had a lot of money to pay her went a long way. Elodie had talked to her while I was getting stitched up, and had learned a lot. Mariam had four sisters and two brothers, and her taxi was their primary source of income since her dad had gotten sick.

“Thank you, Mariam,” I said. I felt like I had to talk quietly or whatever spell had gotten us all out alive would be broken. “I’m sorry about all the blood. I’m sure Elodie told you already, but we’ll give you money to replace your car.”

The smile she gave me wasn’t even hesitant. She grabbed her phone from the middle console and turned it to me. “This is you?”

It was a paparazzi photo of me and Stellan at some airport somewhere. “Oh,” I said, startled. “Um—”

“Don’t worry, she’s known the whole time,” Elodie piped up. “She kept it quiet even before I asked her to. We’re fine.”

“Thank you,” I said to her again. I’d thought we could trust her, but it was nice to have it confirmed that we didn’t have to worry about talking in here. Mariam glanced from me to Stellan with a broad grin before she turned back to the road. Stellan widened his eyes with a shrug.

Jack and Elodie sprawled in the far-back bench seat, with Stellan and me in the middle. Elodie was still coughing, but it hadn’t gotten worse, and Jack had never shown any signs of illness.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Jack watching Stellan and Elodie, as many emotions flitting across his face as there had been in that room with me. Over the past few days, the three of them had learned a lot about one another.

Jack turned to stare out the front window. Elodie was working dirt out from under her fingernails with a knife. We were on a smaller road now. Mariam’s van had no air-conditioning, and the wind whipped through the open windows.

“I remember the first time I met you two,” Stellan said. There was a subtle shift in the car as Jack and Elodie’s attention turned to him. “Bishop had to save me.”

I glanced back at Jack. The kids from the Saxon and Dauphin households used to train and do their schooling together, back when the families got along. That was how they all knew Fitz, and each other.

For a moment, I wasn’t sure Jack was going to respond, but then he said, “I just made some people back off. He didn’t exactly need saving.” It was like they were telling the story to me. “He was at least a foot taller than me—”

“And I was crying like a toddler,” Stellan said. “I’d just been tossed into this child boot camp. I couldn’t speak a word of English.”

And his family had just died. He’d been ripped away from his baby sister. He was in incredible pain. I remembered all that from when he’d told me his version of this story. He didn’t mention it now, though.

“Not like being friends with me helped him much,” Jack quipped from behind me. “I was Fitz’s pet. They all hated me.”