The Conspiracy of Us (The Conspiracy of Us 1)

He said it like it had capital letters: The One Who Is The Strongest. And then it hit me, and goose bumps rose on my arms. “The One. Like in the mandate.”

Jack inclined his head. “Exactly,” he called.

“People as powerful as the Circle just don’t seem like an ancient cult group who’d believe in a prophecy,” I said.

“We’re not, exactly.” We hadn’t moved in a couple minutes and Jack sat up taller to look over the traffic before settling back down with a sigh. “But we leave no stone unturned when it comes to new avenues of power, and finding this tomb would be more than anything we’ve ever had. It’s supposedly far more than just wealth. It’s what made Alexander who he was. Whether that means a weapon, or some kind of instructions from him—we don’t know, but it’s meant to be huge. And with so many of the mandates having come true, we have to try. Plus,” he went on, “fulfilling the union—being the One—is so significant, it’ll make both the families a dominant force in the Circle no matter what, even if the tomb is never found. So if no one finds more about the mandate, the Dauphins will just pick somebody for a union with the baby girl and try to make everyone accept him as the One, so both families will gain that power.”

Like Luc had said. So even if they didn’t figure out who was the One, it was true I wasn’t off the hook.

The light changed, and we took off again. This time, we turned onto a less crowded street. Jack touched my hand like a warning, then sped up until the lights on the river smeared past. We didn’t stop again until we’d pulled up at a block of apartment buildings.

Jack offered me his hand, and I slid off the bike as gracefully as I could.

He stashed both helmets in a compartment under the seat as I attempted to smooth my hair, and we crossed the street toward a modern white high-rise.

“Does the Order fit with the Alexander stuff, or are they separate?” I stepped over a cracked section of sidewalk, careful not to get my heels caught.

“They go back as far as we do,” Jack said distractedly. He pulled his phone from his pocket and checked it, and we turned up the walk to the apartment building. “Alexander had a child who would have been his heir, but the boy died young. Some people—mostly those who were in cahoots with Alexander’s mother, Olympias—thought the throne should be passed to a member of his extended family. They disliked the Diadochi, so they set out to take them down. They became the Order, and they’ve grown to hate us more than ever. The Circle do what we feel is best for the world. The Order thinks there should be more autonomy.”

As awful as the Order was, they might have had a point. Jack would never speak badly of the Circle, but the notion of such a small group of people controlling so much of what happened in the world still seemed wrong somehow. Probably. I still knew so little about them, I wasn’t sure what to think.

Jack ushered me into a sparse but tasteful lobby, and my heels clicked hollowly on the tile.

As we headed to the stairwell, I looked around at the ferns, the seating area, the bank of mailboxes.

Mr. Emerson checked his mail here. Here and in Paris. My sweet pseudograndfather, who let eight-year-old me try on his reading glasses and spent countless flour-covered afternoons teaching my mom and me to make biscuits and cakes and homemade pasta sauce. Who talked with little Avery about books way too old for me, and never treated me like a kid.

Who had known what I was, and the danger I was in, for years. Suddenly, I was a little nervous about seeing him. What did it mean? And what had his text to Jack meant? I didn’t doubt he had my best interests at heart, but I couldn’t believe the first time I was going to see him in years would be in this context. Assuming he actually was here and everything was okay. I’d feel a lot better once we saw him, for a lot of reasons.

“You said he’s your mentor?” We started up the stairs and I thought about taking my heels off—they were killing the backs of my feet—but it couldn’t be that far.

“He’s a tutor for the Keepers.” Jack paused one landing up to wait for me. “I keep forgetting you don’t know any of this. Stellan and I are called Keepers. Technically, Keeper of the Keys. It grooms us to be Keeper of the Watch later. The Keeper of the Watch is the family head’s right-hand man. He’s security, he’s an adviser, he helps run the estate.”

I nodded. And they were all men, as Stellan had said. In the world of the Circle, even though a purple-eyed girl was so valuable, women generally seemed to be good for marrying off, having babies, and being staff, unless they happened to be needed for something very specific, like Elodie was tonight.

Jack slowed when he realized I was falling behind. “Sorry, it’s a fifth-floor walk-up. Anyway, each family has a tutor for their Keepers. That’s what Fitz is, but over time he became more of a mentor to me.”

Knowing Mr. Emerson, I wasn’t surprised.

Jack knocked at a door on the right side of the hall, and when there was no answer after a second knock, he produced a key, slid it into the lock, and swung the door open.

The first thing I saw was blood.

CHAPTER 20

Jack pushed me back into the hallway and pulled a gun from his waistband. “Stay here.”

I stared at the blood, a hand clapped over my mouth. The scene from Prada replayed in my head. All the blood. The killer’s blood. My blood.

Mr. Emerson’s blood.

I ducked inside the apartment, pulled the door shut behind me, and locked it. “Mr. Emerson!” I started to yell, but the words died on my lips when I realized the blood was dry. This hadn’t just happened.

Next to the stain, a cell phone was smashed to pieces. I looked around frantically, but at first glance, the room looked just as pristine as Mr. Emerson’s apartment had always looked, with the same clean lines and dark colors he favored when he lived in Boston. Not even the magazines on the coffee table had been disturbed. So there wasn’t much of a struggle, but they’d hurt him, and now he was gone. Oh God, who would do that?

“Fitz!” I heard doors opening all over the apartment. Jack stomped back into the room a second later. “I told you to stay outside,” he snapped. “It could have been dangerous.”

“It could have been dangerous in the hallway, too,” I retorted. “Who did this?”

“The Order. It’s got to be, hasn’t it?” Jack sat down on the firm gray couch with his head in his hands, stood up, and sat down again. “I should have known. I should have gotten here faster.” His eyes were wild as he seized a pillow and whipped it against the wall.