The Conspiracy of Us (The Conspiracy of Us 1)

I typed out a text to my mom about not having my phone anymore, then reluctantly handed it to Jack. That phone had been with me through our last three moves.

“Sorry,” he said, and hurled both phones so they shattered against the fountain’s edge and fell into the water.

“I hope it’s the phones,” he said after a minute. “I hope it wasn’t that they got him to talk.”

I didn’t want to think about that. “If they got him to talk, they’d know everything. They wouldn’t need us anymore.”

Jack nodded. From not too far away, a low, melodic chanting echoed across the quiet city. “Call to prayer,” Jack said, and looked at his watch. “Is it really almost five thirty? We should probably get going with this.”

I nodded. “So the bracelet is the first of the three things?”

Jack pulled it from his pocket and studied it. “Seems that way.”

“Can I see it?” I plucked the bracelet from his palm. It was heavy and warm in my hand, decorated with a winding vine of words that ran between two rows of small jeweled insects.

“I think it’s in French. What does it say?” I asked.

Jack took it back and read, “He watches over our lady, above the sacred site. Where he looks, it will be found. When it is found, my twin and I will reveal all, only to the true.”

I rubbed my eyes. I was starting to realize how tired I was. “So it doesn’t sound like something about the mandate at all. It sounds like a clue, like maybe it’s directing us to the next of the three things.”

Jack squinted at the bracelet. “But it says ‘when it is found,’ like you first have to find something to decipher.”

I felt a flare of exasperation at Mr. Emerson for sending us on this chase rather than just putting the things in the safe and leaving a note about what they meant. But I immediately felt bad. Anybody could have opened the safe. He’d never have us do something this risky if it wasn’t important.

I watched Jack’s hands turning the bracelet over and over again, and ran through the clue in my mind. Suddenly, something clicked. “Or,” I said, excited, “like the ‘he’ is the next clue, and what he’s looking at is the third. We have to assume this is pointing us somewhere, right? Maybe if we figure out the ‘he,’ we can see where.”

Jack stopped fidgeting. “You’re right.”

“‘Our lady,’” I said. “Do you think that refers to the Virgin Mary? There’s probably Virgin Mary artwork in the Hagia Sophia. And maybe there’s some other artwork above it? Watching over it?”

“We don’t know it’s in the Hagia Sophia. There’s Virgin Mary artwork everywhere. I mean, maybe it’s not even in Istanbul.” Jack sighed. “The inscription is in French, so . . .”

We started walking again. The scent of incense and the low, sultry strains of sitar music drifted out from an open window at the back of a shop.

“The bracelet looks old,” I thought out loud, pulling the blazer tighter around me against a sudden briny breeze. “Even the engraving. It’s not like Fitz did it himself. Whoever engraved it assumed the next point would be around for someone to find. So it’s probably more permanent than a museum piece.”

Jack turned the bracelet over in his hands, and I watched it flash in the headlights of a passing car.

“Translate it again?” I said.

He said it in English again, then said, “In French: ‘Il veille sur notre dame, au-dessus du site sacre. Où il regarde, il se trouve. Quand il est constaté, mon jumeau et je vais révéler tous, pour le vrai.’”

“Wait.” I replayed the words in my head. “Notre-Dame. Like the church in Paris?”

“‘Notre dame’ just means our lady. It’s not capitalized like it would be if it meant the church . . .” Jack rubbed the back of his neck. “But Fitz’s apartment in Paris is close to Notre-Dame.”

“That’s something, I guess, but if he didn’t write the clue, it shouldn’t matter.”

“You’re right. But . . .” Jack’s face screwed up in a frown, and I could see the wheels turning in his head. “Wait. I just remembered something. The insects all over the bracelet. Do they look like they could be bees?”

They were small and winged. I couldn’t tell much beyond that. “I guess.”

“We got this from a Napoleon exhibit. Bees were Napoleon’s symbol. He wore them on his clothes, decorated his residences with them . . .”

“A symbol he wore and decorated with? That sounds familiar.” I gestured to his tattoo.

“Oh,” he said. “Yes. Napoleon was a Dauphin, but he liked to differentiate himself from the others in the Circle, so he used bees as a symbol of his own along with the Dauphins’ sun symbol.”

“What does it have to do with the inscription?” I said.

Jack took the bracelet back, read the inscription again, shaking his head. “Of course. You know how I told you it said ‘the sacred site’? Sacré, with an accent over the e, means ‘sacred.’ Sacre without an accent, like it is here, means ‘coronation.’ It actually says ‘the coronation site.’”

“So?”

“So, Napoleon was crowned at Notre-Dame.”

My heart skipped. “Notre-Dame. We’re going back to Paris.”

Back to Paris meant back to the Circle. Back into the clutches of this hugely powerful group who would lock me up in a second if they discovered who I was.

But it might also mean finding my mom, if she really was headed there. And it meant being closer to whichever of the Circle was my family.

I looked up at the sky. “I used to have a star wish,” I said.

Jack looked up.

“My father. I wanted him to come back more than I wanted anything else in the world. My mom told me he left us when I was a baby, but still, he was every wish when I was little.”

We’d made our way back to the water. A lone fisherman leaned on the railing over the river, his rod propped beside him.

“You said Alistair Saxon and Mr. Emerson were almost like fathers to you.” I hesitated. “What’s it like?”

Jack ran his thumb over the jeweled engraving. “Not like I exactly have had the normal experience, either, since my real father had no interest in me, but in my mind, it’s the feeling of having someone you know is always there for you. Who wants to protect you.”