The Conspiracy of Us (The Conspiracy of Us 1)

For a second Jack’s steely exterior chipped, and I could see another small hint of the person underneath, one more piece to the puzzle of who he really was. And for one more second, I allowed myself to admit that I was kind of starting to like that person. And that, in addition to my own fears about going back to the Circle, I was worried about him.

I glanced up at the bruise under his left eye. He got it somewhere between the prom and Prada, and I was willing to bet it was a punishment for letting me go off with Stellan. And he’d gotten a couple official-sounding calls through the night, like they were starting to get suspicious.

“Luc told me what ‘terminated’ means,” I said. “And about what happened to the Fredericks’ Keeper, and the Rajesh Keeper, and the Emirs’.”

Jack tucked the bracelet into his jacket.

“Saxon wouldn’t . . .” I went on. “If you were caught with me. Helping me, I mean . . .”

He cleared his throat. “The Emir family don’t allow their Keepers as close to them as many families do, but Rocco was different. He was in their inner circle. He was known for being the best at what he did. And still, the second they found out . . . They say Emir made the daughter who was caught with him pull the trigger herself.”

I swallowed. “But not every family is like that.”

Jack rubbed a thumb over the tattoo on his forearm. “I’m aware of the consequences of everything I do.”

When it was clear he wasn’t going to say anything more, I blew out a long breath. I guess it was his choice. “If all of the Circle is going to be at the ball,” I said, “do you think my father will be there?”

“Yes,” Jack said without hesitation.

I curled my hands into fists and watched the first hints of sunrise glint off the Istanbul harbor. “Let’s go to Paris.”

CHAPTER 26

I yawned and squinted into the morning sun, then rooted around in my bag for my sunglasses. It was a languid, hazy morning in Paris, the kind of morning that should be used for a stroll through a garden overflowing with tulips, followed by a picnic along the cobblestoned river walk by the Seine. As we walked over the bridge to Île de la Cité, where Notre-Dame rose against the blue sky, the crowds below made it obvious that half of Paris had the same idea.

I hugged Mr. Emerson’s blazer tighter around me. As tired as I was, I hadn’t been able to sleep much on the small private plane Jack had waiting in Istanbul. I’d had to ask him how many planes each family had. All he’d said was “Enough.”

He hadn’t slept, either. He’d taken off his blazer and hung it in the plane’s closet, then changed into a clean shirt he had stashed there, but that was all the concession he’d made to getting comfortable. He’d spent the whole trip hunched over the bracelet and Mr. Emerson’s note.

The whole flight, he’d caught me staring at him almost every time he’d looked up. Our eyes would meet for a split second, and then I’d go back to pretending to be asleep. I wasn’t sure why, all of a sudden, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. Maybe because my brain was too worn out to worry about real, horrible, dangerous things anymore and somehow, without me quite realizing it, Jack had come to feel safe.

Now he glanced down at me again. We both looked away, but I felt his eyes come back to me immediately. Even through his clean shirt, I could still smell the spices on his skin.

I trained my eyes on Notre-Dame. “‘A vast symphony in stone,’” I said, drowning out my thoughts.

“Victor Hugo,” Jack said, and he didn’t look down at me again. Instead he scanned the square. His head snapped around when a scream sounded from across the road, but it was just a little kid with map-toting parents.

Notre-Dame was much more impressive in person than it was in photographs, its square facade decorated with windows and arches and statues and so much detail, it would take years to see it all.

“Did you know the cathedral might be gone now if it weren’t for The Hunchback of Notre-Dame?” I said. “It was falling into disrepair by the mid-1800s, and the book brought public interest back to it. That’s when they did a lot of the renovations that made it look how it does now.”

Jack nodded. “It’s when they added some gargoyles, and did lots of restoration on others.” He pointed to the stone creatures hanging off the facade. I wasn’t surprised he knew about that. The Hunchback of Notre-Dame was one of Mr. Emerson’s favorites; “Charlie” must have read it, too. “It wasn’t long after Napoleon was crowned, actually. As you might imagine, France—and the Dauphins—had a lot on their minds at that time, but Notre-Dame has always been meaningful to them. It was built to commemorate the Circle’s early cooperation with the Catholic Church, and built here because this area was one of the Circle’s first settlements in northern Europe. This is the historical center of Paris.”

As I stared up at the church, bells pealed out from the tower, announcing that it was 10:00 a.m. We didn’t have much more time. And—I glanced around. The mention of the Dauphins drove home that we had been anonymous in Istanbul, but people here knew who we were. The whole Circle was no more than a mile away at the Louvre.

“Is it safe for you to even be seen with me here?” I asked once more.

“See how the door on the left-hand side is different?” he said. I guess that was my answer.

The door he pointed to had a triangular carving over it that the other two arched doors didn’t have. “It symbolizes the Circle watching over the common people without them realizing it.”

“So do you believe it?” I said. “That the world is a better place because of the Circle?”

He didn’t hesitate. “Of course.” It was amazing how much he seemed to trust them—the Circle as a whole, and the Saxons specifically. Seemed to me like setting yourself up for a fall. “You don’t, I guess?” he said.

Honestly, I didn’t know what I believed anymore.

He steered us toward a line of tourists that stretched from the entrance. We waited for a few minutes, and Jack tossed a euro into the hat of a street performer singing opera. After everything we went through last night, strolling inside behind a family with two crying toddlers felt almost too easy.

Inside, the church hummed with the sound of hundreds of people all trying to speak quietly. School groups perused artwork, camera-toting tourists took pictures of the stained glass, old ladies lit candles. Jack stopped alongside them and dropped a few coins into the collection box, then lit a candle himself, nestling it among the tiers of dancing orange flames that lit the dark foyer.