The Conspiracy of Us (20 page)

Jack looked around the dance floor distractedly. “What?”

“Did you see the way she looked at me?”

“Avery.” Jack slipped his mask inside his jacket and turned to me. “No. I did not tell her anything.”

I let out a breath through my teeth as the orchestra started a fast song. I pointed to where I'd seen Stellan disappear and slipped my own mask back on. “Last time I saw him, he was over there. If we're going to do this, let's do it.”

Jack left a few seconds ahead of me so we wouldn't be seen together again. I followed his back toward the other side of the dance floor when a man stepped in front of me. He was middle-aged, with a red face, a blue mask, and a shock of blond curls, and he grabbed my hand with a grin and pulled me toward the dance floor.

“Oh,” I said, resisting. “No, I—”

“What?” the man yelled, yanking us into place at the end of a line of couples. Three couples down, an older lady with snow-white hair and a bird mask held both of Jack's hands. I met his eyes, but then everyone around me clapped twice, and the blond man spun me and I lost Jack in the crowd.

I gave a silent thanks to my mom for forcing me to take ballroom-dance classes years ago, and foxtrotted across the floor. All the couples ended up in a circle, and then the whole crowd clapped again and my partner released me down the line. I tried to find Jack, but all the twirling tuxedos looked the same. The next guy in the circle, with smiling eyes behind a sky-blue mask, was already holding out his hand, and I took it reluctantly, searching the crowd over his shoulder as the dance continued.

And then another new partner, and another, one in dark robes rather than a suit, squeezing my hand so hard, I was afraid he'd break my fingers, the next younger than me, and stepping on the hem of my dress as we ran through an arch made of everyone's hands. I tried to escape every time we changed partners, but kept getting swept back up. How much longer could this dance go on?

On the next partner switch, I fell into a set of arms that held me exactly how they were supposed to, if a little closer than normal. The man's palm wasn't even sweaty.

“Looking lovely as usual,
kuklachka,
” he said in my ear.

My eyes snapped up to Stellan's, staring down at me through a gold mask. I fought the instinct to pull away, reminding myself I
wanted
to find him. If I could pull him off the dance floor, I could signal to Jack and we could get this over with.

“How are you enjoying the ball?” he said. The dancing and the nerves had riled up my blood too much. My skin prickled when he moved his hand from my waist to the open back of my dress.

“It's beautiful,” I said tightly. The crowd formed two lines, and Stellan directed me to the end of one, holding both my hands between us.

When we came together again, hands above our heads, he said, “One more question.” He leaned close to my ear. “What did you hear earlier?”

So he
had
seen me while he was with Madame Dauphin. He pulled me back into a waltz position. “I don't know what you're talking about,” I said.

A lock of blond hair fell over his forehead as he stared down at me. “Who are you?”

My heart spiked. He didn't actually know. Just keep playing dumb and I'd be fine. “What do you mean?”

He tucked a finger under my chin. “I'm going to find out one way or another,” he said. “You may as well tell me now.”

“I'm not—” He stroked my jaw with his thumb. “Nothing.” I gritted my teeth. “I'm no one. I'm not anything.
Stop
it.” I twisted my face away, suddenly very aware of the music pounding through my feet like a heartbeat.

With a grating scrape of metal, Stellan drew his dagger at waist level.

“I asked you,” he said, in a low, measured voice, “who are you?”

W
hat are you doing?” I couldn't scream. That would draw more attention I didn't want. “Is pulling a knife on me your answer to everything?”

He tucked the arm not holding the knife even closer around me and twirled us deftly away from the crowd, making no move to let go when everyone clapped for a partner switch. “
Qui êtes-vous, kuklachka?
”

“What?” I looked behind me frantically. We were nearly off the dance floor now. Where was Jack?

“
Quien es? Ni shi shui? Kto ty?
Or do you need it in another language?” The dagger shone in the dim light, scrollwork running down the blade like rivulets of blood.

I pulled away as far as I could. The fabric of my dress strained against his arm, still locked around my waist. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“If you won't tell me, I'll guess. I guess that you're a spy.”

“What?” My eyes snapped back to him. “No!”

The blade touched my skin. I drew in a sharp breath. He wouldn't hurt me. He couldn't.

“At first I thought you were a spy for the Order, or even one of their assassins, coming after Luc, but Prada proved me wrong. So, a spy for the Saxons?”

“No!” He thought I was a
spy
? No wonder he'd been suspicious from the beginning. “I'm just a . . . relative.” It wasn't exactly a lie.

He pressed the dagger hard enough to make a dent in my skin. It rose and fell with my feverish breaths. “You realize someone sent a
professional
to kill you?” Stellan drew out the word.

“That was just—”

“I know Prada wasn't a mistake, and so do you.” He spun me to an abrupt stop, still holding me close. “And then you run out of the club like an insane person after taking advantage of Luc's inebriation to get him to tell you who knows what.”

“I did not take advantage of Luc,” I snapped. Now I knew why he hadn't told Madame Dauphin anything. He had no idea who I was, and couldn't afford to be wrong.

“What would the Circle do if they knew you were threatening a member of another family?” I said, glaring up at him, my fingers digging into the shoulder of his tuxedo jacket. “Let go of me. Now.”

He stared back, eyes flashing, and, after a few more seconds, dropped the knife from my chest.

I peeled his arm from my waist, turned, and nearly ran into Jack, who was hurrying toward us as the music faded to a less rowdy number and the dancers dissipated. He gestured with his head and we made our way into the shadows off the dance floor. “What's going on?” he said. “Did you tell him?”

I wiped the tiny bead of blood from my chest with shaking fingers. I had entirely forgotten about asking Stellan about Mr. Emerson. “No. He threatened me,” I whispered, and Jack tensed. “It's okay, I'm fine. I just got sidetracked.”

I let go of Jack and turned to where Stellan was walking away. “Wait,” I called.

We caught up with him at a tall cocktail table. “Changed your mind about telling me the truth?” he said to me. “Or have you two come to show me a slide show of the must-see tourist attractions of Istanbul?”

I stiffened. Jack wasn't kidding when he said they could track me anywhere. “If you'd given me time to explain before, I would have told you I had a panic attack at the club. I needed some air, but I got lost, and Jack was in Istanbul, so he picked me up.”

I was proud of the lack of waver in my voice.

“Istanbul is what we need to talk to you about,” Jack said. I watched for anyone watching us. We were alone. “It's Fitz. I was on my way to see him when I caught up with Avery, so I brought her with me. But he wasn't there—it looks like the Order's taken him.”

Stellan's brows inched up.

“He left pictures of the thr—” Jack paused. “Of you and me, saying that we needed to help him.” I gritted my teeth at the near-slip, but Jack went on. “Do you know why he might have said that?”

“Of course not.” Stellan pulled his mask off and tossed it onto a table. “Are you seriously telling me Fitz has been kidnapped? Why in the world would the Order take a
tutor
?”

“We're not sure. We were hoping you might have some insight.”

“Well, I don't.” He looked between Jack and me, and his eyes narrowed. “What does
she
have to do with this?”

My heart rate spiked again. This was exactly what I didn't want. “I don't have anything to—”

I trailed off as a million tiny lights suddenly danced in front of my eyes. Maybe I actually
was
having a panic attack now.

But no, people were pointing out of the tower. Of course—the Eiffel Tower light show. It twinkled out over Paris every hour. If I had been a tourist, I definitely would have wanted to come see it, and now we were watching it from the inside.

“What are you not telling me?” Stellan said.

“We have some things to show—” Jack started to pull the diary out of his jacket, but Stellan looked over my shoulder. His face hardened, and I put a hand on Jack's arm. A tall man in a tuxedo was storming across the dance floor toward us. Jack hid the book again.

“You and the security staff were supposed to keep her home tonight,” the man barked at Stellan, his face and light brown hair blurring with the twinkling lights. “And now she's off doing God knows what.”

“Yes, Monsieur Dauphin,” Stellan said, and I looked up sharply. The lights burned into my brain. “Madame was not meant to come tonight. But—”

“But she does as she wants.” Monsieur Dauphin hit the table with a fist, and I flinched.

He looked just like Luc, only twice as wide. And ten times as mean. He didn't look like
me.
Not even a little bit.

I touched Jack's arm, motioning him away. We couldn't do this now. Monsieur Dauphin's eyes flicked to me and narrowed. I could see the wheels turning in his head—Madame must have told him her suspicions, too. He said something in French to Stellan, who glanced at me, too.

I turned, pulling on Jack's sleeve, and was surprised to see Lydia Saxon headed our way, with a frowning dark-haired boy who must have been her brother, Cole, in tow. And behind them, a man in a masquerade mask. Now Jack was the one who snapped to attention. My hand fell from his arm.

The lights kept going. Flash, flash, flash. They seemed to get brighter by the second.

Flash.
I turned to Jack, to find his brows a tangle of unreadable emotions. He nodded to the man, who stepped forward, pulling off his mask.

Flash.
The lights flickered faster, or maybe now it really
was
in my head.

Flash.
I stared, unblinking, unable to move. The man's face was illuminated by a million tiny bulbs, dark-bright, dark-bright.

Flash.
I couldn't tear my gaze away, and the man didn't move either as the edges of my world fell away.

As I stared into a mirror version of my own eyes.

M
y eyes.

And not just the same color, like Luc's. The same
everything.
Intense, dark violet eyes, set a little too far apart. Rimmed with thick black lashes, bordered by dark brows. The rest of his face was entirely different—the square jawline, the pronounced cheekbones—and if I hadn't been looking for it, I wouldn't have noticed any more resemblance than distant family would be expected to have. But I
knew.
They were my eyes.

Lydia stepped up next to him, her hand on his arm. She'd taken off her mask, too. She didn't have the eye color, but I could see now that her wide-set eyes—and her twin brother's—were an echo of mine.
That
was what had bothered me about her. Even behind the mask, I'd seen shades of my own face. Lydia and Cole Saxon. That meant—

Something drew my gaze down, to Alistair Saxon's jacket, to the embroidered insignia on a handkerchief sticking out of the breast pocket. A compass. Just like Jack's tattoo, which I had always thought looked familiar. Then I realized when I'd seen it before.

I was five years old, searching the drawers in my mom's bedroom for something to play with. In one of them, my locket had rested on top of a sheaf of papers. Letters. Love letters, from what I could read of them. On top of each one, like personalized stationery, a compass had been embossed into the paper.

My head swiveled between the three of them, and the certainty of it all knocked the breath out of me.

This man was my father, and he was also Jack's boss, Alistair Saxon.

Jack shoved his hands into his pockets. He didn't look at all surprised. Obviously he hadn't found out just now. Finally, he flicked his eyes to mine, then back to his feet. “I'm sorry,” he mouthed.

Jack had lied. He knew exactly who my father was.

My
father.

Jack broke the silence that probably only lasted a few seconds but felt like a lifetime. “Sir, this is Avery West. She's the
cousin
we found in the States.” He looked pointedly at Stellan and Monsieur Dauphin, who were talking just a few feet away, still shooting glances in our direction.

Saxon, my father, took a step closer to me. He knew I wasn't a cousin. I could tell. I could see him confirm it as he recognized me bit by bit. My mom's button nose and rounded cheeks. His own eyes. His daughter.

I wondered just how much Jack had lied to me—how much he'd told Saxon. If he knew I was the purple-eyed girl they'd all been waiting for.

“Yes,” my father said with a bland smile. “Very good. Nice to meet you, young lady.”

And then he turned away, like he was already bored.

I staggered like I'd been slapped, and had to grab the back of a chair. The lights outside stopped blinking. My father didn't bother to look in my direction again.

So Jack hadn't told him about my eyes. He didn't know how powerful I could make him, so he didn't care that I was his kid. After all that, he was just any old deadbeat dad. Maybe he had a dozen illegitimate children running around, and finding a new one wasn't a big deal.

“It's been a long night, Hugo,” my father said to Monsieur Dauphin. “I know our guest has been staying with you, but I think we'll take her to our hotel, as we haven't had a chance to talk—”

I looked up, a flicker of hope running through me.

“Nonsense,” Monsieur Dauphin cut him off. “It's nearly midnight. Isn't most of your family staying with us anyway? Sort it out in the morning. Speaking of, have you seen my wife? The headstrong . . .” He broke off, muttering under his breath.

My father glanced at me, then at Jack, and the hope coiled inside me like a spring. Then he gave a noncommittal shrug. “Yes. Fine. Lovely.”

The spring snapped. My hand fluttered up to my chest, like I was trying to hold in the bits of shattered heart leaking out. My father knew I existed, and he didn't care a bit.

I really, really didn't want to cry in front of him. “I'm ready to go now,” I said quietly. My voice didn't even hitch.

Jack stepped forward. “I'll take you—”

“No.” I jerked away. My breath rattled in my chest. “Somebody else is probably going back anyway.”

“I am.”

I closed my eyes as Stellan stepped up beside me. Which was the lesser of the two evils?

Jack had lied to me. I'd asked him over and over about my father. He knew exactly how much this meant to me. I'd told him embarrassingly personal things. And he knew his own employer was my father, and he didn't tell me. The betrayal burned through my blood like acid.

And yes, Stellan was supposed to interrogate me, but now that I'd met the Saxons and Jack knew Madame Dauphin's plan, he couldn't lock me up and throw away the key. Plus, it looked like there was no way I was ending up anywhere but the Dauphins' tonight.

I didn't look at Jack or my father as I followed Stellan out of the ball and rode silently in the elevator to the ground floor.

Thank you, world, for reminding me again exactly why I never let myself care.

We made our way to a line of waiting long black cars, and I stared up at the glowing tower, stretching nearly a thousand brilliant feet into the gray-and-purple night.

Stellan watched me. “What is your story,
kuklachka
?” he finally said.

I blinked, and the orange glow of the Eiffel Tower blurred into watercolor.

•   •   •

Stellan stopped in front of my room.

“So,” he said. “You tell me you're no one, then almost get killed at a boutique, run away from a club in Istanbul, and now you're crying in a ball gown. You're sure there's nothing you want to tell me?”

“There's nothing
to
tell.” My voice came out in a rasp. “You really don't believe me?”

Stellan unlocked the door to my room. “I learned long ago that I'm the only person I can trust, so no. I don't believe you. I just can't figure out what you're trying to cover up.”

I pushed past him. “And I can't figure out why you're so temperamental. You were threatening to kill me a couple of hours ago, and now you're pretending to be friendly.”

Stellan followed me into the room. “If I was actually threatening to kill you, you'd be dead.”

“I'm going to sleep. Please leave.” I stalked to the bathroom.

In the mirror, Stellan came into view and leaned against the doorframe. I turned on the sink and washed my hands.

“You know, spies are usually good liars. So are pretty girls,” he said.

I tossed the lavender soap into the soap dish so hard, it bounced out and slithered to the bottom of the sink. I whirled on him.

“Really?” The water dripped down my forearms, and I grabbed a towel. “Sometimes I can't tell whether you're trying to interrogate me, or kill me, or sleep with me.” I snapped my mouth shut and felt my whole body flush.

The corner of his mouth crooked up. “To be honest, I can't quite decide either.”

“Get out.”

Slowly, he pushed off the doorframe, blocking my way out. “You know, if you
were
a spy, I'd be impressed. Nothing hotter than a talented girl. I mean, I'd have to kill you. But before I did—”

“Go. Away.” The tears were building behind my eyes again, frustration and exhaustion and bone-deep sadness. I threw the towel on the sink and swiped at my face with the back of my hand. “Seriously, go away.”

Stellan studied me. “What
is
it that's upsetting you so much? Prada?”

I suddenly thought of that first morning, before Prada, when I was wearing nothing but a robe and my biggest problem was trying to forget how attractive Stellan was. It seemed like another lifetime.

“It's nothing. I'm fine. I just want you to leave so I can sleep.” I had to brush against him to get through the doorway, and he blocked my way with one hand.

“You're rubbing your eyes a lot for someone who's fine,” he said, not entirely unkindly. His hand was warm on my hip.

The tears swam even closer to the surface. I forced them back by sheer will and pushed the rest of the way past. “I'm
fine.
My contacts itch, that's all.”

There was a pause. “You wear contact lenses?”

I felt the scowl drop off my face. Oh God. I forced myself to turn and glare at him again, but I couldn't cover the beat of hesitation. “I have really bad vision.”

He pursed his lips, and there was a knock on the door. Elodie stuck her head in and said something to Stellan in French without even a glance at me.

Stellan sighed. “It appears I'm needed. Sleep well, little doll. There will be guards outside to make sure nothing
happens
to you overnight.”

I covered my sigh of relief with a yawn. I could only hope that another purple-eyed girl was so far out of the realm of possibility that he wouldn't connect my contacts to his suspicions.

He made no show of hurrying, and I shoved him the rest of the way out with the door. I closed it behind him, locked it, and rested my forehead against the cool wood while I listened to the two sets of footsteps retreat down the hall.

I collapsed onto the blue velvet comforter, the fabric of my dress crinkling under me.

I lay there for a second before I pulled out my phone and called my mom again. Nothing.

I put the phone back in my bag and dug around for my locket. I set the Prada necklace on the bedside table and tied the two ends of my locket's broken clasp around my neck, then buried my face in the comforter. I felt about a hundred years older than I had a few days ago. I knew so many things I'd never wanted to know. And at the same time, I felt like a little kid. So much less sure of the world, of myself, of everything.

My father didn't care about me. Pretty soon I was going to have to accept that my mom was actually
missing.
And Jack had lied. I trusted him—I
finally
trusted him—and he lied. After everything we'd been through. I didn't even know what that meant. When had he told Saxon? Did they have some kind of plan that involved keeping me in the dark? It didn't seem like my father cared enough to have a plan like that.

I rolled over to my back and stared up at the canopy above the bed.

It felt so trivial to be sad about a boy right now. Jack lying to me shouldn't hurt so much, especially compared with everything else. Like Mr. Emerson. I reached into my bag again and found the piece of paper with the Order's phone number on it. Ironically, I'd written it on the back of the sketch of Jack's tattoo I'd done in Ancient Civ that day. I traced the drawing with one finger. I almost wished I had a compass tattooed on me right now. I could use some direction.

With a start, I realized I could get one on my seventeenth birthday if I wanted. I was a Saxon.

I shook my head. We only had about twelve hours until the Order's deadline. I flipped the paper back over and stared at the phone number until my eyes crossed. We were at a dead end with the clues. Maybe my father could help us find the Order and take Mr. Emerson back by force, if I could get him to care enough about me to go to the trouble.

I rolled off the bed and crossed the room to the window. Should I suck it up and call Jack and have him get Saxon to start a search? I really, really didn't want to talk to him right now.

I slid the window open, letting the smell of the storm that had been threatening all afternoon wash over me. A low rumble of thunder sounded in the distance, and I leaned on the window frame and looked out over the Louvre courtyard.

“There you are,” said a deep voice next to me.

I whipped around. There on the balcony, leaning against the wall outside my window, was Jack.