Map of Fates (8 page)

When the song finished, Eli wiped his face with the hem of his plaid shirt, then leaned close to the mic. “This next one,” he said with another of those weird, sad smiles, “is for a very special young lady. Hi, Avery West. You're going to change the world, you know.”

I sat up straight, startled. The Circle didn't usually say things like that in public. The cameras panned to me, and I tried not to look like a deer in the headlights. For just a second, I pictured Lara watching at home and wondered if she'd even recognize me. If she did, she would be so confused. Then the band started playing again, and the camera swung away.

Lydia poked my arm behind my father's back and raised a suggestive eyebrow in Eli's direction. “Yeah right,” I mouthed. Not being in
the direct line made him ineligible for the mandate, and he was also
Eli Abraham.
But then again,
he
was the one who kept smiling at and talking to
me.
My eyes made people like Eli Abraham interested in me. This was all so, so strange.

I had to admit Sunday Six were actually good live, even though Eli seemed distracted. I still wasn't feeling cheerful enough to dance in my seat like Lydia, but I did teach Takumi the words to some of the choruses.

To finish the set, they played my favorite song of theirs. As it built to the end, Eli jumped off the stage, mic in hand. He crooned to a few tables before making his way back to ours.

“
In the name of loooooove!
” As he hit the highest note, punctuated with a bang on the bass drum, the crowd burst into applause. With another of those sad smiles right at me, he bowed to our table. Whistles and cheers sounded across the room.

Eli took a few seconds to stand. When he did, I flashed him a grin, a genuine one this time, but he didn't smile back. In fact, his expression was oddly tortured.

“I'm so sorry,” he said, and set the microphone on the table next to him.

I sat forward, confused, and felt the rest of the room do the same.

And then Eli Abraham pulled a gun out of the waistband of his skinny jeans. He raised it at our table. And he shot Takumi Mikado in the chest.

T
here was a moment of complete silence before the room burst into screams. People stampeded toward the doors, chairs were knocked over, well-dressed guests were shoved to the floor.

I was still sitting, stock-still, not least because Takumi had collapsed onto me. He made a gurgling noise in his throat, and behind his glasses, his eyes were glassy, blinking.

Guards rushed Eli from both sides. Jack was the first to knock him to the ground.

Eli raised his gun. “Jack!” I screamed. But Eli pointed it at his own head and pulled the trigger.

And then Jack was pinning down the dead lead singer of the world's most famous pop group and I had a guy I'd just met dying in my arms.

Takumi sagged across my lap, his flop of hair fallen over his eyes. I clapped a hand over the wound on his chest. There was so much blood, I couldn't see where the bullet had actually hit. “It's okay,” I said blindly, my voice thin, reedy, desperate. “It'll be okay. You'll be okay.”

He wouldn't be okay. He blinked twice more, staring up at me, and then his eyes slipped closed and his rasping breaths stopped.

Hands were lifting him off me, and then I was being bundled outside and into a boat. Only when we were zipping away down the Grand Canal did I realize that my hands and my white dress were caked in blood.

• • •

Eli acted alone, they were saying. The other band members realized something had been bothering him for a few days, but had no idea what was going to happen. How the Order had managed to coerce Eli no one knew, but it was clear they'd killed two birds with one stone. Literally. A boy who could be the One and another important Circle member, both in spectacular fashion.

Back at our hotel, security stashed me in the suite of rooms they'd secured for us. As soon as I'd showered and put on clean clothes, I started working on a way out. Maybe we should have canceled our plans after what had just happened, but Takumi Mikado's blood still felt like it was all over me. Eli Abraham's apology, and his odd assertion that
I
could change things, had been burned into my mind.

Following the clues felt more important than ever.

But now there were even more guards outside my door and new ones posted at either end of the hallway. My original plan to sneak off once they left me here wouldn't work. I crossed to the window and pushed aside the heavy silk curtains. No way. It was four stories to the canal below.

For a few minutes, I wore a path in front of the door. On top of everything else, they'd spirited me away before I could be sure Jack wasn't hurt, and he hadn't responded to my texts. I tapped my phone with my fingernails, faster and faster. And then I heard Jack's voice in
the hall. I stopped. He wasn't supposed to be here. But it was definitely him, chatting like everything was normal. Relief flooded through me.

And then, from down the hall, a loud
boom.
A flurry of exclamations and running footsteps, then Jack saying, “Go. I'll watch her door.” A few seconds later, two knocks, a pause, two more. The signal we'd agreed on.

I grabbed my bag and opened the door a crack.

Jack stood, his back to me, looking down the hall. Plausible deniability. If this was caught on camera, he could pretend he hadn't seen me sneak out.

“Three doors down on the left,” he murmured, not turning around. “Emergency exit. I turned off the alarm.”

“Okay,” I whispered, easing the door shut behind me and padding down the plushly carpeted hallway. I pushed open the door to the emergency stairs and hurried down, emerging into a narrow alley between buildings. I listened for a moment, then let the door shut behind me and shrank back into the shadows halfway down the block.

The door opened a few minutes later. I went as still as I could, just in case—and Jack stuck his head out and looked around. I waited to make sure he was alone, then ran to him.

Before I could say a word, he swept me up in his arms, and I let my guard down for the first time since dinner, the shock I'd been holding back finally washing over me in waves.

Jack hugged me tighter.

I disentangled myself just enough to pull him down and kiss him.

He broke away. “I—”

I just shook my head and kissed him again, and then we were kissing so fiercely, nothing else mattered.

That last time we'd slipped up, Jack had stopped it as quickly as it had started.

Not this time.

We pulled each other so close, I could feel the hard ropes of muscle in his arms as he wrapped them around me. Everywhere his skin touched mine felt like it was melting, in the best way.

This was so much better than I'd remembered. How had we possibly been able to
not
do this all the time? Kissing him felt safe. Kissing him made me forget.

It was only when we ran roughly into the damp stone wall of the next building over that we pulled away, gasping. I hadn't even realized I had his shirt half off, my palms pressed to his ribs, just under those mysterious round scars.

Jack pushed my hair back from my face. “You were so close. He could have shot you.”

“He didn't.” I slipped my hands out from under his shirt and around his back. “He could have, and he didn't. That's what I've been saying—the Order doesn't actually want to kill
me.
But he could have shot
you.
”

“He didn't.”

Another violent shudder ran through me. Jack pulled me to his chest again.

“We have to stop this.” It wasn't just for my mom anymore. Dev Rajesh, then Eli and Takumi . . . I'd realized intellectually that the Order was killing people, but I didn't
know
them.

If I did marry somebody, though, would that stop it? The Saxons thought so, but I'd never been sure. Maybe if it proved that the union didn't lead to the tomb after all, they'd have no reason to kill any more boys . . . but that wouldn't help my mom. Finding the tomb was the only thing that would solve both problems. After tonight, seven days. “We have to find it,” I said. “There has to be something here.”

“I know.”

I took a deep breath, and felt Jack's chest expand with one of his own. Finally, I pulled away and smoothed my hair back from my face. “We should go.”

Jack's hair was wild, his shirt askew. I saw his arm move, almost reach for my hand. Stop. Notice me notice the hesitation. Both of us frozen, waiting for the other to make a move. To acknowledge that the worse everything got, the more difficult it became not to have each other to fall back on.

“I—” Jack said. He stuffed both hands into his pockets.

I nodded, smoothed my skirt, and we ran out of the narrow alley without a word.

• • •

The fog that had settled since dinner made it impossible to see more than ten feet in any direction, but it seemed to amplify sounds echoing off the narrow alleys that served as streets for anyone not moving around by boat. I flinched at every slamming door or boat motor, and glanced over my shoulder at every set of footsteps.

Jack walked quietly beside me, lost in his own thoughts. I wondered suddenly what would happen if—
when
—I did get my mom back. If I stayed with the Circle, I might not have to be married off, but unless I had enough power to change the rules, Jack and I would never work, anyway. Maybe we'd leave, but then I'd be abandoning the family I'd just met, and he'd be leaving the only family he'd ever had. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

The only certainty was that we had to find this bracelet.

• • •

Finally, after ten minutes of weaving quietly through the maze, a glimmer of light shone up ahead and the alley opened up onto a
wide square. “Oh,” I breathed. Despite everything, the square ahead looked like magic.

The fog wasn't as dense here—it must have had more space to dissipate. But the driver had told us earlier today about the
acqua alta.
“Just be glad it's not August,” he'd said in broken English. “If the
acqua alta
comes in August, you can smell Venice from anywhere in Italia.”

Now I saw what he meant.

The Piazza San Marco was underwater. Tourists strolled along wooden walkways that stretched across it, but it looked like they were walking on the water's surface. The lights from the basilica and the surrounding buildings shimmered in the ripples, creating gleaming pinstripes in the settling dusk. Around the edges of the square, locals went about their business as usual, ducking into stores and sitting at half-submerged cafe tables in knee-high galoshes.

I licked my lips. The air in Venice tasted a little like stagnant ocean and fish, but with an overtone of fresh breeze that made it not unpleasant.

I looked around and got my bearings. We'd emerged at the corner of the piazza nearest the San Marco Basilica, with a small cafe on one side of us and a row of shuttered shops and outdoor bistros on the other. “
La Serenissima
doesn't refer to any specific part of Venice, so that doesn't give us a lot of direction,” I said, “but there's this conspiracy theory about Alexander the Great's bones being hidden at San Marco Basilica.” Stellan had found the book I'd asked for from the Dauphins' library and told me the details.

“Napoleon might have heard that rumor, too. He was really interested in the church. And that over there”—I pointed across the piazza—“is called the
Ala Napoleonica.
The Napoleonic Wing.
Though it seems to have only Venetian history these days, which is why I want to check the basilica first.”

Jack was nodding along. “Sounds like as good an idea as any.”

“Actually,” said a girl's voice from behind us, in a light French accent, “I've got a better idea, but by all means continue to waste more time.”

We both spun around toward the cafe. There, leaning against a column, hundreds of miles away from Paris where she should be, was the Dauphins' maid, Elodie.

J
ack pulled me behind his back, and I reached into my purse for my knife, like it would do much good against the throng of guards the Dauphins had probably sent to bring me back to the cell in their basement.

“Where are they?” I said, looking behind her. “Where are your guards?”

Elodie pushed off the wall, strolling a few feet out to nudge the water's edge with her boot. The platinum highlights in her blond hair glinted in the dark. “I was beginning to think the earlier unpleasantness kept you inside for the night.”

“
Unpleasantness
?” I snapped. “Two people died.”

“How did you know we were here?” Jack said.

She rolled her eyes. “Can you really not guess?”

Jack tensed. “I'm going to kill Stellan—”

“He didn't
tell
me. I just happened to remember the little threesome thing you all had going on, and what with his extended absences to
spy on the Saxons
lately, it wasn't hard to put two and two together. Found the hidden phone he's been using to communicate with you, and here I am. You know,” she said, glancing appraisingly
at the bracelet gleaming on my wrist, “you should really be more careful.”

In a second, Jack was behind her, his gun to her back. “What do you want, Elodie?”

“Jack!” I started, but before I could say any more, Elodie wheeled around and kneed him in the crotch. He stumbled backward.

She retreated a few feet. “Don't touch me—”

She went quiet when Jack pointed his gun at her again. Luckily, the small cafe we stood at the edge of was empty enough that no one was watching us.

“I didn't realize things were quite so murderous around here.” Elodie raised her hands to waist-height.

“Did you not notice what happened tonight?” I nearly shrieked, and made myself quiet down. “I don't care if you
are
telling the truth. You picked the worst possible time to sneak up on us.”

“I'm not here to hurt you,” she said, her palms still out, placating.

“Put the gun away,” I said to Jack.

“She could sound the alarm to the Dauphins at any second.” Jack's eyes still roamed the piazza, but no one had approached us. “I don't even know what they think they'd be able to do with you, but I guarantee she's not just here to chat.”

“Just put the gun down,” I said. “Nobody else is getting shot tonight.”

He lowered it slowly, and I reached into my bag and swapped my knife for pepper spray. “It's just mace,” I said to Elodie. “But you can't expect us to trust you.”

“There,” Jack said, pointing to the cafe's spindly bistro tables. “Sit.” While I held her at mace-point, he took a pair of handcuffs from an inside pocket of his jacket and cuffed her wrist to the chair.

“Are you serious?” Elodie huffed, flopping back dramatically.

“It's just a precaution.” Once she was strapped in, I dropped the mace.

“I have to admit that after I helped you escape the wedding”—Elodie's almond-shaped eyes got artificially wide, innocent—“I thought you'd be a little happier to see me.”

So it
was
on purpose. “Why did you do that, anyway?”

Elodie drummed her fingers—the only part of her able to move freely—on the arm of the chair. “I was bored. Thought I'd stir up some drama.”

“Be serious.”

“You seriously want to know why I'm here?” she said in her haughty French accent. “You could have asked
before
handcuffing me. As I said, I've been monitoring your conversations with Stellan. And I think I know things about your clues that you don't.”

• • •

We left Elodie cuffed to the chair, her long, slim legs crossed casually like she was just out for an espresso on a foggy evening. I'd texted Stellan and changed our meeting place, and now I raked my free hand through my hair. I hadn't had time to dry it after I showered earlier, and it was tangling in the breeze as it dried. Soon, I turned around to heavy footfalls on the wooden pathway.

“I heard what happened with Eli Abraham,” Stellan said. “Are you all right?” He looked over my shoulder and stopped short when he saw Elodie.

“If it isn't the third wheel,” Elodie said, waving her fingers at him.

Stellan turned back to Jack and me. “I'm assuming the light bondage isn't recreational, so who's going to fill me in?”

I told him as much as we knew over the strains of a string quartet that had started playing at a nearby bistro. Stellan chewed his lower lip, then pulled up another chair and sat knee-to-knee with Elodie.
“The Dauphins didn't send you? You haven't told them what we're doing? If we untie you, are you going to hurt us or run?”

“No, no, and no.” Elodie rolled her eyes. “I wouldn't have shown up here alone and relatively unarmed if I wanted to hurt you or your precious purple-eyed girl, okay?”

“
Relatively
unarmed?” I said, but Stellan leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and locked eyes with Elodie.

“Are you telling the truth, El?”

She didn't flinch. “Yes.” Then she looked up at Jack with the same flat determination. “Jackie, you know I am. You have always been able to tell when I'm lying. And after tonight, I'd think you'd want as much help as you can get to stop the Order for good.”

Jackie?

Jack took the keys to the handcuffs out of his pocket. Elodie batted her eyelashes at him sarcastically, and I was struck by the feeling of being an outsider. I knew Jack and Stellan had history, but hadn't really thought about how Jack would have known Elodie for half his life, too. And try as I might, I couldn't picture him as ever having been a “Jackie.”

“Okay,” I said. “But what's in this for you?”

Elodie flicked the bangs out of her eyes, and I wondered, stupidly, how she kept her hair so perfect. She was part Asian, and I didn't think there was any way the platinum blond was natural, but it always looked freshly done.

“What's in it for me is that they'll go after Luc eventually,” she said. “They're hitting every other person who could be the One, in every Circle family. Maybe they've given Luc a reprieve since they already killed the Dauphins' baby girl, but I don't know. I'd rather stop them before they try.”

I didn't think she was lying.

“And, of course,” Elodie went on, “everything that would come with finding the tomb, which I'm sure these two care about, too. Fame, fortune, acclaim . . .” The sarcastic note in her voice was back.

Jack palmed the back of his neck and shrugged at me. He was willing to trust her.

“Fine,” I said. It was later than we'd realized, though, and it'd be a lot easier to search for clues while the basilica and the museum were open rather than sneaking in, so we put whatever Elodie had to say on hold for a few minutes. I wasn't about to give up this chance just because she thought she had a better idea.

Inside San Marco Basilica, Elodie was pointing out something on a fresco to Jack, so I said, “Split up; meet back here in ten?” and grabbed Stellan's arm, pulling him down the center aisle.

“Yes, I trust her,” he said before I could open my mouth.

I sucked in an indignant breath.

“You are blindingly obvious,” he said, cutting me off again. “That's how I know exactly what you wanted to ask.”

I frowned and made my way toward the first few pieces of artwork down one side of the church. He inspected the ones higher on the wall. I thought of Elodie smiling at him earlier and flashed back to the club in Istanbul I'd visited with them, which seemed like a lifetime ago. I remembered the look on her face while she watched some girl hit on him.
Everyone's interested in him in that way,
she'd said.

I glanced over my shoulder, searching Stellan's fine-boned profile for any hint that he might be lying to me. “Is something going on between you two?”

Stellan regarded a statue of Jesus and the Virgin Mary. “Is that relevant?”

“I don't know, is it?”

His mouth curved up at the corners. We moved toward the altar.

“You believed her
immediately
when she said she wasn't trying to hurt us,” I said. “And maybe she's not, but I think I have the right to know if it's more than rational deduction that makes you want to hand her all our secrets.”

Stellan turned from a gilded cross. “Jealous, wifey?”

I bristled. “I'm just saying that you two obviously have a history of . . . something. At least friendship.”

Stellan's grin grew. “Oh, more than friendship.”

“See!”

“Let me give you a life lesson. Just because two people have a history doesn't mean they've pledged their eternal love and loyalty.” He raised an eyebrow. “Sometimes a hookup is just a hookup.”

“You've known each other forever. I don't believe anything is
just
anything.”

“I believe Elodie
because
I've known her for that long. Trust me,
kuklachka,
” he said when I tried to interrupt. “I know what I'm doing. I'm smart enough not to put faith in a girl just because she's pretty. I still question half of what
you
tell me, after all.”

I ignored the flirting. At least none of the potential Circle husbands had actually tried to hit on me. On the contrary, they were fairly businesslike about the whole arrangement, unlike Stellan. “I haven't lied to you. At least not since the time I lied to you. But I didn't know I could trust you then. I'd like to think I can trust you now.” Yes, it was trust with a healthy side of suspicion, but still.

He bumped my shoulder lightly with his. “If you can't trust your future husband, who can you trust?” he said in my ear, and dodged my elbow to his ribs.

When it became clear we weren't going to find anything here, we met back up with Jack and Elodie to do a quick recon of the
front of the church together. While we finished looking, I started to interrogate Elodie.

“Before I tell you my thoughts,” she said, “let me make sure I have this straight. You have a bracelet that may lead to the location of Alexander's tomb. You're searching for a matching bracelet that would complete that clue. You're looking for the tomb because the Circle wants the weapon against the Order, obviously, to stop the assassinations and get rid of them for good.”

I nodded.

“And something else?” she prodded, glancing between the three of us.

I scowled. Elodie had been sure I had a thing for Stellan since I first met her. “It's not anything like
that,
” I said. “Stellan's just helping.”

Elodie smirked. “I did not
actually
think you all were in some kind of three-way relationship, but nice to know that's the first place your mind goes. I mean, I noticed that you mentioned your mother.”

I met Jack's eye, and he shrugged. I guess we were telling her everything.

“The Order kidnapped my mom,” I said. “I want her back.” Close enough to the truth.

“And they killed Emerson Fitzpatrick,” Stellan said.

“What?” Elodie stopped dead, and Jack nearly ran into her. “Fitz is
dead
?”

“The Order killed him,” I repeated.

“How—when?”

“A couple weeks ago. Right after the wedding thing with Luc.”

Elodie started walking again, but she looked shell-shocked.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I didn't know you knew him that well.”

“Neither did I,” Stellan said.

Elodie pushed her hair behind her ears. “I . . . didn't. I just didn't realize that had happened.”

Someday I might be able to think about Mr. Emerson beyond a quick mention without this ache that made it hard to think, but today wasn't that day. I had to change the subject. “And besides all that, I don't want to be forced to marry somebody to fulfill the mandate when I seriously doubt it'll work.”

We headed out of the basilica and back into the night air. A silence had fallen over us as heavy as the fog. Our shoes made hollow clunks across the wooden pathways, and I shivered, wrapping my arms around myself. I wished I'd thought to grab a jacket.

Jack came up beside me and, without even asking if I needed it, shrugged out of his and put it around my shoulders.

“Thanks,” I mouthed. The jacket smelled like him—that combination of earthy and warm and a little sweet that brought back memories of things I shouldn't be thinking about.

Behind us, the San Marco Basilica rose gleaming white against the dark night. Its facade was an endlessly intricate amalgamation of arches and frescoes and soaring pillars, layered like the architects couldn't decide when to stop, and behind that, domes that reminded me a little of the Hagia Sophia.

Elodie lit a cigarette and flicked a burning bit of ash into the dark water we were walking over. The little orange ember winked out, and she seemed to compose herself. “So I was saying, I'm here because I saw your texts about the clue you found. ‘A union forged in blood.'”