Map of Fates (21 page)

There was a long beat of silence. His head was clean enough, and I held his hair up and pulled the drain plug.

“I don't think you know anything,” he mumbled, letting his eyes close again as I turned on the tap and ran warm water over his head. “You always think you're right. But you're not. You are not always right.”

My heart gave a strangled twist. We were quiet for a second.

“You know,” he said, “when I first met you . . .” He opened one eye, and the twist spread to my stomach as I remembered Jack, on the Dauphins' balcony, admitting that he liked me as much as I liked him, all along. It started just like this. Don't say it, my mind whispered. I'm not sure I can handle this.
Don't
—

“When I first met you,” Stellan said again, sleepily, “I thought you were an idiot.”

His eyes slipped back closed, and the breath whooshed out of my lungs.

“Who gets on a plane with a stranger who just pulled a knife on her?” he said. “What is
wrong
with you? I could have been a serial killer.”

I half sniffed, half laughed, because he was right. He let me move his head back and forth under the faucet stream.

“But that stupid, naive girl I thought you were would have gotten herself killed off a long time ago,” he finally said, his voice fading. “Or at least she would have screamed and run the other way. You're not that much of an idiot after all.”

I paused, surprised, and turned off the tap. It took me a second to look back down at him, and when I did, he'd fallen asleep.

I let him sleep for a second while I got the first-aid kit from the cabinet. I couldn't figure out a good way to keep a bandage on his head, so I just sprayed some antibacterial stuff on the wound and nudged him with my knee. He blinked, looking around like he'd not only forgotten the conversation we'd just been having, but like he'd forgotten where he was, too.

“Now we figure out how to keep you awake for a few more hours,” I said wearily, handing him a towel for his head.

He made a face, but followed me into our suite, where Jack was
sleeping soundly on the far side of the bed, a pillow pulled over his head. I planted myself in the middle again, and Stellan climbed in next to me. I watched Jack's back rise and fall with his breath. As I watched, he twitched, mumbling something in his sleep. I put a hand on his shoulder and he relaxed, and we sat that way, swaying with the train, while Stellan flipped channels until he found what looked like
Family Feud
in French. We turned the sound on to just a whisper, and over the bump and rattle of the tracks, Stellan murmured translations of the winning answers to favorite snacks for a football match and vacation spots for retirees, and the fact that 53 percent of participants said French women started to dye their hair at age forty . . .

• • •

I woke up slowly, and immediately wanted to go back to sleep. I was absurdly cozy, pressed against a warm, broad chest, and the shaft of light when I half opened one eye told me it was still early. For the first time in a long time, though, I actually felt rested. I started to shift to look at my watch, but the arms around me pulled me back in tight. “Mmm, no,” he protested sleepily in my ear. “Comfortable.” And it was; the kind of comfortable where you'd be happy to stay in that semiconscious state forever. I nuzzled back into his arms.

And then all of a sudden, I was fully awake. That was not the soft British accent I might expect to hear first thing in the morning. My eyes fluttered open. It definitely wasn't Jack, because Jack was asleep facing me, our fingers inches away from touching, like we'd been holding hands and they'd come apart in the night.

Suddenly, everything from the day and night before came rushing back.

I bolted upright, blinking the sleep out of my eyes, my contacts sticky and dry. “You fell asleep,” I whispered to Stellan.

He blinked, too, barely awake, looking as surprised as I was at the indent in the blankets where I'd just been curled against his chest. “Apparently
we
fell asleep.”

I looked guiltily at Jack. Last thing I remembered, we were watching game shows and my hand was on his back.

“Lucky for you, I'm not dead. You're not very good at babysitting.” A small smile pulled at Stellan's lips. “Pretty great at cuddling, though.”

“Shh,” I hissed. I felt my face heat up and shot another glance at Jack. His dark brows drew down, and his mouth twitched like he was talking to someone in a dream. Without making eye contact, I whispered, “I'm going to—” I gestured with my head and made my way into the hall outside our room.

It was later than I thought. The sun had already risen, and I made my way to the space between the cars, where there were large windows on the doors. We were speeding past a vineyard, and a whitewashed stone house sat on the top of a rise behind it, and then a field of sunflowers, bright yellow, stretched as far as I could see.

I pulled my hair back into a ponytail, brushing through the tangles with my fingers. I wasn't sure whether it was a step forward or a step back that I'd been able to sleep at all after yesterday. What's more, I think I'd slept the whole night straight through. I couldn't remember the last time that happened.

So I'd just have to sleep sandwiched between them for the rest of my life.
That
wasn't horribly weird and wrong or anything.

A few minutes later, I turned around to footsteps. Stellan was wearing his own clothes again, slim jeans and a T-shirt, dark enough to not show dried blood. I felt myself blush again, thinking about how much of the night I must have spent with his arms wrapped around me. I wondered how we'd ended up that way, whether one
of us did it accidentally or whether we just migrated together while we slept, our unconscious minds giving in to the need to hold somebody. He paused when he noticed me, and I wondered if he was thinking the same thing.

He reached around me and hauled open the sliding door.

“Are you allowed to do that?” I backed up a few feet as the wind whipped past, like it could drag me right out the door. The sunflower fields had given way to a ravine, and the train sped along the edge of a cliff.

“Probably not.” Stellan tested his weight on one of the handholds at the door of the train, leaning out over the tracks so the wind pulled at his clothes, then leaned back in and lit a cigarette. He let a curl of smoke out of the corner of his mouth, and the breeze rushing past caught it and left not even a wisp.

I made a face at the cigarette, anyway, and he made a face back.

“You seem better,” I said. He was back to his old self, not soft and fuzzy around the edges like he'd been last night. “Have you checked on your head?”

He held his cigarette out the door and leaned over for me to look at it. I only had to part his hair and take a cursory glance to realize the cut was much smaller than it had been last night. “It's healing
really
quickly. Weirdly quickly.”

He pushed his hair back into place. “Maybe it's the magic skin thing. I guess I have always healed quickly. Never thought much about it.”

I would have been interested to know more about the “magic skin thing” if we had time. Maybe in the future.
If
Stellan was in my future at all, I reminded myself. In just a couple days, I'd know. We'd have the second bracelet, and hopefully have the way to the tomb. If all went well, I'd trade it to Alistair for my mom, and then . . . well,
then I'd decide. Whether to stay and be part of the world's most powerful secret society, or to get off the grid and make plans to stay off forever.

I leaned against the wall and played with my necklace. When I let go, my hands were smudged with black soot. I inspected the locket, and realized there was dust coming out of the holes in the pattern. I clicked it open.

The picture inside must have gone up in flames when we heated the necklace, because now, it was nothing but ash. I only had time to draw in a surprised breath before the wind rushing by whipped the delicate pieces of my old life into the air as easily as it had the cigarette smoke.

I blinked at the empty locket for a second, then closed it slowly.

“What was in it?” Stellan said after a second.

“A picture of my mom.” I wiped the last of the ash from the design and clenched the locket in my fist, against my heart.

Stellan stood quietly for a second, then stubbed out his cigarette and sat down on the top step, folding his long legs into the small space. He patted the step next to him.

I stayed a distance back. “Open train door, sheer cliff face, no thanks.”

He curled his lip. “Really? After everything else you've been through, you're scared of
this
?”

I had to admit, the breeze
did
kind of feel nice. I tried to ignore the plunge into the ravine and sat down next to him carefully, though I made sure to keep the hand that wasn't clutching my necklace on the doorjamb.

“See?” Stellan said. “Perfectly safe.”

I snorted. No, it wasn't.

Stellan rested his elbows on his knees, and we gazed out at the
rocky crags of the cliff, which soon turned to fields again, then the outskirts of a city. If the train was on time, we'd be in Cannes soon. I stood up, brushing off my jeans.

Stellan stood, too, and followed me back to our compartment.

I slid open the door. Jack was, remarkably, still asleep. I put a finger to my lips.

“We don't need to be quiet. He's had
plenty
of sleep,” Stellan said. He flopped on his stomach across Jack's side of the bed. “This is how I used to wake him up when we were younger. He'll appreciate it.” He pulled up the ankle of Jack's pants and yanked on his leg hairs. Jack sat straight up.

His alarm faded to annoyance when he saw Stellan. “Are you twelve years old?”

Stellan rolled off the bed, looking surprisingly chipper for someone in the aftermath of a concussion.

The speakers overhead crackled to life. There was an announcement in French, then in English. We were about to arrive in Cannes.

“I'll wake Elodie,” Stellan said.

Jack ran both hands through his hair. He watched Stellan leave, then found me, perched at the end of the bed. “Good morning,” he said.

The greeting sounded awkward. Less like
good morning
and more like other things.
Sorry I fell asleep and left you playing nurse.
Wondering what I thought about the conversation we'd had last night, about leaving together. Maybe a little something he'd never say out loud about the three of us sleeping in the same bed.

Or maybe the awkwardness was just me.

“Good morning.” I grabbed the remote from where we must have kicked it in the night and was about to turn off a morning news program and talk to him when I realized my own face was on TV again.

It was the video of me and Takumi Mikado, but this one turned quickly to a still of me, and then a frowning reporter. I turned it up. “What are they saying?”

Jack listened for a second, then glanced at me, alarmed. “They're saying the girl some people were calling a hero is wanted for questioning in the attack.”

A dark pit formed in my stomach. “Alistair is trying to turn the Circle against me so it makes sense if I disappear. So it looks like they got rid of me instead of me running away.”
You're the hero in our narrative,
he'd said. He could make me the villain just as easily.

But I still had to be out in public to find the twin bracelet. Alistair must not have considered that. “They're going to make me the most wanted person in the world. We're not going to be able to do anything.”

The door slid open, and I tensed, already paranoid. How many people on this train had seen this news broadcast? How many people in Cannes?

But Elodie and Stellan slipped inside and slid the door shut behind them. “Turn on—oh. You've already seen.”

“We've already seen.”

“Well”—Elodie held out a wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses—“we're going to be in Cannes in about ten minutes. Let's try not to get you arrested.”

C
olette had a car waiting for us at the train station. We kept as low a profile as we could until we were inside—besides anyone who might recognize me, there was still the question of how the Saxons had tracked us to the Arc de Triomphe. Elodie had done a thorough check of our electronics and found no bugs or tracking devices, but even she admitted that the Circle had technology she might not know about.

Cannes was no sleepy seaside town. We got caught in traffic on a street with palm trees running down the center, bordering the ocean. There was hardly an inch of bare sand showing between the bright umbrellas and beach towels, and an overly bronzed, heavyset man wearing only a Speedo lumbered in front of us through the stopped traffic.

“So this is the French Riviera,” I said.

Elodie pointed to a white hotel with navy turrets that dominated the skyline along the beachfront. “The Dauphins usually stay at the Carlton, but we'll be at Colette's private villa. She's still a little camera-shy.”

That was far better for us. I'm sure there were dozens of Circle
members here. For that matter, the Saxons themselves might be attending the festival. If they were, we'd really have to get to the bracelet before they noticed. They knew what it looked like.

On the right ahead, I saw the source of the traffic jam. A swarming crowd of people pushed out into the road, and as we got closer, I saw a banner that must be two stories high itself, proclaiming this to be the site of the
Festival de Cannes.
A flash of red leading up the stairs in front of it was surrounded by photographers in sun hats sitting cross-legged on the ground, cameras in their laps.

“The official opening ceremony is tomorrow, as you know,” Elodie said. “But the red carpet's tonight. The photographers wait all day to get a good spot.”

The traffic cleared when we got past the festival, and we sped the rest of the way to Colette's villa, which was on a cliff at the far end of the city. It was cream with black shutters, looking over a reflecting pool lined by palms and manicured hedges. Before we could get out of the car, Colette ran down the front steps while the driver got Elodie's bag out of the trunk. She was the only one of us who'd brought luggage, so Colette was getting a nearby department store to send the rest of us some essentials.

The tall hedges hid the villa from the surroundings, and I relaxed for the first time since we saw the news this morning.

“Lucien told me what happened,” Colette said, sweeping me into a hug and then kissing Jack on the cheek and throwing her arms around Elodie. “Are you okay? Are you all okay?”

“Besides a few minor injuries,” Stellan said. Colette tucked herself against his side, but he just squeezed her shoulder and let go.

I watched her back as she led Elodie and Jack into the villa, and remembered what Stellan had said on the boat.
You use whatever tools you have.

“You did the same thing to me,” I said. His hands in my hair on the plane, taking out my bobby pins, just hours after we met. The inappropriate remarks, directed straight at my overactive blushing mechanism.

He saw me watching Colette and seemed to understand. “I thought you'd be an easy target.”

We climbed the wide sandstone steps. “I think I knew it. I knew you wouldn't hurt me. That's why I got on the plane with you.”

Stellan opened the door. “What if you'd been wrong?”

I ducked through ahead of him. “I wasn't.”

Inside, we found everyone in a sitting room walled by glass, making it look like the room was made of the palm trees and vines outside. I took a seat next to Jack on the sofa, and he slipped an arm around my shoulders. He was taking the assertion that he no longer cared what anyone thought seriously. Elodie noticed and raised an eyebrow in our direction. I ignored her.

She cleared her throat. “As you all know, the bracelet we're here to get is going to be on display at the opening ceremony of the festival tomorrow, and that will be our best—and maybe our only—chance to steal it. So we'll need to be prepared.”

I looked around at all the nodding faces. We were becoming a well-oiled machine.

“Here's the plan,” Elodie said. “Before the main event tomorrow, there's a red-carpet photo call tonight. Colette and I will recon there. We'll figure out where the bracelet is located, and get a sense of what kind of security there is on it. Tomorrow night, Colette goes to the opening ceremony. When the time's right, she'll signal me, and I'll trip the electricity, which should kill security on the display boxes for a good forty-five seconds before backup generators kick in. Stellan will be with Colette, acting like a bodyguard, and when the lights
go out, he'll grab the bracelet and replace it with this one, which Colette found at a thrift shop earlier.” She held up a passably similar piece of gold costume jewelry. “And then everyone gets the hell out as fast as they can.”

Everyone nodded, except me. “So what's my job?”

“You and Jack make us piña coladas so we can celebrate when we get back.” Elodie spread her hands with a flourish. “Listen. You are the single most recognizable person in the world of the Circle right now, and a fugitive outside it. If anyone saw you, it could complicate things. And you,” she said to Jack, “are not as recognizable, but there are quite a few Circle members who think you're a traitor and would gladly take your head off, which would really screw up the whole plan. You'll need to stay out of sight, too.”

I started to protest, but Jack chimed in. “You're right. We'll stay here.”

I bristled and pulled out from under his arm, but then I gave up. “Fine. I'm not going to screw up the plan just because I want to be part of it. I think not using us is silly, but okay. What else?”

“That's it. For now, we lie low and get ready for a heist.”