The Conspiracy of Us

I glanced at the beautiful gold dress balled up in the corner, bloody, ruined. A whole swatch of sequins was ripped off the front, like a gaping wound. I must have grabbed my necklace earlier, because there was a bloody thumbprint on it, and a smear of red where it lay on my chest.

The shaking that had started in my hands expanded, until my whole body was trembling and I couldn’t stop it.

I scrubbed my hands until the water ran clear, and then scrubbed some more.

A rap at the door startled me, and in the mirror I saw Jack slip into the room. The door clicked shut behind him.

He came up behind me at the sink, and I felt him watching over my shoulder. I opened my mouth, but I didn’t know what to say. Instead, I held up my hands. My skin was pink and scrubbed raw, darker red stains still under my fingernails. I dropped them back under the tap.

We stood in silence, both watching the water splash over my skin, and after a few seconds, he put his own hands under the faucet, too.

I tensed, but he didn’t let go. He ran his thumb down my fingers, one by one. I felt myself trying to say it’s fine, I’m fine, I don’t need your help, but it wouldn’t come out. All I could do was stare at his hands, big and strong and scarred and cradling mine so gently.

“Look away a second,” he murmured.

The window next to the sink was streaked with dirt and age, so the Paris I saw outside was as hazy and distorted as it was oblivious to what had happened on this side of the glass. My eyes skimmed over the cream buildings, the cobbled street, the dark ironwork of the Eiffel Tower in the distance, lighting on the bursts of red that slashed the neutrals of the city. A little girl’s jacket, a bright store awning, a wide flower bed running down one side of the street.

The cold scraping under my fingernails told me Jack was cleaning them with a knife, which should have scared me but didn’t. I watched him in the mirror, his dark brows knitted together, his lower lip caught between his teeth. I hadn’t noticed earlier, but a new bruise was spreading under his left eye. When he said I could, I looked back down and the bursts of red on my hands were gone. My heart flared with gratitude.

And then I realized my hands were still in his, and cradled them to my chest. They left wet blotches on the flowered sundress.

He watched me in the mirror. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left you alone. You’ve had quite a shock.”

Absurdly, I couldn’t stop thinking about his perfect, proper British accent.

“I’m fine.” I grabbed a paper towel and turned away from the mirror, from him.

While I was changing clothes, he’d gone to a pharmacy down the street. He held out an assortment of painkillers, and I plucked two ibuprofen from his palm. He handed me a third, and I watched him put the rest in a bag. This was Jack Bishop, Lakehaven High new kid. In a Prada store, in Paris, offering me painkillers after I’d almost been murdered.

A laugh choked up in my throat, and I very nearly lost it again. Instead, I sat on the closed toilet seat and swallowed the ibuprofen dry.

The music still tinkled out of the speakers. Why had no one stopped it? Someone should have stopped it. “Turn off the music,” I said.

Jack stared at me, pharmacy bag in hand.

“Turn off the music,” I said again. “Please. And can I use your phone?” After a second, he handed it to me and left.

I made myself take a deep breath.

I probably was close to going into shock. I had this fuzzy, half-there feeling, the constant replay of the knife cutting into my skin, the smell, the squishing noise as the killer’s head hit the marble floor. The thought that I’d seen both Stellan and Luc kill people, which probably meant Jack had killed people, too. That my family killed people. And people wanted to kill them.

I dialed my mom’s number, then our house. Both rang and rang, and finally clicked over to my mom’s tinny voice on the voice mail again. I couldn’t leave what had just happened on a message.

The music stopped in the middle of a note. I almost wished I hadn’t told Jack to turn it off. It was too quiet now. My breath echoed, too fast. Too panicky.

No. I was alive. I was fine. I really wished I could talk to my mom. I took deep breaths over and over, in through my nose, out through my mouth.

I sat up straight as the door opened and Jack slipped inside. He spread bandages from the plastic pharmacy bag across the sink.

Would mafia families have somebody bring me bandages when I was hurt? I wasn’t sure why I wasn’t just asking it straight out: Who are you? What are you? Maybe I didn’t really want to know. In the space of one day, I’d turned into what I thought I’d never be: a naive, hopeful idiot. Despite my wariness, I’d convinced myself this was fun. I’d spent all day smiling at famous people and admiring Paris and playing dress-up. I was thinking about going to a ball. All the while I had willfully ignored the ominous signs I didn’t want to see.

I smoothed the pleats of the dress over my knees. I just had to do it. I had to ask. I opened my mouth just as Jack turned, his gray eyes darker than usual, a deep crease between his brows.

“Who are you?” he said.

I closed my mouth. Blinked. “Who am I?”

He leaned against the sink, spinning the top on the bottle of painkillers. “I agree it wasn’t a mistake. But you don’t fit the pattern in any way, and the Order is more careful than that.”

“Pattern? Shouldn’t I be the one asking who you are, since it’s so common for all of you to be attacked?” I started to stand, but I felt dizzy. I sat down again, rubbing the knot on my forehead.

“I just want to know if you’re telling me the truth,” he said, a little more gently. “Are you really as in the dark as you seem?”

I wanted to be calm. I wanted to be rational. Why was this not making enough sense for me to feel rational? I clenched my hands between my knees and spoke in a slow, measured voice. “What are you talking about? What do you think I’m supposed to know?”

“I’m talking about the fact that I was sent to small-town America to gather information about a distant family member. Unusual, but nothing unheard of. Considering everything else that’s going on, it wasn’t shocking for the Dauphins to send Stellan to investigate. But then, just as we’d gotten it all sorted and I was about to take you to meet your family, I got this bizarre message from my mentor, telling me to put myself on the line to keep you safe.”