The Conspiracy of Us Page 4

  “I was told to approach you specifically.” Jack pulled out the chair next to me. “Is it possible your mother wouldn’t want you to know about them?”

  Yes. It was more than possible.

  I’d never made a secret of wishing we had somebody, and she’d never made it a secret that she was bitter about my dad. It must have been easier for her to tell me he had no family than to say I couldn’t meet them. Anger bubbled up hot inside me. I half wanted to call her right now and yell at her. Moving for her job was one thing. Hiding a whole family was another.

  “You said distant family?” I asked. Stellan was still watching us. I turned my back to him, facing Jack. “Like, how distant? Siblings? Cousins?”

  Jack held up his hands helplessly. “There are quite a few family members. I’m not sure which ones are related to you.”

  “Why wouldn’t they just call if they wanted to see me?” A new song started, louder, and I leaned in close to Jack.

  “They weren’t sure of your identity, so I was sent to verify the information,” he said.

  And then it hit me. Jack Bishop was at Lakehaven High to spy on me. All this time—sitting next to me in class, talking about our families, that photo—had been surveillance. God, he’d probably asked me to prom because the person on the phone told him Stellan would be here tonight. After everything else he’d just told me, it shouldn’t matter, but all of a sudden, I couldn’t meet his eyes. I didn’t want him to see the well of humiliation spilling over in mine.

  I stood up abruptly and made my way around the table, running my fingertips over the backs of the chairs. “Then who is he?” I pointed to Stellan. “And who is this family that they’d do that rather than calling? Or e-mailing? Or writing a letter on fancy stationery?”

  “They run your world, sweetheart.” Stellan strolled up, slipping his phone into a pocket inside his jacket. I saw that the teachers had left.

  Jack jumped to standing. “Stellan.” He cast his eyes toward the group of kids dancing nearest to us. “Not now.”

  “Like, they’re in the government?” I’d always pictured my dad as a regular guy who ran from the responsibility of being a father, but maybe his family was rich and powerful, and they’d sent my non–rich and powerful mom off with a little hush money so they wouldn’t have to deal with his illegitimate kid.

  “Hey,” a giggling voice said. Three of the prom princesses pounced on Stellan, their sashes proudly displayed against their fake tans and sequined dresses. “Do you go to Brickfield?” Jessa Marin, in a pastel pink gown with wide cutouts at the midriff, batted her eyes and touched his arm.

  Jack put a hand on my back and steered me toward the door. I shook him off. “Where are they?” I repeated. “If I agree to meet them, where are we going?”

  He didn’t answer, and I turned to see him stopped dead, his face illuminated by the cool blue glare of his phone.

  “What?” I said.

  Stellan watched us over the heads of the three girls as Jack made a call. Over the music, I heard the very faint ding of voice mail picking up. Jack cursed quietly. “Call me back,” he said, shooting an uneasy glance at Stellan, then at me.

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “What’s going on now?”

  “I might ask you the same thing,” he said under his breath, then slipped the phone into the breast pocket of his jacket. “Let’s just go. Quickly.”

  I twisted my locket around my fingers. “I really don’t know if this is a good idea—”

  Jack faced me. “Avery, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to be like this, but they want to know you. You’ll want to know them. I promise, it’ll be all right. I’ll make sure of it.”

  If I did this, it wouldn’t be because of promises from him. I wished I could call my mom, but I clearly couldn’t count on her to tell the truth.

  Let myself live a little. Wasn’t that what tonight was about? This would be living more than a little. This could change my life.

  “All right,” I said. I let go of my locket, and my fingertips tingled. “Okay.”

  Jack started toward the door immediately.

  Stellan extracted himself from the girls and came after us.

  “Is he going to try to hurt us?” I said, glancing backward over my shoulder. “Should you call the police or something?”

  Jack didn’t answer, but as we passed the photographer, he slowed and took out his phone again. His eyes darted from the phone, to the gym doors, to the phone . . . to me. “No, he won’t hurt you. He’d get in trouble if he did anything to you.” He clicked his phone off, then rubbed his forearm with his opposite hand and cursed again, not so softly this time. “Go with him.”

  I stared at him. “Excuse me?”

  Jack scrubbed both hands through his thick dark hair and shot a pained glance at Stellan. “Don’t tell him anything.”

  “What? No way. What did that text say?” I was starting to panic. “He doesn’t even work for my family, does he?”

  “For you, it’s practically the same,” he murmured. “The Saxons will be there tomorrow, and I will, too. You’ll be fine until then.”

  He raised his voice as Stellan approached. “If you’re going to be this difficult, she’s yours,” he said. “We’ll collect her later.”

  I glared at Jack. First he’d spied on me, now he was abandoning me? “You can’t just decide to let him have me,” I said. “Tell me where to find my family and I’ll go meet them myself. I have a car.”

  Stellan laughed. “She’s funny,” he said, and then turned to me, the smile falling off his face. “Listen, if you are who he claims you are, you’ll meet them soon enough, and everyone will be happy.”

  I glared daggers at Jack, whose eyes pleaded with me. It seemed like he was telling the truth about this. If going with Stellan was what I had to do to meet my family, I guessed I would.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Finally.” Stellan propelled me toward the back door.

  And then I remembered something. Jack had said he’d see me tomorrow. “Where are we going?” I asked Stellan. If we were going as far as Minneapolis or something, my mom really would kill me.

  We stepped into the parking lot, and Stellan opened the passenger door of a little black car parked in the principal’s space. I got in. “Parlez-vous français, cherie?” he said, and slammed the door.

  CHAPTER 8

  The plane pitched, and I grabbed the armrests so hard, my fingernails hurt, like holding on would save me if we fell from the sky.

  France. We were going to France. In a matter of hours, I’d gone from moving to Nowhere, Maine, to this. Visions of summers in Europe with exotic, wealthy relatives danced in my head. I knew I was getting ahead of myself—they probably just wanted to satisfy their curiosity and send me back home with a souvenir key chain.

  But Stellan hadn’t taken me to a regular airport. We were on a private plane nicer than any house I’d ever lived in. And not only that, but the second I’d heard we were going to France, I’d told Stellan I didn’t have a passport.

  He said it didn’t matter.

  I thought I’d heard wrong, but the fact that I had no passport and was on my way to Europe did. Not. Matter.

  I rested my forehead against the cool of the plane window and stared out at the endless blackness, broken only by the blinking white and red lights on the plane’s wings.

  Stellan was taking me to Paris, Jack had a British accent, and they could get me into another country without a passport. They run your world, Stellan had said.

  I glanced at Stellan. As soon as we’d taken off, he’d stretched out on one of the ivory leather couches and fallen asleep. He snored lightly, the white T-shirt he’d had on under his dress shirt pulling tighter across his chest with every inhale. One hand rested on his stomach, rising and falling with the easy rhythm of his breath. His other hand clutched the
handle of his knife—dagger, sword, whatever it was—even in sleep.

  There were other couches, and my seat leaned back so far, I could lie down, but there was no way I was sleeping with the heady combination of anxiety and exhilaration coursing through me. I crossed and uncrossed my legs, and my foot wouldn’t stop bouncing.

  How had my mom gotten involved with this? An aristocrat’s son studying abroad, falling in love with a commoner? Or a powerful politician seducing a young girl, then ditching her when she got pregnant? How had I not known my mom’s life was a soap opera? And what, if anything, did the mandate have to do with it?

  The plane pitched, and I drew a sharp breath. Stellan sat up and rubbed his eye with the back of his hand, the hint of soft sleepiness in his face and the blond halo of his tousled hair making him less intimidating for a second.

  I’d expected Stellan to look less epic in the light and without half the prom staring at him like he was a Greek god, but I was wrong. Where Jack was always perfectly put together, Stellan might have cut his mop of hair himself, and he’d slept in his clothes. And still, he was attractive in an almost unbelievable way, like he glowed from the inside.

  Well, I didn’t care if he was a Greek god. I didn’t trust him for a second. And that would have been true even if he hadn’t pulled a knife on me a few hours ago.

  He cracked his neck from side to side, then stood and stretched his arms above his head, raising his shirt to expose a strip of toned midriff.

  I averted my eyes, but not before he caught me and smirked knowingly. “We’re landing soon. I’m going to clean up,” he said, scrutinizing me. “You might want to do the same.”

  I tucked my feet under my skirt. I knew I barely looked presentable for a small-town dance, much less for meeting with government officials in Paris, but it wasn’t my fault. I hadn’t had time to change out of this punch-stained dress or wash my face or anything. I was lucky I happened to have a hairbrush and contact-lens drops in my bag.

  “What’s the mandate?” I said, putting on a veneer of bravado I didn’t feel, but that I’d need if I was going to get any information out of him. I’d already run through all my questions once, in the car after we left prom, but Stellan had ignored me and spent the whole drive making official-sounding phone calls in French.

  He reached into an overhead compartment. “Nothing that concerns you.”

  I pressed my lips together. “You said something about a search. Can you at least tell me what you’re searching for?”

  He retrieved a small leather duffel bag and tossed it onto the seat. “What’s everyone always searching for?” With a glint in his eye, he leaned in close to my ear. I tensed. “Treasure,” he whispered.

  The breath whooshed out of my lungs, and I frowned up at him. He chuckled.

  “Is my, um.” The word still felt strange. “Is my family from England?” I said.

  He took a folded shirt out of the bag. “The Saxons are from England; maybe they’re your family.”

  A smile pulled at my lips. My relatives had British accents. “And you don’t work for them?”

  He reached up one slim arm to pull down the combat boots he was wearing when I first saw him. They hit the floor with two hollow thumps. “I represent another family of the Circle.”

  I traced the cream-colored leather of the seat through the lace overlay of my dress. “Which is what, exactly?”

  Stellan paused, then turned, his hand resting on the overhead compartment so he loomed over me. “The Circle of Twelve?”

  I shook my head.

  He narrowed his eyes. “They claim you’re family, but you didn’t know your father, and you don’t know what the Circle is.”

  I pressed my lips shut. Jack had said not to tell him anything. I didn’t think I had anything to tell, but Stellan had seemed especially curious since the dance, so I wasn’t going to risk it.

  Stellan shook the creases out of the clean shirt, then stripped off the one he was wearing. I tried not to watch him, but my breath caught when he turned to put his bag away.

  A network of scars crisscrossed his back. They were startling, long and slightly raised, but didn’t look like any scars I’d ever seen. Not fresh ones, like when Joshua Metcalf had been in that car accident in tenth grade, and not old ones, like the one on my mom’s leg she got falling off a horse when she was little.

  These were translucent, and they disappeared into two tattoos, both black, made topographical by the scar tissue underneath. One was a sword, starting between his shoulder blades and traveling down his spine. The other looked like a sun, just above it.

  I stared at my headrest. The same sun symbol was embroidered onto each seat and etched into the mirror behind the bar and on every door in the plane. It had a large circle in the middle, with short rays coming out of it.

  My eyes snapped to Stellan’s back, to the scars, to the sun tattoo, to the sword, until he closed the bathroom door behind him with a bang. I slumped back into my seat.

  The Circle of Twelve. Maybe they weren’t government, but a group of European crime families. A French and British mafia. Was there a French and British mafia? Maybe that sun was their symbol. And those scars were . . . some kind of brand? Or just an old injury.

  And there was also Jack’s tattoo, which was different. So . . . rival families?

  My excited side conceded a little to my nervous side, and I buried my face in my hands, not sure whether to cry or laugh or scream. I decided to take out my bobby pins. My head hurt.

  Since Stellan had taken the bathroom, I peered through the rows of crystal liquor bottles to the mirror behind the bar. I felt like a mess, but I looked even worse. Besides the stained dress, my mascara had smeared, and my hair was a wreck.

  I wet a cocktail napkin and wiped some of the dark rings from under my eyes, then turned to my hair.

  The bathroom door clicked open, and I dropped the pin I was holding.

  “Jumpy,” Stellan said, easing the door closed. “Afraid of flying? I should have brought the big plane instead. Less turbulence.”

  This was the small plane?

  Stellan tightened the knot on a slim black tie and reached over me to flip on an espresso maker. “Coffee?”

  I stepped aside and side-eyed the espresso cups he set on the counter. I wanted to get him talking. If he wouldn’t answer any of my questions directly, maybe he’d at least let something useful slip. “I would have taken you for a vodka-in-the-morning kind of guy,” I said, measuring his reaction.

  He loaded the machine with coffee grounds. “Why’s that?”

  “I want to say because your accent sounds Russian and that’s the stereotype.” I tapped a bobby pin on the sink. “But really, from what I’ve seen so far, it’s just what I would expect from you.”

  He filled a small cup and set it in front of me with a quick laugh. “Half Russian,” he said in that light accent. “The other half’s Swedish, so feel free to make insulting Viking references, too. Besides, they don’t have my favorite vodka on this plane.”

  He sipped a second cup of espresso and gazed silently out the window at the fingers of pink sunrise stretching across the sky. So much for getting him chatting.

  “So you and Jack are what, bodyguards?” I took my place at the sink again, concentrating on the mirror.

  He smiled. “Has anyone ever told you that you look like one of those dolls?” he said. “A . . . kuklachka. How do you say it in English? With the white skin and the big eyes.”

  “A porcelain doll.” My pale complexion and dark hair would have been enough, but add dark eyes and cheeks that flushed too easily and too often—like I was determined for them not to do right now—and that sealed it. He wasn’t the first to make the comparison. “Why does the family you work for care about me if I’m related to someone else?” I said, steering the conversation back around.

  “A prett
y little porcelain doll,” he said. “That’s you. Kuklachka.”

  I wasn’t sure if he really did want something from me, but if he thought taking his shirt off and acting like we were on some kind of bizarre vacation was going to make me flustered enough to reveal secret information, he was wrong. It was only making me a little flustered.

  I shook it off and reminded myself that even if he’d been civil since the prom, something about him still made me uncomfortable, which meant it was deeply messed up to let him flirt with me at all, much less react to it. But if he was trying to get me to let my guard down, I could do the same to him.

  I yanked out a few more bobby pins, which clinked as I pitched them into the trash can under the sink. The next pin stuck, shellacked in place with hairspray. I pulled harder, and hissed through my teeth when I yanked out a few strands of hair. It wouldn’t help to take my nerves out on my scalp.

  “Here.” Stellan set his espresso cup down on the sink and peered into my mess of hair, his fingers moving mine aside.

  I ducked away. That was going a little far. “Absolutely not.”

  He moved my hands off my head. “It reflects poorly on me for you to show up looking like you’ve been in a bar brawl.”

  I twisted away, and he sighed. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “Maybe if I knew what you were going to do to me, I wouldn’t be so worried you’d stab me with a bobby pin,” I said under my breath. Honestly, I wasn’t that worried—it did seem like it was his job to deliver me unharmed. I just didn’t want to let him think he was getting in my head.

  He ignored me and placed my hands firmly at my sides.

  I was too exhausted to protest anymore. And who knew? Maybe it’d be good for me to let him think he was getting in my head. Plus he was right—the stuck pin was making it look like I had a wing on top of my head. He worked it out with a surprisingly gentle touch and pushed my hands away when I tried to take over again.