Off the landing was a narrow street lined with cafes, their rickety tables spilling onto the cobblestones, and finally, between them, lumbered a familiar stocky guy in a stained gray T-shirt and khakis. Jack hopped down from the wall, brushing dust off his dark jeans. “There he is.”
I readjusted my wide-brimmed hat over my face, and we made our way down the steps to a bench next to the carousel. The music stopped, and a round of kids got off while another hopped on.
“Have you got them?” Jack said.
The guy wheezed, pushing greasy red hair back from his face. “It is taking longer than I anticipated,” he said in a heavy French accent. “Complications.”
“You told us it would be this week,” I said, my voice rising. “How much longer?”
“One week longer.” He wiped his nose. “Perhaps two.”
I gritted my teeth. Over Jack’s shoulder, an opera singer had replaced the accordion player.
“That’s too long,” I said. “Is there any way to rush it? We’ll pay more.” I was trying to make my voice sound annoyed, but it came out somewhere between defeated and panicked.
“Non,” he said. “There is no way.”
I felt like cursing, and throwing things, and crying. Instead, I said, “Forget it, then.” We walked away from the guy’s protests, and I took the flight after flight of steep steps into the hills of Montmartre two at a time. I think I’d almost been expecting this. It couldn’t be that easy.
“Hey,” Jack said, catching up to me. “It’ll be okay, yeah? We’ll figure something out.”
I nodded silently, but didn’t slow down. I felt Jack watching me. There was one other way to get around Europe, and he hadn’t been subtle about the fact that he thought it was the best idea.
The Saxons could help us. My newfound family.
It had also been two weeks since we’d seen them.
If I was being honest with myself, I was practically obsessed with the idea of my father, and the brother and sister I’d just learned about. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to get to know them, and to give them the chance to help. But with so much on the line, I couldn’t take any chances. Could I trust these strangers when my mother’s life hung in the balance?
Jack stopped me at the top landing and pulled off his sunglasses. I tensed, not ready to have this conversation again right now. But he just said, “There have got to be other delinquents in this city who can get us fake passports on short notice. We’ll just pop in to every dodgy bar we pass until we find them. All right?”
A desperate laugh escaped my throat, but I nodded, and actually did relax a bit. Maybe there was another way. He took my hand, dragging a thumb across my palm. Goose bumps rose on my arms, like they always did when he touched me like that.
Jack noticed and dropped my hand so abruptly, it fell to my side. He pushed the sunglasses back over his face and turned away from the stairs, down a side street. “We should go to the market on the way home. We’re out of coffee.”
I rubbed my arms to banish the chills and caught up with him. I wasn’t allowed to feel like that.
Despite everything that had happened, Jack and I were not together. Not dating. Certainly not boyfriend and girlfriend.
Early on, we’d talked. It would be too distracting. He didn’t want to put me in an uncomfortable position. No matter what we felt for each other, it would be best to put our relationship on the back burner until we were no longer in a life-or-death situation.
I knew he was right. Besides, it was bad enough that he was helping me hide from the Saxons. If they found out that something inappropriate was going on . . .
Yes, we’d slipped up sometimes. Just last week, we were sitting on the couch, flipping through Napoleon history books, and we thought we’d made a breakthrough about a museum in Austria. Without thinking about it, I’d kissed him. He’d kissed me back like he’d never wanted to do anything more in his life, which only made it more awkward minutes later, when he’d let go of me like he’d just committed a crime. The Austrian museum turned out to be nothing, anyway.
So Jack and I were friends now. Teammates. People who lived together—slept in the same room in our tiny apartment—but in separate beds. People who tried really hard not to remember how it felt to wake up with my head on his chest.
Or maybe that was just me.
I looked up at him, heavy brows over gray eyes like storm clouds, the square line of his jaw, a knit beanie that disguised his dark hair.
We were the definition of it’s complicated.
“Yeah.” I adjusted my own dark glasses. “Coffee. And more Parisian document forgers. It’ll be fine.”
We were almost back to the apartment when my phone rang. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Jack sigh.
It had also been two weeks of Stellan. He was across Paris, at the Dauphins’, but ever since we learned he was part of the lost thirteenth bloodline of the Circle of Twelve, he might as well have been living in our little apartment with us. And though no one besides us knew it, he was also the One. The heir of Alexander the Great. And the person who I, according to the Circle’s ancient mandate, was meant to marry in order to find Alexander’s tomb. Of course, I didn’t believe that part for a second.
I answered the phone. “Do you need something?”
“Only wondering what you’re doing today,” he said casually. A car horn sounded up the street from us just as one honked in the background on the phone, and I could picture Stellan weaving between little black Vespas near the Louvre, out on an errand for the Dauphins.
“Nothing important,” I answered. Jack and I paused on the curb as a red Fiat sped by, then continued across the cobblestones and around the overgrown garden on our corner.
Jack pulled off his hat and ran a hand through his hair. He pretended he thought the whole thing was as ridiculous as I did. That me marrying Stellan wouldn’t do anything. But he’d grown up in the Circle. The union in the mandate, between the One and the girl with the purple eyes, meant marriage to him, like it did to the rest of the Circle. I knew it bothered him more than he’d say.