He stepped out of the way, and I stopped dead. In the center of the darkened living room was what I could only call a shrine.
Between when he heard the news and now, Luc must have raided every newsstand in Venice, and half the religious paraphernalia shops. He’d arranged Virgin Mary statues, crosses, and flickering candles with unidentifiable saints painted on the front in an elaborate diorama around a collage of magazine photos of Eli and Takumi. Eli kissing a Brazilian supermodel. Takumi shirtless on a beach. In the center was the cover of Sunday Six’s most recent album.
Luc fell into a chair set in front of the shrine and made an awkward sign of the cross over his chest. We all stared. Somehow all that came out of my mouth was, “Are you even Catholic?”
“No.” Luc sighed again. “But it seemed appropriate, non? And it was all I could find on short notice. When in Rome.”
“When in Venice, actually,” Elodie murmured.
My mouth was still hanging open. “I’m sorry,” Jack said low in my ear. “He doesn’t mean to be disrespectful—”
“And this is the only jacket I have with me dark enough to be appropriate for mourning.” Luc plucked at the shoulder of his blazer, purple velvet with a subtle floral pattern, if you could really call anything about it subtle. “But I think they both would have liked it. I only met Eli once, and Takumi a few times, but I felt like we had a connection.”
Luc picked up a bottle of wine he already had open on the shrine and took a swig, then passed it back to us. Elodie shrugged and took a drink.
I rubbed my forehead. I’d seen them both die. It was horrible for everyone. But still, it felt weird. “Even if the Order coerced him, Eli murdered somebody,” I said. “Isn’t it strange to look at him as if he were as much of a victim as Takumi?”
They all looked at me, a grim set to each of their mouths. “You don’t understand the Order,” Stellan said. “They do terrible things. Eli had younger siblings. Maybe the Order threatened them. He obviously felt like he had no choice.”
“But to kill someone—”
“Aren’t you planning to give up the thing that could stop these murders to save your mom?” Elodie cut in. “How is it so different?”
“I—” I suddenly felt sick. I studied the shrine again, the happy, smiling faces of two people I’d seen die just hours ago. The lump in my throat that maybe should have been there all night was rising.
I pulled out my phone. In a few seconds, I had pulled up a photo of Dev Rajesh. I leaned the phone against a candle on the shrine. “He was a victim, too.”
Elodie set down the bottle of wine and found a picture of Liam Blackstone to go next to Dev. On Jack’s phone, Malik Emir. Stellan rested a hand on Luc’s shoulder, and I knew they were thinking about Luc’s baby sister.
“And to the rest of them, all our brothers killed by the Order,” Luc said quietly.
Jack took out his wallet and pulled out the photo of him and Mr. Emerson on Mont Blanc, the photo Mr. Emerson had left as a clue. He set it in the shrine, too, then squeezed my hand.
“There’s a tradition I know of,” Elodie said. “You open a window to let the spirits of the dead out, like smoke.”
I released a shaky breath.
“You’re not forgetting them, but you’re allowing them—and yourself—to move on.”
I felt my nails digging into my palms. We were still in the middle of this. I wasn’t sure any moving on could happen right now.
But Luc ran across the room and opened the balcony door. He grabbed a package of incense and lit one of the sticks in a candle flame and waved the smoke back and forth across the shrine. The smoke thickened as we passed the bottle of wine between the five of us. It was sweet, syrupy. I kept one eye on the smoke, but none of it was drifting out the open door at all.
• • •
An hour later, we were down almost two bottles of wine. A few of the candles had burned out, but the rest flickered over the photos. Cream rugs covered the hardwood floors in the apartment, and there was a small kitchen and two overstuffed leather couches that all five of us lounged on now. I stayed a careful distance from Jack on one couch, while Elodie’s legs sprawled across Stellan’s lap on the other.
Luc sat on the furry rug at Stellan and Elodie’s feet, and he set to opening another bottle of wine, clumsily. I got the feeling he’d already had a little to drink before we arrived. “Is it horrible to say this is fun?” he said. “It’s like a—what is the American word? Slumber party? A very tragic slumber party.”
We should have been using the time to plan our trip to Greece, but I realized I was glad we weren’t. “Fun” might not have been the right word, but it really was like a slumber party in the cozy apartment, and after the exhaustion and frustration about the clue that wasn’t a clue and all the literal and figurative blood on my hands, I needed that right now. I think we all did.
Elodie leaned over to grab the wine from Luc, and Stellan pushed off the couch and went into the other room.
I stretched and got up, too, and made my way across the room to the small balcony. Jack followed. He stopped me at the French doors and peered outside. “Seems safe.”
I looked out over the piazza below, where a steady rain was now falling, making the cobblestones shiny in the lone streetlight. The piazza was a rectangle, enclosed on three sides by buildings with barred windows and planter boxes, and bordered by a canal on the fourth. It was chilly out, and I shivered even though I was still wearing Jack’s coat.
“You okay?” Jack said.
I hugged my arms around myself and nodded.
“Do you really think Greece is a good idea?” he said.
I looked up sharply. “Of course. Eight days, remember? Do you not think it’s a good idea?”