? ? ?
We left Elodie cuffed to the chair, her long, slim legs crossed casually like she was just out for an espresso on a foggy evening. I’d texted Stellan and changed our meeting place, and now I raked my free hand through my hair. I hadn’t had time to dry it after I showered earlier, and it was tangling in the breeze as it dried. Soon, I turned around to heavy footfalls on the wooden pathway.
“I heard what happened with Eli Abraham,” Stellan said. “Are you all right?” He looked over my shoulder and stopped short when he saw Elodie.
“If it isn’t the third wheel,” Elodie said, waving her fingers at him.
Stellan turned back to Jack and me. “I’m assuming the light bondage isn’t recreational, so who’s going to fill me in?”
I told him as much as we knew over the strains of a string quartet that had started playing at a nearby bistro. Stellan chewed his lower lip, then pulled up another chair and sat knee-to-knee with Elodie. “The Dauphins didn’t send you? You haven’t told them what we’re doing? If we untie you, are you going to hurt us or run?”
“No, no, and no.” Elodie rolled her eyes. “I wouldn’t have shown up here alone and relatively unarmed if I wanted to hurt you or your precious purple-eyed girl, okay?”
“Relatively unarmed?” I said, but Stellan leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and locked eyes with Elodie.
“Are you telling the truth, El?”
She didn’t flinch. “Yes.” Then she looked up at Jack with the same flat determination. “Jackie, you know I am. You have always been able to tell when I’m lying. And after tonight, I’d think you’d want as much help as you can get to stop the Order for good.”
Jackie?
Jack took the keys to the handcuffs out of his pocket. Elodie batted her eyelashes at him sarcastically, and I was struck by the feeling of being an outsider. I knew Jack and Stellan had history, but hadn’t really thought about how Jack would have known Elodie for half his life, too. And try as I might, I couldn’t picture him as ever having been a “Jackie.”
“Okay,” I said. “But what’s in this for you?”
Elodie flicked the bangs out of her eyes, and I wondered, stupidly, how she kept her hair so perfect. She was part Asian, and I didn’t think there was any way the platinum blond was natural, but it always looked freshly done.
“What’s in it for me is that they’ll go after Luc eventually,” she said. “They’re hitting every other person who could be the One, in every Circle family. Maybe they’ve given Luc a reprieve since they already killed the Dauphins’ baby girl, but I don’t know. I’d rather stop them before they try.”
I didn’t think she was lying.
“And, of course,” Elodie went on, “everything that would come with finding the tomb, which I’m sure these two care about, too. Fame, fortune, acclaim . . .” The sarcastic note in her voice was back.
Jack palmed the back of his neck and shrugged at me. He was willing to trust her.
“Fine,” I said. It was later than we’d realized, though, and it’d be a lot easier to search for clues while the basilica and the museum were open rather than sneaking in, so we put whatever Elodie had to say on hold for a few minutes. I wasn’t about to give up this chance just because she thought she had a better idea.
Inside San Marco Basilica, Elodie was pointing out something on a fresco to Jack, so I said, “Split up; meet back here in ten?” and grabbed Stellan’s arm, pulling him down the center aisle.
“Yes, I trust her,” he said before I could open my mouth.
I sucked in an indignant breath.
“You are blindingly obvious,” he said, cutting me off again. “That’s how I know exactly what you wanted to ask.”
I frowned and made my way toward the first few pieces of artwork down one side of the church. He inspected the ones higher on the wall. I thought of Elodie smiling at him earlier and flashed back to the club in Istanbul I’d visited with them, which seemed like a lifetime ago. I remembered the look on her face while she watched some girl hit on him. Everyone’s interested in him in that way, she’d said.
I glanced over my shoulder, searching Stellan’s fine-boned profile for any hint that he might be lying to me. “Is something going on between you two?”
Stellan regarded a statue of Jesus and the Virgin Mary. “Is that relevant?”
“I don’t know, is it?”
His mouth curved up at the corners. We moved toward the altar.
“You believed her immediately when she said she wasn’t trying to hurt us,” I said. “And maybe she’s not, but I think I have the right to know if it’s more than rational deduction that makes you want to hand her all our secrets.”
Stellan turned from a gilded cross. “Jealous, wifey?”
I bristled. “I’m just saying that you two obviously have a history of . . . something. At least friendship.”
Stellan’s grin grew. “Oh, more than friendship.”