Stellan, Elodie, and Luc had convinced the Dauphins they just happened to be at Cannes when everything happened, and they were back in Paris, Elodie’s bullet wound starting to heal.
Last night, Colette had called us. Though the rest of Cannes had been canceled, Paris Fashion Week was just beginning. Madame Dauphin had gotten it postponed once, while she’d been pregnant, and she wasn’t going to push it back again. They were just going to step up security and move forward, and Colette’s friend and distant Dauphin cousin Emilia Deschamps was walking in the first show.
Through her, Colette had just learned that Lydia and Cole Saxon would be there as honored guests.
We’d tried to contact Lydia a few times since Cannes, but she hadn’t answered. Neither had my father. They didn’t have my blood and Stellan’s, but they knew about the virus, and that was bad enough. Without me fulfilling the mandate, and without any other gain in power from the tomb, I wasn’t sure what they’d do with that knowledge.
So we were going to confront them at the Fashion Week show. They wouldn’t be expecting us, and we’d be ready to handle anything they might do. I hoped I could reason with them, and we could come to some semblance of a truce, especially because I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do about the Circle. I was so recognizable now, it’d be hard to disappear. And even with my mom back, with it no longer a hypothetical, I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
I put on the clothes Colette had sent over—a black beaded minidress, a military-inspired jacket, and chunky heels from the new collection we were seeing today. Then Jack and I—and my mom, who’d been with me every second since we’d gotten her back—made our way from Montmartre down to the Carrousel du Louvre, the mall right under the museum.
Colette and Luc met us out front, and Luc led us through mobs of paparazzi yelling not just Colette’s name, but mine, too. The news had stopped reporting me as a suspect in Takumi’s death, but that didn’t stop the Circle from speculating about both that and Cannes. And it didn’t stop the media and the world from realizing that the girl in the middle of the Eli Abraham tragedy was at the Cannes bombing and was also Colette LeGrand’s new best friend.
Circle or not, everyone loved intrigue, especially when it involved famous people. And now the scandalous famous person was me.
We bypassed hordes of extremely thin girls in extremely strange clothing and made our way down the hall. Elie Saab. Miu Miu. Alexander McQueen. Chanel.
Colette led us to Emilia’s show. There were probably only a hundred or so people here, but it was a tiny room, crowded and buzzing. We had seats in the front row, and I watched for my siblings.
Stellan and Jack were posted at the back of the room. If the twins made any attempt to kidnap me or Stellan or steal our blood, they’d be taken down in a second.
But Lydia and Cole never showed up, and soon an electronic beat boomed out of the speakers in the ceiling, and a whole line of models in tweed pantsuits, or mirrored jackets with nothing under them, or boxy cocktail dresses like mine started parading down the catwalk. People lined both sides of the runway, snapping photos on their phones and taking notes and crowding in from the back to get a better look.
I watched the clothes, but I mostly watched the people. Making sure nothing happened. Wondering where the Saxons were.
After a bit, the line of models ended, and the last of them came to the end of the catwalk, made a sharp turn, and strutted back up, stopping along the back of the stage. A white-haired man with sunglasses stood in the center, waving. Behind him, a mob of women dressed in black passed out glasses of champagne—to him, to the models, to the people in the first few rows of the crowd, including us.
The white-haired man spoke to the crowd in French. They laughed, and then he switched to English. “And I’d like to extend a special welcome to our honored guest. Cole Saxon, your family’s support has been invaluable to our brand this year.”
Cole appeared from backstage, smiling his smarmy fake smile. So that’s where they were. But Lydia wasn’t with him. I glanced to the back of the room and saw that Jack and Stellan had both noticed, too.
As one, the whole crowd raised their glasses of champagne in a toast, and I sipped mine without tasting it.
I didn’t really want to negotiate with Cole. Lydia was the mastermind—it was her we needed to talk to. Or my father. But if creepy Cole was all we had—
And then a glass shattered, and a woman screamed.
I crouched low and yanked my mom and Colette down next to me. Jack and Stellan both rushed forward, along with people who must have been bodyguards for other guests.
One of the models at the front of the room gasped and screamed again, even louder. It took me a second to understand what she was looking at. Another model was on her knees. She was clutching at her throat, and as I watched, she looked up, bloody tears seeping from her eyes. She coughed twice more, violently, collapsed, and went still.