CHAPTER NINE
I was in my bedroom, back home, in Boston. I looked around for a moment picking up details: the lace curtains, the small mountain of stuffed animals in the corner, my desk covered in schoolwork and glitter pens. The room was quiet, only the light from the hallway breaking through the darkness and I squinted for a moment as I heard voices start to rise in the living room. It was just mumbling, but the hushed tones made me curious and I threw off the covers and moved toward the noise. Slowly I inched down the hall until I was at the corner and saw my mom standing, her back to me, talking to someone who was seated in the dimly lit living room. She ran her fingers through her hair and yanked for a moment before she quietly whispered,
"You are completely sure?"
"Yes." The man answered.
"Because you know what this means, right? You know what we'll have to do now. We have to run." My mom questioned shifting back and forth on her feet.
"I wouldn't have told you if I didn't know I was right. I found him. Which means it will only be a matter of time until the Circle knows. You have to run."
I felt my eyes open with surprise as I recognized the voice, it was Mr. Emerson. I couldn't even comprehend what they were talking about, circles and running. I would have turned and gone back to my room, but my mom let out a sniffle and said in a miserable voice,
"She's only eight, it's too soon."
"Destroy the seed of evil, or it will grow up to your ruin," Mr. Emerson sadly whispered and everything started to spin.
The apartment whirled around me in a black blur, closing into suffocating darkness before a light started to pin prick through my vision and I heard another voice.
"Avery."
I fought against the darkness but something was holding my hands down. I struggled and a wave of nausea rolled up through me.
"Avery wake up."
Something struggled against my back and I attempted to fight it, despite my hands being tied down. I cracked open my eyes and looked around in complete panic and confusion. Where was I?
"Avery, stop struggling, I'm almost," a guy's voice broke through my confusion and I stilled, frozen with fear, before the nausea swelled within me again and this time I couldn't hold it back. Whatever lunch I had left came violently rumbling up my throat and everything swirled around me again as I attempted to move to the side and release it. I couldn't, I was trapped, my arms tangled to the person struggling against my back. My head was so heavy I could barely move it. With no way to move to the side I choked once, then twice, unable to clear the vomit.
"Shit," the voice cursed and then the pressure on my arms released and I fell limply to the side, my hands still tied off. I hit the ground with a small thud and a cough of vomit spread across the floor before I was able to suck in a large breath. There was some movement at my hands and then I was finally free. I struggled into a crawling position and felt another wave of nausea pulse through me as I dry heaved. Once it passed I wiped my face with the back of my hand and sat back onto my calves. The room swam into view, dark and shadowy.
"Are you okay?" The voice asked and I realized I should recognize it. I knew this voice. A large palm started rubbing between my shoulders and I shook my head a few times, trying to make sense of this. Where was I? Who was this guy? Why was I vomiting? Then the hand stopped and someone moved to crouch down in front of me and I froze with fear.
"Do you know who I am?" He carefully asked and held perfectly still. My whole head throbbed for a moment and then it came flooding back to me. Minnesota, the prom, Prada, Istanbul, Paris...Jack. It was Jack. Relief washed over me and I felt the tears well up as I flung myself at him,
"Jack!"
"It's okay, it's alright." He soothed as he rubbed my back and then crushed me to his chest. I sat there, sobbing into his shirt, most likely getting vomit all over him as well, before he gave me a few pats and then gently pulled back.
"Avery, we have to go. Can you walk?"
I rubbed at my face, trying to scrub off the tears and looked around us for a moment. Vomit, zip ties, splatters of blood all over the floor of some kind of storage room. I could see large squares and rectangles covered with giant white sheets lined up against walls in the windowless space. I attempted to stand and then immediately sat back down, everything swirling too much, my head pounding.
"I don't know."
"Alright," he whispered and let out a long breath surveying the room.
Everything was off kilter for me, I was seeing what I could only describe as stars bursting across my vision. No amount of blinking was making them disappear. I knew we were in Spain but I didn't know where. I knew something bad had obviously happened, but I didn't know what. My head throbbed with pain, every heartbeat making my eyeballs feel like they were going to pop out of my skull and I reached toward the tender part of the back of my head and touched something wet. I pulled my fingers away and looked at them in the dim light - blood. So all the blood on the ground was mine? I took in a shaky breath and Jack turned around, lifted me off the ground and started dragging me toward the door. The movement made everything spin again and I clutched onto the front of him as hard as I could.
"It's okay," he murmured and held me tighter. The fuzzy confusion swirled in my brain and I couldn't help the rush of questions that started shooting rapid fire from my mouth,
"Where are we? Where are we going? Who did this to us?"
He didn't answer me, he slammed his hand over my mouth and I froze as I heard it too, the footsteps. He drug us flush against the wall where the door would hide us temporarily once opened and silently slid in front of me. I held onto the wall, barely breathing, as the door slowly opened. A crack of light spilled across the floor illuminating the empty zip ties of where we should have been. A dark shadow moved into the light and Jack's body slammed against the door creating a terrible crunching sound as the wood made contact with the person on the other side. A body slumped to the ground and Jack threw open the door and jumped onto the body.
The room spun around me and I held onto the wall and tried to take a steadying breath. From the man's radio a few garbled sentences in a language I couldn't place echoed into the space. Jack hurled the radio at the ground, it shattered into a couple pieces, skidding off into a mass in the darkness. I took a closer look and saw a limp hand - bodies. We hadn't been the only people in this room.
"Jack," I whispered and pointed to the bodies his head followed to where I was pointing and he froze. He rose off the intruder, who was unconscious, and took a few hesitant steps toward the mass before he stopped,
"They're dead." He reached down and grabbed the gun off the barely breathing intruder and shoved it into the back of his pants before striding over to me and grabbing me around the waist. "Let's go."
We stumbled out into a hallway lit only by the exit signs pointing us in the direction of our escape. I was concentrating so hard on making my feet work I was barely paying attention to what direction we were moving in. We twisted through some hallways and then Jack hip checked a door open and we spilled into an employee lounge. Tables, chairs and trash cans shared the space with a small microwave and incredibly bright fluorescent lights. We paused, only for a moment, and the nausea swelled in me again.
"Wait." I ordered and tried to pull away from him. At first he fought it, pulling me closer but when he looked at my face he let go and I stumbled to a trashcan and dry heaved again. This time, once I was done, I straightened and felt the world settle a little better. Pieces of my memory started to fall back into place. We were in Valencia, Spain. We thought the next clue to the tomb would be in this city.
"Ready?" He asked and looked around the windowless room. I nodded and took a few faltering steps toward him. Jack hoisted me against his side and we started making our way across the break room to another door.
"Who are those guys?" I asked. Jack took a moment to jiggle the handle before wrenching it upward, the once locked door now sliding open. We moved out into the empty hallway of the museum. The walls were white with directional signs in Castilian. Jack scanned the signs and then turned us left and made a quick clip passing through another door that opened onto the first floor of the museum in the permanents section.
"Order." He quickly replied. "Though I'm not sure which one."
My feet tangled with Jack's and he slowed down to right me before pressing me tighter to his side so he could support most of my weight as we starting the quick pace again. I limped along, trying in vain to concentrate through the fog, as more pieces came floating back to my memory. We'd had lunch at a small restaurant. We had gone to some kind of department store, but that's when everything started to grey out. I could not remember touring the museum. I had a sinking feeling that a huge block of time was going to be forever lost to me from this concussion.
"I'm thinking it's actual Order, because if it was the Saxons they would have shot me on sight." Jack continued when I didn't say anything. We turned another corner and he paused, folding us back into the darkness. Some security guards were chatting in Castilian looking at something on their phones. We scanned the courtyard and saw another exit toward our left. The two middle aged guys both shouted at their phones gesturing angrily at them and Jack took his opening.
We shuffled across the courtyard toward the side entrance and Jack paused for a moment looking at the door with critical eyes. Behind us we heard something crackle on the radios for the two security guards. They both let out annoyed sounding protests, but answered the call and started moving toward the opposite side of the museum.
"It's armed." Jack whispered into my ear. I nodded and let out a small cough against my raw throat. "We can try the front, or just run for it. Do you think you can run?"
I shook my head. My head was throbbing just standing there, running did not seem like an option to me. There had to be another way out, right? It had been so much easier to break in and out of all the other museums I'd been to with Jack.
Jack pressed his lips together, thinking, scanning the area until two men appeared out of the shadows on the opposite side of the courtyard. We both froze as they walked into a pool of light to reveal it wasn't the security guards. They were tall, lean, bald, wearing nothing but black, with giant gold medallions hanging around their necks. It was some kind of symbol and I tried, desperately, to place it or even remember it.
Jack reached for his gun, sliding the safety off in a single move as he pointed it at the two approaching men. They pulled out their own guns and took a few more steps toward us and the room exploded with noise. Red, circling lights fired on above us, a shrill, ear piercing alarm echoed across the giant courtyard and I grabbed my ears as I felt my head shatter from the bombardment of it all. Hands wrapped around my waist and I was being drug through the door into the heavy evening air. Jack yanked us through, kicked the door closed, and then spun around for a second before spotting a trashcan. The metal squealed across the concrete as he slid it toward the door and then shoved it under the handle.
"It won't hold for long. Come on." He ordered and grabbed me around the waist as we weaved around the litany of garbage on the side of the museum. Each step made my head pulse with pain, bright white lights floating across my vision, but I didn't stop. I couldn't stop. The fear of them catching up to us was larger than the pain in this moment. We made it down a loading ramp when we heard the door fire open behind us, the alarm ringing out into the night.
We were trapped in some kind of maze of pallets and shipping containers and a desperate sob broke through as my head felt like it was cracking open from all the jolting. Jack squeezed me closer and strong armed me around an overflowing dumpster. A side alley came into view in front of us, but the gate was locked. I heard some shouting in the weird language again far behind us and closed my eyes for a moment, everything starting to become bright and blinding to me the closer we made it to the streetlights.
Jack leaned me against the side of a shipping container, pulled out the gun and shot the lock off the gate. The sound echoed in my brain so intensely that I grabbed my head and crouched to the ground trying not to cry. I felt his hands grab me under my arms and hoist me back up and then we were moving again. We made to the street corner, the lights burning into my skull and I let out a shuddering sob, pushing my fists into my eye sockets when Jack stopped. I opened my eyes to see his face change from worried to relieved to panicked all within the same moment. He shoved me, hard, and I landed into something solid.
"Go!" He yelled and swung the gun out from the back of his pants and edged back around the corner checking. I spun around to see a tall blond boy give me a startled glance before pulling a gun out from the back of his own pants.
I dug my feet into the ground, overwhelmed. Who was this guy? Obviously he knew us, I had to know him. It itched in the back of my mind as I instinctively took a step toward his outstretched hand. A shot fired off above us, splintering through the trunk of a tree to our left and I let out a scream and covered my head as I ducked to the ground. The two boys fired off a few rounds and my hearing buzzed out completely. I could only pick up the words he was shouting,
"Here...you...leave...now!"
"Me?" The blond boy yelled back, and then roughly grabbed my arm, yanking me to my feet as we started moving backward down the street.
"Yes you! Why do you think we're both alive?" Jack yelled back, exasperated, and I glanced between the two of them as we stopped at the curb, Jack waved down the waiting black sedan. They both shoved their guns back into place sharing a worried glance. I tried to wrench my arm away from the blond guy but he just held me tighter and then Jack gathered up my other side and the two of them pushed me into the car first, both climbing in after as it squealed off from the sidewalk out onto the open road.
The blond boy started giving directions and then looked behind us through the back window before looking down at me. The quiet of the car made the buzzing a little louder in my ears, but easier to hear what they were saying.
"What happened?" He gestured toward me with a nod of his head and then reached out a finger to touch my collarbone, sliding it up toward the back of my ear. I swallowed hard at the gesture, unsure why I trusted him to do that, and he pulled his finger away to show it shiny with blood.
"Concussion." Jack distractedly answered as he spun around in his seat to look out the back window as well. The car slammed around a corner, screeching with the force, and the blond boy reached his hand across my lap, pressing his fingers into the window glass so he didn't fall into me. My stomach lurched with the motion and I bit back the gag. When the car righted itself his hand slid across my legs and his fingers wrapped around one of my thighs. I stiffened, the gesture startling me, but then his index finger pressed into a bruise there and the memories surged through my brain in technicolor. The Louvre, Notre Dame, Greece, the vampire bar, Cannes...Stellan.
"Stellan," it came out as a strangled cry and I twisted in my seat to bury my head into the side of his chest.
"Avery?" He questioned and ran a hesitant hand down my back, trying to soothe me.
"It's a pretty bad concussion." Jack elaborated and barked out an order in Castilian to the driver. The car swerved and I pressed myself harder into Stellan letting the waves of protective calm wash over me, soothing all the jittering panic that was making my brain throb so badly.
"What about you?" Stellan shifted slightly to look at Jack and I curled in closer to him trying to block out all the streaking lights that blurred past us as we speed along. "Are you okay?"
"I'll be fine." Jack quickly answered and I felt Stellan's heartbeat pick up from the side of his chest against my already throbbing temple.
"Good." He stopped and then took a deep breath. "What the fuck happened?! I gave you one job. Protect Avery."
I flinched against his yelling and put a hand up to cover my other ear.
"Stellan," Jack started sounding a little shook up and I squeezed my eyes shut. If I could just rest for a minute maybe I wouldn't feel so...
"Avery. Avery!" Someone was calling my name from what sounded like a long tunnel and I floated toward it blinking my eyes open. Jack and Stellan were both staring at me, panicked worry across their faces. I looked around and realized I was being held up against the window of the sedan, the car had stopped. I looked to my left to see even the driver eyeing me warily.
"Where are we?" I tentatively asked and both of their faces dropped.
"How are we going to find a doctor this time of night?" Jack shook his head as he said it. Stellan released me from the door a little and frowned,
"We don't need a doctor she needs an MRI. We can't get on a plane with her! What if there's a…"
"I don't need a doctor." I quickly cut over them. "I just meant the car stopped so where are we now?"
"You need a doctor." They both said at the same time. Jack slid out first and started looking around and then Stellen pulled me with him out of the cab. The moment the door shut the car speed off down the street and around the corner. I looked up to see that we were standing in front of an opulent hotel with some kind of Spanish name. It seemed like I should remember why we were here but it blurred out in my battered short term memory.
"We just need a doctor," Jack continued as we moved toward the lobby in a solid line, Jack close to my right and Stellan on my left his tight wrap around my waist holding most of my weight off my wobbly legs. "We won't even be in the air for more than an hour. We wouldn't hit an altitude for it to affect her."
"You think we're still going to Ibiza?" Stellan leaned across me for a moment to look incredulously at Jack. We pressed through the busy lobby toward a bay of elevators. A few hotel guests gave us a startled second glance, but the boys continued arguing like no one was there.
"Of course we're still going to Ibiza tonight. Especially since we came up empty handed today." Jack countered and looked at Stellan. They had some kind of staring contest with each other and I leaned heavily into Stellan feeling a wave of nausea and exhaustion pulse through me again.
"She can't even stand up on her own." Stellan angrily grumbled and pulled me into the elevator, to then reach forward and swipe a fob before jabbing at the topmost button on the panel. "What happened to the two of you?"
The elevator doors pinged open and we stepped out into the entryway of a house. It was disorienting and I dug my feet in for a moment trying to get my bearings before swinging my hands out to grab onto the railings. I ended up smacking Jack and Stellan's stomach's instead and they glanced at each other for a moment before Stellan scooped me up and carried me into the living room of the place like a baby.
"Te voilà! Qu'est-il arrivé? Oh non!" Said a blonde girl as she rounded the corner toward us. Her critical eyes took me in for a moment before she stared at Stellan and Jack expectantly.
"We were ambushed by the Order." Jack supplied and her face dropped. "Actual Order, not Saxon Order." He clarified and Stellan moved past the two of them toward the couches in the living room. He set me down on the love seat and then crouched down in front of me.
"Are you going to be sick?" He lowly asked and I shook my head. I was still nauseous but there was nothing left to throw up at this point. My ears were buzzing from all the gunfire, but it was slowly turning more into a muffled sound rather than actual deafness. More than anything I was in pain, everything was throbbing and my eyeballs felt like they were going to burst with every heartbeat.
I closed my eyes as more muted voices added to the mix back at the entryway. Stellan sat next to me on the couch and I felt his fingers start pushing my hair to the side as he followed the trail of blood toward the back of my head. His fingers poked around the tender area and he let out a small noise of dissatisfaction.
"Looks like it stopped bleeding, but it's hard to tell with all your hair." He carefully replaced the hair and then gently grabbed my chin and turned my face to him. "Open your eyes."
I complied and he frowned. I knew I was in bad shape, but if he thought I was in bad shape it had to be worse than I thought. Yet, with every passing moment I was starting to feel more like myself despite the huge black hole in my memory.
The people rounded the corner, their arguing sputtered to a stop when they took the two of us in. Jack eyed me again and then seemed to decide something and announced to the group,
"We have to go. With or without Avery."
"Absolutely not." The blonde girl snapped back and shot Jack an exasperated stare. It clicked into place - Elodie. The redheaded woman and brunette boy next to her both shook their heads - seeming to agree with her.
"Clearly she is not well. You said she didn't even recognize you or Stellan." The brunette gestured toward me. Another puzzle piece regained - Luc.
"Besides," the redhead started, "we had all agreed it was a trap not even a couple of hours ago." She looked toward the back rooms for a moment before turning to the group and it snapped into place - Colette.
"That was before we came up empty handed from the only guess we had." Jack countered and then held up a hand as everyone tried to counter him. "Plus we now have the Order coming after us, we need to keep moving."
"To, literally, anywhere else." Stellan entered the conversation next to me. "Not to a tiny island full of inebriated people."
"That's exactly where we should go." Jack argued and everyone looked away - annoyed.
"So say we go," Stellan started and I saw Elodie and Luc frown, "what could we possible gain from it that would make it worth the risk?"
"An actual clue. A lead to the tomb. Another Keeper we could turn for ourselves." Jack started to list off. Elodie immediately cut over him,
"An ambush. A kidnapping. A stabbing of Stellan and Avery that would activate their blood plague!"
"We could get more information out of him about the Saxons. We could put a tracker on him and finally get ahead of the Saxons for once." Jack quickly countered, and turned to face Elodie. She squared off against him as well and I felt Stellan tense next to me.
"We could all get taken out by Saxon security while we were too distracted trying to find this contact. We could get separated inside one of those giant clubs and they could kidnap Stellan and Avery and then come back here and kidnap Anya as well."
"Not so loud," Colette broke in and glanced back toward the rooms, but Jack and Elodie were locked into each other neither wanting to back down. Colette put a hand on Elodie's shoulder and she broke her staring contest with Jack for a moment. "Let's move into the dining room."
Elodie nodded at Colette and then she and Jack stormed off toward the dining room in front of us all. Colette and Luc exchanged a worried look with each other and then us before following them. Stellan helped me up from the couch, the room spinning for a moment, but I finally felt more stable. I gave his hand a squeeze to signal I didn't need him to carry me anymore but he just pulled me closer and whispered into my ear,
"It's going to get ugly."
"Uglier than this?" I grumbled and we hung back for a moment as he lowly answered,
"There are only two outcomes when Elodie and Jack get like this, and one of them involves a bedroom."
"Does the other one involve a slap? Because that I'd like to see." I countered and Stellan smiled at me before guiding me into the dining room. He deposited me in an empty chair across from Elodie and Jack who were still standing and locked into a glaring contest. Luc settled to my left, Colette at the head of the table on the right as Stellan moved around the table to stand next to Elodie. Part of me wondered if it was to protect Jack. When no one said anything for a moment I set my hands onto the table top and started,
"Are we going to Ibiza tonight?"
"I'm not leaving Anya in Valencia while we all go to Ibiza." Elodie quickly argued, turning away from Jack's glare. "Jack and Stellan would both have to come with us and that would leave her defenseless."
"Who said she had to stay in Valencia?" I countered. "She can just stay on the plane. This isn't going to take us that long."
"Might I suggest," Luc cut in and we all turned to him. "I have a villa in Ibiza. It's secure, and it's not exactly...on the books. Meaning the Saxons couldn't anticipate that being a rendezvous point."
Elodie looked like she could have strangled him. Out of my peripherals I saw Colette start to nod,
"That is actually pretty helpful. We can keep our room here, fly together and split again. You can canvas the club and we can take off the next morning. The more we deviate from the plan the better our chances are of not being followed."
Elodie crossed her arms and a triumphant smile started to form on Jack's face as he turned back to face her,
"Besides - we need to have a doctor check out Avery. She has a pretty bad concussion. We can ensure more discretion at Luc's villa versus a very public hotel."
"Don't drag me into this. My concussion shouldn't be part of the planning." I quickly replied and shot an annoyed look at Jack. Elodie narrowed her eyes at me and I couldn't help but feel a little scared. What did I say to deserve her wrath?
"Actually, you having a concussion is a huge hindrance to his plan." She leaned onto the table and looked me up and down for a moment before continuing. "A concussion that bad impairs your judgement. It makes you cloudy and irritable, rash. If we are about to outwit the Saxons we can't afford to have you messing up the plan with some irrational response."
"That's not going to happen. All I have to do is be there. The Saxon spy just has to see me - the rest of you can do whatever it is we decide to do with him." I countered.
"But you have a history of making bad choices, even without a concussion." Elodie slowly rose straightening her spine, but our eyes never left each other.
"And you have a history of purposely pissing me off to try and distract away from the actual plan." I snapped. Everyone else went still but Elodie spread her fingertips across the table, letting them tap out a little rhythm before countering,
"This isn't going to be some little exchange in a cafe. These clubs are huge, the crowds are bigger, it's too loud to hear anything, and all the lights and smoke are disorienting. It's going to be too much for your little battered brain to handle and it will mess up the whole thing."
"Elodie," Stellan warned, but the two of us refused to back down. It had to be done. This tension had always existed between us. From the moment she'd met me she'd treated me with mildly disguised disdain, even after everything we'd been through together. It hung between us, damaging any moment of progress. If she couldn't respect me then I couldn't trust her, and the only thing that was holding all of us together was trust.
"I can't tell what's more insulting, that you think so little of me, or that you think pissing me off is going to let you get your way. You're going to have to try harder - I'm not as much of a pushover as those two." I flicked my eyes at Stellan and Jack. They both looked affronted but Elodie cracked a dangerous smile.
"You say that," she pulled her hands off the table and started walking her fingers up the arms of Stellan and Jack who stiffened. She never broke eye contact as she walked them across their shoulders and then leaned toward Stellan, running her fingers through his hair before continuing, "but I think…" she trailed off and leaned into him to put her mouth next to his ear.
"Don't." I warned her. She dared me to stop her with the glare she sent my way and finished in French,
"Elle ment." She planted a loud kiss on his cheek and winked at me.
It didn't matter what she said the fuzzy, irrational, anger boiled and I seethed through my teeth,
"Don't touch him."
"Said the concussed girl too angry to go with us. I'm not even a threat to you!" She snapped back, releasing Stellan.
Stellan immediately moved away from her while Jack took a step toward her, both anticipating an explosion and I laughed darkly for a moment before rising from the table and glared at her,
"How about this then? I'm the girl with the violet eyes, the leader of the Circle, and I've decided we're going to Ibiza. Pack your shit or clear out. Here's your chance. Where do your loyalties lie Elodie?"
Everyone balked, including Elodie, and then her face flushed with anger.
"How could you ask that of me after everything I've done?"
"Then start helping me. This is only going to work if we can all be a team." I looked around the table. "We have enough fucking enemies."
"I've always been on your team. You have just never accepted my help." She spat and crossed her arms over her chest.
"You didn't do it for me," I quickly replied. "You did it for Stellan. Either you can respect me or you can't. So what will it be?"
"Of course I'm staying!" She snapped and I nodded curtly before pressing my fists into my eyeballs again and barked out,
"What's the fucking plan Jack?"
He nervously cleared his throat and I dropped my hands to glare at him, he flushed before quickly starting,
"We use Stellan and Avery as the bait. Colette takes Anya to Luc's villa. We all head to the club, canvas, cover, extract and move to a secure location to integrate."
"What if he brought a whole Saxon security detail with him?" Luc questioned.
"He won't." Jack answered but his voice was starting to ebb and muffle in my thoughts. "He wasn't listed as Saxon on the phone. So he's trying to gather information to garner favor. Besides the Saxons would never send an entire detail to something like this. That's not even the pattern of how Lydia ran the Order."
Luc posed another question but everything was muted and distorted in my ears. I shook my head a few times, trying to clear all the confusion but it wasn't working. I closed my eyes and one word floated through the haze - Order. Those men at the museum hadn't looked anything like Saxon Order, so they must have been the real Order. The medallion on their chests flashed across my closed eyes but I still couldn't place it and then a single word broke through the darkness.
"Wait," I cut over their conversation, "the walkie-talkies."
"What?" Jack paused mid-sentence and gave me a quizzical look.
"They said something on the walkie-talkies. It was a question but I didn't know the language. I think he said asfalís."
"Secure." Stellan quickly said and everyone turned to look at him. "It's Greek."
Despite the fuzziness I could feel my brain pulling all sorts of pieces together.
"Who taught you Greek?" I stared at him as everyone went silent.
"My parents." He quietly replied.
"Why that language?" I held my breath anticipating his answer.
"Said it'd be useful." He shrugged a single shoulder.
Jack's eyes met mine across the table and we both started nodding as he said in a rising voice,
"Oh god - I see it now, they were Order." He turned to Stellan. "Your parents weren't just part of the 13th Family - they were actual Order. Just like Avery's Mum wasn't just Circle - she was actual Order."
"That man you clobbered wasn't coming in to hurt us. He was coming in to help us." I added and Jack put his hands to his face, rubbing his five o'clock shadow for a moment.
"That's who those bodies were. They were Saxon. The Order killed them before they could kill us."
"Bodies?" Colette broke through.
"Killed?" Luc was next.
Jack and I ignored them, the frantic buzzing energy between us heightened by my concussion.
"That's why they didn't come after us as we were leaving the museum." I added.
"That's why Anya wasn't taken as well. That's why we've been safe this whole time. It had nothing to do with secure locations or scrambling our plans - it was the Order." Jack finished and then pulled out the chair in front of him and sat down, hard.
I sat down as well, staring at the table as it started to wash over me. My Mom was Circle. My Mom was Order. All this time I'd thought she didn't want me to know about the Circle because they would force me to fulfill some kind of warped destiny. But if she had been Order all this time it meant she'd been hiding me from the Circle because she'd known I was actually a weapon - and I was supposed to be used to destroy everything.
"So how do we use this to our advantage?" Elodie broke the silence, her voice still tight with annoyance. I looked up at her, Jack and I still the only people sitting,
"We go to Ibiza. We make a big show of leaving this hotel too. We need to lure out any other Saxon spies or security."
"But how will we know which ones are Order and which ones are Saxon?" Stellan questioned.
"Other than the giant gold medallions?" I countered and Jack crossed his arms over his chest and furrowed his brows,
"The Saxons will chase you."
A/N - Mr. Emerson's quote at the very beginning is from Aesop. All the love to Trubie on this one. She didn't know it at the time but I was asking her a lot of hypothetical questions about Elodie that COMPLETELY changed the course of the fight between Avery and Elodie. Canon Rock Star! Maidenpride and Laura were also amazing because they continue to support and help - even though no one is reading this...LOL.
Chapter Soundtrack
Sucker for Pain - Imagine Dragons,Lil Wayne & Wiz Khalifa
Out of the Woods - Taylor Swift
Pray to God -Calvin Harris ft. HAIM
Wherever I Go - OneRepublic
