I folded my arms over the stiff khaki of my uniform shirt. "What if-" I said.
Stellan shook his head and started forward again. If they're not here, my mind rationalized, it doesn't have to mean the worst. The Circle could have taken them. Or maybe they were hurt-a broken wrist or something. Maybe-
The lobby door flew open, and Elodie rushed down the steps and crashed into our arms.
CHAPTER 6
Merde, you two. Where have you been? I thought-I thought you-" She pulled away, still holding on to both of our shoulders. In the light spilling out from the hotel lobby, I could tell her face was red and blotchy.
She was okay. She was alive.
Then she pulled away and punched Stellan in the shoulder, hard. "Where were you? It's been hours."
I was peering behind her. The longer the doorway stood empty, the more times I glanced back at Elodie's puffy eyes, the more my chest caved in on itself.
"Where's Jack?" I interrupted. I grabbed her. "Elodie. Where is he?"
"He's okay. He's inside," she said, and my bones turned to jelly. I sat down on the front steps of the hotel.
"Lucien?" Stellan said.
"He's fine. I saw him just after, and texted with him a few minutes ago. He's going to call when he can."
Stellan sat down hard beside me, his head in his hands.
"Hello," Elodie said. "I asked where you've been. We ran around to the other entrance looking for you and heard that the police were looking for a dark-haired girl in a white robe. We figured that was bad, so we didn't go back to the Circle, but we've been searching all over this city. I'm assuming you didn't join the army while you were gone, so what happened?"
We went inside as we told her about Lydia setting us up and about the hospital.
Jack threw open the hotel room door as we approached, and sagged with relief when he saw us. His black pants and shirt were so dusty, they were gray. So was his hair. "Took your time getting back here, didn't you?" He wrapped me in his arms so hard, my feet came off the ground. I buried my face in his dirty shoulder.
"Are you okay?" I muttered against him.
He set me down and nodded, then looked over my shoulder at Stellan. They stared at each other for a second, then pulled each other into what I could tell was a bruisingly tight hug.
Stellan pulled away and smacked Jack on the side of the head, raising a cloud of dust from his hair. "There's such a thing as a shower."
Jack patted Stellan's chest. "Sure thing, Officer."
Stellan went immediately to call his sister. I sat down and shook my hair out from under my hat. The hotel we'd chosen as a rendezvous was a cheap, seedy one that no one would expect us to stay in, and I could see its lit sign buzzing and flickering out the window while Jack and Elodie told me what had happened after the explosion. All the Circle had made it out without getting sick.
"Did you hear that other people were infected, though?" I asked as Stellan came back into the room. "People died who weren't Circle."
Jack and Elodie looked at each other. "We did hear, and we had a thought," Jack said. "It doesn't look good."
"The virus infects people with Circle blood," Elodie cut in. "Until now, we've been thinking of it in terms of close relatives of the twelve families. Biologically, though, that's not necessarily true. Circle blood has spread a lot farther than that in the past two thousand years."
I didn't understand for a second, but then coldness slipped over me. "Olympias meant the virus to kill the Circle-"
"But she was expecting to kill them in the first or second generation," Stellan said, catching on at the same time. "Who knows how many people have some amount of Circle blood now? If a distant ancestor is all it takes . . ."
"That must have been what happened with my mom," I said. I'd assumed she'd lied about being Circle. Maybe instead, she had enough of the blood to be killed by the virus, but not enough to know about it.
Jack nodded grimly. "Which means this could devastate far more than just the Circle."
I didn't want it to, but it made sense. I couldn't believe we hadn't thought about it before, actually. I put my head in my hands. "Are you guys feeling okay? I know you said the virus didn't seem to hit in the ceremony chamber, but-"
Jack and Elodie both nodded. "Fine."
Fine. They were fine. I closed my eyes for a few seconds. My hair fell lank around my face. It smelled like smoke, and like the herb they'd thrown into the fire at the ceremony. I bottled back up the flood of emotions that had tried to overtake me in the last few hours, and sat up straight again. "Okay. So I guess this is even more important now." I pulled the piece of metal out of my shirt. "The box was taken away when we got arrested, but I got this out first."