The Ends of the World (The Conspiracy of Us #3)(31)

But I suddenly realized that, since the bomb in Jerusalem, I'd barely thought about ruining the Saxons at all. Instead, what had come to my mind just now was the tour group crying over their friend in the tunnels. The angry men throwing bottles at each other in the square because each side thought the other had attacked their city.

I remembered what Stellan had said: the Circle only cared about the Circle, and more specifically, about their own family. The world wasn't their concern.

"Because the whole world is in danger now," I said quietly. "From the virus or from the turmoil that's following it. Because as much as we didn't mean to, we started this, and we have to stop it."



       
         
       
        

Jack spread his hands as if to say my point exactly.

Stellan sat back heavily against the bench and gathered his hair up in the hand not holding the candy. It was long enough now he could have tied it back. He stared off into the middle distance, not acknowledging what I'd said, but not fighting it, either. I knew he agreed. I'd seen his face in the tunnels when we'd realized what had happened. I knew he wouldn't leave the Saxons with something that could kill Luc and Colette, or any number of other Circle members we cared about.

"At the least, can we agree that arguing about it is a waste of our time and our sanity?" Elodie gestured to me. "This one's having panic attacks. The two of you have your pouty faces on. Not that your pouty faces aren't adorable. But it's not helping."

Stellan leaned across me to Elodie. "I think we can all agree that you're not allowed to pretend everything's the same as it always was and that you can joke your way back into us trusting you. You can't."

Elodie's face fell. I sighed and pushed up from the bench, wandering a few feet away to lean on a lightpost. The crinkle in my back pocket reminded me that I'd taken a pamphlet from the first little museum. I pulled it out and perused it absently. I flipped it over to the back, where it talked about the museum courtyard, which we hadn't even realized was there. There was a close-up of flowers, and then a shot from above.

I froze.

The courtyard contained ruins from circa 300 BC, the brochure said. The ruins were just bits of stone, now made into a garden. I picked up my locket, and rubbed my thumb over the symbol there. The symbol had thirteen loops, with the thirteenth at the center.

So did the garden.

The ruins in the courtyard were in the exact shape of the locket around my neck.





CHAPTER 10



The museum was closed. A heavy iron gate had been pulled down over the entrance we'd used just a couple of hours earlier. We peered around the back and saw a drive gate, but it was locked, too, and guarded.

"We could bribe the guards," Elodie murmured.

"Wouldn't it be better if no one knew we were in there?" I whispered. "This museum is state run. It probably wouldn't get back to the Circle, but anywhere that has guards at a gate cares if random people traipse in and attempt an archaeological dig in their garden."

As we watched, a tall, brightly painted truck rumbled up to the entrance. The guards opened the gate, and he drove right through. 

"Maybe we could sneak through when he drives out," I whispered, but realized as I was saying it that there would be no possible way for us to get through unseen.

Unless . . .

Jack thought of it at the same time. "A delivery truck," he said. "Them we'd be able to bribe."

We hurried to a major road a couple of blocks away and surveyed our options. Cars would be too obvious. A pickup truck piled high with melons wasn't ideal for camouflage. And then I saw it.

Like a lot of the places we'd been, this city was a mix of the modern and the far less modern.

A donkey stood placidly, chewing on a piece of straw. He was attached to a flat-bottomed cart carrying a pile of something covered in cloth tarps. The driver was bantering with a taxi driver and spit some kind of dark liquid out of the corner of his mouth into the gutter.

"The donkey cart," I said.

Elodie sighed. "Why do these plans always involve ruining my clothes?"

Jack spoke to the driver, and when he said I could, I peered under the drop cloth, relieved to find baskets instead of raw fish or garbage.

I looked back to see the driver grinning widely at the bills in his hand, and gesturing for us to do whatever we wanted.

Stellan held up the cloth, and we all wedged ourselves in among the baskets. When Stellan had draped the cloth over us and gotten in on the far side, I felt the driver climb onto the seat over our heads and click his tongue at the donkey.