"She's lying." Lydia got her phone out of her pocket. She must have had the trigger to release the virus programmed.
"We're not." Every head at the table swung from Lydia to me as though they were watching a tennis match. "We tried to tell you about the vaccine, but no one would listen. You should listen now, and not just because of the treaty-but because if you sign it, the Saxons plan to release the virus in this room."
It took a second for that to sink in, and then the table erupted with protests.
"What do you mean by that?" Mr. Wang demanded.
"They're having you sign over everything you have," I said over the din. "And then they'll kill you so your families will be too destroyed to fight back. But we have the vaccine, and you should all take it." I nodded at Colette. She pulled a bag full of small vials out of her purse, and began to hand them out.
"Don't be stupid." Lydia's bored indifference cracked just a tiny bit. "They're obviously infecting you."
My father squinted at the vial in front of him quizzically.
"Why should we believe any of this?" Ryo Mikado said, but I noticed he'd pushed his paper away.
Arjun Rajesh opened the vial and sniffed it.
Outside, the wailing and chanting was growing louder as the sun went down.
"Because I vouch that it's true." Luc stood up at the center of the table.
Lydia laughed. "They killed Hugo and Celine Dauphin and left Lucien alive because he's in on their schemes. That means nothing."
Colette set her bag down. She stepped up to the table. "Lucien is right." Every head turned to her. "I've seen it all. There's no way I'd be siding with people who killed Liam, or who killed my aunt and uncle. Those of you who have also lost someone, ask yourselves whether you think I'm telling the truth. And if you don't believe that, believe this. I've taken the vaccine already." She walked around the table to Stellan and me. She opened a small pocketknife. I held out my arm, and Stellan did, too. She cut me and wiped a bead of my blood on her hand, then cut Stellan and mixed our blood together.
"Colette!" Mr. Frederick cried out, slamming both hands on the table. Colette must have been like family to him. She'd dated his nephew Liam Blackstone for years.
"I'm doing this for Liam's memory," she said. "He would never have wanted to see you die over this. Any of you. Now you'll have to believe us." She put her hand to her mouth.
Mr. Frederick looked at her with wide eyes. Mr. Emir's mouth fell open. Zara Koning, whom I'd talked to at the party in Jerusalem, gasped from her place behind her father.
As the entire Circle stared in shocked silence, Colette wiped a tiny bit of blood daintily off her lip.
"More lies, more manipulation," Lydia said, but no one was listening to her. All eyes were on Colette, watching for any sign of the virus taking hold as she made her way back around the table to the seat behind Luc.
Elodie was right. "Alive" was a pretty low bar, but in this case, it was all we needed.
"Take the vaccine," I said again.
"It's a trick," my father said, but even he sounded uncertain.
Stellan's hand came over mine. "Mr. Saxon," he said, cutting through the murmurs building in the room. "You brought Avery into this against her will. You tried to marry her off. You used her own blood to kill her mother and made her watch, and then you ruined the world with it and blamed that on her, too. And somehow she's managed to stay good and kind and care that the Circle would fall." He turned to the table. "She is the one who convinced us you were worth saving. Let her do it."
I was still watching Lydia's finger poised over her phone. While Stellan was speaking, she turned it off and put it back in her pocket, and I loosened my grip on the edge of the table. Maybe she believed us about the vaccine getting out. Or maybe she could see the tides turning against her.
And then she gestured to one of her minions. The guy trained a gun on Stellan. "Who votes to terminate the ex-Keeper now?" Lydia said.
"What? No," I said. Arms came roughly around me from behind, dragging me back from the table. On my other side, two more men seized Jack and Elodie. Stellan backed slowly away from the table, his hands spread warily.
"He's a Circle member," I protested, clamping down the panic in my voice. "It's forbidden to terminate a Circle member without a trial."
Lydia ignored me. "He's responsible for killing members of over half the Circle families. All in favor of termination?"