Prologue
Six Weeks Ago
I was twenty-some meters under Paris in a room hacked out of limestone, huddled against the farthest wall, shivering. I didn’t know what to do next. A frantic voice in the back of my head kept shrieking,Run!Like that was a solution. Where would I go? I didn’t have any money with me. I didn’t have my passport. I didn’t have a plan. What I did have: My phone. A pack of cigarettes. Some matches. A set of lockpicks. Also shame. And guilt. And blood soaking my shirt and stiffening my hair.
Besides, running was what had gotten me here, to the farthest dark corner of this sour-smelling room in the cellar of a forgotten church. I’d been running, and I didn’t see its steps rising out of the sidewalk until I went sprawling. As I got to my feet, I noticed the church’s weather-beaten door with its clumsy medieval lock that I could have picked with a damp twist of paper. It looked like a good place to hide.
Inside, soot-crusted stained glass held the dark in. Dust coated the floor so thickly that my steps threw up little puffs. Automatically, I looked for the votive stand, but it held no candles, just a few blackened wicks trapped in grimy pools of wax. The tiny nave contained several disorderly rows of chairs and a thirdhand table, bearded with dust, that must have been the altar. The place was as dead as last year’s leaves. Near the altar in a grubby little grotto stood the only saint in the place, leaning casually on his club. His specialty was lost causes, but the dour look on his face said my troubles were beyond his powers. In the space before the ambulatory, the floor opened, and a wide stair descended into the dark. I followed it down and found myself in the crypt. Another set of steps took me down again, to a room that harbored a sad little regiment of rush-bottomed chairs—amputees all, too damaged to repair and return to the nave. I needed to make a plan, but I was too weary to think or even to cry. I sank to the floor, pulled my knees close to my chest, and rested my head on them.
Chapter 1
Twelve Weeks Ago
Three days before we were supposed to move to Paris, Dad’s company had a major supply-chain disaster, and he had to fly to London to meet with a new supplier to make sure its waterproof fabric was up to Great Outdoors’ specs. It was kind of ironic. He’d started working for GO part-time in college because one of the perks was a discount on hiking boots, and now he spent half his time flying to places where a hike meant walking to the subway station.
“I can’t believe this,” he said, scheduling his Uber. “You know I’d send someone else out to deal with it if I could, right?”
“It’s okay, Dad. I know how airports work.” I’d flown to meet him for long weekends when he’d had business in fun cities—Barcelona, London, Prague, Ljubljana.
“I know, but I was looking forward to starting this adventure together.”
“Me too. But I’ll be fine.”
“Nina”—our Portland housekeeper—“will take you to the airport, and I’ve scheduled a car in Paris to pick you up. Our new housekeeper, Madame Dupuy, will be at the apartment when you arrive, so you’ll be fine.” He sighed. “But I didn’t want you to do this by yourself.”
I smiled at him. “I’m really okay.”
He gave me a quick hug. “I hate that my work means I have to leave you like this.”
I hugged him back. “On the other hand, your work means we get to live in Paris.”
On the flight to Chicago, I had a row all to myself, and I hoped I’d have the same kind of luck on the Paris leg. But not long after I settled into my new seat, texting Dad that I was on the right flight and that it was on time, a guy in a business suit put his laptop down onto the seat next to me. I sighed. Business Guy shucked off his jacket and looked around for a flight attendant to hang it up for him. I went cold. He was wearing the same blue-and-gold-striped tie my debate partner, Cole, wore to meets. That stupid lucky tie. Business Guy handed off his jacket, then did the tie-flapping thing that guys do—why? What is the purpose of it?—and all I could see was Cole, smoothing his tie before a round, almost petting it, attributing every win of the season to its magical lucky powers instead of my research skills. I tried to reassure myself that hundreds, maybe thousands, of people wore that tie. It was probably the third-most-common tie in all of menswear, and of course I’d see it. It didn’t disappear from the world just because I was putting a whole country and an ocean betweenme and Cole. I was stupid to let it make me miserable. But I felt the way I felt.
I fumbled my earbuds into my ears, hoping Business Guy would ignore me. I’d been looking forward to getting some sleep on this flight. The past few weeks had been exhausting—finals, packing, saying goodbye to Lily and Mina. But I wasn’t falling asleep next to someone wearing that tie. I concentrated on my phone’s screen, stress-watching Buffy kick vampire butt until Business Guy closed his laptop, reclined his seat, and went to sleep. I pulled my legs up close to me and turned so I could keep an eye on him, the armrest digging into the small of my back.
By the time we landed in Paris, half an hour before our scheduled arrival, I’d been awake for twenty hours straight. My body said it should have been the middle of the night, but the morning sun glowed confusingly through every window. The floor bobbed under me as I walked through customs, and my eyes slipped in and out of focus. People zoomed their luggage-laden trolleys by, buffeting me as they passed. Signs morphed as I tried to decipher them, so that Contrôle de Passeports became Controversial Parrots and Arrivées turned into Archrivals. And it was so loud. The PA system kept up a nonstop “bargle bargle bargle” of important unintelligible announcements, while people meeting passengers called out names, little kids collapsed onto the floor and screamed, and strained-looking travelers scouted for restrooms.
I finally made it to the “archrivals” area. Just like Dad had promised, a bunch of dark-suited car-service guys stood there, holding up signs with people’s last names on them. Ifound my driver and followed him to the car. He put my bag into the trunk and held the door open for me, then waited calmly while I fumbled with my phone so I could tell him the address. I really, really needed coffee, but I didn’t know if I could ask him to pull off the autoroute at the nearest Starbucks. I didn’t know if therewasa nearest Starbucks, or what the French equivalent was.
After almost an hour on the autoroute, we exited into Paris; dodged through an enormous, chaotic roundabout; and finally turned into a narrow street lined with straight-edged, modern-looking apartment buildings and crammed with parked cars. Dad and I’d traded postcard-Paris architecture for a light-drenched apartment in a plain, six-story box in a redeveloped area three blocks from the Eiffel Tower. We chose it for the large park in the center of the block, an almost unheard-of amenity in the city. The view on Google Maps showed a long rectangle of green—the park—which took up almost half the area. Surrounding it like walls surrounding a medieval city were four apartment buildings. Six openings between the buildings gave you street access on all sides from the interior while maintaining the peaceful feel of a sanctuary.
The driver got my bags out of his trunk, wished me good day, and drove off. I looked around, blinking hard, because the street kept going out of focus. I wanted to lie down right there on the sidewalk and go to sleep. Instead, I pulled my phone out and found the text Dad had sent with our address, the apartment number, the two security codes I’d need to get into the building, and Madame Dupuy’s cell number. I’d never lived in an apartment before, so I wasn’tsure how to work the codes. My head felt like eighty pounds of wet cardboard, and things were blurring at the edges. But I found the code box, so yay me. I punched in the first code. Nothing. I punched it in again. Nope. I squinted at the keypad until the numbers were in focus and then punched them in, slowly, consulting my phone for each one. Nothing happened again.
There was a button on the box marked Guardian, so I pressed that, thinking somebody would come. Somebody didn’t. I tried the second code. Dad could have gotten them reversed, right? But that didn’t work, either. I didn’t have a French SIM card for my phone yet, so I couldn’t call our new housekeeper or Dad, and he wouldn’t be back for three more days in any case. Madame Dupuy should have already been there, but when I pressed the buzzer for our apartment, nobody answered. I didn’t know anyone in Paris. I had an emergency credit card, but I didn’t know where to find a hotel. I told myself I didn’t need to cry yet; maybe Dad had just typed the numbers in backward. I punched in a different combination. It didn’t work. Tears filled my eyes and slid down my face.
“It’s fine,” I muttered to myself, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. I’d just failed again with the codes when Nick walked up with his little sister, Sophie. I didn’t know he was Nick then, of course. He was just a random boy with a cute little sister.
She pointed at me and said something in French that I didn’t understand.
“Mademoiselle?” he said.
Oh, God, I thought.I’m going to have to talk to an actualFrench person, and I can barely remember how to speak English.I would have pretended that I was leaving if he’d been alone, but the gap-toothed six-year-old smiling tentatively at me made me decide it was safe to ask him for help. I tried frantically to remember the words for “door” and “It doesn’t work.” I didn’t even know what you’d call the code box in English, let alone French. In the end I failed to say anything at all.
“Je peux vous aider?” he asked, and through the fog of exhaustion and frustration and anxiety, I realized he’d asked if he could help me.
I took a deep breath and gestured at the code box. “It’s broken,” I said. I’d meant to say it in French; I did remember the word for “broken.” But I opened my mouth and English came out, which was humiliating. I was still crying, too. I felt like such a loser.
“You speak English?” he said in a very friendly sounding American accent. I nodded.
