The Key (13 page)

But over time people were like, “Maybe we were hasty in saying it sucks.”

Followed by, “It's actually not bad.”

Followed by, “It's epic!”

Followed by, “Are you dissing my tower? Because I will totally kick your butt!”

The tower is visible from just about anywhere in Paris. It will be at the end of an avenue, or you'll be floating down the river and, hey, there it is, or maybe you'll see the top poking above a building. It's ubiquitous. It's a cliché.

You know what else it is? Beautiful. Especially at night when it's lit up.

So anyway, add in a bunch of sidewalk cafés, the Métro, a few more churches, a scattering of museums, and you basically have Paris. So now you don't even have to go, you've already experienced it.

One other interesting feature of Paris: the sewers.

Back in days of yore (say a thousand years ago, round numbers), when Paris was growing larger, people were saying, “Hey, we don't have sewers, so we're dumping our poop into the streets. Also our unused chunks of butchered hog, our dead rats, our rotted fruit, our three hundred and fifty-two kinds of cheese rind, and of course, during plague years,
²⁶
our dead relatives. The result is, shall we say, not as pleasantly fragrant as a nice glass of
vin rouge
.”

Yes: they noticed that poop and dead things smelled.

So they built sewers, giant underground tunnels. That way, the fecal matter and dead things that got dumped in the street eventually sloshed down into the sewers, which helpfully carried such things to the river. The same river whose water people drank. So they quickly went from, “Man, the air stinks,” to, “Man, this water tastes awful. Plus, I'm sick now.”

Hey, it was medieval times. It took a while for people to figure stuff out in those days.

Anyway, the sewers are no longer in use much except for when it rains and the water goes rushing through the ancient tunnels. In fact, now you can take a tour of the sewers. People do.

Cost of Paris sewer tour for six kids: 24 euros.
²⁷

“We are being followed,” Dietmar said as the Magnificent Five (so far) emerged from the train station weary and worried.

“The guy in the trench coat?” Mack asked. Because Mack had also noticed the person in the trench coat with the hat pulled down low over his brow.

It was night and the city was lit up but not so well lit as to banish all shadows. The trench coat seemed to be staying with those shadows, circling wide around bright-lit cafés and melting into closed-down shop fronts.

“Yes,” Dietmar confirmed. “There is something strange about him.”

“Yeah,” Mack confirmed, feeling a tightening in his throat. “Very strange for a man, not strange at all for a Skirrit. And there's another one across the street.”

“They've spotted us already?” Sylvie asked. “That is bad. I had hoped to take you straight to the sewers.”

“Sewers? I was hoping for a hotel. And a sandwich,” Jarrah said.

“We have a hotel,” Mack said. “The trick will be getting there alive.”

“Surely they wouldn't attack us right out in the open on a Paris street?” Xiao said.

Sylvie said, “They are not attacking, they are following. They want us to lead them to the others.”

Mack decided that was probably right. It was also probably true that Skirrit—even ones with hats—would be noticed in a brightly lit, crowded place.

“I doubt they can follow us down into the Métro,” Mack said. They were walking on the rue La Fayette, which was not one of the biggest, widest avenues, but a respectably important street. But it was late, and only a few restaurants and cafés were open.

“I have a Métro app,” Sylvie offered. “I don't live in Paris so I don't know the system. But there is a stop—Poissonnière. I know we need to get to Alma-Marceau....”

She began thumbing information into the app.

“Okay, then, we take the Seven line and switch to the Nine line,” Sylvie said decisively.

“We'll follow you.”

Down the narrow, dirty stairs into the station: white tile, cement floor, modern ticket-vending machines. They used the million-dollar credit card to buy six tickets.
²⁸
This took a while. And during that while, the Skirrit came down the stairs after them.

As Dietmar handed out tickets, two Skirrit stared and twitched nervously in their weak disguises.

In the unlikely event that you don't know what a Skirrit is, think grasshopper or maybe praying mantis, but about the height of a moderately short man, and walking erect.

Parisians, being city people, seldom look anyone in the face, so it seemed possible to Mack that the Skirrit might go unnoticed. They might even wait until the crowd had thinned a little and—

“Aaaahhh!” An older woman, built like a fireplug but with an attractive scarf around her throat, pointed in horror at a face that did not belong on anything human.

The Skirrit drew a knife from under its trench coat and seemed ready to go for the woman to silence her.

“Hey!” Mack yelled. “This is between us.”

The Skirrit's expressionless insect eyes turned to glare at him. The knife wavered. The woman ran. The Skirrit hissed, then turned and quickly ran with his companion up the stairs.

“That was easy,” Jarrah said, sounding slightly disappointed.

“That was both brave and self-sacrificing, Mack,” Xiao said, sounding a bit too surprised.

“Let's get out of here,” Mack said. He was troubled. Jarrah was right, it had been easy. Too easy.

They passed their tickets through the ticket reader and found their way to the right platform. The light was cold and gray. The white tile was grimy. The only color came from large posters that followed the curve of the walls and advertised banks, tours, sneakers, and movies.

The train came in a whoosh of fetid air and screeched to a stop. Doors opened. Glum-faced people stepped off. Other glum-faced people got on, along with Mack and his friends.

The train was crowded—standing room only—which seemed odd this late. Maybe all the people were coming from some special event.

The six kids were soon separated. Mack found himself clinging to a chrome pole he had to share with four other hands. People pressed close around him as the train lurched away from the station.

Mack felt a hand touch his on the rail.

He moved his hand away an inch (or 2.5 centimeters since it's France).

This time the hand—a delicate, pale, female hand—covered his. He followed the hand to the wrist. Then the wrist to the arm. The arm to the shoulder. To those eyes. Those impossibly green eyes.

“
Bonjour
, Mack,” Risky said.

T
he golem lay on the wall of Mack's room. He had never gotten entirely used to sleeping on the bed. Or horizontally. There was just something about lying flat against a wall that felt comfortable and right.

But this night he was having a hard time getting to sleep. He was tossing and turning, sometimes rolling all the way up to the ceiling.

The golem wasn't a thoughtful creature.
²⁹
He didn't normally lie awake wondering what to do about the deficit or pondering the nature of existence or wondering why any human being would willingly consume CornNuts.

He was not a philosopher, and those questions were beyond him.

But the encounter with Risky had gotten him thinking. There was something wrong about that girl. The thing she had done with the phone in his mouth … He hadn't decided to shrink back to normal; she had sent a text and it had worked just like the scroll that Grimluk had placed in his mouth at the moment of his completion.

He still had the phone. It was sitting on his—Mack's—desk. He wondered if she would ever call him.

He wondered if he would be able to resist if she told him to put the phone in his mouth.

He wondered whether he would have to become whatever she texted.

The idea was troubling. The golem furrowed his brow, a phrase he had learned in school. He furrowed his brow thoughtfully, and then became distracted for a while with the realization that furrows are what farmers form in the fields. They plant corn and soybeans and beets
³⁰
in the furrows. And should he try doing that with the furrows in his forehead? Would Camaro be impressed that he could grow tiny corn in his forehead?

Thinking of Camaro just made him toss and turn some more, and he finally got up and paced around the ceiling for a while. He had promised to be a “big boy” when she did something—he wasn't quite clear on what—with Tony Pooch.

Now he was no longer a big boy. Although maybe he could become big again. He thought about testing it out, growing a little. But he was afraid to try. What if it didn't work?

In some strange way, Risky taking him over had changed his outlook on life. He'd always been content to just “Be Mack.” Those were the words on the scroll, and he had never questioned them.

But now … now he had been forced to change, and that changing thing, becoming something different—even for just a while as he shrank—had broadened his outlook. It had introduced … possibilities.

If she called … he would try not to obey.

What a crazy thought! How could a mere golem refuse to obey the words of power placed in his mouth?

But he would have to try, wouldn't he?

He lay back down again, snuggled between two wall posters.

Be Mack.

He was doing that as well as he could. He would do that until Mack returned. And then …

Oh, right: then he would return to the mud he had been fashioned from.

Unless of course she called.

“S
o close, eh, Mack?” she asked.

“Close?” he squeaked.

“Already you have assembled five. And more await here in Paris.
N'est-ce pas?
As the locals would say?”

“Are you going to kill me?”

That got the attention of some of the passengers nearby. One man cast a very suspicious look at Mack.

“Kill you?” Risky echoed. “Wherever did you get that idea?”

“I think maybe it was because you tried to kill me before. Several times.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, and gazed off into space as if she was savoring the memories. “Good times. Good times. By the way, don't you want to know how I found you?”

“By … supernatural means. You always seem to find me.”

“Paddy had lost track of you after Stonehenge. You were completely off the grid. Then we heard you were in Scotland.”

“How did you hear that?”

Risky shrugged. “Twitter. It was a trending topic. But I found out too late; I don't check Twitter as often as I should.”

“How many Twitter followers do you have?” Mack asked, aware that the conversation had taken a rather odd turn.

“Four,” Risky admitted.

“You should tweet more. That's the only way.”

“I should be tweeting right now,” Risky agreed. “I could say, ‘Found Mack in Paris thanks to—'”

And that's when the train reached the next station and the brakes screeched so loud that Mack heard none of what Risky had to say.

The doors opened. It wasn't Mack's stop, but he really wanted to get off anyway. Get off and then run screaming down the platform, up the escalator, and onto the street.

But he didn't do any of that. In the movement of bodies on and off the train, Dietmar was suddenly closer. He hadn't noticed that Mack was talking to Risky.

“We must get off in two stops and then switch to the—”

Dietmar stopped talking when Mack made a quick throat-cutting gesture. Then he noticed Risky. She gave him a dazzling smile.

Dietmar did not smile back.

“Is this …?” Dietmar asked before his voice dried up.

“My friends call me Risky,” she said. “But I have many names.”

“And no friends,” Mack said.

“You know, I do have feelings, Mack, and that hurts.”

Mack almost apologized but managed to stop himself. She had no feelings. At least no decent, normal feelings. She was an evil creature. It was just that the red hair and the green eyes and the whole bewitching-beauty thing made her seem like she might have feelings. For just a second. But no: she didn't.

And the little glistening tear that appeared in her eye was fake.

“I have to tell you, Mack, I've changed,” Risky said.

“Changed?”

“I have come to realize that my mother …” She paused, glanced at Dietmar, and explained, “My mother, the Pale Queen.”