The Key (17 page)

He sighed. No, he was feeling good finally. It was not time to hear that the golem had burned down the house or whatever. Later.

They reached a pedestrian bridge. It was a sturdy thing, quite capable of carrying a car or two, but strictly for pedestrians. They crossed here, thinking it appeared giant-free. And from the middle of the bridge they could see the tower in all its magnificence. Not very near, but not very far, either.

They paused there for a moment for Stefan to throw the centipede head into the river. “It stopped moving,” he explained ruefully. “It was only cool as long as it was moving.”

A long
bateau mouche
was coming toward them, and a tugboat was chugging by below, going the other way. They watched the boats and therefore missed seeing the police car that pulled up very abruptly at the far end of the bridge.

Two blue-uniformed officers stepped out. More police cars arrived. More cops. Or flics, as the French would say.

Jarrah was the first to spot trouble. “Uh-oh,” she said.

There were now close to a dozen cops.

Mack shot an anxious look back the way they had come. A big police van had just pulled up, and guys in body armor carrying plastic shields were piling out in a very professional way.

“I can use the disappearing spell on them,” Jarrah said.

“No,” Xiao said quickly. “They are the legitimate forces of law and order.”

This brought a raised eyebrow from Jarrah, a snort of disbelief from Charlie, a sage head nod from Dietmar, and a shrug from Sylvie.

Mack said, “Xiao's right. We don't hurt the good guys. Let's try talking to them.”

He stepped to the middle of the Passerelle Debilly. He held his hands out, palms open, and smiled. The intent was to show he was harmless and not looking for trouble.

But some things translate better than others in foreign lands. The palms and the open arms were fine. But Parisians have a different attitude toward smiles than Americans do. So to the flics, this looked mighty suspicious.

A plainclothes officer, a woman with dark hair and a no-nonsense attitude, pushed through the uniforms. “You must come with us,” she said in firm but charmingly accented English.

“Sorry, ma'am, we can't do that,” Mack said.

“But I insist,” the woman said. “We know that you were involved in the disturbing incidents on the bridge. People were hurt.”

“Sorry about that. But we're kind of in the middle of something,” Mack said. Again in his most winning, charming, harmless, trustworthy, smiling way.

“I am Inspecteur Bonnard of the police nationale,” she said. It wasn't in the nature of a friendly introduction. “You will come peacefully. Or you will come with … difficulty. But either way, you will come.”

“Boat,” Stefan said. Just that one word. And his eyes flicked toward the
bateau mouche
that was passing beneath them.

“We'll get killed,” Mack hissed, still smiling at the
inspecteur
in an ingratiating way that really wasn't working.

“Nah,” Jarrah said dismissively. “We'll most likely survive.”

“I will count to three,” the
inspecteur
said. “I will not count slowly.”

“Oy,” Mack said, and sighed. “Everyone? Follow me.”

He turned suddenly and raced for the railing on the far side of the bridge. The police were not slow to notice. From both sides the uniforms surged.

Mack jumped, landed on the rail, and leaped.

N
ow, if this were a movie, we'd know exactly what happens next. The Magnifica plus Stefan would leap and then fall in slow motion while yelling comical catchphrases. They would land on the
bateau mouche
's awning and slide down safely, and the cops would be left fuming helplessly.

Ah, if only life could be a movie. Or a movie could be life. Although not some movies.

As it happened, Mack did not land on an awning; he landed on a transparent covering that looked like it might be glass but was in fact plastic. The plastic didn't break. It cracked from the impact but it was thick and strong, so it didn't shatter. Mack landed hard on his heels, fell on his butt, smacked his head, and lay as stunned as a slapped catfish.
³³

Sylvie, Xiao, and Charlie all landed in a heap of tangled legs and arms. The two girls seemed to have landed on top of Charlie, who softened their landing but was now groaning that his back was broken. (It wasn't.)

Jarrah was the only one to shout anything at all, and it was, “Yeeeeeaaaah!” followed shortly by, “Owww, that hurt.” Followed by some interesting Australian expressions that we cannot repeat here lest some Australian get hold of this book and be offended.

Dietmar missed the boat altogether and landed in the water. So did Rodrigo.

However they both landed quite close to the side of the
bateau
, and when Stefan leaped last and spotted their splashes, he hit the plastic cover, bounced easily off the side into the water, and came up with one Rodrigo and one Dietmar in each hand.

He basically threw Dietmar aboard. Then he grabbed one of the bumpers, held on, and pushed Rodrigo up over the side before following him up.

The police refused to be comically helpless. Instead they hopped into their vehicles and were now, with sirens lamenting loudly and blue lights flashing, racing down both banks of the Seine.

Also, in a movie the crew of the boat would just kind of shrug off the fact that eight kids had dropped onto their boat from a bridge. But in reality they were somewhat upset, actually. The dropping bodies had made a mess of the plastic, and the passengers were concerned and asking questions like, “Is this normal?” and, “Is this part of some kind of street theater?” And one man even asked, “Are they mimes?”

The French are very touchy on the subject of mimes, so this created some real resentment on the part of the crew. Said crew were now edging forward cautiously and demanding to know just who they thought they were landing like that without even a ticket. One of the crew was holding a pepper mill as a weapon.

Mack reached for his pocket.

The armed crewman said, “Don't try anything!”

“I'm just reaching for a credit card,” Mack said. And out came the black plastic rectangle that signaled great wealth. “I want to pay for tickets, and I'll pay for damages. And I'd like to leave a tip of five hundred euros for every crew member and twice that for the captain!”

There was a sudden mood change. The pepper mill disappeared, a credit card reader appeared in its place, and someone brought bandages for Jarrah's scraped leg and foot.

“We're heading the wrong direction,” Dietmar pointed out. “The Eiffel Tower is the other way.”

“Yeah,” Mack agreed. “And the cops are keeping up with us.”

The crew now brought them café au lait and hot chocolate and the most perfect croissants, along with pots of preserves and tubs of butter. The
bateau
churned along at a good speed—just fast enough that the cops couldn't catch up by the time they reached Pont de l'Alma again.

The cops made pretty good progress after that and almost got onto the next bridge, but not quite. Then it seemed the police were slowed by traffic and the
bateau
might get away altogether.

“We might just make it,” Rodrigo said.

“Bet you a fiver we don't,” Charlie said, holding out his hand for Rodrigo to shake on the bet.

As they rounded a bend, up loomed an island, and on that island was the huge Gothic church called Notre-Dame, with its spires visible despite being at the far end.

The river narrowed. Police boats waited like sharks for a guppy.

The captain sent his apologies and said that he was bound to obey the police boats. It was one thing to pretend not to see police cars racing frantically to catch up. This was a whole different kettle of fish. These were boats.

The police cars had reached the Pont Neuf ahead of them as well, so it was more or less the entire Paris police force arrayed along the bridge or in boats just in front of the bridge.

“My compliments to the captain,” Mack said, because he'd seen that in a movie once, “and tell him we understand.”

“What do we do now?” Dietmar asked.

Mack stifled an urge to say a sarcastic, Oh, now you want me to make the decisions.

They were trapped. The boat couldn't turn around even if the captain had wanted to. Either they fought the police, or they would have to be able to walk on water.

Which is not something that is done on a regular basis.

“I have a crazy idea,” Mack said.

“Let's do it!” Jarrah and Stefan both said.

“You haven't even heard what it is yet!” Xiao protested.

Jarrah shrugged. “He said it was crazy”—as though that was enough.

“We know the Vargran for ‘water.' And we know the Vargran word for ‘walk,'” Mack said. He just let that hang there in the air for a minute as the others stared at him.

“Are you out of your mind?” Charlie demanded at last, and it was pretty clear that Sylvie, Rodrigo, and Xiao shared this opinion.

Surprisingly, it was Dietmar who said, “Very clever. Ingenious. If it works.”

“It feels big,” Xiao said. “Like it would take all of us together.”

“And would it work for Stefan?” Rodrigo asked.

“If it works for us and not him, we drag him along,” Mack said.

“And if it doesn't work at all, we end up wet and cold and looking ridiculous!” Charlie said.

Mack ignored him. “Rodrigo and Jarrah, you haul Stefan if necessary. We head down the right side of the island, where the river is narrowest—the cop boats aren't over on that side. We get out of sight of the boats and the bridges and then we head up into the city and try to disappear.”

Jarrah grinned and grabbed Charlie's hand, shook it firmly, and said, “Welcome to the Magnificent Twelve, mate.”

The boat slowed, and the police boats were just thirty feet away when together the Magnifica spoke the words
booj-il ebway truk (sniff )oh
with a certain fervent energy.

Then Mack vaulted over the side.

His feet landed on water. His knees buckled. But he did not sink. The water was not dry and it was not suddenly flat or solid or unmoving. In fact, his shoes were wet immediately. They seemed to sink an inch or two with each step, and tiny waves splashed over his ankles. But he did not sink.

“Okay, I did not expect that to work,” Mack said. He looked back to see the others gaping at him. “Come on,” he urged, with far more confidence than he felt. “No problem.”

They jumped.

Stefan plunged.

Rodrigo and Jarrah grabbed an arm each and hauled him after them as they ran in a soggy, shuffling way. It was a very odd thing to watch: two running on water, dragging a third like he was a fallen water-skier.

The current was against them, so they couldn't run as fast as they might have liked—it was a bit like running in the wrong direction on a treadmill. But the mere fact that they were running at all on water seemed to have finally caused the cops to stop and gape in frozen astonishment.

The kids raced down the narrow part of the river, island on their left, the Left Bank on their right, and passed beneath a series of very low, mossy-bottomed bridges. Soon they were in the shadow of the great cathedral.

And there at last, just as they were feeling pretty good about themselves, and Mack was congratulating himself on his out-of-the-box thinking, they saw a figure standing on the last bridge, the one that led directly from the Left Bank to Notre-Dame.

He was a boy, clearly, although dressed a bit flamboyantly in puffy maroon pantaloons and a tight yellow vest over a full-cut white shirt. He wore a sword at his side.

Yes: a sword.

In addition to the sword, Mack spotted nunchakus stuffed into his belt. And some kind of wickedly curved knife on the other side.