by Angie Kelly
"Ow!" Mia clutched her cheek in shock. "What's your problem?"
I got right in her face. "You felt my hand, didn't you? This is not a dream! This is for real! Now, snap out it!" We glared at each other without speaking, while I hoped I wasn't about to get my butt kicked.
"What's she doin' here?" came a voice from behind me.
Alex and Devon were coming up the steps. Predictably, Alex was a little surprised, and a lot amused, but hardly mad. Devon was highly annoyed by the sight of Mia but was silent and strangely subdued. Mia was still holding her cheek but finally seemed like she was lucid… and ticked off. She rounded on Alex.
"What am I doing here? What am I doing here? Don't you have anything else to say? For instance, how about telling me who you guys are and how is it even possible we're in France?"
None of us knew quite how to answer. Finally, Alex spoke up.
"Come on, luv." He grabbed Mia's hand "We'll need a bit of privacy for this."
Once we were back in the maze, in a secluded, tourist-free corner, the explanations came flying from all of us — except Devon — who was still too quiet for comfort.
"We're the Labyrinth Society, Mia," I told her.
"Founded by Mrs. T.'s husband Dr. Tarpley," continued Lily.
"We work for some of the most prestigious museums in the world huntin' down lost and stolen priceless art and artifacts. We travel all over the world through the labyrinth," said Alex, who was squeezing Mia's hand like he was afraid she might run away.
"The three of us girls all had family members in the Society. My grandfather, Tomi's parents, and Devon's mom were all original members, which makes us legacies," concluded Lily.
"Okay," said Mia slowly. So far, it seemed like she was taking what she'd been told pretty well. "You hunt down stuff for museums. Sounds reasonable enough. But how are you able to get around through the labyrinth?"
"All historical places like Versailles generate energy, which acts as a magnet. The energy, combined with the rings we all wear, and the design of the labyrinth itself, enable us to travel. All we have to do is concentrate on where we want to go. The energy connected to our destination pulls us through the labyrinth, and we're there," I explained.
"Yeah, no passports, no goin' through customs, no bad airline grub, and no sittin' in coach listenin' to colicky babies. It's brilliant!" exclaimed Alex. "It's kinda like—"
"Being in one of those square barcode things you scan with your smartphone. You know, a giant QR code?" said Mia slowly. "And you guys are like the URL embedded in the center? When you do your thing with the rings, it's like you're scanning yourselves to get to whatever location you need to get to."
"Wow," said Lily, looking impressed. "Someone's been doing their homework. How'd you know?"
"From one of Dr. Tarpley's books. You guys were being so weird I had to find out what was going on," she said defensively.
"It is a lot like a QR code," I admitted. "The only catch is we can only travel to and from other labyrinths," I said.
"Or a maze usually works in a pinch," added Lily.
"Was Morgan Lake a member of the Labyrinth Society?" asked Mia, looking directly at Devon. Devon rolled her eyes and crossed her arms.
"She's the reason Mrs. T. didn't want you to know about us yet," I explained. "We recruited Morgan too soon and she couldn't deal. She was never much of a team player, and she bailed on us during our last job. She left the Society right after she turned eighteen."
"Yeah, she was so desperate to get away from us she left most of her gear behind. Talk about an odd duck," said Alex, causing Devon to explode.
"Don't you dare talk about her! Not everyone is cut out to do what we do! You know how dangerous it can get!"
I caught Devon's eye behind Mia's back and put a finger to my lips and shook my head trying to get her to shut her big yap. Now wasn't the time to tell Mia about some of the more, well, unusual items we track down. There would be time enough to tell her about it later. Maybe after we break the news about the spirit of a murdered Egyptian prince inhabiting the Egyptian burial mask in the foyer. However, Mia didn't seem to notice the reference to danger. She was too busy staring daggers at Devon.
"You lying cow! I could just kill you!" Mia spat out at Devon. She lunged at her and Alex caught her just in time to prevent her from getting her hands around Devon's throat but not before she grabbed a big chunk of Devon's hair, almost ripping it out of her head.
"Get her off of me! She's crazy!" screamed Devon.
But Mia wasn't letting go and when Alex unwisely loosened his grip to get a better hold on her, Mia broke free, jumped on Devon's back, and grabbed another big handful of hair. Devon was lurching around trying to throw Mia off her back like a ticked-off bull trying to buck a cowboy. It took all three of us a good five minutes to pry them apart. Thankfully no one saw us and called security. We must have looked like idiots, which is never good.
Once she chilled out, Mia told us, in one long breathless rush, what happened at her last foster home and what Devon had told her in the attic.
"I'm not a thief, you guys! I swear!" Mia sounded like she might cry.
We knew she wasn't a thief because Mrs. T. would have hardly let her come live with us if she thought for even a minute she couldn't be trusted. We're real big on trust in our business. Lily put an arm around Mia and we all took turns jumping all over Devon's case, which didn't faze her one little bit.
"And I'd do it all again," Devon said, rubbing both sides of her head and probing her scalp for hair loss. "Isn't the first thing they teach us is to protect the Society at all costs? Mrs. T. said not to tell her, so I didn't tell her!" said Devon defiantly.
I noticed she was staying out of arm's reach of Mia who still had steam coming out of her ears, not to mention more than a few strands of long blonde hair dangling from between her clenched fists. We were all silent for a few long awkward minutes. Devon was right. We are supposed to protect the Society. It was lesson number one. But Devon had no business lying to Mia and making her think we didn't trust her.
Alex finally consulted his watch and spoke up. "Mia, sweetheart, I know you've got loads more questions. They'll have to wait though, because we've got a necklace to track down and we're already behind schedule."
"What are you looking for? Can I help?" Mia asked, perking up considerably. "I may as well, since I'm already here."
This was the first time she seemed genuinely excited about anything since I'd met her. It was a good sign and Lily and I exchanged relieved looks. We're a tight-knit group, and always have each other's back. Morgan "the Flake" Lake turning out to be such a disaster was a real blow, not to mention the wasted time it took to train her.
"No!" Devon wailed. "You haven't been trained and you'll just mess things up. You can wait here for us until we get back."
"Not so fast, Dev," said Alex, holding up a hand. "A little on-the-job training might not be a bad idea, and we could use the extra help."
Devon stalked off in a huff, and the rest of us got busy quickly filling Mia in on our mission. We had been hired by the Price Institute, a small privately funded museum in London, to track down a necklace owned by Marie Antoinette. It went missing during the French Revolution. The journal of a French priest named Father Jean Billon was found in the museum's storage a while ago. It had only recently been translated; it made mention of the necklace.
Marie Antoinette gave a lot of her jewelry to friends for safe keeping with plans to get it all back after the revolution ended. This particular necklace was given to the captain of the palace guard, a man named Pierre Garrin, to take to one of the queen's close friends. It never made it because as he was leaving, the palace was stormed by an angry mob. They attacked him and left him for dead. The royal family was taken to Paris and put under house arrest. His daughter, Avril, found him. Before he died, he gave the necklace to Avril. She held on to it, planning to return it to the queen herself after the revolution ended, thus hoping to earn herself a place
at the royal court.
However, after Marie Antoinette's execution, Avril got sick and died of tuberculosis. Father Jean Billon gave Avril her last rights; before she died, she told him about the necklace and how she'd given it to someone closely connected to the queen, who'd hidden it. According to the journal, when Father Billon asked Avril Garrin where the necklace was she said: Le chemin que Renee La Faussi a marché mènera la manière. Translation: The path Renee LaFaussi walked will lead the way. We had no idea who this Renee person was or what path she walked. As for the necklace, the only description we had of it was from the journal. It was described as having a flat octagonal shaped pendant made of platinum and pearls.
"So how are you going to track down a necklace when you know so little about it?" Mia asked us.
"Same way we track down everything — teamwork," said Alex smiling.
"Actually, we're going to split up, Mia," said Lily pulling a blue blazer with a gold crest on the right breast pocket from her backpack. "Devon and I are going inside the palace to try find a painting of Marie Antoinette wearing the necklace, since we haven't turned up any paintings of her wearing a necklace with an octagonal shaped pendant, while Tomi and Alex head over to the Church of Saint Cecelia. We're going to search birth and death records to see if anyone named Renee LaFaussi even existed. We haven't found a trace of this person in our research so far."
"What's with the blazer?" Mia asked.
"We think the painting is in the private apartments of the queen, which aren't included on the regular tour. We're hoping a lot of the personal paintings of Marie Antoinette, the ones not commissioned as PR to improve her funky image as the Queen of Debt, are in her private rooms. You have to get here early and wait in a long line to see those rooms unless you already have a tour booked in advance, which we don't," I explained.
"Yeah, Devon hacked into Versailles computer system and found out a private girl's school from Connecticut called St. Albans is here on a class trip and is scheduled for a tour today, which includes the queen's private apartments. Me and Devon are going to pose as St. Albans students so we can get into to the palace with their group to search for any portrait showing Marie Antoinette wearing this necklace," Lily said, putting on the blazer and fluffing out her wavy hair.
Before Mia could ask anything else, Devon came running back to where we were. She was already dressed in her blue blazer. "Come on, Lily, St. Albans's bus just pulled into the parking lot."
"Hold up," said Alex before the pair of them could leave. "Actually, I think it would be better if Lily went with us to the church. We'll need all the help we can get searching through all those records. Plus, Lily speaks a little French, which will help us out a lot. Mia, you can go with Devon to look for the painting."
Devon's mouth fell open. "You can't be serious! She'll just slow me down! She doesn't know what she's doing!"
"How hard can it be to look for a painting? Sounds pretty easy to me," Mia said happily putting on the blazer Lily had, with great reluctance, just taken off.
Lily was struggling not to look mad and failing miserably. She shot Alex an evil look and would barely look at Mia. I'm betting she wasn't so happy she'd taken the French class I talked her into last summer. I couldn't blame Lily for being disappointed. I'd take touring the palace of Versailles over searching through a bunch of boring old records in a musty church basement any day. But I was also the only one who spoke fluent French, so I was the one who'd have to deal with the priest at the church where the records were kept. It was an important job, but hardly an exciting one.
"If we find the necklace in enough time, maybe we can all see the palace before we go," I added hoping to appease everybody. I hate conflict of any kind. It's so bad for the digestion. I'm allergic to drama. So, I'm always the peacemaker when trouble rears its ugly head. Plus, I was still feeling jumpy from the brawl we'd just broken up.
"This ain't a field trip, Tomi," Alex said irritably. "We're here to work. Now, let's get crackin'. We'll meet back here in two hours."
See, told you so. All work and no play. The four of us silently followed Alex out of the maze and split up once we got to the palace's crowded cobblestoned courtyard. Lily, Alex, and I passed a group of about fifty talking and laughing teenage girls wearing blue St. Albans blazers on our way to the crowded vendor-filled parking lot. Through the palace's ornate wrought iron gates, a ticked-off looking Devon and an excited Mia lurked in a nearby doorway waiting to join them. Mia was a little too excited, which worried me. Alex was right. This wasn't a field trip, or a game, and for the first time I regretted not telling her more. I sure hoped Alex knew what he was doing. ‘Cause Devon could end up bald.
Chapter Six
"This is just great!" exclaimed Alex as he rattled the handle on the Church of Saint Cecelia's large wooden front door. St. Cecelia's was the only church in Versailles with the birth and death records for the years we needed to track down Renee LaFausse. And now there was a locked door between those records and us. Alex glared at me.
"Hey! It's not my fault," I protested. "They didn't say anything about it being closed when I called here two days ago."
Okay, I lied. I meant to call, truly I did. But I forgot. I didn't think it would be a big deal. I mean how was I supposed to know a church would be closed on a Sunday? And I knew I should 'fess up and admit I'd forgotten to call. Believe me, I could feel the tiny teeth of my lie embedded in my buns. But Alex would go ballistic and it wouldn't change the fact the church was closed. According to the sign on the door, it was closed for repairs to the roof and wouldn't be open again until the following Sunday. Alex ran down the church's steps, shaded his eyes and peered up. Lily and I followed him.
"Roof looks fine to me," he exclaimed irritably. "And where are the roofers?" He was right. There were no roofers to be found anywhere. And no repairs of any kind were being done to the church.
"Uh, guys. It's Sunday, remember," pointed out Lily. "What idiots would be working today?"
"You mean besides us?" I said, cutting Alex a look. He was too busy scowling up at the roof to notice.
Don't get me wrong. I adore Alex… most of the time. He was fun to be around and always watched out for us, especially when we were on a job. He kept us safe, and when he was around we all worked together like a well-oiled machine. But when it came to his precious schedule, he had tunnel vision. He had our missions planned out down to the last second. The only problem was when things didn't go as planned, Alex got cranky because he hated having to wing it.
"So now what?" asked Lily, following Alex back up the church steps and watching while he glared at the locked church door like he could scare it into opening.
"Desperate times call for desperate measures," he replied. He took his backpack, or his rucksack as he called it, off and rummaged through it until he found his lock picking kit.
"Are you crazy?" whispered Lily. "We are not going to break into a church. We may as well take an express elevator straight to H-E-L-L." She made an L with her thumb and index finger and tapped it twice against her forehead. I coughed to keep from laughing. Alex didn't realize she'd just called him a loser in sign language.
"Says the girl who hasn't been to mass since her granddad went into the home," snapped Alex. Lily turned bright red, and she and Alex launched into full scale bickering, which is so bad for a person's attitude.
A group of old French women walked by carrying canvas bags filled with groceries. They stopped to stare at Lily and Alex and were whispering amongst themselves and giving the three of us dirty looks as Alex and Lily continued to bicker. Not cool. We were attracting way too much attention.
"Bonjour mesdames!" I gave the ladies a wave and a smile. And they crossed themselves and hurried off down the street.
I left Alex and Lily, who were still arguing, and walked around to the side of the church. There was a narrow alley between the church and the building next door. A little further on, there was a set of steps leading down to a doorway. It was probabl
y the church basement and I bet the records we needed were down there. Looking around to make sure no one was watching, I headed down the steps and jiggled the doorknob. I couldn't believe it when it turned. The door was unlocked. I pushed and it opened halfway with a loud creak. I hesitated. I hadn't picked the lock, but would going inside a closed church be the same as breaking in? Besides, if rule number one was to protect the society at all costs, rule number two was don't get into trouble with the law. One of us girls getting arrested in a foreign country would cause Mrs. T. a lot of aggravation, not to mention attracting a lot of attention. I didn't know what France's equivalent to juvie was, but something told me spending time there wouldn't exactly be life affirming.
I was still standing in the basement doorway when a long, loud moan came from inside. I was so startled I jumped back and scraped my elbow on the brick wall behind me. Ow! Then I heard it again. Only this time it wasn't a moan. It was a man's voice.
"Aidez-moi," the man called out. "Aidez-moi!"
Help me? He was calling for help. I screamed for Alex and Lily before pushing open the door all the way and rushing inside. Even with the light streaming in from outside, it was dark in the basement. My eyes took a few seconds to adjust to the darkness. And I had just spotted a figure lying on the floor several feet from the door when Alex and Lily came rushing in behind me.
"Blimey!" said Alex, running over to the person on the floor, who turned out to be a priest.
He was lying on his side near another set of steps leading up into the church. I spotted a light switch on the wall behind him and ran to flip the switch. Once the lights were on, I could see there was a big gash over the priest's right eye and his lip was split. There were papers and folders all over the floor. Big filing cabinets lining the basement walls had been overturned. I asked him in French what had happened. His eyes got big and he started pointing up the steps.