by Angie Kelly
"I'm sorry about your friend. She must be scared," I said. Devon gave me a surprised look and then turned to stare out the window without answering.
"Thanks," she finally said a few minutes later. "I know the others didn't think she was so great. But they didn't get to know her like I did. Morgan was cool. She was like my big sister. And… thanks for saving our butts back at Versailles. I totally blew it, which I never do," she added, sounding more like the Devon I was used to.
"What do the kidnappers want, money?" I asked. But Devon turned back towards the window like she was tired of talking.
"This is our stop. Let's go," she said, nudging me to get up.
We got off at a metro stop called Tuilleries`. I had to hurry to keep up with her before the crowd swallowed her up. I followed her up the steps out of the metro station to the street above. We were on a street called Rue de Rivoli. Tons of people were out either walking dogs or sitting at sidewalk cafes. All the buildings were ancient.
"What hotel are they staying at?" I asked.
"Best Western. It should be over there somewhere." She pointed across the street.
But I wasn't looking. We'd been walking next to a high hedge and once we'd gotten to the corner I noticed the huge glass pyramid in the middle of a wide courtyard surrounded by a palace as old as Versailles. I gasped. We were at the Louvre! It was enormous, and I couldn't stop staring. I was in Paris, home to some of the greatest artists in the world, with a lot of their most famous masterpieces a mere thirty feet away from where I was standing. My gaze immediately fell on a girl standing in the courtyard staring at the glass pyramid. She had shiny, coppery, red hair so shiny it glowed in the sunlight, and pale shimmering skin. She didn't look quite real. Was she a ghost, too? I was trying to get a better look at her when I heard my name.
"Mia! Come on!" shouted Devon, who was already across and halfway down the street. I looked back and the girl was gone.
Once I crossed the street, we headed past a golden statue of a woman on a horse, holding a flagpole high in the air, in the middle of a side street. It was Joan of Arc. The statue had to be made of bronze but the pointed ends of the flag she was carrying looked like they were fluttering in the breeze. Cool. There was so much to see I wasn't watching where I was going and bumped into the back of Devon, who gave me an evil look and I flinched.
"Sorry," I mumbled and meekly followed her into a tiny Internet cafe directly across the street from the Best Western.
Devon stood in the doorway and scanned the café, finally fixing her gaze on a harassed-looking guy in a suit sitting at a computer terminal while arguing on his cell. When he got up and left, Devon rushed over and sat at his terminal and then I saw why. He still had five minutes of paid computer time left on his terminal. Devon's fingers flew across the keyboard even though none of the keys were in the same place as our keyboards back home.
"Um, shouldn't we be across the street waiting in the hotel lobby?"
"Look at us," she said, glancing down at her wrinkled, soot-covered clothes. "We look a mess. They'd just think we were homeless and call the police."
"What are you doing?"
"This," she said, turning the screen towards me and lowering her voice. On the screen was a map with a blinking red dot. "I'm tracking my phone's GPS. The dot is my phone and it's not moving."
Her fingers started flying again and the map was quickly replaced by an image of a car- choked highway. One of the vehicles was a large tour bus.
"It's the tour bus St. Alban's is on. How'd you do that?"
"I hacked into the traffic cam on the highway outside the city. They're right outside Paris, only fifteen minutes away, but the traffic jam is backing everything up and it'll probably take at least an hour for them to get here." The screen went back to the welcome menu, indicating the time was up.
"So what do we do until then?"
"Wait."
She headed outside and parked herself on a wooden bench directly across the street from the Best Western Hotel and watched the guests coming and going. I sat next to her and rummaged through my backpack until I found a couple of granola bars and handed her one.
"Thanks. I'm starving." She stuffed half of it into her mouth. "You know you don't have to wait with me," she said around a mouthful of granola.
"And where else would I go, Devon?"
"You've still got the museum pass Sister Catherine gave you, right?"
"Yeah, why?"
"I saw your eyes bug out of your head when you were looking at the Louvre. The pass should get you in there if you want to go check it out."
"Seriously!" I said, jumping up. "But what about you?"
"Both of us don't need to wait, and it's not your problem anyway. Just be back in an hour or I'll leave you behind," she called out after me. But I was barely listening.
****
It took me a few minutes to figure out how to get into the Louvre. But once I was pointed in the right direction, I made great time. I flashed my museum pass at a guard and got on an escalator, which took me down to the Louvre's crowded main lobby, where I grabbed a map from the information desk. Sunlight from the glass pyramid above filled the lobby with light. According to the map, there were three main wings: Denon, Sully, and Richelieu. I had less than an hour. But what did I want to see? The Venus de Milo? The Egyptian exhibit? Then it hit me. The Mona Lisa! The Mona Lisa was in the Denon wing and I followed the map, pausing every few minutes to check out all the other art and sculpture along the way.
If I spent a week here I'd probably still not be able to see all the art here. But at least I could see one of the most famous paintings in the world. Too bad I wasn't the only one. I had to push my way through the crowd of people encircling the Mona Lisa. And once I got to the front of the crowd, I was disappointed to see the painting, which was mounted on a wall under thick glass, was so small. Seriously. It was half the size of a regular portrait. But she was still mysterious and beautiful with her smirky half smile.
I was probably the only one not snapping a picture. So when the Mona Lisa's gaze suddenly shifted from the left to looking straight ahead, no one else seemed to notice but me. I did a double take. Not only were her eyes looking front and center, but her head was also turned to the front and worst of all…she'd stopped smiling. The Mona Lisa was frowning. I must have been hallucinating. I rubbed my eyes, as the people around me continued to snap pictures. But when I opened them she was still frowning. Then I realized it was just like it was back in the Green library at Versailles. No one else could see what I was seeing. I also realized something else. The Mona Lisa was looking at something or someone across the room. I followed her gaze through the crowd and pushed my way back from the front of the painting to see what she was looking at. The room was full of people but most of them were crowded around the Mona Lisa. The back of the room was much less crowded. Then I noticed her.
Standing in front on the biggest painting I'd ever seen was the same girl with the shiny, glowing red hair I'd seen in the courtyard. She wasn't a ghost. At least I didn't think so. She was pretty solid, but so was Marie Antoinette. She was dressed in jeans and a white top and sandals. And I wasn't the only one looking at her. I detected movement out of the corners of my eyes as every figure in every single painting in the room, including the one she was standing in front of, was turned towards this girl. And like the Mona Lisa, none of them were happy. I had to know who she was. But by the time I reached her, she'd already left the room and was heading through another galley.
I followed her and so did the paintings. With each painting she passed, the angrier the figures inside the frames got. They went from giving her dirty looks to screaming at her. The words ladro and bugiarda were shouted by the figures in the Italian paintings and mentirosa and ladrona from the Spanish paintings. As far as I could tell, the redhead couldn't hear or see any of it. But I could. I was dizzy and my head was ringing from all the noise. I had to stop and cover my ears as the shouting got louder and louder. And whe
n the people in the paintings started leaning out of their frames shaking their fists at the redhead as she headed into the next room and dripping paint on the parquet floors, I fainted.
Chapter Thirteen
When I came to, I was lying on my back surrounded by a small group of people. A lady wearing an orange and black Princeton T-shirt helped me sit up
"Take it easy, sweetie. Are you okay?" I nodded.
"What's your name?" asked another lady, who was fanning me with her folded museum map. She handed me a bottle of water.
"Mia," I said, and then took a long sip from the water bottle. A quick peek around the room showed the paintings were back to normal. The redhead, whoever she was, was probably long gone by now. Once I was sitting up, I noticed some of the people in the crowd had started to leave.
"Where are your parents, Mia?"
It was on the tip of my tongue to say dead, but when I caught a glimpse of the Princeton lady's watch and saw I only had two minutes to get back to the hotel to meet Devon, I jumped to my feet and shoved the water bottle in her hand.
"I'm okay! Thanks!"
I raced through the Denon wing and out to the main lobby where I got on the escalator and rode it up to the exit through the glass pyramid. I was back on the busy Rue de Rivoli where I weaved around people on the sidewalk and almost knocked over a table at a sidewalk café. A waiter yelled something at me in French, and I'm glad I couldn't understand what he said. I crossed the street and was half a block away from the hotel, when a big black tour bus pulled up at the corner down the street from the hotel. I was expecting the bus to turn the corner and pull up in front of the hotel but the street the hotel was on must have been too narrow. I started running just as the bus's door opened and St. Albans students started getting off. When I got to the opposite corner down the street, I saw Devon wasn't sitting on the bench anymore. She was across the street, lurking near a large potted plant at the entrance to the hotel. She'd taken off her St. Albans blazer and was wearing dark sunglasses. She spotted me and I waved to her but she put a finger to her lips so I wouldn't call out. The students were too busy talking and laughing, probably about us, to notice as they filed past her. Sister Catherine was at the front of the line and talking on her cell phone and Devon ducked behind the plant when she passed by.
Sister Ruth was the last one off the bus and had her big purse, with Devon's phone in it, dangling from her forearm as she chewed out a student. It was iPod Girl. I couldn't tell what she was saying but could tell by the look on both their faces it wasn't anything good. I was happy Sister Ruth wasn't paying attention, because Devon had come out from behind the plant and was walking towards the nun ready to pounce. Unfortunately, neither of us was paying any attention to the guy in a grey hoodie, who darted out of the doorway of a shop next to the hotel, until after he jerked Sister Ruth's purse from her arm so hard it broke the strap, and jetted off down the sidewalk, knocking Devon on her butt in the process. Devon just lay there on the sidewalk with her mouth hanging open too stunned to move.
"Stop thief! Stop! Someone call the police!" yelled Sister Ruth. I ran over to Devon.
"Come on! Get up!" I yelled and grabbed her hand, pulling her to her feet, then took off after the thief, who'd ducked down a side street.
Devon and I ran the direction the thief had run for two blocks but didn't see anyone wearing a grey hoodie.
"He could be on the metro by now," wailed Devon. Her eyes filled with tears. The last thing I wanted to see was her crying again. It was embarrassing, like seeing someone naked.
"We can't give up now! We've got to find him!"
I took off down the street without even waiting for her reply, even though I knew she was right. The guy had probably already pocketed the cash and Devon's phone and ditched the purse. I'd gone a few more blocks when I had to stop to catch my breath. I was blocks away from the Rue de Rivoli. I searched the cafés and shops along the way and didn't see the guy in the grey hoodie. I finally gave up and started walking back the way I'd come. I was walking past a small playground filled with kids when a yellow ball rolled to my feet. A little blond boy was standing in the middle of the street holding his hands out for me to throw him his ball. He couldn't have been older than five. Where were his parents?
"Hey, little boy, you need to get out of the street!" I tossed him his ball.
He caught it and smiled just as a car flew around the corner and drove straight at him. I screamed and lunged forward but the car drove right through him. The kid was still standing in the street grinning at me. I finally noticed how old fashioned his clothes were. He was wearing a torn white blouse-like shirt, knee breeches and suspenders. His boots buttoned at the ankles. He clutched his ball to his chest with one arm and then turned and pointed to an alleyway behind him. I watched as he bounced the ball a few times and then vanished into thin air.
Another ghost? What was happening to me? And what was he pointing at? I followed his gaze down the alley. Someone was crouched next to a large dumpster. I hurried over and crept closer and saw a guy in dirty jeans and a grey hoodie hunched over something on the ground. It was Sister Ruth's purse. A purple cell phone was sticking out of his back pocket, Devon's phone. I hadn't thought about what I'd do if I actually found the guy. And since I was afraid he'd just run off again if I yelled for help, I did something pretty stupid. I ran up and snatched the cell phone out of his back pocket. But he must have heard me coming because he turned and grabbed my wrist before I could get away. I had thought he was a kid or a teenager because of his clothes, how short he was, and how fast he could run. But he wasn't. He was a grown man with a scruffy looking beard and wild eyes. He also smelled like funky armpits and his fingernails were long and dirty.
"Let go of me, you freak! This is my friend's phone!"
He snapped something at me in French, then shoved me face first against the alley wall, pulled my arm up painfully behind my back, and pried the phone out of my hand. When I tried to snatch it back he shoved me to ground. He was about to kick me when something whizzed over my head and hit him so hard in the stomach he let out a loud, "Oof!" went flying backwards, and slammed into the side of the dumpster. He was out cold. What had hit him was on the ground. It was a yellow ball. I searched around for the little ghost boy but didn't see him and when I turned back to the dumpster, the ball was gone.
"Thank you!" I called out before grabbing Devon's phone, which was still clutched in the thief's hand.
I retraced my steps back to the Best Western where Devon was sitting on the same bench across the street…waiting. When she saw me she jumped up. And when I waved the phone at her she did something I'd never seen her do. She smiled. Then the phone rang.
"Hello!" said Devon snatching the phone from my hand. "Morgan! Are you okay! Where are you?"
I could hear hysterical crying and reached out and hit the speaker button so I could hear too. The crying was replaced by an electronic voice.
"I take it, Ms. Sharp, you still have what I want?"
"Yes, I've got it!"
"Good. The Apollo Fountain in one hour." The caller hung up and Devon let out a sigh of relief.
"Uh, Devon," I said.
"What?"
"We don't have any money and our train tickets were only one way. How're we gonna get back to Versailles?"
"Well, we've got even bigger problems now," she groaned and handed me her phone.
Devon had a bunch of missed calls from a restricted phone number, probably the kidnapper, and a bunch of voice mail messages from Alex and Lily wanting to know where we were. There were also two text messages, an SOS text from Lily and a text: Necklace is an OSO. Come Home Now! It was from Mrs. T.
"What's an OSO?"
"I'll tell you later," she said, as she pulled up a map on her phone just like the GPS one she'd pulled up in the Internet cafe. There were two blinking red dots on the map in the exact same location, not at the Palace of Versailles but apparently a few blocks away.
"Whose GPS dots
are those?"
"Alex and Lily's."
"What about Tomi?"
"Her GPS isn't registering, which means either she lost her phone, again, or her phone isn't turned on, which happens a lot, or something has happened to her." Devon tried calling all three and only got voice mail.
"They're in trouble. We've got an hour to get to them and we're stranded. What are we going to do?"
"I don't know!" She ran her fingers through her hair in exasperation.
"I know. We need a labyrinth."
"What are you talking about? You don't have a ring," she said.
"I didn't have one when I came through with Tomi. I'll just hold your hand."
"But it's too dangerous. Our rings protect us from any weird side effects from traveling through the portal. It isn't safe."
Like seeing ghosts? I wanted ask. "What kind of side effects?"
"I don't know," said Devon, shrugging. "Mrs. T. just told us to always wear our rings and we do."
"It's not like we have a choice, you know. I'll be fine. We can use the labyrinth to find the others and still have time to get back to the Apollo fountain in time to meet the kidnappers."
Devon thought about it for a moment while I Googled labyrinths in Paris on her phone.
"Looks like there's a labyrinth in a place called Jardin des Plantes. It's a botanical garden. Ugh. And it's a half-hour walk from here."
"We can take the metro. I've still got some tickets."
****
Once we were on the metro, I couldn't hold it in anymore. I had to know. "So what's an OSO?"