by Meg Cowley
He nodded, though I had said it for my own benefit, too.
“Do you know anything about the Catacombs?”
He shook his head.
I looked it up online. “Wow. An ossuary. Perfect place for it.” I showed Jamie the pictures. Underground tunnels constructed of and lined with human bones. Millions of them forming macabre art. Bones stacked high. Rows of skulls staring empty-eyed into the corridors. Most of them victims of the plague. “Almost a city of death, and under our feet.”
Jamie looked down, as if he could see through the floors, and the ground, into the catacombs somewhere below us. “He mentioned a crypt. Sac… sac… something-or-other.”
I loaded a map of the catacombs, grating my teeth as the internet connection sluggishly worked. Hotels like this didn’t have Wi-Fi.
“Sacellum Crypt.” A curving underground chamber lined with bones like the rest of the catacombs and with an altar in its centre. “She knows how to make a statement,” I said grimly.
Jamie scowled. “She always was a showy cow.”
“Seems so. What could be more fitting than to sell the bringer of the next great plague amidst the bones of the victims of the last one? Six million Parisians lie down there, according to this. Six million. Not even a fraction of those at risk if that box gets opened.”
“Well, we’ll have to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“We don’t have much time. She moves quickly. She won’t want to delay now the bidders have seen what the box can do, I imagine.”
Jamie’s lip curled. “No, she’ll want to scarper with the money as soon as she can, no doubt to somewhere she thinks the box will never be able to touch her. I can’t believe she’s seen what it can do and still wants to go through with this.”
“From what we’ve seen, she’s done a lot more than see what it can do.”
“We’re going to have to be really careful. She’s ruthless and not to be crossed at the best of times; now more than ever. I don’t want to see you get hurt,” Jamie said.
I looked away. It was too close to all that was unsaid between us. “It won’t come to that,” I muttered. I didn’t know whether to be touched or annoyed by his protectiveness. I could take care of myself regardless, I was sure.
This time, we wouldn’t be able to steal a token. This time, we’d have to find a way in on our own.
The minutes raced by as we got to work crafting glamours to change our appearance — just in case — and shroud ourselves with invisibility charms. They were nigh on impossible to manage, and it was only by combining our strength and knowledge that we achieved it. Cloaked under the same magic, we could see each other perfectly, but it would be unnerving to walk in in plain sight and have to trust that our magic would do the job of shielding us from prying eyes.
We would be going in blind this time with no chance to reconnaissance — we spent what little time we had left learning the map of the Catacombs by heart. We could not afford to get lost underground. I shivered at the thought of being lost, surrounded by nothing but the dead and the dark.
We checked, double-checked, and triple-checked our wards, adding to them spells and charms of protection where we could. I stifled a yawn. My head seethed dully, fuzzy with tiredness. Jamie had shadows beneath his eyes, and I was pretty sure I’d be the same. No amount of replenishing magic from Paris’ ley lines could make up for no sleep.
We arrived early at the deserted attraction. It was dark and silent. Shadows yawned between the branches of the trees lining the cobbled street, poorly lit by the intermittent lamps. Gone were the usual crowds queuing all the way around the block for entry. Only the occasional car roared past, illuminating lines of rain in the sky.
We huddled under one of the trees as drips plopped onto our heads from the leaves above. As one rolled coldly and unpleasantly down my neck, I added an impervious charm to our layer of protections.
We watched and we waited. Nothing. The entrance was closed off behind roadworks barriers, diverting passers-by around them. Was it truly open?
I motioned for Jamie to follow me and we crept closer to the closed entrance. As we approached, it was like we had stepped through a cut in reality to another world because, all of a sudden, it was well-illuminated. I halted at once, blinking in the light, and stepped back.
Darkness.
Rain.
Silence.
I stepped forward. Light. Jamie and I exchanged a glance. How clever of her; Cleo had shrouded the entrance so passers-by would not think to look or approach too close. The open door invited us in. The man beside it did not. He had not moved a muscle, though we were surely obvious to him. He was built like a tank, and all six plus feet of him crammed into a dark jacket that bulged at the seams. This guy could take people out. Only his eyes moved beneath the shadow of his brow, scanning the street around him.
And then they fixed upon me.
Chapter Nine
His eyes captured mine in a piercing stare. In a moment that felt like an hour, his eyes slid across me, and away. I slowly released the pent-up breath I’d been holding.
He couldn’t see us.
Our invisibility charm had worked.
I jerked my head towards the door and we crept past him. It was completely unnerving, feeling like we walked in plain sight. As if at any moment, he could — and would — reach out and grab us and break us with his giant hands.
And then we were in, and descending the hundred plus steps into the dark. Our feet were silent, muffled by magic, and I watched every step to make sure I did not trip. Down and around we went, spiralling into the depths of Paris until we reached the level of the catacombs. The air was cold here. Stale and damp. Unpleasant.
The tunnel was one-person wide, and we had to stoop to walk through it. It was dark: poorly lit by solitary lights every now and again that did little to dispel the blackness. On and on we walked as the tunnel wended into the bowels of the earth, occasionally breaking to one side or another to reveal a macabre grotto. Not a sound did we hear but our own muted breaths as Jamie followed me.
At last, the tunnel opened out, widening slightly, and the roof soared into dark, vaulted heights. Above a doorway, a French carving adorned the stone, warning us we entered the land of the dead.
Arrête, c'est ici l'empire de la mort.
I suppressed a shiver and stepped inside.
Once more, the ceiling lowered until it was a great shelf of stone hovering uncomfortably close above our heads. The pillars upholding it seemed as small as twigs as if at any moment it would collapse upon us. As the corridor widened, great stacks of bones lined the walls. Eyeless skulls — thousands of them — watched us pass.
On and on the corridor led, and for minutes we trekked through the dull silence of the catacombs, not uttering a word to each other. Shivers crawled and crept up my spine with each eyeless, grinning skull we passed. Then, voices ahead. Men, much like the brute outside, lined the way. Their monotone mutters echoed along the passage.
Jamie walked beside me now, and like me, his hands were glowing with a hint of magic, ready to call forth protective spells at a moment’s notice should he need to. Lights grew ahead until we had to blink against the brightness. We passed the guards, one by one, and entered the chamber behind them.
I recognised the altar at once. The Sacellum Crypt.
I stopped.
There it was.
The small box sat upon the altar as innocently as any other object.
This one, however, I could feel from where I stood, oozed malevolence. Candles lined the crypt, bathing it in warm light, and additional electric lights poured brightness over everything. The tiny, battered box looked out of place upon the altar.
The guards were feet away in the corridor behind us, around the bend and out of sight. There was no one else about, though I could hear voices ahead — one of them, I recognised as Cleo’s — and see flickering shadows as figures moved in the halls, casting shadows here and there. I sent out a small seekin
g charm. The box was loaded with wards, as we’d expected. Some to keep the contents inside, and some to keep the box out of meddling hands. Our seal would contain it all, no problem.
I turned to Jamie and raised my eyebrow. He nodded and smiled grimly. At the same time, we strode forward.
It was like tripping over a rope and falling through a curtain at the same time as if we’d stepped into some bubble that wiped away everything. Our wards, our glamours, and our invisibility. I felt it all vanish as the trap closed behind us with an audible snap and we stumbled, latching onto each other to save ourselves from falling.
My wide eyes met Jamie’s as we froze in a moment of tumultuous panic, indecision, and split-second decision making. I dived behind a pillar at the edge of the crypt, tucking myself into a corner and trying not to think about the bones poking into my back or the skulls leering at me, whilst Jamie scrambled behind another.
Damn it, she’d rigged a trap. I hadn’t seen it coming; hadn’t even thought to check. She was meticulous in magics I didn’t even know about. She might not have been able to protect the world from the contents of the box, but she’d sure managed to protect the box from the world, or at least from us.
I could have kicked myself. She was named The Ghost for a reason: she was elusive. An elusive Magicai at that. She would be well used to covering her tracks and safeguarding herself. I should have known better.
I didn’t have another second to consider all the magic I would need to research after this to even stand a chance of understanding how she’d stripped all our magic away, because, at that moment, the guards barrelled into the room, followed by the slim, petite figure of Cleo herself. I used the moment I had to shroud myself in darkness, turn passing eyes away and sink into the corner, but Jamie had not managed the same.
She was death incarnate as I sneaked a look. Pale face. Dramatic black eye makeup. Black diamonds glittered about her. And a dress made of night itself swept to the floor in waifs that made her seem like she floated across the stone floor like a macabre banshee. The Ghost. Her men dived on Jamie and hauled him out, throwing him to the floor at Cleo’s feet. He jumped up at once with his fists raised.
“Jamie!” Her raised eyebrows and taken aback tone betrayed her surprise before she composed herself once more. “Well. I did not expect to see you here, or ever again.” Her eyes hardened but did not leave Jamie’s face as she spoke to her lackeys. “Fetch Nick at once. The rest of you, some privacy. I can handle him.”
She circled him like a predator circling prey. “Now, how does a man who is supposed to be dead appear at this exact moment in this precise place?” she asked him deceptively lightly, but I could see she was genuinely curious, as well as annoyed. As her attention focused on him, I lurked, building my layers of protection, now shrouded in silence and waiting for an opening.
The moment her men left, Jamie’s fists ignited in blue-green flames. He hurled a barrage of magic at her, but with a snap of her fingers, it deflected and smashed into the skulls beside her instead, shattering them. Black smoke roiled from the hole left.
“Don’t be stupid, Jamie,” she said and pursed her lips. “There’s no way you can overpower me.”
“Oh yeah?” Jamie replied, as defiant as ever. He bombarded her with blast after blast, which she deflected.
“Yes. And I’m certainly not going to bargain with you. So, there’s only one way you leave here. Or, actually, maybe you don’t.” Her laugh tinkled. “This is a grave, after all.”
And in one swoop, she vanished Jamie’s magic and swept him into the wall of bones with one powerful blast that stunned him. As she advanced, I dived from my hiding place and pelted her with my own brand of magic, drenching her in an icy jet of water and blasting an arctic wind at her until her dress crackled and snapped with breaking ice as she moved in the frozen fabric.
She whirled on me, and I earned the same fate as Jamie: a great, sweeping arc of magic that battered all breath from me and catapulted me into the wall of bones in an explosion of dust and shards. I slumped to the floor, winded and gasping.
Her eyes searched the darkness. My wards held. Her shot had been lucky. But she saw the smashed bones from the impact above my head and her eyes followed gravity down to where she knew I would be on the floor. She grinned wolfishly.
“Now, now, what do we have here?” Tendrils of magic flowed from her slim fingers as she cast towards me, confidence in her every gesture.
I called my magic up, but I was winded and could not concentrate through the haze. Her power swept aside my own, wiping away my protections.
Chapter Ten
“You could have told me you brought a friend,” Cleo said to Jamie, who was struggling to sit up, his hand on his head. She stalked over to me. Her slim, cool finger slid under my chin and tipped my head until my eyes met hers, glittering above me.
“She’s very pretty, but not your type,” Cleo said offhandedly. “This isn’t a very good idea for a date, if you ask me.”
Jamie shot another blast at her. Feeble. It missed, blasting through bones above me. I raised an arm to shield against the dust and shards.
Cleo wheeled on him, her jaw clenched and her face tight. “Give it up, Jamie. You lost. Get over it. You were foolish to come here. You survived somehow, don’t think I won’t find out all about that. You should have stayed away. I would have never known.”
A sound behind her. She smiled grimly. “I would have never realised you were alive. Or who the real traitor in my midst was.” She turned and my eyes followed her attention, to the struggling figure between the burly guards. Nick. My heart sunk.
“Get off me!” he cried, tugging at them. They released him in a sprawling heap on the floor at Cleo’s nod. He scrambled to his feet and brushed off the dust. He was shaking. “The CCTV is working fine, I already told you, but I need to monitor it. We can’t leave it unattended,” he said with a hint of indignance, though he stuttered. I could see his eyes were wide and his fingers trembled. He was doing a slightly better job of covering his fear than he had done a few hours ago.
“Nick,” rasped Jamie, struggling to his feet.
“Don’t move.” Cleo narrowed her eyes at him. “Nor your friend.” Her attention slid to me. “You don’t seem surprised to see him, Nick.”
“Uh, oh! It’s you, Jamie. Um, how?”
Cleo scoffed. “If that’s the best you can do, that’s pathetic. I should have known you wouldn’t kill him when you had the chance.” She shook her head. “You’ve been the weak link in all this from the beginning, haven’t you. You’re the leak, aren’t you?”
Whilst her attention was fixed on the hapless Ordinary, I sent a few protective charms his way, hoping they would help as he stammered and stuttered.
Cleo cut him off with a step forward. “I’ve heard enough. I’m not going to waste another second on you. This has come too far, and I shan’t have you spoiling it at the last second.” She raised a hand.
“Wait!” Jamie cried, desperation an edge in his voice. “Don’t hurt him. Let him go. He doesn’t know what he’s caught up in. He wants to get out and go home. Let him go,” he implored.
“So he can tell all? I think not.”
“Mind-wipe him. It normally takes well on Ordinaries.”
Nick’s brows furrowed at his words. Of course, as an Ordinary, he wouldn’t have a clue what Jamie spoke of.
“I have no room for error. I don’t leave loose ends.” A phone beeped — Cleo’s. She pulled it out of her small clutch. “I’m done here. It’s nearly go time. You two I’ll deal with later.” She gave Jamie and me meaningful glances. “I want to know all about the pair of you. You, however,” she said, turning to Nick, “have reached the end of the line.”
He opened his mouth to protest, but Cleo jabbed her outstretched fingers at him. In a blast of light, he was gone, tumbling to the floor like a puppet with cut strings, until he lay upon the rock in a crumpled heap. I felt my wards upon him break.
“No!”
screamed Jamie, surging forwards, and I joined him as anger roared through me. I forced my complaining body up and towards Nick’s prone figure, but Cleo’s men were upon us before we had moved more than a few paces.
I summoned my magic, but Cleo was faster and cast a dampener on the pair of us, rendering us practically Ordinary and unable to use our magic. Her guards restrained us with ease, and magic blazed at their own fingertips as they bound us with more than fists.
She was more powerful than any Magicai I had encountered. How had she learned to harness such huge volumes of magic?
“Put them somewhere out of sight and sound. I’ll be back for them afterwards. Don’t hurt them – too much.”
They guffawed, and one threw a glowing punch at Jamie’s stomach that had him doubled and retching before they hauled him out. My arms screamed in their sockets, threatening to pop as I was dragged after him.
I struggled every inch of the way until one of the men lost patience. He slammed me into the wall, knocking the breath from me, and crushed me against the jagged bones. His sausage fingers squeezed my cheeks together til they hurt, and his other arm pinned me across the chest as he leaned closer. His fetid breath rolled over me as he snarled at me to stop.
I spat at him in the eye.
He leaned away, wiped the spittle away slowly with one hand, and backhanded me across the face. I saw stars and then the floor as it dazed me and knocked me over. He pulled me back up by my hair and hauled me along by my ponytail. I hoped my screams of pain broke his ears.
We were in darkness a moment later, and the rusty clank and creak of moving iron echoed along the hall. I was thrown onto the floor, into a warm, groaning lump — Jamie — and iron slammed shut behind us. The rusty screech of a turning key. I could just make out the outline of bars. Around us, more bones gleamed pale in the dark, but we sat in dust and dirt. I realised we were in one of the offshoots of the ossuary, closed to the public.