Why not? That had been enough; Camille had booked them the flight the next day, not caring what it cost. Time to go home. Time to think. Time to decide what I’m going to do.
Camille tossed a euro into the puppeteer’s hat as they walked on a few more paces. She leaned on the stone railing of the bridge, looking down into a Seine whose ripples glittered with the sunset’s colors. Just downstream, another couple was sitting on a ledge near the water, arms around each other and basking in the remaining light. The towers of Notre Dame appeared golden in the late afternoon. A tour boat passed underneath them with a snatch of French from the guide. “… one of the most famous Gothic cathedrals, begun in 1160 and completed nearly two centuries later. Notre Dame was one of the first buildings in the world to use the flying buttress …”
She heard the click of a camera behind her, and glanced over her shoulder to see David taking pictures of her on the bridge with Notre Dame as the backdrop. “You know, there have been a few million pictures taken right here,” she told him. “All of them are currently moldering forgotten in a few million albums.”
He grinned lopsidedly at her. Since they’d come to Paris, much of the grief that surrounded him following Helen’s murder had been overpowered by the scenery. He could manage to laugh and smile again, though the shadows still crept over his face at odd times. “Yeah, but none of them have you in them, and they weren’t taken by me.”
“Egotist,” she told him. For a moment, she forgot her own quandary in the innocent, honest awe in his face as he gazed around at the scene in front of them, and she laughed. “Put the camera down and come here.”
David had never been to Paris before, never been to Europe at all, and she could feel his eagerness and wonder at the sights, sending his emerald radiance to pulsing as he tried to absorb everything around them. “There’s nothing like this in America,” he told her. “Nothing. There’s such a sense of age here. New York … Well, as wonderful as it is, it’s so new and blandly modern compared to this.”
She smiled and didn’t contradict him, though she had little romanticism about the Paris she remembered from centuries ago. That Paris had been smaller, malodorous, and filthy, the air thick and dark, the houses smaller, more closely-set and poorly-built. This Paris had space and was far cleaner, yet the memory of the violent, periodic spasms Paris had experienced still lingered, sanitized like the rest of the inner city—pockets of ancient memories hidden in the midst of more modern structures. She could still see underneath the facade to a past that, sometimes, felt more real to her than the present. She stood arm-in-arm with David, basking like a cat in sunshine to the radiance of his green heart.
Only she could feel that. That pleasure was hers alone.
They strolled across the bridge to the Île. David marveled at the elaborate stone figures above the massive doors of the cathedral, gazing up at the gargoyles that leered down at them from the roof. “Can we go up to the top of the tower?” he asked her.
“Not tonight,” she told him. “Leave something for another day. We’ve plenty of time to see everything, as much time as we want.” She hoped that was true. “This evening, let’s just walk around the city and pretend we’re not tourists, just two lovers out for a stroll.”
They did exactly that, walking across the Île to the Right Bank, past the grand facade of the Hôtel de Ville, turning west along the rue de Rivoli, with Camille giving him a running commentary on the sights. They came to the rue Saint-Denis and Camille stopped, overcome again with memories. The rue Saint-Denis had been called rue des Saints Innocents when she and Nicolas had lived there, close by. Nothing remained from that time, all of it obliterated by the glacial but inexorable march of centuries and decay. She could recall where their little estate had stood, but there were newer buildings there now, already a few centuries old themselves.
She’d been back to Paris several times over her long lifetime, but while she loved the city and felt that it was more “home” than any other place, each time she returned, the city saddened her as well. All these people around them: all of them felt so temporary, given such a fleeting existence that, to them, the city seemed solid, permanent, and largely unchanging in a way it could never be for her. To her, the city was ephemeral and constantly in a state of slow alteration.
And David, on her arm, was no different than any of them: to her, his life would be just as ephemeral and fleeting, unless she did with him what she’d done to Verdette, and that was something she wouldn’t do without his understanding of all the implications the potion represented.
Nicolas would not have her hesitation.
It was as if his name generated the vision. She saw a man, dressed in dark clothes, approaching them from farther up the rue Saint-Denis. He was short, and the bulk of his body and the way he carried himself … For a moment, Camille’s vision blurred and she saw the street as it once had been, with the cobbles and central gutter and their house set on the corner, with the neighbors she remembered moving around them.
He had found them, impossibly. She wasn’t prepared for this; she’d intended to buy a small handgun here in Paris, but had not yet had the opportunity. There were a few vials of chemicals in her purse, ready to be set off with a small spell, but that was all. But he would be ready. Camille’s arm tightened around David’s; as she reached into her purse; he misinterpreted the gesture and smiled, leaning down to kiss the top of her head.
“I can see why you love this city,” he said to her. She barely heard him, watching the man approach. He was within a dozen strides of them now, and she waited for him to take a few more steps, so she could fling the vial at his feet and shout the spell—if she was lucky, if Nicolas didn’t stop her first, if he didn’t send the black fire rushing toward her and David. A shielding spell—could she cast it quickly enough? She wondered how she could communicate her urgency to David, to convince him to run while he could, while she tried to deal with the threat. “Paris has the energy of New York,” he was saying, “yet there’s so much history here also. I can’t wait to see more of it. How many times have you been here before, Camille?”
With the invocation of her current name, her vision cleared. The short man was but a few strides away, but now she saw his features and realized that he was not Nicolas. He was not anyone she recognized. Her fingers released the glass tube they were holding. The man felt her gaze on him, though. He nodded to her as he passed, smiling as he regarded the two of them, her arm still holding him tightly. “Bon soir,” he said. “Appréciez votre soirée.”
“Bon soir,” Camille answered. Then, to David, she said: “I’ve been here too many times. The city is inhabited by ghosts.”
*
The next day, they left the Hotel de Notré Dame on rue de Maítre-Albert, leaving their key with Dominique, the owner who also worked at the desk. Camille expected to do the normal tourist things, and they did: not for her, of course, but because David wanted to see them and it gave her pleasure to watch the delight in his face as he gazed at the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, the Jardin du Luxembourg and Jardin des Tuileries. David, never without his camera, took a massive number of pictures, though he complained that too many of them looked exactly like tourist shots.
David wanted to tour the Louvre as well, but she convinced him to leave it for another day, shepherding him instead to the Musée d’Orsay, with its incredible collection of mid-19th to early 20th century paintings, all in what Camille still remembered as the Gare d’Orsay, a train station built at the turn of the century.
She’d been there the day the train station had opened, during the Exposition Universelle of 1900. The current building overlaid her memories, dimmed.
Later that afternoon, they wandered the Musée de Cluny, close to their hotel. Originally built to house the abbots of Cluny, the building itself dated from the late 15th century and was constructed over the remnants of Roman-era baths, some of which had been excavated and were now visible again in the basement of the museum as w
ell as in a rear court. David seemed most impressed by a room hung with the six tapestries of the Lady and the Unicorn, but Camille herself stopped near the top of the stairs leading to the tapestry room. There, on the wall, was a rectangular square stone, much weathered, with images of the sun and three men, two of them depicted as saints with a key and a book, the figures carved above a section of writing.
Her breath caught, looking at the stone—she’d forgotten that it was there. She remembered it; she’d last seen it in 1418, above an empty grave. “What’s that?” David asked her, his touch on her shoulder startling her. He bent down, reading the card for the exhibit, printed in English and German as well as French. “Nicolas Flamel’s tombstone? Isn’t he that alchemist guy?”
“Yeah,” she answered, surprised at the trembling in her voice. “That alchemist guy.”
David chuckled. “It figures you’d be interested in that, given the laboratory you have in our apartment.”
That evening, David came grinning into the room. “I was just talking with Dominique at the desk,” he said. “I know where we’re going for dinner.”
“I do, too. We’re going to the Petit Saint Benoit.”
“Nope.” He shook his head. “We’re going somewhere else. I’ve already made the reservations.”
“Where?”
His grin widened. “Not telling you,” he said. “It’s a surprise.”
That evening, they took a taxi from the hotel. He still refused to tell her where they were going. The taxi moved across the Île and up the Boulevard de Sébastopol, finally turning right, then left again, then right once more before stopping. Well before then, she realized where they were heading, knew with a knot in her stomach. The street sign on the building proclaimed this to be the rue de Montmorency, though she remembered other names for the street. It was close to where she and Nicolas had first lived. As David paid the taxi driver, she peered at the small building sandwiched between two larger ones: Auberge Nicolas Flamel, it proclaimed, and a sign placed on the house itself proclaimed this to be the “House of Nicolas Flamel and his wife Perenelle,” built in 1407.
She knew the truth: that “Perenelle” had vanished from Nicolas’ life five years before, that Nicolas had never actually lived here. She managed to smile as David came up to her. “Look,” he said. “Nicolas Flamel’s house. Dominique said it’s one of the oldest buildings in Paris, maybe even the oldest, and that the restaurant here is excellent.” He stopped, looking at her suspiciously. “You already knew about this place, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” she told him, and the visible disappointment in his face made her sorry for the admission. “But … I’ve never eaten here before. And I think it’s lovely that you would put this together.” On her toes, she reached up to put her arms around his shoulders and kiss him: a long, lingering embrace that surprised even her with its intensity. She was surrounded by him, by his radiance; she felt complete, as she had not felt in more than half a century. “It’s still a wonderful surprise, and I love you for the thought. Let’s go in.”
For a time, inside the restaurant, she could almost believe that she had dropped back in time: the exposed timbers, the carvings, the candles alight everywhere, the decor; all brought her back to another century despite the modern conveniences. She managed to put aside the fact that she was inside a house that Nicolas had built—though the waiter informed them, as she already knew, that this hadn’t been his home. This was designed as a house for the indigent, who were given a drink and food in the tavern on the ground floor, then were taken upstairs to sleep, paid for with their prayers for the souls of Nicolas and Perenelle.
She had smiled tight-lipped at that. “Nicolas must have felt they truly needed the prayers,” she said, and their waiter shrugged.
“Who knows?” he said. “Everything about the Flamels is mysterious, no?”
The dinner was as delightful as Dominique had advertised, and they lingered for a few hours. Afterward, in the cool evening, Camille had taken David’s hand. “Come on,” she said. “Since you’re on this Flamel kick …”
They walked south for a few blocks, toward the Seine, and onto a narrow street set with shops and taverns, crowded with throngs of people. She pointed at the street sign: rue Nicolas Flamel. “Stand there under the sign,” David told her, bringing up his camera. “I should get a shot of this.”
“No,” she told him firmly. “Take a picture of the sign if you want, but not with me.”
He looked at her strangely, but shrugged, lifting the camera and taking a quick snapshot. She took his arm again and they strolled down the lane, weaving through the clots of pedestrians and looking in the shop windows. As they walked, she felt her mood darkening again. “So, is it true what our waiter said, that Nicolas may not really have been an alchemist at all, that it was all just a rumor?” David asked her.
“He was rich,” Camille told him. “That much is certain. And he didn’t get that way by selling books and working as a scrivener.”
“So you think he was actually able to transform lead into gold?”
“Transmute, not transform,” she told him. “And probably not gold. But mercury to silver …” Her shoulder lifted. “Maybe. Maybe he managed that much.”
“And the rest? All those legends that he and Perenelle have been seen long after they were supposed to have died?”
She shivered. The street seemed darker now and more shadowed, and the laughter of the people easing around them was hollow and mocking. “Sounds like a total fantasy to me,” she said.
David paused to take a picture down the street. He gave a small satisfied nod at the result, looking at the camera display. “Is that what you’re looking for with all those chemicals you have?” he asked. “The secret of immortality? The chance to live forever?”
She didn’t answer, instead responding with another question. “Would you want to live forever, David, if you had the chance?”
“I don’t think most people in decent health really want to die,” he answered. “And I think that if you thought you were going to live forever, the knowledge would change you—change the way you act and the way you think. Maybe pretty drastically.”
“TANSTAAFL,” she said, pronouncing the letters as a single word: tan-staff-ull.
“Huh?”
“It’s an acronym. ‘There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.’ Whatever advantage you gain, you have to pay for it in some way. If Nicolas and Perenelle managed to find the elixir they were looking for, then they’re paying for it—and the bigger the payoff, the bigger the cost they’re paying.”
David shrugged. “Still, I can see wanting that. Though maybe what you find out is that eternal life doesn’t automatically hand you eternal happiness. And it wouldn’t stop the people you love from dying around you.”
The remark brought her to a halt as the street dead-ended into another. “Yeah,” she said. “I’ll buy that. Are you thinking of Helen?”
He nodded. “She and I … well, she always said she’d wanted to go to Paris, and I said I’d take her there one day. Now it’s too late for her.” His lips pressed together, and Camille hugged him.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she told him. She pointed to a street sign across the way on the cross street: rue Perenelle, it said. “Maybe having to live forever wasn’t exactly a blessing for them, either.”
The night was suddenly full of ghosts again, rushing past her and whispering her names: all of them, the long succession of people she’d pretended to be. The ghosts tugged at her, hissing and warning her: You can’t stay here more than another day or two. Running has never been the solution. You still have to be the hunter; more than ever now that Nicolas knows your current identity. Leave David here, go back, and do whatever you must to end it.
She shook her head. “David, can we go back to the hotel? I’d like to be alone, just the two of us.”
*
She could hear David snoring in the darkness, but she couldn’t sleep, her thoughts a
ll in turmoil. Nicolas lurked in her dreams. She glanced at the clock on the nightstand; the LEDs glared that it was 4:30 in the morning; 10:30 at night back in New York. She threw aside the covers and quietly dressed, then wrote a terse note that she left on her pillow: Went for an early walk. Back soon. Love, Camille.
She left the room and rode the elevator down to the lobby, where a sleepy-looking attendant glanced at her from behind the desk. She slid him her room key but said nothing as she crossed the small lobby and went out the doors into early morning Paris. She walked quickly up the street toward the Seine.
Paris never sleeps: that was the saying, and it was generally true. Even now, in the predawn, there were people out along the main boulevards and traffic on the streets. Notre Dame was pinned in amber spotlights, gleaming against a night sky that was just beginning to lighten, while street lights plucked deep pools of illumination from the dark. Camille crossed the Quai de Montebello, walking past the shuttered booksellers’ stalls, and taking the Pont au Double toward the Île. Halfway across the bridge, she stopped, leaning on the stone railing and staring down at the water of the Seine, shimmering with the reflected lights of the city.
This was the place she lived much of her long life. She wondered if this is where she would end it as well. All these centuries of being a muse for someone else—what had it gained her? All the centuries of inevitable loss, or moments of joy interrupted, of death and the decay of age.
At an all-night Internet cafe a few blocks from the hotel, she booked herself a plane flight out of Paris, leaving the following afternoon. This would be their last day together.
Maybe our last day together forever. She shivered at the thought.
Not long after dawn, after making a few discreet enquiries, she found a dingy shop open in an alleyway on the Left Bank that would sell her a 9mm handgun and a full clip without worrying about the legalities. She put that in her purse; the weight made her feel slightly less paranoid.
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