Seduction (12 page)

Oink, oink, oink.
The second thing was that the light from my keychain was getting dimmer by the second. I guess the flashlight built into a two-inch rubber pig hadn’t been meant for long-term use. Dimmer . . . dim . . . out.

Oink.

And then the third thing: Just before the faint light oinked out into total blackness, I saw a gaping hole in the ground right in front of my feet. A second later, I was falling into it, screaming.

• • •

I landed hard on my rear, but, aside from having the breath knocked out of me, I didn’t seem any the worse for wear. The problem was the darkness. If I’d thought it had been dark before, this was a whole new dimension of darkness. I tried holding my hand in front of my face. I couldn’t see it.

“Oh, boy,” I said out loud.

I didn’t know how far I’d fallen, but I knew I was at a whole different level from where I’d been before. And where had that been? The sewer? Could I somehow have fallen into a place
beneath
the sewer?

Keep it together,
I told myself. It wasn’t all bad. I was still in one piece.

That was the only thing that wasn’t bad. I’d lost my keys, along with the pig flashlight.

But you’re a telekinetic,
I told myself. Yes. Yes. I could summon my keys back to me.

“Pig!” I shouted, and I heard a whizzing sound and a single loud
oink!
as the light illuminated the keys that had struck the sound button as they flew. I reached up and grabbed them before they sailed past. There are relatively few times in life when my particular talent comes in handy, but this was one of them.

I pressed the button on the pig’s head. Nothing happened. I’d been lucky. Without the tiny amount of reserve power in the pig, the keys would have zinged past me in the dark and been lost forever.

On all fours, I swept the ground around me. Since I had no idea which direction I should go, I just started crawling, hoping that sooner or later I’d run into a wall that I could follow.

I’d traveled about four feet when I encountered something
that felt like sticks. One dug painfully into the heel of my hand; another was under my knee. They were suddenly everywhere, as if I’d crawled into some underground forest. I explored one of the sticks with my fingers: it was smooth and dry, with knobs on both ends. Another was flat and curved; yet another was spiny. Finally I picked up one that wasn’t a stick at all, but sort of globe-shaped, and I started to get nervous. Flicking obsessively at the light on my keychain, I finally elicited a faint sound from the pig that sounded more like a moan than an oink, accompanied by a very brief beam of light, which I aimed at the object in my hand.

It was a skull. And the sticks all around me were bones. Human bones.

With a shriek, I dropped it and scrambled away. That is, I thought I was moving away until I crashed into a mountain of bones that cascaded over my body until I was buried neck-deep in them.

I’d read about—and even seen photographs of—the catacombs, the big underground ossuary on the outskirts of the city that had been a tourist attraction since the late 1800s, but that was more or less an art exhibit, well lit, organized, and overseen by a staff of docents and historians. It wasn’t anything like this random pile of decomposed dead people.

Whimpering, I waded through them, squeezing my pig light for all I was worth, hoping it had one or two more seconds of battery life left. Occasionally it emitted a tiny grunt and an increasingly feeble light showed me that I was slowly moving away from the weird repository of bones, until finally I had to admit defeat. The light was gone for good. And I was in the middle of a pitch-black tunnel
somewhere in the bowels of Paris, with no idea how to get out.

Sitting down, I picked a bone out of my hair and sobbed, even though a part of my brain was rolling its brain-eyes and telling me to grow up.
Enjoying our tantrum, are we?
Katy Brain asked.

“Well, what am I supposed to do?” I yelled.

How about . . . anything,
suggested Katy Brain with her usual sarcasm.
Like maybe try to find your way out of here, if I may be so bold.

“Easy for you to say,” I muttered.

Actually, you could follow that light.

“Light?” I craned my neck in all directions. “I don’t see . . .” But wait, I
did
see. When I moved my head to the extreme left and squinted, the darkness wasn’t quite as dark. Carefully, I began to move toward that place, wherever it was, more on instinct than vision, feeling the air around me lighten.

And I was right. After a few minutes I could actually see something like a curving wall overhead. I was in a tunnel, a second tunnel below the tunnel of the sewers. My ears popped. I was heading down still farther. And yet the tunnel continued to get infinitesimally brighter.

I stood up to my full height and saw my breath steaming in the cold air. I felt the skin of my legs stand up in gooseflesh. The tunnel veered off to the right, and the walls grew brighter. Light. There was definitely light ahead. I began to run.

And then I stopped in my tracks, feeling my heart jump into my throat.

There was something in the light. Something that stood on two feet like a man, but was bent over and covered with hair and making sounds like a wild beast.

A monster.

I turned around and doubled back to where the tunnel had branched, and plastered myself against the mold-covered wall. It was much darker here. My eyes had gotten used to a small amount of light. Now I was again as blind as I’d been when I first fell through the hole into this place.

In the silence, I heard the creature loping toward me, invisible in the darkness.

CHAPTER

•

FIFTEEN

It was close enough that I could hear it breathing.

Oh, God,
I thought.
Oh God oh God oh God
 . . . I didn’t know anything about fighting—especially fighting something big and hairy and grunting louder than my pig ever did.

The pig! Except for a few euro notes in my pocket, it was all I had in my possession. Pressing myself against the stone wall, I ran my fingers up the little chain that connected the pig to my house key. I supposed I could stab the monster—or whatever the thing was—in the eye. That is, if I had any idea where its eye was. Meanwhile, I mentally scrolled through my inventory of magic to see if I knew anything that would give me an advantage in this situation.

I did know how to call objects to me, and if I yelled “stick!” or “rock!”, I was sure those items would come flying in my direction. But I’d learned my lesson from calling for the pig: Rocks didn’t come with penlights, and I couldn’t see well enough in this darkness to be able to catch them once I called
them to me. They could easily smack me on the side of my head or break my legs. No, I supposed the key would have to do.

I closed my eyes. I could always think better with my eyes closed, and in this situation, sight wasn’t much of an option, anyway. Then I deliberately slowed my breathing, willing myself into the wall behind me, convincing myself that I was invisible.

This wasn’t magic. It was something I’d done since I was little, trying to keep my dad from noticing me so I wouldn’t have to spend my evenings or weekends taking sample SAT tests or listening to CDs like
Great Thinkers of the Eighteenth Century
or
Learn Romanian Now!
Sometimes it even worked.

So I was hoping and praying it would work now, as I disappeared into the wall.

The monster was coming toward me, questing. He moved slowly, his feet shuffling, turning from side to side in the darkness. Then he sniffed deeply, and I knew he was trying to smell me.

There wasn’t any more time. I jumped out with my key poised like a knife inside my fist. With a scream, I attacked, feeling the key strike flesh.

The creature shrieked, and I attacked again, but this time I didn’t make contact. Instead, I felt him rolling at my feet, sobbing and whimpering in terror.

“Hey,” I said, but he just kept crying pitifully.

I knew it was my chance—probably my only chance—to get away, but I just couldn’t leave him suffering like that.

“Gosh, I’m sorry,” I said, leaning over him. “
Pardonnez-moi
.” As if apologizing in his language would make up for
stabbing him. Still, I didn’t have much experience with subterranean monsters. I didn’t know what language he spoke, or what I could do to make things better. I didn’t even know where I’d stabbed him. In the eye? God, I hoped not. In the darkness I felt for the wound inside his matted fur. He didn’t object.

As it turned out, he wasn’t exactly covered with hair. It was really long, but actually, it just grew from his head the way it did with everybody. A stream of blood, from what I could tell by touch, seemed to be coming from his neck. Judging from the amount of it, he needed a bandage. I knew money wasn’t very sanitary, but that was all I had on me, so I slapped a euro note around the spot where it felt like the wound was bleeding the worst, and then I tore the bottom of my T-shirt to wrap it around his neck. I only hoped I got the right spot.

“We need light,” I said. Then, translating in the hope that he might understand me:
“lumière.”

“Ah,” he said. At least that’s what I thought he said. I jumped backward into a crouch, key at the ready. He shuffled around some more, and I realized how stupid I was acting. I doubted very much that I’d have to fight him again, since I hadn’t
fought
him in the first place. I’d
attacked
him, plain and simple. He’d never done a thing except scare the bejezus out of me. For all I knew, he was just another lost soul wandering through the sewers, hoping to find a way out, just like me.

The question was, how long had he been wandering? Maybe he’d been searching for an exit for fifty years. Maybe living in the dark had made him hairy. Maybe that was my fate too.

Oh God.

Just then, he lit a match, illuminating a small circle for
a moment that showed his trembling hand trying to light a candle, which he held aloft. He was shaking so hard that I thought the match would go out before he finished the job, so I reached out to steady his hand. As the candlewick caught, I finally saw his face.

The first thing I noticed about him, aside from the fact that he was human—and that was a big relief, let me tell you—was that he was old. Really old, maybe older than anyone I’d ever seen. His eyes were filmy with cataracts, and his skin was as spotted as a fawn’s. The white hair on top of his head was nearly gone, even though what grew on the sides hung down almost to his waist. Ditto his ears and nose. Well, those hairs weren’t down to his waist, but they were long, and there were a lot of them. In the tricky light of the candle, he might have passed for a yeti, or some fairy-tale ogre.

But really, he was just an old man. He fumbled with the candle, then raised his hand with its swollen, arthritic fingers to touch the makeshift bandage I’d put on his neck.

“Let me help you,” I said, tucking myself under his arm to help hold him up. “Where do you want to go?
Ou voulez vous aller?
”

He gestured with the candle. With every step, I became more aware of his frailty, and of the seriousness of his wound. “I think we ought to go to the hospital,” I said in French, but he only smiled and shook his head.

“My home is not far,” he said. “Thank you.”

That made me feel like a total creep. I’d stabbed the poor old soul with a dirty key, and then staunched the wound with the equivalent of a dollar bill—possibly the filthiest thing on earth—and he was
thanking
me.

“I’m really sorry,” I whispered. “I can’t tell you how—”

“No, no. I surprised you.”

Some excuse.

“How far . . . ,” I began, but then I saw a glowing light off to the right. “Is that it?”

Here?
I wondered. Was this old man saying he lived beneath the sewer?

He nodded.

CHAPTER

•

SIXTEEN