Kate waved her hand. “I have money.”
“I know you do,” Simon said. “This is yours. I took it from your safe. All right, everyone, remember, we are away from the relative protection of Hartley Hall and vulnerable to Gaios. I don’t suspect he has any way of knowing we’re here, but his resources are immense and we should be prepared for a strike. If you are separated from the group, make your way back here. This is the only location in the city where we can activate the portal. Who has been to Paris before?”
Kate, Nick, and Malcolm raised their hands.
Penny gave a sour look and crossed her arms. “I’ve never been anywhere.”
Malcolm, having recovered his color, was checking a pistol. “Passed through on the way to Provence. Back in ’23. Hunting werewolves.”
Simon asked, “Do you speak French?”
“I did. I was going to settle near Avignon.”
“Settle?” Penny looked at Malcolm with surprise. “Was there a woman involved?”
Malcolm holstered his pistol and buttoned his coat. Everyone waited for him to continue, which he did not. Simon exchanged curious glances with Kate. Then her eyes darted toward his hand. He looked down too and noticed a section of the gold key was blinking. It wasn’t giving off the same glow as it did when activating its magical portal. Rather, a small phrase of the inscribed runes blinked several times and went dark. Simon was puzzled; he had never seen that action before.
Penny noticed it too and pointed toward the still-shimmering portal back to Hartley Hall. “Flip back to the map.”
Simon waved his hand in front of the hole in space with practiced skill and the shimmering view of Hartley Hall vanished to be replaced by a map of the world, replete with dots representing locations where the key would open its portal to allow the user to tread through time and space. He and Kate and Penny perused the world until Kate exclaimed.
“There. Batavia is back.”
Indeed, one of the dots on Batavia on the island of Java, which had vanished along with all the others when the key had been drained by Ra, was now back in place. Over the last few months, the various sites had been popping back onto the map. This was the first time they had noticed a correlation between a portal’s return, and some activity on the key itself.
Simon held the key up to his eyes and smiled. “That’s fantastic! We’ve just seen the creation phrase in the inscription. Those runes control the creation of portals, in some fashion.”
“And what does that do for us?” Penny asked with typical practicality.
He tapped Penny lovingly on the nose with the key. “It means, Miss Carter, that I may be able to create new portals. And we may be able to create new keys.”
Penny and Kate exchanged excited glances.
Malcolm gargled with water and spat into a long-dead plant in the corner. “Could we handle one thing at a time for once? We’re in Paris for a purpose.”
“Marthsyl,” Simon intoned the active phrase of the key’s magic, the ancient Celtic word for miracle, and the portal spun into nothingness. He replaced the key in his waistcoat pocket with a chuckle. He bowed and extended his arm to the door. They all went out into the narrow corridor. They had come fashionably dressed, although Penny’s twill and heavy rucksack made her appear a bit more the laborer. Malcolm also seemed out of place with his long wool greatcoat on a warm September day. They trooped down the stairs and out into the shadows of a leisurely afternoon. Simon pulled out an English-language guidebook and the company became just another group of tourists.
They hired a carriage and set off eastward through the dim warrens and grand boulevards. It rolled out of the crowded Rue Saint-Antoine into an open square where it creaked to a halt. Simon opened the door. Penny hopped out with a whispered curse of wonder.
“Is that a bleeding elephant?” she exclaimed.
In the center of the open plaza was a gigantic plaster elephant nearly a hundred feet high including the castle tower on its back. It stood on a small rise and was surrounded by a low wall.
“Are we there?” Penny looked around in confusion. “Where’s the Bastille? Am I missing it? I thought it was big.”
“It’s gone,” Kate replied. “It was pulled down early in the Revolution.”
“They replaced it with a huge elephant?”
“Bonaparte,” Kate said. “He intended it to be a colossal bronze elephant fountain, but this plaster model is the best they’ve managed so far.”