Labyrinth Society (11 page)

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"We were almost home free. I can't believe you had to stop and take a stupid phone call," whispered Mia.

We were sitting in the security office while the head of security, a skinny guy with slicked back hair, was on the phone verifying what we already knew: we weren't St. Albans students. The office was small and the only window was in the door. It smelled like cigars and onions. There was a cigar smoldering in an ashtray sitting near the edge of the desk, even though I'd seen a no smoking sign on the wall as we were escorted in.

"We need to get out of here. I need to get my phone back." I was still in panic mode.

"Good luck with that," said Mia sarcastically.

I wanted to run out the door and find Sister Ruth, but the door had been locked behind us from the outside by one of the head of security's minions. He was standing right outside the door guarding it like Mia and I were a danger to society. How in the world were we going to get out of here? I just had to get the phone back. Mia had already gotten us out of the last two jams. It was my turn to step up to the plate, especially since our situation was my fault.

"Mademoiselles," said Security Dude in a soft menacing way after he'd hung up the phone. "I do not need to tell you how much trouble you are in. St. Albans has decided against pressing charges. But since you've attempted to steal a valuable item from Queen Marie Antoinette's private apartments," he held up the charcoal sketch, "it is my duty to notify not just the police but your parents."

"We don't have parents," blurted Mia.

"Your names,
si vous plait
," Security Dude demanded.

"Shannon Dunlevy."

"Portia Goodwin."

"Your real names!" He slammed his hand down so hard on top of his metal desk it shook. Mia and I both flinched.

"We'll tell you our names if you get my cell phone back from Sister Ruth," I demanded.

"Ah, your phone," he said, leaning back in his chair with an evil smile. "I'm afraid the group from St. Albans has left to go back to Paris. Getting your phone back is not my concern. And your biggest concern should be cooperating as it will make things much better for you."

"What?" I shrieked, jumping up and heading for the door. This was a nightmare. I had to get my phone back even if it meant going to Paris. What if Sister Ruth answered my phone? What would she tell the person on the other end? Mia grabbed me by the back of my blazer and pulled me down into my seat.

"Will you forget about the phone," Mia said through gritted teeth. "You can use mine."

"Silence!" yelled Security Dude. He slammed his hand down on his desk making it shake again. The ashtray with his big lit cigar resting in it slid so close to the edge it almost fell into the trashcan sitting next to the desk. The trashcan was full of paper. And just like a light bulb coming on, I got an idea.

"So little Miss Runaway planned on keeping the expensive cell phone Mrs. T. bought her, huh? What else did you stuff in your backpack before you took off, you little thief?"

Mia jumped up and leaned down in my face. Her eyes were narrowed to slits. "What did you call me?"

"You heard me. I didn't stutter," I said, jumping up to face her.

"I've so had it with you!" Mia shoved me so hard I went stumbling back against the desk sending the ashtray off the edge and into the trashcan.

Security Dude didn't even notice because he rushed out from behind his desk and shoved us into our seats. His back was to his desk so he didn't see the smoke coming out of the trashcan. Mia saw it and finally got it.

"
Monsieur
. How do you say fire in French?" I asked anxiously when the paper started to ignite.

"
Le feu
," he said slowly looking from me to Mia.

Mia and I yelled, "
Le feu! Le feu!"
at the top of our lungs.

Flames had started shooting out of the trashcan. All the color drained from Security Dude's face. He rushed over and tried to put the fire out, tripped and knocked the trashcan over setting the rug on fire.

"Unlock the door!" screamed Mia.

He patted his pants and shirt pockets. No key. We ran over and started pounding on the locked office door. But the guard had been standing outside just a minute ago was gone. Okay, maybe this wasn't such a great idea after all. Could this day get any more messed up? The office was filled with smoke, and I could barely see. My eyes were watering and Mia had started coughing so hard I thought she might barf up a lung. The fire alarm finally kicked in and I had to cover my ears to block out the loud piercing sound.

"Get back!" shouted Security Dude.

We crouched down as he threw his office chair through the window of the door just as the sprinklers turned on drenching us with water. Once we were out of the office, Security Dude started yelling and screaming in French at the other guard who came running out of the restroom zipping up his pants. Then the other guard started yelling back and pointing at the no smoking sign on the wall. A crowd of other security people had shown up to see what was going on. No one was paying Mia and me any attention, so we grabbed our backpacks and left.

"Where are you going? The gardens are this way! The others are probably wondering where we are!" shouted Mia when I started running towards the palace gates.

"You go to the gardens if you want. I'm going to Paris. I've got to get my phone back and I know where the St. Albans group is staying!"

"How in the world are you going to get to Paris?"

"The train station is ten minutes from here." I was impatient to get going. Plus, we were soaking wet and our faces were sooty from smoke. Everyone was staring at us.

"Are you crazy? It's just a stupid cell phone! Why's it so important?"

I pushed my wet hair from my face, then I told her, "Morgan Lake's been kidnapped. I'm the one the kidnappers called with the ransom demand. The phone is the only way they have of contacting me with the instructions on where to leave the ransom. I'm the only one who can save her life. They told me if I told Mrs. T. and the others they'd kill Morgan! Do you get it now?"

I couldn't believe it when I started to cry. The last time I cried was when my mom died. Mia was embarrassed for me and it only made everything worse. I heard police sirens and took off running through the palace gates and across the parking lot. I'd probably gotten about two minutes away when I heard a voice behind me. It was Mia.

"Devon! Wait up! I'm coming, too!"

Lily and the Trickster Crows

It's my turn. Finally. And about time, too. By now I bet you think you've got me all figured out. Lily the tough girl. Lily the fighter. Ha! What a joke. Yeah, I can hold my own if some goon tries to mess with me or one of my friends. But somebody's got to do it, right? Alex can't do it all. Tomi has the street smarts of a gerbil, and Devon is so into herself she doesn't see trouble coming until its right in her face. So I end up being the go-to girl when the bad stuff starts going down. But trust me. There's more to me than just an awesome roundhouse kick.

My face was aching from all the smiling and nodding I'd been doing ever since I ran into Tomi. She was jabbering away like a hyperactive parakeet. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's no use trying to interrupt her when she gets like this. She can go on forever. And it was a good thing I found her because as usual, she wasn't paying any attention to where she was going. I'd already kept her from stepping into at least three piles of dog poo. I admit I wasn't paying as much attention to what she was saying as I should have been. I was too busy checking alleys and doorways for Dr. McFarland and her thugs. Even though they didn't look too bright, pretty soon they'd have to realize Tomi wasn't in the sewer and come looking for us. And where was Alex? It had been an hour and a half since we scattered, and we'd heard not one peep from him. It wasn't like him at all. Tomi was right. He could look out for himself better than any of us, but I was still worried. I'd called him three times and texted twice and he never answered.

"Maybe Alex lost or broke his phone in the fight. He'll find us, don't worry," said Tomi when she finally shut up and noticed the look on my face. "Worrying is so bad for your face; you'll have wrinkles before you're sixteen."

Telling me not to worry is like telling me not to breathe. My
abuelo's
nickname for me is Mother Hen, 'cause he says I have a caring and protective nature. At least he did back when he could still remember my name. I started living with my grandfather when my parents were killed in a car accident when I was nine. They'd both been in the military. They were Marines; they'd survived two tours in Iraq just to come home and get killed by some loser drunk driver. Grandpa's the only family I had left, and Alzheimer's was stealing him away from me, too, a little bit each day. So can you blame me for being worried about the people I care about?

And Alex was right. I hadn't been to mass since my grandfather went into the nursing home. I've tried, but I'm kinda mad at God right now, and I'm feeling guilty about it. The only way I could think of to keep from going completely bonkers was to throw myself into the society. Devon thinks I do it to please my grandfather. She's wrong. I mainly do it because I want to. But I also do it to keep my grandfather's spirits up, since the society was his life. Being able to tell him about our missions allowed him to still be a part of something he loved, but one day soon it'll be over.

Before I knew it, we were back in the gardens of Versailles, but Devon, Mia, and Alex were nowhere to be found. We searched the areas all around the two large fountains — the Latona and the Apollo — and all we could see were large crowds of tourists taking pictures. Where were they?

"Think we should call Mrs. T.?" I asked.

"No," Tomi said, shaking her head. "Devon and Mia are probably still looking for the painting. And I bet Alex is keeping an eye on McFarland trying to figure out what she's up to and how she even knew about the necklace. Besides," she said, pulling a map of the palace grounds from her backpack. "We've got work to do."

"What are you looking for?"

"Did you even hear one word I was saying on the way here?"

"Yes," I said defensively. Tomi gave me a "yeah right" look. "Okay, I wasn't listening. What were you talking about?"

"I found out Renee LaFaussi was an anagram for
la reine fausse
, the false queen."

My ears perked up when she said anagram. I loved puzzles of all kinds. My dad was always giving me crossword and word find books when I was little. When I got older, it was books on Morse code and how secret messages were used by the military during wartime. My mom thought he was crazy for giving a little girl books on military code-breaking techniques, but dad always said people depended too much on the internet and you never knew when the world was going to Hades in a hand basket and you'd need Morse code. When other girls my age were reading books about ponies and princesses, I was reading about Navajo Code talkers.

"So," I began excitedly, "Avril Garrin's last words to Father Billon were actually, the path the false queen walked will lead the way?"

"Yep," said Tomi, spreading out the map on an empty stone bench. "And I know where the false queen walked." She consulted the map for a minute then stabbed her finger on a spot. "Here it is!"

The spot she was pointing to was labeled The Queen's Grove. She stuffed the map back into her backpack and took off walking.

"Hey! Wait up!" I hated it when she didn't pay attention. Someone could snatch her little behind in an instant and she'd be gone.

"What's the Queen's Grove?" I asked when I finally caught up with her. I made sure to keep half an eye on the crowds, scanning them for any glimpse of a hook-handed woman with two big burly bald men.

"Back in the sixteen hundreds it used to be a labyrinth with thirty-nine fountains. Each one depicted one of Aesop's Fables. The statues of the animals were said to have been so lifelike some people thought they were real. Each fountain had the fable it represented written on a plaque. King Louis XIV's son learned to read from those plaques."

"What happened to the labyrinth?"

"Well, it was pretty popular for about a hundred years. But it got way too expensive to maintain. When Marie Antoinette's husband, Louis XVI, was on the throne, he had the labyrinth torn out and trees planted. It was turned into an English style garden. They named it the Grove of Venus because there was a statue of Venus in the center. But something happened there, and it got the nickname the Queen's Grove, which is what they call it today."

"So, are you going to tell me what happened there or are you going to make me beg?"

Tomi loved keeping people in suspense when she knew she had hooked them. We were walking down a narrow dirt path with high shrubbery on either side, and then came off the path into an area with lots of trees. There were statues tucked away here and there. Around the outer edges were hedges and paths leading off all directions. I could definitely tell it used to be a labyrinth. The shape was still there. My labyrinth ring felt warm on my finger. It must have sensed the remains of the other labyrinth.

"Back when Marie Antoinette was queen, she got mixed up in a scandal called the Affair of the Diamond Necklace."

"You mean the necklace we're looking for?"

"No, Lily, it was a necklace with almost 3,000 carats of diamonds and it was made for Madame Du Barry, the mistress of Marie Antoinette's father-in-law. But he died before it was finished, and Madame Du Barry got kicked out of Versailles. So the jewelers tried to sell the necklace to Marie Antoinette. She wasn't interested in a necklace not designed for her. But a con artist named Jeanne came up with a plan to get the necklace and use it to get wealth and power."

"How?" I asked, spinning my ring around. It was making my finger feel all tingly and weird. Tomi didn't seem to be having a problem.

"Well," she said, and took a deep breath like she was about to launch into some long drawn-out historical explanation.

"Cliffs Notes, please. We don't have all day."

"Aw, man. You're no fun." She pulled a foil-wrapped chocolate drop out of her backpack stash and popped it in her mouth. She didn't offer me one. But I wasn't surprised. Tomi never shared her chocolate.

"Anyway, this Jeanne hired a woman to pretend to be Marie Antoinette and fool a cardinal into buying the necklace for her. The meeting took place at midnight, here in the Queen's Grove. There were a lot more trees and shrubbery back then, and it was so dark the cardinal didn't realize the woman he was meeting wasn't Marie Antoinette. The goofball actually thought the queen was in love with him, and he arranged the purchase of the necklace. But by the time he realized he'd been tricked, the damage was already done. The necklace got sold and broken up to make it easier to sell off. And the queen's rep, which wasn't so great in the first place, took a big hit," concluded Tomi.

"You should tell this story to Mia, since her rep was ruined by the Affair of the Diamond Tennis Bracelet."

We were still laughing when my phone suddenly beeped, letting me know I had a text message. This better be Alex. But it wasn't. It was from Devon. It was a picture of a sketch of a woman wearing a necklace. When I got a good look at the necklace I did a double take.

"Look what Devon sent me." I showed the picture to Tomi and she let out a whoop.

"I knew they'd find it! Didn't I tell you it was going to be okay?"

"No, Tomi," I said, shoving the phone in her face. "Look at the necklace, look closely at it." When she saw what I was talking about, she let out a little squeak and her eyes fell on her own ring.

"So weird. But how—"

"We need to find Alex, now! Something's not right and my ring has been feeling funny ever since we stepped foot in this grove," I said.

"Mine, too. I just thought I was imagining it. My whole hand feels kinda numb like it's asleep. Even though this isn't a labyrinth anymore, this place must still have some juice left in it. We probably should hurry up and find this path leading to the necklace and then get out of here."

I tried to call Alex again and still got no answer. Next, I tried Devon and her phone went straight to voice mail. I didn't know Mia's number and didn't even know if she had her phone with her. I was about to press Mrs. T.'s name in my contacts list when she called me.

"Are you okay?" she asked. She sounded worried. I told her I was fine and filled her in on what had happened so far. "You and Tomi need to find the others and come straight home. The necklace is an OSO. It's very dangerous. Don't go near it."

"But it's what we do. We can't have a dangerous artifact just lying around—"

"Lily!" she snapped, making me jump. "You need to do as I say. It's important. Do you understand?"

"Yeah, but why does the necklace look like our rings?"

"I'll explain when you get home. Now find the others quickly." She hung up before I could ask anything else.

"The necklace is an OSO and we've been ordered home." I stalked off towards the entrance to the grove with Tomi hot on my heels.

I was mad. I hated to be treated like a little kid. If I was old enough to do this job, then I was old enough to know what the heck was going on. Then my phone beeped again with another text message. It was from Alex… finally! Only it wasn't a text, it was another picture and it wasn't from Alex. It was a picture sent from his phone. When I saw it I almost dropped my phone.

"What is it?" asked Tomi.

But I couldn't talk. Tomi snatched the phone out of my hand and saw the picture of Alex chained to a wall. His face was covered in blood. His lips were split, his eyes were swollen shut, and his shirt was ripped. Tomi immediately burst into tears.

"Is he alive?" she wailed.

"Read the message," I croaked.

"One foolish young man in exchange for one priceless necklace," she read, barely able to get the words out. "Find it and I'll tell you where he is. Don't find it and he'll rot." Tomi buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to punch someone. Someone wearing a pink suit and a straw hat. But it wasn't gonna help Alex. I had to be the calm one, because Tomi already had dibs on being the hysterical one.

"Snap out of it!" I grabbed her shoulders and shook her hard. "We don't have time for this. Alex needs us." It took me a few minutes to calm her down. Once I told her tears were bad for Alex's lifespan, she finally shut up and put her game face on.

"We should call Mrs. T."

"No! If the necklace is dangerous, she'll just tell us to come home anyway. It's up to us now. We have to save Alex. Okay. Avril Garrin's last words led us here. So how do we find the stupid necklace?" I asked her.

"The path the false queen walked will lead the way," she repeated. "But which path?"

Having once been a labyrinth, there were paths in the Queen's Grove leading in all directions. She could have walked down any one of them.

"What about all these statues?" I asked. "Maybe one of them has some kind of message on it. Or maybe the necklace was hidden inside one of them."

"No," said Tomi, shaking her head. "Most of these statues weren't even here back then. We need to be looking for anything still here from Marie Antoinette's time."

"How would we be able to tell what was here from her time? And this ring is driving me crazy." I tried to pull the ring off my finger but it wouldn't come off. The labyrinth design in the center glowed an icy blue.

"What's wrong?" Tomi exclaimed and rushed over to me. We both stared at my ring, which was glowing like crazy.

"I've never seen it do this before," I said. Then I grabbed Tomi's hand. "Look! Your ring's doing the same thing!"

Suddenly, thin blue lights zipped out from the center of both our rings and the two lights connected, kinda like when we travel from our labyrinth back home. When the lights touched, smaller, thinner lights snaked out forming a wheel of bright blue light floating in midair. The wheel started spinning clockwise and beams of light shot out, each one hitting a row of trees before it disappeared. We were stunned.