The Adventures of Mademoiselle Mac 2-Book Bundle by Christopher Ward

crouched as low as my body would go. The crunch of three sets of footsteps stopped no more than a few feet from where I was hiding. Through the cables I could see only the bottom halves of their bodies, dressed in black, of course. It must be in season here. I spotted the shoes of the man in the middle of the little group. Actually, they weren’t shoes at all, but highly polished silver cowboy boots, a sight that was becoming all too common for my liking.
    â€œDid you remember to feed the gargoyles, Phlegm?” wheezed a familiar voice that I recognized as belonging to the bony-handed Shadow from the club.
    â€œYeah, bones and all, Scar,” the other Shadow replied. “Looking good, Louche. Every construction crew in Paris would want to run this baby.”
    A third voice I’d heard at the table of ghosts added, in his own special hiss, “Except we’ll be doing some deconstruction.” If a snake could laugh, I think I knew then what it would sound like.
    They moved closer to the work in progress, and I heard Louche, or Luc as I was sure he was, saying, “Yesss ... ouiii” approvingly as he examined what I now understood was a giant crane. He stepped up onto a workbench, steadied by a couple of his henchmen. The blowtorches were lowered, and the buzz of machinery slowed as he smiled and gestured at the proceedings. “Well done, my friends. The Shadows always work late, n’est-ce pas ?” A ripple of quiet laughter reverberated in the huge room. “And in a few days, we will have our very own Bastille Day celebrations!”
    My curiosity was disappearing, and my desire to be above ground was getting stronger by the second. I moved slowly along a darkened wall in the flickering bluish light toward a doorway that I hoped would get me out of there quickly. The workers applauded Fiat’s words, providing the distraction I needed.
    I stepped into an ancient passageway of large stones with puddles of blackish water pooling at my feet. One hallway led to another just like it, then another. Pipes twisted like ropes were attached to the walls, and the passages rose and dipped as I made my way through them to who knew where. The sounds of work became a dull throb in the distance. Even if I could find my way back, I knew it would be the wrong choice. That bad taste in the back of the throat called fear was making its way into my mouth. I was concentrating hard on not having it turn to panic when my shoulder bumped against a metal ladder. Feet dripping, I hauled myself up to the lowest rung and began climbing. I looked up into complete blackness, but it seemed to hold more hope than what was below.
    After what must have been ten minutes of climbing, during which I did not slip once, nor think of how high I must have been, I saw light. I banged my head against something cold and hard and peered through metal bars onto a street. I realized I was looking through a sewer grate. Anyone larger would have been facing the return trip on the ladder, but not me. I tucked my hair into my hood and squeezed and pushed and wriggled until I was standing on a dark street, covered in things that should have been going down a drain, with wet feet and no idea where I was. A lone car sat at a taxi stand on the corner. I almost cried when I saw the exhaust pipes shaped like trombones. When I threw open the back door and fell in, I must have looked like a creature crawling out of a swamp.
    Dizzy turned and looked at me from under his porkpie hat. “Where’ll it be, mademoiselle ? The Russian church?”
    The street and the church were dark when Dizzy dropped me off back at Rudee’s. He hadn’t asked me a thing, and I don’t think I would’ve had the energy to tell him anyway.
    â€œThe Hacks are rehearsing tomorrow. Maybe I’ll see you there.”
    I thanked him and climbed past a snoring Rudee into the safety of my room. With my smoky hair and clothing smelling of the