Ministry Protocol: Thrilling Tales of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences
Page 52
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The climb down had been a nightmare, but Joe’s urging kept her moving. The sun was just turning the sky a cheerful pink as they hobbled into the bakery. Her shop girls stared, their mouths in perfect Os, but Anne-Marie merely flapped her good hand and demanded a box of éclairs, which she gave to Joe before pointing upstairs. He took it in ruined but expensive gloves, and only as he preceded her up to her apartment did she notice the bloody rips in the back of his jacket where the grotesque’s talons had torn into muscle.
They spoke little as they tended to each other’s wounds with the dusty medical kit she had never opened before. Her hand would always bear a shiny pink scar across the palm, but it would still function. His back required a few stitches, which she was able to manage. He grilled her on Madam Allemande: how to find her room, how many statues were there and whether they were all clockworks; and what she had said about tunnels, and catacombs, and Englishmen.
“Are you sure?” Joe asked for the tenth time.
Anne-Marie pulled the suture too tightly and snapped, “Of course I’m not sure, you oaf! I was drugged and nearly thrown from Notre Dame by a clockwork grotesque. We’ll go after her first thing tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow’s too late.”
She snipped the thread and held up her raw, scarred hand, and he fumed silently but didn’t press the matter. Still, something about the way he kept staring at the clock and her door didn’t sit right. Just in case he had ideas about apprehending Allemande without her, Anne-Marie waited until his back was turned to twist open a sleeping pill and pour its contents into one of the éclairs. Within moments of devouring the pastry she presented on a doily, the giant oaf was snoring on her floor.