Wanderlust

by Adam Millard

  “Is it old?” After all, that was all that mattered. “It doesn’t look that old.”

  “Old enough,” Alcorn said. He opened it up to reveal the small, S-shaped piece. “Let’s just hope it blocks our giant friend out long enough to get this done. God, I can’t believe I’m even entertaining this.”

  Smiling, Abigale said, “That was exactly how I felt a few days ago.”

  “Yeah, but at least you’ve got a good reason to go through with it. If you don’t, that thing in your head is going to…” he trailed off as he saw Abigale’s smile falter. “Oh, look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “You’re right, though,” Abigale said. “I’m doing it to stay alive. And you’re doing it so that you get to be the one to throw me in gaol when we get back to London. Sounds like we’ve both got our reasons.” She moved across the room, stretching her legs, interlinking her fingers and yawning. She looked as if a few hours’ sleep wouldn’t do her any harm.

  “Get some rest,” Alcorn told her. “We need to be ready to move tonight, and I want you at your best.” After chasing her for what seemed like forever, he knew all too well what her best entailed.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, staring out at Paris—the city of love. “I don’t know any other way.”

  26

  Darkness settled over the city. Without the glow of the full moon reflecting upon the Seine, it would have been absolute pitch. A chill wind blew through the open square, and by the time Alcorn and Abigale arrived at the Louvre, they were both shivering.

  The huge monolith that was the museum reached up into the Paris sky like a yawning giant. Alcorn had not expected such a magnificent structure and understood why it was no wonder people fell into hysterics when they recounted their visit. It was stunning, a truly remarkable building, and that was just the outside. Somehow, though, he knew there would be no time to stand back in admiration once they breached the doors.

  Several young couples walked hand in hand along the plaza, occasionally stopping to kiss. She reached down and grabbed Alcorn by the hand.

  Without facing her, he said, “What are you doing?” It was a surreptitious whisper from the corner of his mouth. He would have made a terrible ventriloquist.

  “Fitting in,” Abigale said. “We need to get through the Passage Richelieu, do we not?”

  Alcorn nodded. “And the only way to do that is by holding hands?” His tone was drenched with sarcasm.

  “People are less likely to remember us if we look just like another love-struck couple.” Abigale gave his hand a playful squeeze. “Just go along with it. I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

  At the left side of the square, a tall archway led to a wide passage. On either side, windows displayed various objects, though nothing of real worth. Only an idiot would put the priceless stuff in the window display.

  Still holding hands, Abigale led Alcorn deeper into the passageway, where they came upon a tall man wearing what must have been museum security uniform. He nodded in their direction.

  Alcorn squeezed Abigale’s hand, as if to say, What now?

  Abigale reached into the satchel with her free hand, and for a moment, Alcorn thought she was simply going to shoot the man with the hand cannon. Instead, she retrieved what looked like a folded paper, and smiled at the guard.

  God, she is good…

  “I wonder if you could help us,” she said, momentarily releasing Alcorn’s hand. “We’re a little lost.” She proceeded to unfold what turned out to be a map and thrust it toward the guard, who seemed suddenly overwhelmed by such a large object.

  “Madame…” he said, but that was as far as he managed to get before Abigale pulled Big Daddy from its holster and pulled the trigger.

  The map rustled as the bullet passed through it, and the guard grunted. Alcorn couldn’t believe what he was witnessing. “What are you doing?” he said, incredulous. Not content with simply stealing from the Louvre, of all places, Abigale Egars had just shot a man in cold blood.

  Terrific!

  “It’s okay,” Abigale said. “He’s just going to take a small nap. You might want to catch him before he hits the ground, though.” She stepped aside as the guard began to lose control of his legs.

  “What…” Alcorn trailed off and grabbed onto the guard’s stumbling body.

  They tottered back and forth for a few seconds, and then the man was wholly unconscious. Alcorn simply eased him back onto the pavement. Once he was safely down, Alcorn dragged him by the feet across to the edge of the passageway, where Abigale unfolded the map completely and draped it over the guard’s prone form.

  “Was that entirely necessary?” Alcorn said, shooting Abigale a reproachful look.

  “I’d much rather shoot him with my gun than you shoot him with yours,” Abigale said, re-holstering the pistol. “Plus, I had to improvise. He wasn’t supposed to be down here. No one was.”

  Alcorn shook his head. “Well, we’re off to a great start with those plans of yours,” he said. “Can we just try to keep the violence to a minimum? I know I’m out of my jurisdiction, but I do know how much paperwork is going to be involved for the poor bastards following this up.”

  “I’ll do my best.” Abigale winked at him. “By the way, I hope none of what we do here tonight is going to reflect on what happens to me back in London.”

  “As far as I’m concerned,” he said, “none of this is even happening. And I don’t know an inquisitor in the world who would believe me, even if I submitted a thousand-page report.” He shrugged. “None of this will go on your record. If what’s happening is real, and The Guild is taking these things out of commission, then you’re doing the only thing you can do.”

  Abigale tapped the side of her head. “And staying alive at the same time.”

  Alcorn had almost forgotten about the device in Abigale’s head. Perhaps it was because of her stoical façade. She was extremely difficult to read, but he knew deep down she was affected by it. He knew he would be.

  “Come on,” Abigale said. “This is getting us nowhere.” She reached into her satchel and came out with an odd-looking contraption.

  “What’s that?” Alcorn asked. By then, he should have known better.

  Abigale paced across the passageway to the large window. “This is our way in,” she said, pushing the device against the glass. She began to squeeze a small, black ball on the side of the thingamajig, and it hissed a little. Turning to Alcorn, leaving the thing hanging from the glass, she said, “How wide are you?”

  “What?” It was the obvious response to a question he was seldom asked.

  “Girth,” she said. “I need to know how big to make the hole.”

  Alcorn frowned. “I don’t know. Can’t you just guess it by looking at me?”

  With a flick of the head, Abigale said, “I suppose I’ll have to. You’re a pretty big fellow, so I’ll just set it to maximum and we’ll see what happens.”

  “You do that.” Alcorn didn’t know whether to be impressed or offended. “Just hurry it up. We don’t want Sleepy Joe’s buddies coming ‘round the corner while we’ve got our pantaloons down, so to speak.”

  “Hold your horses,” Abigale said, easing the blade of the glass cutter slowly round. It screeched, but not loud enough to be heard outside the passage.

  After three minutes—Alcorn timed it on his pocket watch, when he wasn’t glancing nervously across his shoulder—Abigale lowered the glass through onto the window display and slid it carefully across. She turned to Alcorn and placed a finger across her lips as if to say, “Be quiet from here on.”

  Alcorn nodded. What the hell am I doing?

  They slipped in through the aperture, Abigale leading the way to Wanderlust as if she could smell the paint upon the canvas.

  *

  Mordecai Pick lit a cigar and poured a large glass of whiskey. Werner paced frantically back and forth across the office, the small box with its flickering green light clenched tightly in his hand. The girl was in Paris r
ight, and they were so close to possessing the final three pieces, so very close to destroying them before they fell into the hands of a madwoman.

  “Oh, sit down, will you,” Mordecai said, irritated. “You’re making me dizzy.”

  Werner shook his head. “This isn’t right. Something’s not right.” He could feel it in the pit of his stomach and he knew, despite his relaxed demeanour, Mordecai could too.

  Mordecai sniffed his whiskey before taking a large gulp. Through clenched teeth, he said, “We must wait. That’s all we can do.”

  “And what happens when we get the triptych?” Werner said. “This place will be crawling with wizards, and you know as well as I do that we’re not equipped to deal with such an attack.” He plonked himself down in an armchair on the other side of the room. “They must be destroyed immediately.”

  “That’s exactly what’s going to happen,” Mordecai said. “I’ve already fired up the combustion engine. Those pieces will be melted down into worthless nuggets before Blithe even knows they’re here.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on that,” a voice said from the door, which had yet to be repaired.

  Mordecai dropped his glass and spluttered a mouthful of smoke across the room. “Blithe, we were just—”

  Raw energy slammed into him, sending him back into the wall. On the edge of the room, Werner tried to stand, and a moment later, he was hit with a blast twice as powerful as that which had incapacitated his superior.

  The office smouldered as magic fizzed all around.

  “Fools,” Blithe said, throwing her head back and inhaling the errant magic. And then everything reduced to a dot, whipped away across time and space, to where Blithe could better deal with it.

  *

  Thick, cream columns stretched up to the glass roof, through which the moonlight was visible and dimly illuminating the museum’s interior. It was almost impossible to remain quiet on the marbled tiles, but Abigale and Alcorn did their utmost to remain light-footed.

  Huge paintings lined the walls,some as big as the walls themselves, but none of them were Wanderlust, the objet petit, which Abigale would notice as soon as her eyes fell upon it. Alcorn merely stared at everything in the hope that she would hurry up and pick one. For Christ’s sake….

  Abigale tapped the detective upon the shoulder and pointed to an archway at the side of the room. Through there…

  Nodding, Alcorn turned and slowly headed in the direction Abigale had gestured. His heart pounded inside him, despite being a man of the law, this was the single most exhilarating thing he’d done in his entire life. He was going against every moral he’d ever believed in and robbing a goddamned museum. The implications might very well be too much to ultimately live with, but he was in the moment, and very much enjoying the adrenalin surging through him. No wonder Abigale couldn’t help herself.

  He paused at the large archway and turned to make sure that Abigale was close by. She was attaching something to her eye— that monovision eyeglass of hers. To Alcorn, she looked like something from the future, some robotic Cyclops from outer space. She shot him a coy smile, to which he simply shrugged.

  “Stunning.” he whispered.

  Abigale silenced him with a finger to the lips once again, and then removed what looked like a small bug from a wooden box. She held it out on the palm of her hand, and a moment later, the thing flickered into life.

  Alcorn, who knew very well that nothing Abigale Egars did should ever surprise him, was genuinely shocked. He’d seen the scorpions back at Harriett Haversham’s, and they, in his mind, were magnificent automatons, a miracle of engineering. However, this fly was so small, so lifelike, and so creepy. It was something else entirely. He watched as it buzzed up into the air in front of his face, and then it was gone, soaring through the gloom ahead.

  Inside the monovision eyeglass, Abigale could see everything. Splendid art flew by on either side, and as the fly reached the end of the corridor, it turned right and continued on to the next room.

  Abigale dropped into a crouch, concealed herself in the shadows. Grabbing Alcorn’s hand, she urged him to do the same.

  “What’s it doing?” Alcorn breathed. Abigale could just about see his face through the dark, and it was with a disbelieving glare that he now regarded her.

  “Searching,” Abigale whispered. “Making sure Wanderlust is where it’s supposed to be.”

  The detective nodded as if that was a perfectly acceptable answer. Of course, it’s searching. How very silly of me…

  *

  Abigale watched as the fly manoeuvred the great columns. No matter how close it came to the cream stanchions, it would never crash. Octavius was a perfectionist, not some fly-by-night contraptor with half a brain and a bucket of spare parts. There were plenty of those in London, and all around the world, but not any Tom, Dick, or Harry could create things such as this automaton fly. It was genius.

  The device glided through the museum, taking in information quicker than any human being could ever dream of and relaying it directly back to Abigale. The green images were clear, though a little dark. It didn’t matter, for the next corner the fly traversed was the one leading on to exactly what they were looking for.

  “There she is,” Abigale whispered.

  Her eyeglass revealed to her the painting, that wondrous imagery by Frederic Laffitte. The towers stretching up to the sky, wrapping round one another as if in embrace. Even though the painting was in various shades of green, it was still beautiful. She could barely contain her excitement. She was going to see it, touch it, stand beside it…and then what? Destroy it?

  No. There was no way she could do that. Wanderlust would not suffer the same fate as “Bansei” or the Chindesaurus egg, not if she could help it.

  “Come on,” Abigale said, sliding out from the shadows. “The path is clear. No guards en route.”

  “That, Alcorn whispered, is a minor miracle.” They would need more of them if they were to survive the night unscathed.

  *

  Octavius woke, and though he had no real idea how long he’d slept for, he knew the time had come to gather himself. His shoulder ached, and his stomach felt as if someone had jumped up and down repeatedly upon it, but they were minor inconveniences. He was more than capable of healing himself.

  He slowly climbed from his chair, summoned energy from the four corners of the room, and took a deep breath. For a moment, everything was dark, and then there was the most penetrating of lights. Hues of orange and red surged around him, passed through him, through his body and mind, touching his soul, even. After several minutes, he opened his eyes and sighed. The room no longer consisted of incongruous angles and odd shadows; it was as if he’d been plucked up from his workshop and planted in another realm. He’d existed in darkness for far too long, using gas-lamps to see by, tinkering with toys and devices that he was capable of simply thinking into existence.

  Magic was overrated, but by god it was useful when you needed it.

  Octavius Knight knew that by the end of the night, his life, and that of his adopted daughter and friend, would rely upon it.

  *

  Alcorn stared through the gloom at the painting hanging upon the wall. It didn’t look like anything special, but he’d learned a lot about artefacts in the last few days, and had arrived at the conclusion that the less extraordinary something seemed, the more it was probably worth. To him, though, Wanderlust looked like every other madcap painting. Surely, the artist behind its creation had partaken in something highly illegal before picking up a brush and setting to work. How else could you explain such a peculiar design? No one of sane mind would conceive that painting he looked at.

  “Help me,” Abigale said, reaching up and grabbing one side of the frame.

  Alcorn grasped onto the other.

  “Be careful.”

  “I am being careful,” he whispered, as loudly as he possibly could. She might know a thing or two about thievery, but Abigale Egars was severely lacking when it came t
o people skills.

  Carefully, they removed Wanderlust from the wall and set it face down on the marbled floor.

  As Abigale had thought, the rear of the painting was covered over with a desiccated brown sheet of paper, pulled tight over the edges of the frame. It was a good thing because it meant that she didn’t have to devastate the painting. Wanderlust would live on. It would need a new frame and a good remounting, but as far as she was concerned, that was a small victory.

  She pulled out her lock picks from the satchel and selected one. She jabbed it into the paper at the corner of the frame and began to peel it back—slowly, of course. There was no need to go in heavy. One slip, and she’d stab the canvas, and that just wouldn’t do at all.

  Once she’d cut enough of the paper away, she tore at the edges using her fingers. Carefully peeling it away from the frame, convinced they must have used some sort of super-sap to stick it down. She cleared enough space in which to slip her whole hand.

  “Where is it?” Alcorn whispered, suddenly wishing they were anywhere else but there.

  “Tip it from that end,” Abigale said, retracting her hand.

  She lifted her side of the frame, and Alcorn matched her move-for-move. Something rattled from within, and when they lowered Wanderlust to the ground, sitting there at the bottom of the frame was a small T-shaped nugget.

  “I don’t believe it,” Alcorn said, trying to keep his voice low. He watched as Abigale slowly picked the piece up from the golden frame. “That’s it. The final piece.” If he sounded relieved, it was because he was. Now all they had to do was get out of there.

  Just then, something howled. Alcorn ran through a list of things that howled in his terrified mind, but he knew very well what it was.

  “We need to go,” Abigale said, lunging to her feet. “Now.”

  Then, all hell broke loose, not for the first time that week.

  *

  The guards were the first to arrive in the room. Three of them, armed with pistols and gas-lamps. None of them looked particularly comfortable as they trained their weapons on the girl and her accomplice in the centre of the room. Abigale considered that it was probably the first time they’d ever come across anyone stupid enough to try and steal from the Louvre. If only they knew what would happen next, they might very well have turned the guns on themselves.