Chapter 24
“It’s a death trap for death. A death death trap.
” Maher leans over the hole we’ve cut in the hundred-year-old floors of the apartment on Rue Saint-Honoré.
It was the closest building to the fairgrounds that fit our needs.
Enough ground-floor space for our fake exhibition, and a cellar directly beneath a wood floor.
We cleared all the furniture down here in order to work.
The bedrooms upstairs are crammed with chairs, sofas, and the kitchen table we’re using as Inge’s desk.
I sleep on a chaise longue shoved up against Maher’s bed.
Inge claims she’s sleeping in the bathtub, though I hear her muttering at the table whenever I wake in the middle of the night.
I tried my best to make her stay behind in Amsterdam for Joren’s sake, but it was no use. Every time I tried to argue, she glared and reminded me of my promise. I’ve lost all my leverage when it comes to making decisions for the group.
But Inge was right. She absolutely came into her own during my absence.
There’s no longer a sense that she’s younger than us.
She’s been through what we’ve been through; we three are fully partners.
And, as Diavola so accurately pointed out, Inge is the most useful of us all.
We wouldn’t be in Paris if it weren’t for her.
Inge surveys the work. “Poor Madame Chabert. I failed to mention the modifications we were making to her house. I assumed she’d refuse to give us the keys otherwise. But who wouldn’t want a trapdoor in the middle of the dining room?”
I nod. “The Bloody Benders certainly thought it was a feature, not a flaw.”
“Do I want to know who the Bloody Benders were?” Maher asks.
“Probably not. But we aren’t using ours to rob and murder travelers.
We only have one target. So we’re on much more solid moral ground.
” Our trapdoor is large enough that anyone standing on it will be dropped straight down into a waiting steel cage, but not so large that we can’t cover it with a rug to hide the seams.
Maher stands. “I’ll get to work on the hinge mechanism.”
“By which you mean you’ll find a craftsman to do it,” I tease.
He sniffs in mock-insult. “Delegation is working.”
We’ve healed a lot over the last year. I was a fool to think I could do any of this without them.
And though the absence of Dávid is so notable it’s a presence in and of itself, I do believe that Inge and Maher don’t blame me for his death.
I’ll never forgive myself, which is more than enough guilt and shame.
“Hurry with the delegation,” Inge says. “The fair started two weeks ago. I can’t believe after all our planning that we’re behind schedule. And we can’t even pass out our flyers until the trapdoor is complete.”
We didn’t account for how hard it would be to rent a suitable location during a massive city event.
By the time we secured this apartment and began preparing, we were already running out of time.
And though the city is flush with workers because of the fair, it’s been more difficult than expected to find ones that can do what we need.
It’s also challenging explaining why we want a floor-to-ceiling steel cage in the cellar beneath a trapdoor.
But there are so many unbelievable things at the fair, our “live grizzly bear” exhibit wasn’t all that outlandish.
Maher strides out. I stare at our future trapdoor and wonder: Have we done enough?
There’s no such thing as “enough” in this case. But we’re as prepared as we can be. And we have time. If regular cities can hold the Watcher’s attention for up to a month, this pulsing, vibrant, enormous fair will surely hold it for longer. It has to.
Inge must sense my angst, because she puts a hand on my shoulder. “He’ll be here.”
She spent more time than any of us looking at where the Watcher struck, back when we thought it was Diavola.
Several of his sprees in cities were tied to large festivals or fairs, events that pulled in extra activity and excitement.
Diavola spoke of her difficulty adjusting to modern changes.
I suspect the Watcher is attracted to change and development, lured by energy.
The fact that he’s adapted to the use of cameras and cinematographs is proof enough that he loves new things.
More to reassure herself than me, Inge continues.
“He’s not like Jack the Ripper. He doesn’t target those no one will miss, and he wants variety in his victims. He’ll be drawn to these crowds.
And given what we know about his use of technology, the themes of the exposition will also appeal to him.
The fair will be irresistible. I know it will. ”
I nod, squeezing her hand. “We’ll find him.”
“We’ll find him,” she repeats, a mantra we share back and forth whenever one of us begins doubting.
I pull out my list of tasks. “I’m meeting with Louis Lumière tomorrow to pick up the prototype.
I’ll also let him know what to be on the lookout for at his own exhibits and theaters.
But it’s hard to warn people to be on alert for the devil.
” If the Watcher is anything like Diavola, people won’t recognize him from one visit to the next.
No wonder no one ever picked up on the fact that it was a single person doing so much damage.
Even I got it wrong, and I was paying all my considerable attention.
Inge pulls out her own list, far longer than mine. She has lists of lists. “And you’ve reached out to your contacts here?”
“I’m having tea with Locard this afternoon, Lacassagne tomorrow. They’ve already introduced me to the local police forces via correspondence and will each bring several key contacts to meet Maher and me. I’m confident they’ll update us immediately on any suspicious deaths.”
“They really were receptive to it?” Inge knows how in the past we’ve struggled to bring local forces on board.
I laugh. “Maher named us the Extraordinary Circumstances Task Force and said we specialize in events that put strain on local officers. And de Haas wrote an official letter to the Paris police chief about how we’re the finest investigative team he’s ever worked with, that he didn’t want to spare us, but that he knew they’d need us more over the next few months.
” That one still makes me emotional. For every de Lange I meet on a force who hates me simply for having the audacity to be a woman, there’s a de Haas.
Gruff and demanding but also respectful and loyal when value is demonstrated.
“Add all that to your father’s contacts, and we have a friendly situation here despite the fact that Maher has brown skin and you and I have breasts. ”
“It really is a new century,” Inge says.
“But we’re not waiting for them to come to us with cases.
We’ll find him first.” That part of the plan was all Maher.
Once the Watcher gets to a city, he’s nearly impossible to predict.
So, we had to find a way to make him find us instead.
Maher’s idea was elegantly simple. We’d put on an “exhibition” that the Watcher couldn’t resist, offering something that doesn’t actually exist.
“An artist!” Inge shouts to herself, making another note on the list. “For our flyers.”
“We already have flyers.”
“Everything here is in that new art style. I want ours to look the same as any other exhibitors, so we have to redo them. I have a list of potential hires to contact.”
I know better than to argue with her, and she’s probably right. The more we blend in with the rest of the fair, the less likely the Watcher is to suspect that everything about our operation is designed with him in mind.
With nothing to do until my meetings, I head down to the cellar. Stepping over the supplies for the steel cage, I open the newly reinforced door to a storage room.
“We’re the ones who look like crazed murderers,” Inge shouts down through the hole.
She’s not wrong. Diavola tried everything she could to kill our devil, but she was a young woman in an isolated mountain town. I’m a forensic detective. I know ever so many more ways to kill. I might even have come up with some new ones.
There’s a section for ropes, chains, steel spikes, and hammers.
A section for blades of every metal we could get our hands on.
A section of stakes made of various types of wood, because despite what Diavola says, a vampire is still the closest comparison we have.
A section for poisons—though he doesn’t eat, there are plenty of corrosive options, along with several acids.
Maher tracked down a terrifying device called a blowtorch, with the theory that prolonged exposure to intense flame might do what merely trying to light him on fire could not.
And finally, the most important piece, and the one that will be the trickiest to implement: a diving helmet.
After we stake the Watcher to the floor, we’ll secure it around his head and fill it with water.
Maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll drown. But even if he doesn’t, it will prevent him from speaking to us.
Because that’s my greatest fear: that we’ll lure him here, and Inge or Maher will die because of it.
After all, we’re keeping a monster capable of talking people into killing themselves next to a closetful of weapons.
I pull the door shut and lock it, then tuck the key into one of my skirt pockets. Once we have him, none of us will come down here without wax packed into our ears. But I’m still worried. There has to be a smarter way to neutralize him while we test every method of destruction available.
And all the while he just smiled at me, patiently waiting, Diavola said. I stare at the place where his cage will go and wonder if we’re dooming ourselves to decades of trying to kill the unkillable while time slowly chips away at us until he’s free once more.
A frantic pounding upstairs draws me away from my tortured, circular thoughts. I make it up just as Inge opens the front door.
A young officer is there, hat held in his hand, shoulders heaving as he gasps for air.
“Are you the Dutch detectives?” he asks, confused.
“Yes,” I answer in his language, already pinning on my hat. Inge does the same. My impulse is to tell her to wait here, but the look on her face makes it clear she’s going to do no such thing. How can I lure the Watcher to our trap while keeping Inge and Maher safe?
The officer puts his hat back on, confused but unwilling to ask more questions. “Come quick, then.”
“What is it?” I ask.
“Bodies,” he says.