The Parisian Codex

13 - Across Rooftops

I stepped out of the building, and a police siren sounded on the avenue.

I took the side street. The neighborhood would be swarming with cops for hours, long after sunrise. I didn't have time to wait for them to get bored and go home. I climbed a facade and dashed across rooftops.

The rain was making the zinc slippery, and the streets of the 16th arrondissement were a little too wide for my taste. But at least there was no risk of the police looking for me twenty yards above the pavement.

I dropped back to the sidewalk on Kléber Avenue and took a wide detour to the south: Trocadéro plaza, Bir Hakeim Bridge, and the Left Bank as far as Ile de la Cité before daring to enter rue du Louvre. I spent the walk thinking.

I was dealing with a demon. My usual tactics would probably be as useful as plaster on a wooden leg. I had to find a way to deal with a denizen of the underworld. The last time I'd tried something like this was with Sofia in the 1920s. It wasn't exactly a successful operation. At the time, I had gone through every page of every manuscript in my infallible memory. I'd found a few spells and a ritual, all of which had proved ineffective. I couldn't invoke the Savior's name, but Sofia certainly did. The demon laughed.

There was no reason to believe that my memory had since stored the solution to this particular problem. Nevertheless, I went back in search of a previously overlooked passage. By the time I reached the entrance to my building, I was no further ahead. Either the demons were invincible, or they had eliminated all information concerning their Achilles heel.

The sun wouldn't rise for several hours, but all I wanted to do was get back to my lair, double-lock the door, and shoot myself a bag of A-negative. If Laurel hadn't worked for the scumbag who was blackmailing me, I'd have emptied him down to the last drop.

Deep in these dark thoughts, I stumbled down the stairs and stopped dead in my tracks.

"Namaste!"

Romane stood in front of my office door, beaming with positive energy.

"You never sleep, do you?" I growled.

"Yoga," she said as if that explained everything.

"Not in my office."

I motioned for her to move her buttocks out of the way. She stepped aside, and I saw that my door was ajar. I don't know what face I made, but Romane stepped back and held up her hands.

"I found it like that! I wanted to check on the cat, but when I knocked, the door opened. The lock's broken, but I didn't get in, I promise!"

Deep in my pocket, Kitten had stiffened.

"Check on the cat?" I echoed rather stupidly.

"Is he here?" she asked, her voice full of hope.

I had a demon on the loose, no trail to follow, no client to pay me, a mobster and the police on my back, someone had broken into my office, and Romane wanted to talk about the cat?

"The cat's gone," I lied.

In the blink of an eye, her expression went from disgusting joie de vivre to dark despair. "But ... where...?"

"No idea. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a lock to fix."

I closed the door on Romane and her inexhaustible joie de vivre, but the door bounced open.

The locks had been ripped from the wall.

"Shall I call the locksmith?" Romane suggested from the hallway.

"No need," I grumbled, "I'll fix it."

Then, when she still didn't leave, I added: "Enjoy your yoga!"