Machiavelli Read online

Without a word, Dagon dropped a heavy purse on the table. Coins clinked.

  “Triple what you are owed,” I said. I reached down beside my chair and placed a leather-wrapped bundle on the table between us.

  Vidocq unwrapped it. It was a long-bladed hunting knife with an ornate Damascus steel blade and polished walnut handle.

  “To make up for the one you lost,” I said.

  “It is magnificent.”

  “You deserve it. It was a gift to me from Caesar Borgia himself. He was once my employer, and an absolute villain. I think you would have liked him. Now, tell me: How are the children?”

  “Most of them seem to think they got lost in the tunnels and hallucinated because of lack of food and water.”

  “Most of them?”

  “Some—like Marius—are suspicious and confused. But who does he tell?” Eugene shrugged. “And what does he say? ‘I was digging corpses out of the underground crypts so that a blue-skinned chicken-legged woman could bring them back to life and attack the city’? ‘Oh, and I was guarded by skeletons’?”

  “And Madame Bougon?”

  “She thanks you; said she will be eternally grateful to you. Said you are a man of your word. I think that’s a compliment.”

  “As time goes by, the children’s memories will fade. Eventually, they will not know if it really happened or if it was a dream.”

  Vidocq poked the bag of coins with his dirty fingers. “I’m already starting to wonder myself. It really did happen, didn’t it?”

  I glanced up at Dagon. If I was going to lie to the boy, this would be the time. “Yes,” I answered, “it really happened.”

  “And there really was a blue-faced chicken-legged old woman…”

  “Black Annis,” Dagon said, managing to pronounce the name with a layer of disgust.

  Vidocq swiveled in his chair. “Were you really worshiped as a god?”

  “I still am,” he said.

  “Do you ever answer prayers?” he asked cheekily.

  “I’m not that sort of god.”

  The young man turned back to me. “What happened to Black Annis? She was still pinned to the floor when we left.”

  “You can rest assured: she’s gone. Everything in that chamber was burnt to a crisp.”

  He grinned, and I could see that a weight had lifted off his shoulders. “I keep thinking she’s down there, stuck to the floor, just waiting for the knife to rust through so she can come and find me.”

  “You’re safe,” I said. “Safer than you have ever been, Monsieur Vidocq, because now you are under my protection. I will be watching out for you in the years to come. And when the time is right, I am thinking you might make a fine chief of police in this city.”

  Vidocq started to laugh, then stopped. “Oh, you’re not joking.”

  “I am making you a promise,” I told him with a smile.

  * * *

  ***

  Dagon saw Vidocq to the door and locked it behind him. When he returned, he was carrying a length of stained cloth. “What do you want me to do with this?” he asked, unrolling the cloth.

  It was Black Annis’s foot, still with Vidocq’s knife embedded in it, complete with the chunk of limestone it was impaled in.

  “I searched every inch of the tunnels for her,” he said. “This”—he tapped the foot—“was the only evidence that she’d ever been there.”

  “She’ll grow another?” I asked.

  “Those Elders are practically indestructible. She’s probably limping around on a tiny chicken’s foot right now.”

  “So she’ll be back?”

  “Not here. Too many bad memories. She’ll find a new nest, in a new country. And if we’re still around in a couple of hundred years, she might try again.”

  “Will we still be here?” I wondered.

  “Not sure about you,” Dagon answered, “but I will. I have unfinished business with Scathach the Shadow.”

  What is lost will be found.

  Discover another Lost Story from the world of the New York Times bestselling Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series

  Coming November 2020

  Perry Hagopian

  An authority on mythology and folklore, MICHAEL SCOTT is one of Ireland’s most successful authors. A master of fantasy, science fiction, horror, and folklore, Michael has been hailed by the Irish Times as “the King of Fantasy in these isles.” He is the author of the New York Times bestselling Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series: The Alchemyst, The Magician, The Sorceress, The Necromancer, The Warlock, and The Enchantress.

  DillonScott.com

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