The Shape Stealer Read Free

I’d lost both of them. I could only hope that young Will would eventually come back here to the store because it was the last place we’d been together. I’d leave a note.
    Recalling that there was a manual typewriter where lingering expats typed notes—and poems and unfinished novels, for all I knew—to each other, I climbed the stairs to the second story and slid into the snug alcove that housed the typewriter. I grabbed a piece of paper, but then glanced at the pages thumbtacked to the walls of the cubby. Michele, je t’aime, Nicole. Zeke, meet me at the Musee D’Orsay beside our favorite Cezanne. You know the one. Yours evermore, Twink. Elsa, we’ll always have Paris. Rick. And then, Garet, go to the Institut Chronologique, 193½ rue Saint-Jacques. All your questions will be answered there.
    I yanked the page off the wall and studied it for a signature, but there was none. Could Will have left it for me? But I wasn’t sure how he would know about an Institut Chronologique in Paris.
    And what the hell was the Institut Chronologique? I’d never heard of it. But if it had to do with time, then it was probably a good place to start.
    I rolled the paper into the typewriter and typed a reply beneath the enigmatic note: I’m on my way, Garet.
    *   *   *
    The northern end of the rue Saint-Jacques was right around the corner from Shakespeare and Company. Checking my notebook, I saw that the Institut Océanographique, where just a few days ago I’d met Madame La Pieuvre, was at 195 rue Saint-Jacques. I didn’t recall an Institut Chronologique on that block, but I must have missed it.
    As I walked south past the great marble façades of the Sorbonne I wondered where Octavia La Pieuvre was now. She had traveled with me to the Val sans Retour in Brittany to find passage to the mythical forest of Brocéliande, there to ask to be made a mortal so she could live out a mortal life with her beloved, Adele Weiss. She had told me about the curse of the Val sans Retour, which condemned all faithless lovers to wander there forever. Part sea creature that she was, Madame La Pieuvre had been dehydrated by the hike. When I’d left her to find shade she’d been reminiscing about a past lover. Did that make her unfaithful? I’d lost her during my own trials in the Val, but eventually I’d found Will and together we’d found our way out—albeit that way had led through 1602. Had Octavia la Pieuvre found her own way out? I would have to find Adele Weiss (she was the concierge at my hotel, so that shouldn’t be hard) and, if Octavia was still missing, tell her what had happened. I didn’t look forward to that conversation. Far better to follow an anonymous note to an unknown institute … which I should be arriving at soon.
    I had come to the Institut de Géographie with its twin globes above its doors, and I could see beyond it the square tower of the Institut Océanographique. The Institut de Géographie was number 191. So the Institut Chronologique must be next door … but the next building appeared to be the Oceanography Institute. I checked the numbers again. 191, 195. No 193, let alone a 193½. Had my anonymous note writer gotten the number wrong? Or was it simply a ploy to send me wandering aimlessly around Paris? After all, there were half a dozen things I should be doing—finding Monsieur Durant, looking for Marduk, telling Adele Weiss about Octavia … the list grew as I paced between the two buildings under the baleful glare of the cast-iron octopus above the door of the Institut Océanographique. I was so tired and overwrought I could hear a humming in my head and something ticking …
    I paused directly in between the two institutes and, peering down the alley between them, recalled something that Octavia La Pieuvre had said to me on the drive to Brittany.
    “The mythical forest of Brocéliande is not a place of this world. It can’t be found on a map of France. You can’t reach it on the E50 or take a