The Shape Stealer Read Free Page A

TGV from Montparnasse and expect to find the door open to Brocéliande.”
    Perhaps the Institut Chronologique was not on the map of Paris. Perhaps to find it one had to look hard, or listen …
    The ticking was coming from the depths of the narrow alley between the two buildings, which ended in a wall covered with vines and ivy. As I stared down the alley, a breeze wafted through it and disturbed the greenery, revealing a marble caryatid flanking a doorway. In the brief glimpse I had of the statue I thought she might be holding an hourglass.
    As I walked down the alley the ticking became louder. When I reached the door the breeze stirred the ivy, revealing a huge clock above the doorway, half-hidden by vines—a huge and complicated-looking clock made of three revolving disks filled with celestial symbols, which were transversed by four sweeping hands. The whole contraption was encircled by a dragon biting its own tail, and every inch was inlaid with gleaming enamel.
    I immediately wanted to make a reproduction of it for the line of watches I’d been thinking of launching. I took out my sketchbook and began to draw it, losing myself in the myriad details of the complicated mechanism. I hadn’t drawn like this since the week before I’d left Paris, when I’d given up on finding Will and thrown myself into sketching in the museums. On this very page I was drawing on were the sketches I’d made in the Musée des Arts et Métiers of timepieces and astrolabes. From them I’d come up with the timepiece I was wearing now. On the night that I’d finished making the timepiece I’d gone to Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre to say my final good-bye to Will and my quest for him. But as I’d sat outside in the Square Viviani, the bells of Notre Dame had chimed midnight and the oldest tree in Paris had split open to admit me into the earth where I’d met Jean Robin, my first guide toward finding Will. Would this door lead me into another adventure? Would it help me find Will again? I looked down for a knob … but there wasn’t one. Nor was there a door knocker or … when I searched through the vines at either side of the door … a doorbell. I’d come to a closed door at the end of a narrow dead-end alley where an extraordinarily complicated clock ticked away the seconds. Was this the beginning of an adventure, or the end? As I pondered that question the gears of the clock moved and three of the hands met at the top. Bells began to chime. One … two … seven … eight … twelve … thirteen …
    Thirteen?
    Two little windows flanking the clock slid open. I waited to see what sort of mechanical figures would pop out, but instead an elderly man’s face framed with white fluffy hair appeared in one of them.
    “Ah, Garet James,” Horatio Durant said. “It’s about time.”
    *   *   *
    From its half-hidden door and narrow alleyway entrance I expected a tiny atelier similar to Monsieur Durant’s watch shop in the Marais; instead, I walked into a lofty atrium at the center of which was suspended a gigantic pendulum swinging above a black granite basin filled with sand. As the pendulum swung, it described arcs in the sand. Looking up, I saw that the roof soared so high above us I could barely make it out.
    “How…?” I began, turning to Monsieur Durant.
    “Is it bigger on the inside than the outside?” he finished the question for me. “The institute lies outside the restrictions of time and space,” he intoned rather formally. Then he shrugged, threw up his hands, and lifted his white bushy eyebrows at me. “At least, that’s what it says in our brochure. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a big nuisance. Do you know what it costs to heat this place in the winter? And forget about keeping it clean! The last cleaning crew we hired got lost in the archives and we haven’t seen them since.”
    “I was going to ask how you knew I was coming.”
    “Ah.” Monsieur Durant tapped the side of his nose. “The