Page 15 of Meet Me in Paris

“Is Kennedy there with you?” my sister asked in a rush.

“I’m here,” I told her, feeling my earlier joy dissipate as my mind raced through the possibilities. Mom had found the broken window. I’d be grounded for two months, maybe three. This wouldn’t keep us from going to Paris, would it? “Sorry, I forgot I left my phone at home.”

My sister took a deep breath. “I don’t know how to say this, but you need to come home.”

Lovely. “Tell Mom I’ll be right there.” If I told her the truth, maybe my sentence wouldn’t be so bad. It was the night of graduation, after all, and I wouldn’t see Hunter forover a week. It wasn’t like she would cancel Paris or anything.

“No, you don’t understand. It’s Mom.” Jillian’s voice shook. “An ambulance is taking her to the hospital.”

“You want us to gowhere?”Jillian asked, looking slightly pale.

I couldn’t blame her. I’d expected to hit Notre Dame today and maybe the Arc de Triomphe. But we stood on a small street in front of what looked like a row of regular houses.

“Underground,” Hunter said. “Today I’m showing you the catacombs, my very favorite part of the city.”

I stared at him in disbelief. With all the culture surrounding us, the guy with the history degree wanted to see thousands of skeleton parts?

He laughed at my expression. “I know, but seriously. You’ll be glad you went.”

Moments later we checked in, bypassing the tour headsets, and found ourselves facing a long stairwell leading downward. Paris seemed determined to march me down every flight of stairs it could. Except this one didn’t extend hundreds of feet into the air. Instead, it went several stories underground—and it had a dark creepiness to go along with it.

Jillian looked down the stairwell and shivered. “Not sure this is my thing, Hunter.”

“Just wait till you see it.”

After a few minutes, I thanked my lucky stars for the electricity powering the lights at each landing because I couldn’t imagine descending beneath the streets of Paris in the pitch dark.

As the air around us grew colder and wetter and I focused on taking one step after another down the stairs, Hunter gave us some background.

“Like with many other European cities, these tunnels started with the Gauls, conquered by the Romans almost two thousand years ago,” he said. “The early settlers pulled limestone from the ground to build the city above, and the Romans built sewers down here as the city grew. There are still remnants of a Roman section of the city beneath Notre Dame if you find the time to see them. Over time, as the city grew and the buildings got heavier, the underground began to cave in. So a city architect was assigned to reinforce it using crude cement made from the well water they pulled down here.”

I couldn’t help it. I simply stared at Hunter as he spoke, his presence commanding and in full tour-guide mode. His love for the city seeped into every word. No wonder he’d done so well at this job. It was impossible not to listen.

“Fascinating,” Alexis said, covering a yawn.

I hid a smile. Okay, maybe not so impossible for some. But my inner history geek was thrilled to be here, though I would die before I let Hunter know it. “How big is this, exactly?”

“We’ll see about a mile, but the tunnels cover roughly 195 miles. Most of those are sealed off.”

“Good,” Jillian muttered.

“This section is the most decorated, but there’s a lot more down here you won’t get to see,” Hunter said. “Old Nazibunkers from World War II, a resistance bunker not far from that, and even the remnants of Gaulia Brewery, an underground structure few know about. A friend took me down to see it. It’s really something, all covered in modern graffiti art.”

That piqued my interest. “Why can’t we see it?”

“Only cataphiles know how to get to it, and it requires hours of sloshing through groundwater and squeezing through a tunnel small enough to make you claustrophobic for life.”

“Already there,” Jillian said, and I gave her a side hug.

“Cataphiles,” Alexis said, perking up. “Are those, like, underground experts?”

“Unofficially, yes. There are police, too, and they work to keep the most dangerous sections sealed off. Even gangs. It’s a whole world down here. After you.” He stepped back to let us walk through a doorway with a sign over it.

“What does it say?” I asked, trying to tap into what little French I still remembered.

“‘Stop. This is the empire of death,’” Hunter said. “If anyone wants to obey, speak now and I’ll take you back up.”

Jillian looked positively sick, but when I gave her a questioning look, she shook her head. “No way. We came this far. Let’s do this.”

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