Free The Adventures of Mademoiselle Mac 2-Book Bundle by Christopher Ward

de la Concorde until we stopped just down the sidewalk from the giant “Roue De Paris” millennium Ferris wheel that lit up the square.
    Once out of the car, they silently whisked me past a line-up that stretched in both directions from the ticket booths, right up to the platform where giddy Saturday night couples were piling into the waiting compartments. Someone entered from the other side of the car I was being led toward, and I climbed up and into the opposite seat as the doors were locked shut.
    â€œThere’s no smoking in here, Monsieur Fiat.” I attempted to reduce the tension for my own sake. He just stared at me until I wanted to take a shower.
    â€œYesss,” he finally said, “you are a child, aren’t you, after all.” Our car jerked once, twice, as we started our climb. “What you know, my little flea, does not concern me. Paris is a city where things are easily forgotten. Old love affairs, people, places ... and sometimes that is as it should be.”
    He had a hazy expression as he looked over the city and down the length of the Champs Élysées. I flashed back to the rally where I had first seen him, and the moment seemed completely unreal.
    â€œThis used to be a beautiful city, you know, dark and beautiful. A city that respected its past. The little neighbourhoods, the narrow streets, the tiny houses huddled together; a place where you could discover passages that all but the rats had forgotten, lose yourself and hide your cares, not seeing the sun for days at a time.”
    This was all sounding chillingly claustrophobic to me, but he was just warming up, I could see. “Now, some fool builds a Ferris wheel to look down on the spot where Marie Antoinette lost her head.”
    He shot me a look that I think was designed to inspire terror. It worked. “One hundred and fifty years ago, the prefect of Paris, a man named Georges Haussmann, with the approval of that little worm Napoleon the Third, ripped this city apart. In a fever of demolition, they tore down all that held people’s lives together and sold off the pieces to the highest bidder. Pushing these big boulevards from one side of Paris to the other, they ripped the soul out of the city in the process.”
    I wasn’t even tempted to mention how cool it was that you could see the Arc de Triomphe from so far away. “Does your family matter to you, little one?” He stared into me. My mouth went dry, and I wanted to be able to give the right answer at this point. We had reached the top of the Ferris wheel, and our little car was swinging back and forth in the night sky. It was a long way down.
    He went on without a reply from me. “My great-great-grandfather was a lamplighter at the time, and they snuffed out his job like extinguishing a lamp, tore down his family’s home, and sold the pieces to scavengers who called themselves antique dealers. He died shortly after, selling postcards of the ‘ nouveau Paris’ to tourists in Montmartre. My great-great-grandmother whispered his story in my ear as a child at her one hundred and twentieth birthday party. I vowed to avenge him, and she died happily a few minutes later trying to blow out the candles on her cake.”
    I swallowed hard and clenched my teeth, pushing the picture of granny collapsing into the icing from my mind. A chilly breeze from the Seine blowing into my face helped me maintain my composure. Fiat continued his story as though I weren’t there.
    â€œI grew to hate the light of day. I collected sunglasses, carried an umbrella to school on sunny days. I was always happiest at the end of the day, when my papa would return home and entertain me with shadow puppets of buzzards on my bedroom wall. My best memories are of him waking me up and taking me into the street during power failures to see the ‘true darkness,’ as he called it, ‘the shadow of the city as it once was.’”
    Despite the