The Maze of Bones (The 39 Clues #1)(34)

She tried to imagine what her mother or Grace would do in her place. They would be braver. They'd see what to do more clearly. Her mother had once searched for these same clues. Amy was sure of that now. Grace had intended Amy to take up the challenge, but what if Amy wasn't up to it?

So far she felt like she'd done a terrible job. Every time she'd needed to speak up, she failed. The other teams probably thought she was a mumbling loser.

If it wasn't for Dan, she would've been lost. Just thinking about it made a lump form in her throat.

They finished the bread. Amy knew they needed to get moving. She stared at the darkening sky and tried to remember details from her Paris guidebooks. "There aren't any Métro lines to ?le St-Louis," she said. "We'll have to walk."

"Let's do it!" Dan hopped to his feet.

Amy couldn't believe how quickly his spirits had rebounded. A few minutes ago, he'd been complaining about his feet and his heavy backpack. Now, a hunk of bread later, he was as good as new. Amy wished she was like that. She felt like lying down and sleeping for a century, but she wasn't going to tell that to Dan.

It was full dark by the time they got to the Pont Louis-Philippe. The old stone bridge was lined with streetlamps that glowed against the water. On the opposite side rose a cluster of trees and mansions -- the ?le St-Louis. To the north was a larger island, with a huge cathedral lit up yellow in the night.

"That's the ?le de la Cité over there," Amy said as they walked across, mostly to keep herself calm. "And that's Notre Dame Cathedral."

"Cool," Dan said. "You think we can see the hunchback?"

"Urn ... maybe later." Amy decided not to tell him that the hunchback of Notre Dame was just a character in a book. "Anyway, the smaller island we're going to -- the ?le St-Louis -- the tour books hardly said anything about it. Mostly old houses and shops and stuff. I don't know why Irina would be looking there."

"No Ben Franklin history?"

Amy shook her head. "It used to be called the Island of the Cows, because that's all that lived there. Then they turned it into a neighborhood."

"Cows," Dan said. "Exciting."

After the other parts of Paris they'd seen, the ?le St-Louis felt like a ghost town. The narrow streets were lined with elegant old apartments -- five stories tall with black gabled roofs. Most of the windows were dark. A lot of the shops were closed.

Streetlamps cast weird shadows through the branches of the trees, making monster shapes on the walls. Amy was too old to believe in monsters, but the shadows still made her uneasy.

An elderly couple crossed the street in front of them. Amy wondered if it was her imagination, or if the couple really glanced at her suspiciously before they disappeared into an alleyway. On the next block, a guy in a beret was walking a Labrador retriever.

He smiled as he passed Amy and Dan, but his expression reminded Amy of Ian Kabra -- like he knew a secret.

You're just getting paranoid, she told herself. Or was it possible there were other people seeking the clues, people that weren't even part of the seven teams? She glanced at Dan but decided not to say anything about this ... not yet. The contest was already overwhelming enough.

After another hundred yards, they found the Rue des Jardins. It was narrower than the streets around it, with crumbling stone buildings that might've stood there for centuries.

Amy counted the street numbers. She stopped abruptly. "Dan ... 23 Rue des Jardins.

Are you sure?"

"Yeah. Why?"

Amy pointed. There was no building at 23 Rue des Jardins. Instead, ringed with a rusty iron fence, was a tiny cemetery. At the back stood a marble mausoleum. In front, a dozen weathered headstones slanted every direction like crooked teeth.

The cemetery was sandwiched by tall buildings on either side. The one on the right said MUSéE. The one on the left must've been some kind of shop once, but the windows were painted black and the door boarded up. The only light came from the dim orange glow of the city sky, which made the place seem even creepier.

"I don't like this," Amy said. "There can't be any connection to Franklin here."

"How do you know?" Dan asked. "We haven't even searched. And those tombstones look cool!"

"No, Dan. You cannot do charcoal rubbings."

"Aw..." He walked through the cemetery gates, and Amy had no choice but to follow.

The tombstones told them nothing. Once upon a time, they might've had inscriptions, but they'd been worn smooth over the centuries. Amy's pulse was racing. Something wasn't right. She racked her brain, trying to figure out why this place might be important to Ben Franklin, but she couldn't come up with anything.

Cautiously, she approached the mausoleum. She'd always hated aboveground burial places. They made her think of dollhouses for dead people.

The iron doors stood open. Amy was hesitant to get close. From ten feet away, she couldn't see anything special inside -- just old nameplates lining the walls -- but a slab of marble lay on the ground in front of the doorway. With a start, Amy realized the inscription was a lot newer than the rest of the cemetery. It looked freshly carved: SE TROUVE ICI

Amy et Dan Cahill

ILS ONT COLLé LEURS NEZ DANS

LES AFFAIRES DES AUTRES

"Whoa," Dan said. "Why are our names -- "