The twins chased a man wearing a loose white tunic, leather breeches and a sword down the emergency stairs to the Louvre’s main gallery. Sprinting down the marble steps, Matt clipped the edge of Winged Victory’s bow-shaped plinth with his wrist. By the time he had stopped yelping at the pain, their prey had gone.
‘If he gets into another painting, Vaughn’ll have our hides,’ said Em as Matt shook the feeling back into his wrist and hand.
Matt groaned. ‘We should have trusted our instincts the first time,’
‘Ha! You mean, you shouldn’t have let your hormones run amok and flirted with him so shamelessly. He may be great to look at but he’s dangerous.’ Em jabbed the air above Matt with her finger. ‘You knew two months ago when Vaughn gave us our first case.’
Matt flushed and pulled out his sketchbook.
‘Whatever. We should have bound him like Vaughn told us to, even if his information was good. How are we going to find him now? As sources go, he’s a pain in the—’
Em pulled Matt’s sketchbook from his hands and began to draw, glancing from Matt to Titian’s nearby painting of the Angel Gabriel and back again.
Matt’s eyes widened. ‘Don’t do this to me, Em…’
‘This mess is not my fault,’ Em reminded him tartly. Using the heel of her hands, she smudged the drawing, creating the texture of feathers.
A golden glow washed out from the painting and enveloped Matt. He dropped to his knees, his jacket ripping from his shoulders as if he was the Hulk, his eyes tearing with pain for the second time in as many minutes.
Em kneeled beside him. ‘I didn’t think it would hurt that much, Mattie. I’m sorry. But it’s the best way we have of catching him, OK? Try to stand. We’ve only about two minutes left.’
Matt stood, wobbled, and dropped to his knees again. His centre of gravity was off. Em rubbed out a line here, one there, and thickened some shading in the background of the drawing. This time when Matt stood up, although the crushing weight on his back felt like he was carrying someone on his shoulders wrapped in barbed wire, he was mobile at least.
He opened and closed Titian’s wings. The air rushed across Em’s face. ‘Go!’ she shouted.
Matt jumped.
At first he thought he would face-plant into the marble, but then he found his balance and soared. He glided between the statues and down the long hallway to the European wing, exulting in the feeling. In a matter of seconds, he was crash-landing on top of the man in the tunic, knocking his sword from his hand.
‘And so we meet again,’ grinned the man, catching his breath. ‘Gods preserve me!’
‘They gave up on you a long time ago, Caravaggio. This is for these bloody wings.’Matt punched him in the nose.