I try to recall every tale I have ever heard about the Châtelet. It has three levels. The upper floor, which I tiptoe through, is large and well aired. The cells here are rooms, with doors and tiny grated windows. Inside are the rich prisoners, those who can pay for the meager comfort the upper levels afford them.

There’s a clattering of boots on stone from the end of the corridor. My heart leaps into my throat. I’ve mistimed my entry, or the guard is early. The twinkling of a distant lantern grows stronger in the dark stairwell before me. I have only seconds and so I climb, scaling the wall, till I’m at the ceiling. I dig my claws in above, and my toes into the corner. Here I hang, suspended. Patience is ninety percent of being a Cat: sitting, waiting in the shadows till the right moment. I relax my muscles to avoid cramping and try to calm my breathing, to ignore the sweat gathering on my forehead as, below me, the guard arrives. Most people who walk into a room never look up. Neither should he. Bored, he strolls through the corridor, lantern in hand. Then he pauses, and sniffs.

Ysengrim be damned! The smell of excrement coming off my boots is strong. I hold my breath. He looks around for the source of the odor but sees nothing. He rubs his nose, sighs, and walks through the door beneath me, just seconds before a soft lump of something foul dislodges itself from my boot and falls to the floor.

Once I’m convinced that the guard is safely gone, I head down the winding stone stairs, counting the floors as I go. Le Fosse, la Gourdaine, le Puits. The staircase gets damper and steeper, and each corridor I pass has more cells squeezed into the same amount of space. I speed up, not knowing when the guard will return. Finally, the staircase ends, in a corridor of complete and utter darkness.

A place we cannot remember, Loup whispers in my mind.

My fingers brush the plaque on the wall, which bears the dungeon’s name: les Oubliettes. The place of forgetting.

The air down here is stale. The floor is covered in rough straw. Something scrambles near my foot, and I keep myself from flinching. It’s only a rat.

There are ten cagelike cells with iron bars. I reach into my jacket and pull out my tin box of matches. I light one and hold it up to the first set of bars. An emaciated man, more skeleton than human, barely moves. He might be dead. In the next cell is an old man with long hair and a beard. His cheeks are hollow, his fingernails long claws, and though his eyes are open, he doesn’t seem to notice the light. I move on to the third cell, casting my light before me. A pile of rags in the shape of a person faces the wall. I go nearer to the bars and, in a low voice, whisper, “Good hunting.”