Joan reached out, clamped iron-hard fingers over her husband’s arm and squeezed tightly enough to silence him. “You can puzzle it out later, dear. Right now we need to go.”

“Oh, absolutely.” The count brushed his long black hair off his forehead and then pointed to the center of the square. “Two ley lines connect the West Coast of America to Paris. Both are incredibly ancient, and one-this one, in fact-circumnavigates the globe, linking together all the primeval places of power.” He tilted the rearview mirror to look at Scathach. “When you, Nicholas and the twins arrived, you came in on the line that ends at the Sacré-Coeur basilica in Montmartre. Theoretically, it should not have worked, but obviously the Witch of Endor was powerful enough to activate it.”

“Francis,” Joan warned, “we don’t have time for a history lesson.”

“Yes, yes, yes. Well, the other line, the much more powerful ley line, is here at Point Zero outside Notre Dame in the center of the city.”

“Point Zero?” Scathach asked.

“Point Zero,” the count repeated, pointing toward the cathedral. “The very heart of Paris; this place has been special for millennia. This is the place from which all distances to Paris are measured.”

“I’ve often wondered why this particular spot was chosen,” Joan said. “It wasn’t some accident or random choice, then?”

“Hardly. Humans have worshipped here since before the Romans arrived. They have always been drawn to this place and the others like it. Perhaps, deep down in their DNA, people remembered that there was a leygate here. There are Point Zeros or Kilometer Zeros in just about every capital city in the world. And there are nearly always leygates nearby. There was a time when I used them to travel the globe.”

Joan looked at her husband. Although they had known one another for centuries, they had only recently married, and she realized that there was still much she didn’t know about him. She pointed toward the cathedral. “What do you see?”

“I see a golden column of light shining up into the heavens.”

Joan squinted out into the early-afternoon sunlight, but she saw nothing. Her eye was caught by a flash of bright red over her shoulder as Scathach also shook her head. “These columns: are they always gold?” she asked.

“Not always: they are either gold or silver. On my travels into the Far East, I saw silver spires. Once, before he lost the ability to see clearly, I believe that ancient man would have been able to identify leygates by simply looking to the skies to find the nearest gold or silver shaft of light.” He turned to look at Scathach. “Can the Elders see leygates?”