Alessandro woke from his sleep. He was still beside that fragrant pool, but the women were gone.
"Do you know why it's five?"
Before he had fully awakened, the beautiful Egyptian goddess spoke.
Alessandro was still groggy. Hathor waved at the pool, and an aerial view of Place de la Concorde appeared on the water's surface. Satellite images apparently were not much different from the way gods looked down upon the mortal world from the clouds.
"Look. Connect them like this, this, and this. Doesn't it look like a pentagram?"
As Hathor spoke, she left a gleaming trail of fire across the water. Of the eight city statues, excluding the three holding double-headed Rods of Asclepius, the remaining ones—Brest, Lille, Strasbourg, Bordeaux, and Marseille—formed the five points of an irregular pentagram.
"Do you know what the pentagram represents?" Hathor asked Alessandro.
"Venus, the goddess of love," Alessandro said.
Hathor was visibly much happier. She reached out and pinched Alessandro's cheek. "Good boy. You didn't learn from those monks and call the pentagram a symbol of the devil."
Alessandro looked at Hathor in fear, as though the beautiful devil before him truly was one.
"Only love and wisdom can conquer terror. The king drew a pentagram magic circle in the square, and he also brought Ramses II's obelisk here, hoping its magic would intimidate the ghosts causing trouble. It would have worked too, if not for a dark wizard meddling with it." Hathor tilted her head. "Let me think... I believe his name was Grindelwald."
"I've heard that name before," Alessandro said.
"His magic disrupted the order of the city, both underground and aboveground." Hathor shook her head. "How irritating."
"What do you want me to do?" Alessandro asked, sweating coldly.
That seemed to interest Hathor. She leaned close to Alessandro's