Read Chapter 3: The Archivist's Empty Desk

Julien’s footsteps echoed off the marble floor of the archive wing, each tap swallowed by the vaulted silence. The air here was different—colder, drier, tinged with dust that had settled before the Eiffel Tower was built. Fluorescent lights hummed above rows of steel shelving that stretched into shadow, each shelf crammed with binders, boxes, and ledgers whose spines bore gold-embossed dates.

He’d expected a person. A desk. Some sign of the woman who supposedly managed this labyrinth.

Instead, he found an empty chair pushed neatly beneath a mahogany desk, a blotter untouched, and a single lamp burning low. On the desk’s surface, a leather-bound logbook lay open, its pages weighted by a brass paperweight shaped like a fleur-de-lis. No computer. No phone. Just the book, a fountain pen laid precisely beside it, and a small ceramic cup holding three cold pencils.

“Delacroix?” Julien called. His voice bounced down the long aisle and died.

Nothing.

He approached the desk, hands in his pockets, half-expecting someone to appear from between the shelves and demand he identify himself. When no one did, he leaned over the logbook. The handwriting was elegant, slanted, the ink a deep sepia that looked old even for a fresh entry.

*Case 117-C, transferred to Detective J. Moreau, file retrieved. Notation: cross-reference possible.*

The date beside the entry was three days ago. Today was Tuesday. Three days ago was Saturday. His first day at Section 13 had been Monday—yesterday—when Verne had handed him the werewolf case without ceremony, as if it were a parking ticket.

But the case number she’d given him, the one she’d pulled from her drawer and slid across her desk, had been 117-B. Not C.

Julien frowned, tracing the letters with his fingertip. The logbook recorded a file retrieval that hadn’t happened yet—or had happened for someone else. Someone who’d opened the same case before him.

He straightened, scanning the room again. On the far wall, between two towering shelves, a green filing cabinet sat slightly ajar. The drawer’s label read *1920–1929*. The drawer that should contain his cold case file.

“Anyone here?” he called once more, louder this time.

A shuffling sound came from behind him. Julien turned, hand instinctively moving toward his sidearm, but the figure emerging from between shelves was a wiry man in his sixties, balding, wearing a gray cardigan and carrying an armload of yellowed folders. He blinked at Julien through thick spectacles.

“You’re not supposed to be back here,” the man said, his voice thin and reedy. “Archives are restricted.”

“I’m looking for Claire Delacroix.”

The man’s face went blank, then flickered with something like confusion—or warning. “Claire? She left two days ago.”

“Left as in off-duty, or left as in quit?”

The man set his folders on a nearby cart, arranging them with unnecessary care. “Left as in she stopped coming in. No notice, no call. Verne had someone check her apartment. Empty. Clothes gone. Cat gone.” He paused, adjusting his glasses. “Happens, sometimes. With this job. People… drift.”

Julien absorbed that. People didn’t “drift” away from a secret police unit investigating magical crime. They retired, they transferred, or they disappeared in ways that required cover stories. But Verne had mentioned nothing about a missing archivist. Not when Julien had asked who maintained the files. Not when he’d asked about the Moreau name appearing across decades of records.

“She worked here alone?”

“For the last decade, yes. Before that, there were two archivists. Budget cuts.” The old man gestured vaguely toward the shelves. “I’m Marcel, by the way. I do the cataloging. Claire handles—handled—the requests and the logbook. She was meticulous.” He nodded toward the desk. “Never left her book open. Not once in ten years.”

Julien looked back at the logbook. The open page, the precise entry, the pen laid at an angle that suggested the writer had been interrupted mid-thought. Meticulous people didn’t leave their station in disarray—but this wasn’t disarray. This was deliberate. A message left for someone who knew how to read it.

“May I look at her other entries?” he asked.

Marcel’s brow furrowed. “Those are restricted. Detective-level clearance only.”

Julien pulled his badge from his jacket and held it up. Marcel squinted at it, then nodded reluctantly.

“Just the log, then. Don’t touch the files themselves.”

Julien opened the logbook to earlier pages. The entries were sparse—one or two per month, occasionally more. A record of which files had been pulled, by whom, for what case. The names were mostly initials: Detective M. Rousseau, Lieutenant A. Petit, Commandant V. Verne. Routine. Boring.

Then his finger stopped on an entry from eleven months ago.

*Case 117-A, reviewed. Photograph removed for preservation. Additional material flagged. See 117-C.*

Case 117-A. The same case line as his werewolf attack. Someone had reviewed it last year, flagged something, and removed a photograph.

Julien’s chest tightened. The photograph in his pocket—the one he’d found inside the brass pocket watch—was of Élise Garnier, the 1920 murder victim. He’d assumed the hooded figure had taken it from somewhere. He hadn’t considered that it might have been taken from the archive itself.

And then there was the entry from three days ago. The 117-C reference. Cross-reference possible.

He flipped forward, past his own arrival, and found one final entry dated this morning—today—hours before he’d walked in.

*Detective J. Moreau, incoming. Report directly. Watch the desk. She will know.*

Julien read it three times, the words refusing to rearrange themselves into a less disturbing pattern. The last entry was written in the same sepia ink, the same elegant slant. It was dated for today, before he’d even arrived at Section 13. Before anyone could have known he’d come looking for older files.

Except Claire Delacroix had known. And now she was gone.

He pulled his phone from his pocket and photographed the page, the flash dim against the old paper. Then he carefully turned the logbook back to its original position—the one Claire had left it in—closed but slightly offset, exactly as he’d found it.

“Find anything useful?” Marcel asked, hovering near the cart.

“Maybe.” Julien straightened his jacket, forcing a casual tone. “What can you tell me about Claire? Did she ever mention a case from the 1920s? A werewolf attack?”

Marcel’s face tightened. “I don’t discuss the contents of the files. Even with badges.”

“I’m not asking about the file. I’m asking about her. Did she seem nervous lately? Did she say anything about leaving France?”

Marcel hesitated. He glanced at the logbook, then at Julien’s pocket—where the brass watch sat, hidden but heavy.

“She kept to herself,” he said finally. “But three weeks ago, I came in early and found her standing at that cabinet there, holding a file. Not reading it. Just holding it. Like it was warm.” He shook his head. “I asked if she was all right. She said—” He stopped, swallowing.

“What did she say?”

“She said, ‘The first one is still open. It’s waiting for him.’” Marcel met Julien’s eyes. “I didn’t know what she meant. I still don’t. But she left that same day without saying goodbye to anyone.”

The first one. The same words as the note in the watch. *Find the first one.*

Julien reached into his pocket and let his thumb trace the cold edge of the brass pocket watch. The photograph of Élise Garnier pressed against his leg. The gears inside ticked once—a soft, deliberate click that felt like an answer.

“Thank you, Marcel,” he said, pulling his hand from his pocket. “Lock up behind me.”

He walked out of the archive wing, down the corridor, past the bulletin board of outdated memos. At the landing of the stairwell, he stopped and pulled out his phone. The logbook photograph glowed on the screen. He read the final entry one more time.

*Watch the desk. She will know.*

Someone had known he would come. Someone had planned for it. Either the hooded figure was connected to the archive, or Claire Delacroix had seen the truth about the Moreau name and run before it caught up with her.

Either way, the case file he’d been handed wasn’t the beginning. It was the middle. And the beginning was older, deeper, buried somewhere in the records that had been sealed for a century.

Julien turned his phone to face his reflection in the dark stairwell window. The man staring back had his mother’s eyes and his father’s jaw. A family name that appeared in every mythical crime Section 13 had ever investigated.

But no one had told him why.

He clipped the watch to his belt loop and started down the stairs, the gears ticking in sync with his heartbeat. The first case was still open.

And it was waiting for him.