Read Chapter 5: The First Overt Case

The body lay in the shadow of the Sacré-Cœur, arranged with almost liturgical care. Arms crossed over the chest, eyes closed, the man's face composed into something that might have passed for serenity if not for the fact that his throat had been torn open and every drop of blood had been drained from his corpse.

Julien crouched beside the body, careful not to disturb the chalk outline the first responders had drawn. The morning light was still thin and grey, washing the white basilica walls in pale pearl. He could hear the distant clatter of the funicular and the first tourists beginning their climb, unaware that a few hundred meters away, a man had died in a way that made no sense.

"Claw marks," he said, lifting the man's wrist. The skin had been raked open in four parallel lines, the wounds precise and clean. "But no tissue under the nails. No signs of struggle. He didn't fight back."

"Because he was already dead when the marks were made." The voice came from behind him, dry and unimpressed. Julien turned to see a woman in a fitted black coat, her dark hair pulled back in a severe knot, a thin cigarette burning between her fingers. She took a slow drag, exhaled, and only then extended her hand. "Romy Lefèvre. Your partner."

Julien shook it. Her grip was cold, and he caught the faint scent of something herbal beneath the tobacco—wormwood, maybe, or something older.

"Julien Moreau."

"I know." Romy dropped his hand and gestured at the body. "The autopsy's already flagged it. No animal DNA in the wounds. No human DNA either. Nothing but—" She flicked ash onto the cobblestones. "—residue. Limestone. Copper. Old iron."

Julien stood. "The pathologist called it?"

"Called it impossible, which is why it's ours." Romy crouched, not seeming to mind the blood. She tilted the dead man's head, exposing the full damage to his throat. "See those marks? Not teeth. More like a beak. Or a chisel. Something that punctured and then *drained*."

"Gargoyle," Julien said before he could stop himself.

Romy looked up at him, one eyebrow arching. "That's a jump."

"The claw marks. The limestone residue. The drained blood." He shrugged. "There's a legend about the gargoyles of Notre-Dame—the ones that weren't just decoration. The ones that were bound to protect the city. Or to feed on it, depending on which version you read."

"Versions." Romy studied him for a long moment, and Julien felt the weight of her assessment. "You've been at Section 13 for what, four days? And you already know the gargoyle variants."

"I did my reading."

"Mm." She pulled out a small notebook and flipped it open. "The victim is Étienne Moreau. Sixty-two. Antique dealer, specializing in religious artifacts. He lived two streets over, above his shop."

Julien felt the name land like a stone in his chest. Moreau. But of course it was Moreau. Everything in this city, in this job, had become Moreau.

He kept his face neutral. "Moreau's a common name."

"Is it?" Romy didn't look up from her notebook. "There are about four hundred Moreaus in Paris proper. But your name is Moreau, and the victim's shop is called *L'Héritage du Temps*—The Inheritance of Time. And according to his neighbor, he'd been expecting a visit yesterday. From someone he called 'the new one.'"

Julien's pulse quickened. The Marché aux Puces. The antique dealer who had identified the Brotherhood's mark on the watch. That dealer had seemed nervous, evasive, but he'd also seemed *old*. Older than sixty-two, certainly. But perhaps not.

"The victim—did he have business dealings in the flea market?" Julien asked.

Romy finally looked up, her eyes sharp and unreadable. "His shop is in the ninth. But his inventory came from all over. Sources, contacts, dealers. The kind of people who sell things they shouldn't have." She paused. "Why? Do you know this man?"

"No." The lie came out flat and easy. "The name just threw me."

Romy held his gaze for a moment, then closed her notebook with a snap. "Come on, then. Let's see what Étienne Moreau left behind."

---

The shop was narrow and dark, crammed floor to ceiling with reliquaries, old crucifixes, tarnished censers, and books bound in leather that might have been human skin. Dust motes hung in the air like suspended history. Julien moved through the space carefully, running his gloved fingers along the spines of books, the edges of frames, the cold faces of old clocks. Every object seemed to watch him.

Romy had gone to talk to the neighbor, leaving him alone in the silence. The shop's atmosphere pressed in on him—heavy, expectant. He found the office in the back, a cramped room lit by a single green banker's lamp. The desk was cluttered but organized. Bills. Receipts. Correspondence.

And an address book.

The leather was worn soft, nearly white at the edges, the pages yellowed with decades of handling. Julien opened it carefully, running his finger down the alphabetized entries. Most of the names meant nothing to him—collectors, clergy, auctioneers. But halfway through the M section, he found it.

*Moreau, A. — 12 Rue des Archives. Do not call after sunset.*

Julien stared at the entry. The hand was a different ink, older, written by a different person at a different time. But the name was unmistakable. A. Moreau. His great-uncle Armand—his grandmother's brother, who had died in 1968 under circumstances that had never been clearly explained to the family. Julien remembered his mother's evasiveness when he'd asked about her uncle. The way she'd changed the subject, the dry click of her tongue against her teeth.

He flipped back to the front of the book, looking for a date of first ownership. The inside cover bore an inscription, faded but legible:

*From P. Moreau to E. Moreau, on the occasion of his restoration. 1947.*

P. Moreau. His great-grandfather Pierre. And E. Moreau—not Étienne, surely, but someone earlier. The book had been in the family. It had passed from one Moreau to another, accumulating names and secrets.

Julien turned back to the M section and found the entry for himself. His own name, in handwriting he recognized as his mother's, still fresh despite the years since her death. And beneath his name, a single line in a script he didn't recognize:

*He will know the first when he sees it. The watch will open the door.*

His hand shook. The address book had been marked *before* he had ever received the pocket watch. Before he had ever seen Élise Garnier's photograph. Before he had known Section 13 existed.

The bell above the shop door chimed. Julien shoved the address book into his coat and stepped back from the desk, his heart hammering. A second later, Romy's voice floated back.

"There's no forced entry. The neighbor confirmed he went to bed alone and the door was locked from the inside. Whatever killed him, he let in."

Julien came out of the back room, his face carefully composed. "There's something you should see."

Romy raised an eyebrow. "Found something in the office?"

"My great-uncle's name in his address book." He watched her expression carefully. "Armand Moreau. He died in 1968. But according to this book, he was still in contact with the victim four years after his death."

Romy's face flickered—just for a moment, a crack in her cynical armor. Then she smoothed it away. "People write names down and never erase them. Could just be old."

"Could be." Julien didn't believe it. And from the way Romy was looking at him, she didn't either.

Romy pulled out a cigarette, tapped it against the box, and didn't light it. "There's a possibility I should have mentioned earlier. Étienne Moreau wasn't just an antique dealer. According to a flag in his file, he was also a known intermediary for buyers of supernatural artifacts. The kind of merchandise that requires registration with Section 13." She paused. "The kind that runs in families."

"Families." The word felt heavy in his mouth.

"Generational trades. Knowledge passed down." Romy finally lit the cigarette, the flame briefly illuminating the sharp planes of her face. "The victim wasn't chosen at random, Moreau. He was killed because of what he knew. And if your family is connected to him—" She let the sentence hang, unfinished.

Outside, the bells of Sacré-Cœur began to toll. Eleven o'clock. The sound rolled through the narrow streets like a summons.

Julien thought of the address book against his chest, the weight of it physical and enormous. His family had not just known Étienne Moreau. They had given him this book. They had marked Julien's name in it before he ever knew this world existed.

Someone was preparing him. Someone had known he would come.

And now someone had killed to keep the same secret from reaching him.

"Romy," he said slowly, "what exactly is Section 13's protocol when a detective's family is implicated in an active case?"

She took a long drag, exhaled a plume of smoke. "Conflict of interest review. Temporary reassignment. And a background check that goes back three generations." She smiled without warmth. "Congratulations. You're about to become the most investigated detective in Paris."