Read Chapter 19: The Watch's Secret

The night train was quiet, the rhythm of the rails a lullaby beneath the sleeping cars. Camille sat alone in the staff compartment, the watch in her palm. Its second hand moved not with the steady tick of time, but in deliberate, solitary jumps—one minute forward, then nothing. Counting down to the full moon.

She had examined it before. The case was plain, steel worn smooth by decades of touch. She had never thought to open it. But tonight, with Julian’s last words still echoing in her skull—*I was never meant to die that night*—she worked the edge of her thumbnail into the seam.

The back of the case popped off with a soft click.

Inside was not the dense machinery she expected. No jewels, no coiled springs. Instead: a single disc of pale, luminous stone, the color of milk glass, etched with concentric rings that seemed to slowly turn of their own accord. A hairline crack ran through its center.

Camille’s breath caught. There, at the edge of the stone, was a tiny engraving. *Pour revenir. Pour sauver.*

To return. To save.

She tilted the watch toward the compartment’s dim bulb. The rings rotated, and she noticed something new—a tiny detent, almost invisible, just above the crown. A reset mechanism. One she had never dared to press.

Her thumb hovered over it.

*Pour sauver.*

The derailment. The 1955 crash. If the reset changed the watch’s time back to the moment before the accident—before the sabotaged track gave way—

The train hit a switch. The whole car shuddered. Camille’s thumb slipped.

The reset clicked. The luminous disc spun backward. The rings retraced their revolutions, the hairline crack sealing itself for a single, humming heartbeat before splitting wide again.

And then—

Camille blinked.

She was sitting in the compartment. The same night. The same train. But the clock on the wall read 11:58. It had been 12:13 a moment ago.

No. She checked her own mechanical watch. It chimed once. One minute. Exactly one minute had been subtracted from her life.

She scrambled for the phone on the wall, dialed the front desk of the Nice hotel where her grandfather was staying. The clerk answered: “Bonsoir, Hôtel Ruhl, how may I help?”

“What time is it, please?”

A pause. “Eleven fifty-eight, madame.”

Camille hung up. Her hands were shaking. She looked down at the spirit clock on her wrist. The luminous disc pulsed, the rings now moving faster—making up for the stolen minute. The second hand clicked once. Twice. The countdown to the full moon accelerated.

She had not brought Julian back. She had lost a minute of her own existence, and the watch was now hungrier than before.

A knock at the door. “Camille?” It was Odile, the night supervisor, passing with the mail cart. “You look pale. Are you ill?”

“I’m fine.” Camille shoved the watch into her pocket, the back of the case still open, the stone’s glow leaking through the fabric. “Just tired.”

Odile studied her a moment too long. “You’ve been working closely with that historian in Marseille. The Ravel file. Be careful, chérie. Some doors, once opened, don’t close.”

She moved on. Camille closed the compartment door and locked it. Her reflection in the window was faint, but there—for now. She pulled the watch out again, the back cover in her other hand. The exposed stone pulsed against her skin, warm.

She wanted to believe it was Jules Julian’s soul, waiting in the mechanism for a hand to wind him back to life. But the price was measured in her own hours. Her own days.

And the full moon was in three.

She clicked the back of the case into place. The stone’s glow dimmed to a whisper. Her hands were still shaking. She pressed the watch against her chest, holding it there, feeling the slow, deliberate ticks through her ribs. Counting down.

She could not tell Georges. She could not tell her sister. Who would believe that a dead man’s watch could eat the time of the living?

The door rattled. Camille jumped.

“Camille?” It was her sister Sophie’s voice, muted through the panel. “The platform inspector said you were still on the train. Are you alright? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Camille laughed—a short, broken sound. She had, in fact, seen a ghost. She had kissed a ghost. And now she held in her hand the instrument of his possible salvation, and she was afraid to use it again.

She slid the watch into her inner coat pocket, buttoned the flap, and opened the door.

Sophie stood in the corridor, car coat draped over her shoulders, hair mussed from sleep. She looked at Camille’s face and stopped smiling.

“What happened?”

“Nothing.” Camille’s voice came out steadier than she felt. “I need some air.”

Sophie did not move aside. “You’re lying. You’ve been lying for weeks. You’re seeing that ghost again, aren’t you?”

The train’s brakes hissed. They were pulling into Nice.

Camille pushed past her sister, descending onto the platform into the cool night air. The wind smelled of salt and diesel. She walked two steps, then stopped, her hand against her chest. Beneath her palm, she felt it.

The second hand had moved again.

A full minute gone.

She did not know for whom. She did not know in exchange for what.

But she knew, with a sickening certainty, that the watch was not only counting down to the full moon.

It was counting down her own minutes.