Read Chapter 25: After the Mist

The cold came first. Not the chill of the train—that she knew, that she could place—but something deeper, like she’d been sleeping in a cellar. Then the ache, a dull throb behind her eyes that pulsed with the faint rhythm of wheels on track.

Camille opened her eyes to her own ceiling. Her bedroom. Morning light, pale and watery, filtered through the curtains, catching dust motes in the air. She was in her clothes from the night before, the navy conductor’s jacket still buttoned, one shoe kicked off and the other still laced.

She lay still for a long moment, listening. No train. No frozen wind. No Julian’s voice, sharp with hurt. Just the distant murmur of the street below, the creak of the old building settling.

She tried to sit up and immediately regretted it. Her head swam, and she pressed a palm to her temple, fingers finding a tender spot near her hairline. Had she hit something? She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t remember anything after—

After the watch fell.

After Julian’s face, twisted with pain and accusation.

After the world turned to glass.

Camille swung her legs over the side of the bed, the room tilting gently before settling. Her mouth was dry, and there was a metallic taste on her tongue, like she’d bitten the inside of her cheek. She touched her lip. A small split, already crusting.

She didn’t remember that either.

On her nightstand, propped against the base of the lamp, was a folded piece of paper. It wasn’t her stationery—it was a cramped receipt from the café down the street, torn at the edge. She picked it up, recognizing her own messy handwriting, the blocky capitals she used when she was in a hurry.

*Find the proof. Before it stops.*

Camille stared at the words until they blurred. She had written this. When? The ink was smudged, as if her hand had been shaking. She turned the paper over, but there was nothing else.

She looked at her wrist.

The watch was there, strapped on like always, the old leather band soft and worn against her skin. She brought it up to her face, squinting at the face, and felt her stomach drop.

The hands were moving.

But they were moving the wrong way.

For weeks—months, it felt like—the watch had counted down. Each tick had been a step closer to something, though she’d never been sure if it was the full moon, the anniversary, or the end of Julian himself. But now the second hand swept forward, past twelve, past one, in the correct direction, and the minute hand followed, patient and steady.

Counting up.

Counting *forward*.

Camille let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. The headache pulsed behind her eyes, unhurried, like a metronome. She undid the strap and held the watch in her palm, turning it over. The back was smooth, unmarked, the way it had always been. But she felt something she hadn’t felt before—or maybe she had, and she’d been too afraid to name it.

The watch felt lighter.

No. That wasn’t right. It felt *older*. Like it had settled into its own skin, done with something it had been laboring to carry.

Camille dressed in silence, her fingers clumsy on the buttons of a clean shirt. She brushed her teeth, wincing at the split in her lip, and caught her own reflection in the bathroom mirror. There was a shadow under her eyes, dark enough to look like a bruise. Her hair was tangled, with a piece of leaf stuck near her temple. A leaf?

She pulled it free and held it up. Green, still slightly supple. From the cemetery, maybe. From Julian’s grave.

But she didn’t remember going back to the cemetery.

The last thing she clearly recalled was the train carriage, the frozen moment, the engineer’s face—unaware, kind, doomed—and Julian’s voice, raw with anger, telling her she wanted to erase him. Then the watch hitting the floor.

And then nothing.

Camille folded the receipt note and slid it into her pocket. She grabbed her jacket from the chair and headed for the door, then stopped. On the floor, half under the bed, was her other shoe. She retrieved it, noticing a smear of dirt on the sole. Not train grit. Softer, darker. Garden soil.

She couldn’t remember the garden either.

The kitchen was small and bright, and the coffee maker was still warm when she touched it. That stopped her. She hadn’t made coffee before going to the station last night. Sophie had been here. Sophie must have come in, checked on her, made a pot and left it to stay warm before going to work.

Camille poured a cup and drank it black, letting the heat settle in her stomach. The note in her pocket seemed to press against her thigh. *Find the proof. Before it stops.*

Proof of what? She had the letter—Marie-Claire’s letter, hidden now in the false bottom of her jewelry box. She had Pierre’s confession, signed and damning. She had Marguerite’s tearful admission. She had everything she needed to prove the Laurent family had engineered the derailment that killed Julian and dozens of others.

Unless the note meant something else.

She set down the cup and went to her jacket, hanging by the door. She checked the inside pocket, then the other. Empty but for a train schedule and a lint-covered mint. Her bag was on the table, unzipped. She rifled through it: wallet, keys, a torn ticket stub, the small notebook she always carried. She flipped through the notebook. The last page with writing simply said: *A clock is not a thing. It is a promise.* She didn’t remember writing that either.

Camille sank into the kitchen chair, the watch cold against her wrist where it counted forward without knowing why. The full moon was still days away, but the air in the room felt charged, like before a storm.

She looked at the phone on the wall. In Nice, her grandfather would be arriving today, demanding the watch’s return. In Lyon, there was a clockmaker named Bernard Aubert who might understand what the watch truly was. And tonight, on the midnight train, a ghost would be waiting for her—if he was still there, if he hadn’t faded entirely, or if he hated her too much to speak.

But first, she needed to know what she’d done last night.

Camille stood, her legs a little unsteady, and walked back to her bedroom. She looked under the bed first, but found only dust and a forgotten sock. Then she checked the wardrobe, the chest of drawers. She moved through the apartment slowly, methodically, looking for anything out of place.

In the hall closet, she found her trench coat hanging where she hadn’t left it, and in the pocket, a folded piece of paper—heavier stock this time, official-looking. She unfolded it and felt the ground shift under her feet.

It was a manifest. Passenger manifest. July 1955. The names were typed, faded but legible. She scanned the list, her finger stopping halfway down.

Vasseur, Émile. Second-class coach.

The man who executed the sabotage. The passenger who’d died in the crash and might still haunt the train, seeking this very document.

The paper shook in her hand. There was a note in the margin, in pencil, in handwriting she didn’t recognize—small, cramped, elderly. *He took the seat by the window. Three rows back. He has always taken that seat.*

Camille read it three times, then folded it carefully and put it back in her coat. Her own note made a different kind of sense now. Proof. The manifest was more proof—but of what? That Vasseur was on the train that night? That he had a reason to be there, a seat he always chose, a pattern to his haunting?

She returned to the kitchen and looked at the watch again. Forward. Counting forward.

A promise, she thought. A thing kept.

She didn’t remember being in the cab of the 1955 engine. She didn’t remember reaching for the engineer. She didn’t remember anything after the frozen train began to melt. But she must have done something. She must have climbed out of the carriage, made her way to the front, found the proof she’d been seeking—or the proof had found her.

The headache pulsed, insistently, like it wanted her attention. Camille pressed two fingers to her temple and closed her eyes. She could almost feel the shape of the memory—the cold metal of the manifest, the hiss of the passenger car’s door, a voice that wasn’t Julian’s, gruff and low, telling her something she couldn’t quite hold onto.

The phone rang.

Camille opened her eyes. The watch ticked forward. A full minute had passed since she’d looked.

She went to answer it.