Read Chapter 5: The Debt Collector

The café on Rue des Martyrs smelled of burnt sugar and cheap coffee. Julien had chosen it for the window seat, the one that gave him a clear line to both exits, a habit Claire had always mocked as paranoid. Now he wondered if she'd been right to mock it, because the man who slid into the chair opposite him hadn't come through either door.

He'd simply appeared, like a stain bleeding through linen.

"Moreau." The man's voice was low, almost pleasant. "You've been hard to find."

Julien's hand went instinctively to the satchel at his feet, the one still weighted with his father's watch and the maps from Élodie's cellar. "I don't know you."

"No. But you know who I work for."

The man called Victor wore a denim jacket despite the heat, sleeves rolled to reveal forearms mapped with ink—swallows, chains, a single eye on each palm that blinked when he flexed his fingers. His face was unremarkable except for the scar that bisected his left eyebrow, giving him a look of permanent surprise.

"I've been square with Le Corbeau since March," Julien said, hating the tremor in his voice. "The job went sideways. I told him. I paid what I could."

"March was four months ago. The principle remains." Victor reached across the table, plucked Julien's coffee from his hand, and took a sip. "Ten thousand euros. You have one week."

"I don't have that kind of money."

"Then you have a problem." Victor set the cup down. The porcelain made a sound like a small bell. "He's not an unreasonable man. He understands that capital comes and goes. But he also understands that you've been spending time underground, and that you recently came into possession of certain... artifacts."

Julien's blood went cold. "Who told you that?"

"People talk. More importantly, they listen." Victor smiled, revealing teeth that were too white, too even, like a row of piano keys. "You know what the professor used to say about you, Moreau? That you had a talent for finding things that shouldn't exist. A gift. Le Corbeau finds that gift useful."

"I'm not finding anything for him."

"Did I say you were?" Victor stood. He wasn't tall, but he seemed to fill the room nonetheless. The other patrons had gone quiet, their attention fixed on their phones, their pastries, anything but the two men at the window. "You have one week. Ten thousand euros. In cash, or in kind."

"In kind?"

"You're an explorer, Moreau." Victor buttoned his jacket. "People pay good money for what you find. A man like you, with your particular talents, could find something very valuable very quickly if he applied himself."

The implication hung in the air like smoke. Julien felt the weight of his father's watch in the satchel, the brass warm against his thigh. He thought of the word burned into his camera footage—FORGET—and of the door beneath Les Halles that required memory as a key.

"One week," Victor repeated. He paused at the door, turning back with that too-white smile. "And Moreau? Don't think about running. The last man who tried that is still being found. Piece by piece."

Then he was gone, swallowed by the afternoon crowd, and the café's noise rushed back in like water through a breach. The barista called Julien's name—his order was ready—and he realized he'd never actually paid for the coffee Victor had drunk.

Julien sat for a long moment, his hands flat on the table. Thoughts churned through him. Ten thousand euros. He didn't have it. His channel's ad revenue had dried up after the FORGET incident—sponsors didn't like footage that glitched and screamed—and his savings had gone to his mother's medical bills.

But Victor had just given him the answer, hadn't he? Find something valuable. In the underground.

He pulled the satchel onto the table and unzipped it. The maps rustled like dead leaves. Élodie's annotations sprawled across them in ink the color of dried blood. There were symbols he hadn't yet decoded, arrows pointing to places that didn't exist on any official survey. The Rue de l'Oubli. The door beneath Les Halles. His father's note, worn soft as cloth at the folds, whispered its promise: *The vein runs true.*

A vein. His father had been a jeweler before his death—a métier d'art, precious metals, stones. What if he'd found something down there? What if the thing that killed him was the same thing that had buried Élodie, the same thing that had touched Julien in the ossuary and left him clutching his own memory like a coin about to drop?

He'd go back. Tonight. Claire's maps in one hand, his father's watch in the other. If there was anything of value in the phantom city—anything at all—he'd find it, sell it, pay off Le Corbeau, and disappear.

His phone buzzed. Mireille.

*Got your text. Reran the ping data. You're not going to like this.*

He typed back: *What?*

The reply came in three parts, each one a blow.

*Her phone pinged at the lime-kiln junction, yes. But I overlayed it with the GPS from your father's old car—the one that went to the scrapyard in 2012.*

*A week before he died, he visited the same junction. Nine times in five days.*

*The tenth visit was the day he disappeared. He never left. His car was found abandoned at Les Halles.*

Julien stared at the screen until his eyes burned. His father hadn't just investigated the underground that had taken Élodie. He'd been looking for her. And something down there had taken him instead.

The phantom city wasn't a mystery to be solved. It was a debt collector of its own, patient and hungry, and Julien was walking into its ledger with empty pockets.

He looked at Victor's empty chair. At the maps. At the watch that had held his father's last words.

His father had left a note, but not a warning. Not really. He'd left a map to the exact place where he'd been lost. And now Julien understood what he had to do.

Not find treasure. Find his father.

And pray that whatever was waiting beneath Les Halles hadn't already spent the memory of him.