I didn't understand this. At all. My throat went dry, thoughts racing as I tried in vain to determine if I should be worried or not. Though I'd rather run into Luc and Béatrice than Abelard and Heloise, I struggled to make sense of it. Why hadn't Luc left the necropolis as he said he would? Where had he found Béatrice? What were they doing here together?

Had Béatrice truly been someone we could trust?

I'd been giving her the benefit of the doubt for hours, but the fear we'd been wrong began creeping into my soul.

"Luc? Béatrice? What's the meaning of this?" I didn't bother masking how baffled I really was.

Béatrice said nothing. She looked stiff and tense, awkwardly wringing her hands together. Her eyes darted to Luc, which taught me the question's answer would be coming from him. Luc himself didn't seem so relaxed, either, though he tried to appear that way, leaning back slightly with his hands in his pockets. But he still stood too straight, his fingers dug too deep into the fabric of his jeans, and he was too close to Béatrice for comfort.

"Hi, Nick. So good to see you." There was an unprecedented intensity in his gaze when he locked eyes with me, though it was filled with uncertainty, too. Tension. Stress. Something conflicted I couldn't place.

"I know I said I'd go back, and I was planning on it," Luc went on, the corner of his mouth twitching. "But then I happened to run into Béatrice. We talked for a while, and because her car is faster than public transport, we decided together that we'd do well to pick you up. So we came here and waited for you. Come to the car with us and we'll be in Père-Lachaise before you can blink."

Something was off. I couldn't put my finger on what it was, but this didn't feel right. There was something missing in Luc's voice; a certain cadence I'd gotten used to in the short time I'd known him had been replaced by something flat. And though the story was plausible enough, would he really have taken that risk after being so shaken and determined to make it home for his family?

I turned to Béatrice, desperate to find clarification and support. "Did you manage to lose Friedrich? How'd you find us again?"

Béatrice's hands trembled. "I–"

"We don't need to discuss this while we're loitering here, do we?" Luc's words came out on edge, razor-sharp. "There will be plenty of time to get into this in the car. Are you coming already?"

I'd still been half-focused on Béatrice, and from the corner of my eye, I saw her give me a slight headshake. She mouthed a word as if in warning, but I didn't know how to read lips and couldn't be certain what exactly she was trying to say. The anxious expression on her face, though, indicated it couldn't be anything reassuring.

This was getting fishier and fishier by the second.

"Why so tense, Luc?" I asked. "You said yourself we still have time."

Luc took a step in my direction. How close to me he was now made my heart beat faster. For all the wrong reasons this time.

"I'm not that tense. I am just ready to get out of here." He took my hand, but his skin was cold as ice. "I need to get back to my... my family... and I have to piss on Uncle Richard's grave. So let's go."

He smiled, and my uneasy feeling turned into a hair-raising revelation.

On top of all the other red flags, Luc's smile wasn't his. It wasn't bright enough and too lopsided, as if he was using his facial muscles differently.

The way he talked, the things he said, the coldness of his hands. Béatrice's warning...

"You're not Luc," I said, freezing in place. "You're pretending to be him. You're Heloise."

Luc's—Heloise's—strong grip on my hand tightened painfully while the woman slipped out of her role. "And if you're not coming to the car, we will wait for my husband right where we stand."

My thoughts became a chaotic mess, alarm bells screeching at me from every corner of my brain, a hundred questions I struggled to grasp making my head ache. "How the fuck did you get to him?" was the only one I managed to spit out.

There was a frantic look in Heloise's eyes, as if she struggled to maintain her composure as much as I did. "I overheard your conversation in the crowd during your escape from prison. I knew where you would be heading after that, but it was imperative I got to the other one first. Before he could leave." She glanced at Béatrice. "Then it was only a matter of using the right bait."

Béatrice looked on the verge of tears, proving to me she wasn't working with Heloise by choice. Had Friedrich brought her to this dangerous woman, forcing her into compliance? A part of me prayed our former spirit guide would turn against our shared tormentor; if we both went on the offensive, we'd be two against one, and Heloise wouldn't stand a chance.

But at the end of the day, if we did that, I would escape back to my own realm, and Béatrice would be left to deal with the potentially horrible consequences of her actions for the rest of her afterlife. An afterlife that could even get abruptly cut short.

I couldn't ask Béatrice to fight for me. I couldn't even escape. If I escaped, I'd have to focus all my efforts on making my way back home; there wouldn't be any time left to concoct a plan to force Heloise out of Luc's body. Luc's body had plenty of drool-worthy muscle, but I'd still be able to wrench myself out of Heloise's grip if I really worked for it. I could do it. But what good would that do?

If I escaped this time, there wouldn't be any hope of returning. I'd abandon Luc in this place. And he mattered far too much for me to even consider doing that. Rage soured my expression, my free hand clenching into a fist. Luc deserved to walk out of here, back to his life, to his family and his friends back home.

That, and I needed him in my own life, too.

"I'm not going to try and escape. I'll wait with you until Abelard gets here." I pried Heloise's hand away from mine as I said so, eager to at least put a little bit of distance between us. "But the least you can do before your husband takes my life is hear me out. If you're as fair and reasonable as the people here say you are, and if you have anything left resembling a heart, you'll do that for me. Please."

That was all I could think to do now: talk. I didn't know how to get Luc back by force, which meant my only shot at getting it done was making Heloise leave his body willingly. I just had to convince her it was the right thing to do. And maybe, considering how frantic she looked, how strangled she'd mentioned Luc's family, there was indeed some reasoning that could still be done. It was worth a try.

Luc had said I had a way with words. Now I had to prove it.

I could see a surge of panic cross Luc-Heloise's face. Heloise might've felt tempted to clamp my friend's hands over my mouth to shut me up, but she refrained, if only to keep me from changing my mind and making a run for it anyway. "If you wish to make me reconsider my plans, just know you will not succeed," she stated, though she was possibly trying to get that into her own head as much as mine. "I cannot let an opportunity like this go to waste. Nothing you say will change that."

"Maybe not. It is a golden opportunity for you." I tried to swallow my nerves, to keep my voice calm and steady and free from any pesky emotions that might trip me up, but I couldn't manage it as well as I'd hoped. "I just want to tell you that... that I think I understand you. Why you're so desperate you'd go so far as to consider stealing lives that aren't yours for the taking."

"You think you understand me." Heloise tensed up, shocked, frustrated and intrigued at the same time. "I have possessed your friend and you think you understand."

I nodded, scrambling to pull every last thing I'd learned about Heloise tonight from the deepest recesses of my brain. What Luc had read in that history book, everything the people we'd met here had said. I needed to use it to the fullest to try and save our lives.

"You haven't felt like you were truly free for a single day of your existence, have you?" I began. "When you were young and alive, your uncle and the society around you never let you pursue an education or love who you wanted on your own terms. After your affair's tragic end, you had to spend the rest of your days in a convent because it was the only shot you had left at living a decent life as an intellectual with some independence. You're used to taking the opportunities you can get, but only those available within the cages others put you in.

"And this place, it doesn't feel any different for you, does it? You have your husband and your fancy spot on the City Council, but this necropolis is still a damned prison, and if it wasn't at first, it has to feel like one after more than two hundred years. All that time and you're still in somebody's cage. Getting out of here is the only way you think you can break out."

"And what of it if that were true, child?" Heloise gritted her teeth, giving me hope I was hitting a nerve.

"If it's true, then I'm sorry." I started that sentence unsure if I meant it, but realised halfway through that I did. "I'm sorry, because what happened to you was awful, and it was unfair and you deserved better. I don't know if anyone's told you that, but I'm doing it now. I think you could stand to hear it. You never could have whatever life you really wanted, and for that I'm so fucking sorry."

Heloise remained quiet. I wasn't about to wait for a reply, but I wouldn't let the silence stretch on, either, wouldn't risk losing steam and getting lost in my own growing distress. Even if this wasn't getting me anywhere, I couldn't stop talking and risk her brushing off everything I'd said.

And now that the words and emotions had started spilling out, it was hard to keep them inside.

"But that's the thing. That's exactly the thing. You didn't get the life you wanted, but at least you got to live one for over sixty years. You even live on in here, and the people love you, okay? I've heard them talk about you. They think you're wonderful and clever and I may not agree with all the methods, but they seem to appreciate that you're trying to look out for them and keep them safe. And I want to believe you're a monster but I've heard you write really shitty love poems and I guess I kind of like that you do. And I still don't understand why you'd name your son after some weird science instrument, but it must've been important to you, right? It must've meant more to you than anything."

Somewhere along the way, I'd lost track of my thoughts and my speech had stopped making sense. I was exhausted, panicking more and more with each passing second, because Peter Abelard could be here any moment and I wasn't getting through to Heloise like this. She'd stopped talking, simply looked like she didn't have a clue what to make of me, and she'd possessed Luc and he was going to die, I was going to die, we'd be doomed forever.

My vision blurred. Though all my instincts told me I shouldn't cry, I knew I was going to end up in tears. It became hard to discern Béatrice's lingering presence in the background, or even to see Luc-Heloise right in front of me.

We wouldn't ever get to go home again, and we were much too young to die.

"I get that you want a second chance, Heloise. But this is it."

All I wanted to do was curl up into a ball on the cold hard floor until it was over, but I still forced myself to get everything I'd meant to say out, even if it wouldn't make a difference. I was blubbering and shaking and felt more than pathetic about it, but I hoped I at least made an impression. I hoped the sight of me could haunt Heloise for the rest of the days that should've been mine.

"You can love it or you can hate it, but this place has always been your second chance, and no matter how unfair life was to you, you lived. For sixty years. I'm eighteen, Luc is eighteen, and you're about to make sure we won't ever have a chance to even try and reach sixty. How is, how is that fair? You're going to take our lives from us and every time, every time you look in a mirror, you and your husband will see us instead of yourselves, and it'll be as much of a lie as Dorian fucking Gray! And can you... tell me..." Ungraceful sobs further wrecked my broken voice. "...how long your... how long your son lived...?"

I was spent, so tired I didn't believe I could take anything else. I was about to collapse in that quiet subway station and had nothing left to say. I'd been reduced to a mess of snot and salt, tears steadily trickling down my cheeks, staining my hands and clothes. It was still hard to see, and I didn't even want to look anymore, so I squeezed my eyes shut to protect what was left of my sanity.

But I finally received a reply.

"Astrolabe lived well into adulthood, but he died before I did." It was barely louder than a whisper. "It has been nine hundred years. I've forgotten what he looked like."

Drained as I was, I found the strength to react somewhere deep down. "I'm sorry about that, too."

"I feel I should have been able to remember regardless," Heloise noted. "But... all that time. Nothing is quite as relentless as time."

I would've enjoyed pondering those words in other circumstances, but what Heloise had said interested me less than the way in which she'd said it. She'd been talking to me using Luc's voice before, but the one I heard now belonged to a woman. It jolted me out of my misery and I opened my eyes fast.

In front of me was Luc, blinking rapidly after what must've felt like a rude awakening. Next to him, I could see the real Heloise; the pant-suited woman Luc and I had knocked down in the crowd while running away from La Santé. Her taking leave of Luc's body had lacked any and all fanfare—No sound, no bright light, no uncomfortable sensations in the air. She'd simply left, and now she stood there as if it was where she'd been from the start.

'I'm dazed, confused, and kind of hungry," Luc announced with a small voice, swaying on his feet. "And I feel like I missed some really important stuff."

He looked like he might topple over, his muscles not yet fully back under his control. I would've hastened to catch him, but I wasn't at my most balanced myself, and all such a move would've done was send both of us falling. Béatrice scurried to Luc's side instead, supporting his standing upright.

Heloise's sunken eyes, a murky shade of grey, drifted to the time displayed on Luc's Smartwatch. Though her appearance lay in the same age range as her husband, she looked old. Old, tired, and rather plain for a woman embroiled in one of history's most renowned love affairs. Hollywood had ruined me.

"It is nearing seven," she observed, tone flat, "and the drive to the cemetery may take half an hour if misfortune befalls you. Bring these boys to the gateway like you wanted, Béatrice, before I change my mind."

She turned away from us, staggering in the direction of the subway turnstiles, heels clicking on the floor. I wasn't sure if she knew where she was going. "And you are excused from attending my class tomorrow, unless by some miracle you would still like to be there."

Béatrice nodded in understanding, then dragged Luc along with her towards me. "I have a lot to explain to you both, but it is absolutely essential we make it to Père-Lachaise before sunrise."

I wasn't in any position to protest or struggle. I allowed Béatrice to grab hold of me, too, allowed her to support and guide us to the subway station's exit. But when we rounded the corner on our way out, my puffy eyes widened and my heart sank.

Peter Abelard was here.

Fear clawed at my chest. The professor had come alone, for once not surrounded by students, but he still stood between us and the staircase back to the surface. Much too close, too.

This couldn't be happening. We hadn't escaped Heloise only to be recaptured by her husband now.

"Not you again!" I shouted, hysterical. "Just leave us alone! We don't have time for you to hold us up..."

Abelard frowned, adjusting his glasses. "You misunderstand. I have no interest in stopping you."

"You... don't?"

"We would have deserved to live a proper life again, in a time that would have left us be. I stand by this." Abelard strode forward, but his trajectory would take him past our little group. "It would have been nice to see for myself what the world has become. I would have liked to publish my thesis. But Heloise has made her choice, and what should anything I could do in your realm mean to me when all I love is here?"

He didn't have anything else to say to us. If I'd had the time and energy, I might've asked him how long he'd been standing around the corner, listening and waiting. But maybe it didn't even matter anymore. He didn't have eyes for us, only moving past on his way to reach his wife.

As far as I could tell, he never once looked back.

"Come, darlings." The moment the shock of our encounter with Abelard had worn off, Béatrice quickly jostled us onward again. "Madame Heloise was right about one thing: Nothing is quite as relentless as time."