The man stalking towards us crossed the Moulin Rouge's seating space as if the building belonged to him. His face was a stone mask and I had no clue what he could be thinking, though he most certainly looked unamused, reminding me of the strictest teachers I'd had in school. Though his black blazer gave him an air of stuffiness rather than one of danger, his presence set off alarms in my head.

Béatrice, twisting in her seat and craning her neck to see the man for herself, produced a whispered merde. "Stay calm," she reassured us in that same quiet tone right after. "I will handle this. You needn't worry."

But every time someone told me I 'needn't worry', worrying was exactly what I did.

The man came to a halt by our table, eyes darting between the three of us. "Good evening, Béatrice." His voice was a deep rumble, audible remnants of what I pegged for a German accent embedded in his English words. "I didn't expect to see you here tonight. With company, no less."

"Friedrich. I didn't expect to run into you tonight, either." Béatrice greeted our visitor with a curt nod, rummaging through the purse she'd brought inside and grabbing a packet of cigarettes, proceeding to light one. Indoors. No lung cancer in the afterlife, I supposed, but I'd always loathed the smell of cigarette smoke. I would've requested she wait until we stood outside again, but Béatrice clenched the cigarette between her fingers with such cramped tenseness that I wouldn't test her limits.

"You two, um... know each other?" I tried instead, hoping to discover just what was going on here and what Luc and I could expect.

"Oh, Friedrich and I met in this class we both take. On twenty-first century gender identity, very fascinating." Béatrice lowered her voice conspiratorially, but not so much that Friedrich wouldn't be able to understand what she said. "The blithering fool doesn't understand the added value of normalizing the singular 'they' pronoun. Can you believe that?"

"That is crazy," Luc told Friedrich without a hint of fear. "Come on, man, you don't even need to understand something to respect it."

If they were trying to bait Friedrich into showing emotion, it didn't work. The man retained his statuesque appearance, rigidly unwilling to stray from the course he intended to chart. "I won't debate this outside of class. But..." His eyes narrowed ever so slightly. "I know what you do on the cusp of All Saints' and All Souls', woman. These boys are alive. And surely you remember your instructions, what they requested you do on the off-chance living people came to our city again?"

Who the hell were they?

"I'm aware." Béatrice blew out some smoke. "I simply decided I would rather make my own plans. Perhaps you could take notes?"

"Mein Gott, Béatrice–"

"I will not tolerate that horrid tongue in my presence," Béatrice interrupted. "A barbaric language for barbaric men, German. Keep it far away from me."

I made a mental note to stay on Béatrice's good side, as I got the idea she was capable of holding massive grudges.

"I was born in 1957," Friedrich grumbled in his defense. "In Switzerland."

"And still I don't want to hear it." Béatrice rose from her seat, giving us a tight smile. "Now, if you'll excuse us, Friedrich, I promised I'd introduce Luc and Nick to my friend Mélanie backstage. After that, I'll follow my instructions. Please trust me to do so."

She gestured for us to follow, scurrying away from our table and the man whose appearance had disturbed us. I didn't want to go after her, my faith in our spirit guide shaken by Friedrich's words; his talk of instructions she'd apparently neglected to tell us about made me question her integrity and wonder what else she could be keeping from us. But Luc obeyed her command, and no matter how much I could or couldn't trust Béatrice, I trusted Friedrich even less. So I, too, followed suit while Friedrich's pensive gaze dug into our backs. He didn't chase after us, but I could sense his scepticism about Béatrice's assurance.

"Béatrice, what's going on? Who was that man and what did he mean when he was going on about your instructions?" I asked when we'd left the seating area behind us, venturing deeper into the Moulin Rouge's underbelly. Béatrice's story about having a friend who danced here must not have been a lie, for she navigated us through corridors with the ease of someone who knew exactly where she was going.

Our spirit guide wrung her hands together, nervous, rolling her cigarette between her fingers. "I apologise, darlings. I never meant you harm, but I'm afraid I haven't been entirely honest with you. I let my excitement over your appearance cloud my judgment and didn't prioritise your wellbeing over everything else. It seems mistakes don't only befall the young."

Luc's steps briefly faltered as his own nervousness seemed to grow as well. "Could you be a little less vague? Where are you taking us?"

"To the exit out back." Béatrice kept the pace up. "It's been a pleasure, a real pleasure, but we ought to part ways. You'll be better off if you aren't seen with me. I will return to Friedrich by myself and convince him I have everything under control, that Mélanie is showing you around backstage. It's all I can do."

"Are we in danger? Do we need to get out of here as fast as we can?" My heart sank as I asked the questions. Now that Luc and I had come up with items to cross off our Other Paris Bucket List, the thought of leaving so soon was an especially bitter pill to swallow.

We came to an inconspicuous back door few would think to use. Béatrice threw it open, letting in the cold night air. "Not necessarily. The city is big and if you keep a low profile, you should be safe." She regarded us with a severity that I imagined she'd used to terrorise many a German soldier during the Second World War. "But be careful, do you understand? And should you need this warning, do not trust Abelard, and trust Heloise even less."

Could those have been Béatrice's mysterious instructors? Their names rang a bell in my head, as if I'd encountered them not too long ago, but in the chaos of the moment, I couldn't recall where.

"Béatrice, who–"

"Go." With that final order, Béatrice slammed the door closed, the sound of her footsteps fading away as she hurried back to keep Friedrich occupied. Luc and I were left alone on the cobbles of a shadowy back alley, boxed in by old, ivy-covered walls. In our own Paris, I would've expected to see a rat race past, but I still hadn't seen any here.

"That," Luc pointed out, eyes wide, "escalated quickly."

I had to agree. "Yeah, and it was... confusing. What do we do?"

"We should probably get away from the Moulin Rouge, at least." Luc started on his way out of the surprisingly long alley, heading back towards the main road. He checked the time on his smartwatch. "It's only a quarter to two. Still more than five hours until sunrise. Do you want to go home now or stay here longer?"

Still more than five hours. Though I'd been cautious before, I was more and more inclined to throw my caution to the wind; though our ghost tour had been cut short, the city already felt more familiar and less intimidating. We had plenty of time and clear objectives to boot. That, and Béatrice had said we'd be okay if we kept a low profile. Despite our strange parting and the fact she'd definitely withheld information, I wanted to believe her. She'd looked out for us too much for me to think of her as malevolent.

"We have a lot of time, two people we'd like to meet, and Béatrice said we'd be fine if we're careful. All we need to do is stay away from Abelard and Heloise, whoever they are, and that doesn't have to be hard in a city as big as Paris. So I think we can afford to hang out here a little longer. Unless you want to go back to our own side?"

Luc smirked. "As if I'd run away from people with names as stupid as Abelard and Heloise." He opened his backpack, digging around within and unearthing a small, somewhat crumpled booklet. A city guide to Paris. "There's maps of the public transport networks in this, as well as a bunch of notable places for each arrondisement. If we're lucky, that hotel Oscar Wilde lives in is in there, too. Getting to him shouldn't be that hard, so we can visit him first."

I considered it. Though I itched to meet my favourite author against all odds, I hesitated. Luc was right: if everything went according to plan, it wouldn't be hard to get to Oscar Wilde at all. But Luc's personal mission of finding his great-granduncle would be much tougher to accomplish. Would it be doable to track down Richard Vaillancourt, and if so, how long would it take us? If we embarked on a search for him, we could break it off in a heartbeat and head for L'Hôtel once it became apparent we weren't getting anywhere, but I'd hate to stay too long at Wilde's place and leave Luc with too little time to find and meet with his ancestor. It seemed to mean a lot to him.

And what about Abelard and Heloise, who'd potentially instructed Béatrice to do... whatever they'd planned with us? As hard as I worked to suppress my cautious side, I couldn't shake their names from my mind. I had seen those names before, I was sure of it, but I'd likely been paying more attention to something other than them at the time. Not remembering who they were bothered me, especially since Béatrice had implied they posed a threat. I always feared the things I knew a lot less.

"Maybe Oscar Wilde can wait," I suggested. "If you really want to meet your Uncle Richard, we could try to find him first."

"But how? I don't know anything about the dude. My mother might have some more information, but I can't message her from this place, and if I could, she might not even be available. We have no leads."

I wished I could will such leads into existence for him, but that was as impossible as trying to will myself to be into girls. All I could think to do was ask people on the streets if they knew a Richard Vaillancourt, but it wouldn't mesh well with Béatrice's advice of keeping a low profile. "I don't know what we could do about that right now," I told Luc honestly. "But maybe, if we try to figure out what's up with these Abelard and Heloise people, we'll find something? We might come across a lead or meet someone who knows him along the way, or... I don't know."

It was the flimsiest of all the flimsy plans I'd had, I realised when we reached the main road, where I kept sneaking glances at the Moulin Rouge's entrance as if Friedrich would come storming out. The odds we'd find Uncle Richard during an inquiry into Abelard and Heloise were abysmally low. But we had to start somewhere.

Luc raised his eyebrows. "You're actually interested in those two?"

"I'm just curious why we should watch out for them, that's all. I like knowing what to expect. And... I swear, I've heard of them before, but I'm struggling to remember where. Maybe I read about them in a book, or..."

I paused, having a light-bulb moment the second I started theorizing out loud. I'd indeed read Abelard and Heloise's names in a book. Very recently, too.

"The Count of Monte Cristo!" I announced, excited. "There's a footnote about them in The Count of Monte Cristo. Twelfth-century lovers, it said they were–"

"He even reads the footnotes," I heard Luc mutter to himself under his breath.

"–and they've had a tomb in Père-Lachaise since the nineteenth century. I thought it was really neat symbolism, because that tomb is brought up in relation to Maximilien Morrell losing his beloved Valentine, and if Abelard and Heloise were 'twelfth-century lovers', it has to be a parallel of sorts, and..." I paused. "You're not following this at all, are you?"

Luc had been staring at me with such intense confusion I worried my rambling had broken him until his lips quirked into a smile. "No. But I'm a fan of your enthusiasm about it."

I blushed. "...Thanks?"

"Twelfth-century lovers, huh?" Luc had picked up on that, at least, pondering it as we descended the stairs into the Blanche subway station, passing a variety of people whose dead status my brain still struggled to fathom. "That is interesting... and vague. It doesn't sound nearly as threatening as Béatrice implied, either. What's the problem with some medieval 'it' couple? What makes them dangerous?"

"That's what I'd like to uncover."

"Then we will." Luc flipped through his city guide, focusing his search efforts on the Latin Quarter in the fifth arrondisement. "Abelard and Heloise were remembered for all these centuries, so they must be pretty famous. We can't just pull up their Wikipedia pages, but if they were mentioned in that big book of yours, they've got to be mentioned in other books as well. What do you say to visiting the Sorbonne Library? My buddy back in our Paris likes to study there."

I liked that idea a lot. Libraries were always right up my alley and there was a significant chance we could find Abelard and Heloise in a medieval history textbook. "We should go for it. Who knows, if the university's still functional, it's possible your uncle goes there at times. At the very least, asking around there seems safer than approaching random people in the streets."

Luc lit up when I suggested that. I loved to see it.

"I didn't think I'd ever be thrilled to visit a library," he said with a grin, "but let's. Fucking. Go."