Paris slept beneath a gauze of fog that evening — the kind that swallowed sound and softened sin. Lanterns burned like dying stars beyond the gates of Montparnasse Cemetery, their glow filtering through iron scrollwork slick with rain. The hour was late, the streets beyond empty, and the only soul abroad was a tall man in a pinstripe coat and a crimson scarf, humming faintly under his breath.

Alastor had come to France for stories — ghost tales, forgotten music, whispers of the old world clinging to the marble of its dead. What he found instead was her.

The first night, she’d been little more than a voice in the fog. He’d followed it between the mausoleums until he saw her — sitting atop a marble slab, pale as moonlight, tracing the name carved there with gloved fingers. She looked perfectly alive then, so still that he’d thought her a lost mourner. But the moment she turned her head, he felt the temperature drop, and his heart stumbled in his chest.

“You shouldn’t be here at this hour,” he’d said, smiling despite the chill.

“I could say the same,” she’d replied. “But I like it here. The living don’t bother me so much among the dead.”

That was how it began.

He visited again the next night, then again after that. Each time she was there, waiting — sometimes sitting on a headstone, sometimes standing by the gates, her dress pale against the dark. They talked of trivial things at first — books, Paris, the silence that only the dead knew — and with every word she spoke, the cemetery grew warmer, more familiar.

By the fourth night, Alastor caught himself laughing — really laughing — for the first time in months. Her voice reminded him of home, of soft jazz through broken speakers, of stories whispered close to the microphone. He began to crave that voice like a song he couldn’t turn off.

Then came the day he couldn’t find her.

The cemetery was different in daylight — cold, ordinary, stripped of its mystery. He walked the rows where they’d spoken, calling her name once, softly. That’s when he saw it: her grave. Her name. Her date. The bouquet of wilted lilies someone had left weeks ago.

He didn’t speak for a long time. The realization didn’t bring sorrow — it brought fascination, a terrible clarity. That night, he returned to the cemetery once more.

When the fog began to move and her shape emerged from it, he smiled as if nothing had changed. She looked at him then, knowing.

“You found me.”

“I did.”

“And yet you came back.”

“Of course I did,” he said gently. “You didn’t think I’d let a little thing like death end a good conversation, did you?”

She laughed softly — that same haunting, human sound that no ghost should make — and he knew he was lost.

When Alastor found her grave, he didn’t think of oceans or borders. He thought of permanence. Cemeteries were too open, too uncertain. She deserved a sanctuary, a place where night never ended and her voice could linger in the air like incense.

Days later, Alastor purchased a train ticket to Calais. His luggage was heavier than it should have been, but no one dared to ask why. When the ship left port for America, the cargo hold carried a coffin older than most of its passengers.

And so, weeks later, He spent days in secret — gathering candles, mirrors, her portrait, bits of marble from her own tomb, and the soil where she’d once rested. The basement of his New Orleans home became a chapel of devotion: velvet-draped walls, a phonograph that hummed her favorite waltz, a stone altar carved with her name.

He laid her upon the altar as though tucking her into bed. When he whispered her name that night, her ghost appeared — disoriented, translucent, but whole. And when she realized where she was, her eyes went wide with a mix of awe and horror.

“Bonsoir, ma chère. I was afraid I’d lost you in translation.”

Her heart — if she’d still had one — might have stopped. He stood beneath the wrought-iron archway, hat tipped, smiling that same gentle smile she’d come to love.

“You brought me here,” she whispered.

“I couldn’t bear to leave you behind,” Alastor replied. “After all... love should travel.”

The jazz began to play faintly from somewhere unseen — an old tune, cracked and distant.

The dead, it seemed, spoke softly in every language.