The rain had returned by the time Isabelle stepped into the quiet glow of Estelle Girard's study.
It was the kind of room where silence pressed against the walls, heavy with old case files and the scent of wax-sealed envelopes. Books lined the shelves — human behavior, criminal profiling, forensic linguistics — each one weathered by years of use. Estelle herself stood by the window, her posture as sharp and deliberate as her mind.
Isabelle hadn't seen her in months. Maybe years, if she counted the nights that blurred together in the wake of her sister's disappearance. Estelle had always been one of the few who read between Isabelle's words — which meant the invitation card and the voice on the phone were not details she could afford to omit.
"Let me guess," Estelle said quietly, turning from the rain-spattered glass. "You've stepped into something you didn't expect to be personal."
Isabelle's throat tightened. The profiler always had a way of pulling answers from her before questions were even asked.
She placed the ivory invitation on the desk between them. The card's delicate smile glinted faintly in the lamplight, mocking them both with its pristine elegance.
"He sent this," Isabelle said. "Or... left it. My missing persons are all connected to it."
Estelle's gaze drifted to the card without touching it, as though its surface might burn.
"Tell me everything, from the beginning."
Isabelle laid it all out, carefully, methodically, stripping the emotion away and letting the facts stand naked in the space between them. The missing artists, the confessional scratches, her sister Vivienne, the old printing press, the phone call — all of it.
When she finished, Estelle sank into the worn leather chair behind her desk, lacing her fingers thoughtfully beneath her chin.
"This isn't random. Whoever this is... they aren't hunting strangers. This is selective. Emotional. Calculated."
She nodded toward the ivory card.
"That isn't just an invitation. It's a signature."
Isabelle leaned forward, her voice low. "A signature for what?"
Estelle's gaze sharpened, her mind already drawing invisible threads between the fragments.
"Ritualistic obsession. Whoever's orchestrating this wants control — not just over the victims, but over the narrative. He stages his work. He wants to be seen, understood. This masquerade club isn't just a front, it's the stage."
Isabelle rubbed her thumb against her jaw, thinking of the way Mathieu's notebook described the masks, the strange line on the invitation: Admission granted upon perfect silence.
"He's methodical. He doesn't leave fingerprints or evidence, but he leaves symbols." Estelle tapped the card gently. "And the victims — you said their names appear in those anonymous online stories?"
Isabelle nodded. "The stories are uploaded before the abductions, as if someone's scripting them."
"Stories, masks, staged disappearances..." Estelle's voice trailed, her eyes distant but razor-focused. Then she stood, crossing the room to a locked cabinet, her fingers drifting across labeled files.
"This isn't the first time I've seen something like this," she murmured, pulling out a thin folder. "Years ago, there was an obscure pattern that passed unnoticed. Back when I was assisting with archival cold cases. Victims connected by ritual, by symbolic objects, even by the use of public spaces."
She opened the folder, revealing photographs and yellowed police notes.
"The press never caught this part because the victims were drifters, addicts, people who slipped through the cracks. But each disappearance... was staged to mirror a scene from a forgotten French play."
She slid an old, brittle pamphlet toward Isabelle. The title was scrawled in faded ink:
Les Rêves de Cendre
(The Dreams of Ash)
Isabelle's breath caught.
"Cendre," she repeated. Ash.
Estelle nodded, her voice growing colder. "A fringe production from the late 1800s. The play was banned after a series of accidents involving cast members. And the script vanished from public record."
She flipped to a list of characters and stage directions.
"Act II, Scene III," Estelle read aloud. "'The Silent Masquerade. Guests wearing ivory masks gather in a hidden hall, bound by an oath of silence. One guest will not return. Their name, pre-written, is spoken only by the absent one.'"
Isabelle felt her stomach tighten, ice rippling beneath her skin.
"The stories," she murmured. "The online ones. They've all been writing the ending before the victim disappears."
Estelle nodded slowly. "And the next one was you."
The rain tapped steadily at the window, like the ticking of a clock winding down. The profiler's voice dropped into a quieter, almost reverent tone.
"This isn't just a killer. This is a performance. Each abduction is a rewritten act. The play lives on, and the audience is the police."
Isabelle stared at the pamphlet, her thoughts racing back to the masked figure in the surveillance footage — the stillness, the way it stood there, like a stage prop waiting for its cue.
Before she could respond, Estelle reached for another sheet of paper — a recent one.
"I asked a contact at the National Archives to run a search after you mentioned the masquerade. A digital scan flagged something... strange."
She turned the page toward Isabelle. There, in the digital transcript of a rare-book auction held only weeks ago, was an item up for private sale:
'Original script copy: Les Rêves de Cendre. Condition: fair. Buyer: anonymous. Location: Paris.'
Isabelle's pulse skipped.
The killer had the script.
The phone vibrated in her pocket again. A new message. No number. Just a single sentence:
"The curtain rises tomorrow."
To be continued...