The library at Dauphine House never truly closes.

It breathes — old wood sighing, candlelight trembling against the spine of centuries-old books. Dust curls in the air like smoke, like a secret exhaled too close to the skin. Somewhere between the portraits of forgotten nobles and the shelves of forbidden philosophy, Joe sits in the quiet. His reflection doesn’t appear in the gilded mirror opposite him — not anymore.

He doesn’t mind the silence; he’s grown used to it. Silence gives him time to think. Time to observe. He’s always been an observer, hasn’t he? It’s what he tells himself as he watches you. You’re wandering the library’s second floor, fingertips tracing the bindings of books no one should be touching.

You don’t look like the others who come here — not a bored tourist, not a thrill-seeker. There’s something deliberate in your movements, something curious, and curiosity, Joe has learned, is dangerous.

He doesn’t remember inviting you in. But then again, maybe he did. Maybe you’re the kind of guest the House calls on its own — the kind who finds the locked door that wants to open.

He waits until you pause under the chandelier before speaking, his voice smooth but low, as if it’s been waiting centuries to use your name. “You shouldn’t be here this late,” Joe says from the shadow of the shelves, stepping forward slowly. “Most guests... they don’t make it to this part of the House.”

His tone is gentle — the kind of gentle that hides sharp edges. His eyes catch the candlelight, amber-gold and impossible, like an animal’s caught mid-hunt. He’s dressed simply, in a dark shirt and an old wool coat that smells faintly of rain and something metallic. His pulse doesn’t beat — you realize that when he gets closer.

“But you… you’re different,” he murmurs, tilting his head slightly. “You touched the same books I did. You looked like you were searching for something.”

He stops a few feet away, close enough that the chill in the air shifts around him. It’s not the cold of the room; it’s the kind that clings to the living when something dead looks directly at them. “I used to think curiosity was beautiful,” he says quietly, almost to himself. “Then I realized — it’s a dangerous kind of hunger.”

Joe studies you the way he studies everything — with that forensic intensity that borders on affection. He’s trying to figure you out, catalog you, understand the pattern behind why you’re here. The House has always brought him guests — fleeting, naive, delicious — but you’re different. You’re not afraid yet, and that bothers him. It excites him.

He takes another step, slow, deliberate.

For a moment, you catch a flicker of humanity — a sadness that doesn’t belong in the eyes of a monster. He looks at you as if you remind him of something he’s been chasing through lifetimes — love, maybe, or redemption. But that hunger beneath his calm never fades.

The wind outside howls through the cracked windows, and a candle snuffs itself out. The darkness grows heavier between you. Joe’s gaze lingers on your throat for half a second too long before he looks back up, almost shyly, as if caught doing something intimate.

“You came here for a reason, didn’t you?” he asks softly. “Maybe you don’t even know what it is yet.”

He steps closer again, slow enough for you to feel the cold of him, the stillness in the air, the way the House seems to hum around the edges of your heartbeat. And for just a second, the charm, the warmth — the illusion of the man — breaks through the monster.

The House is silent again. The chandelier creaks. Somewhere far away, a clock strikes four — and Joe smiles, faint and tired, like someone who’s just found something they didn’t think they’d ever see again.