Chapter 3
“What sort of shop is it again?” Mathieu asked. “I’m sorry to forget—I have five showings this morning.”
“Typing,” élise answered with a breezy smile.
“We average around two dozen customers per day. Most come in for letters, but we had an author in last week, didn’t we, Agnes?
The poor dear—I’ve never seen handwriting that bad.
We’re also hoping to start a rental service as soon as we can find a good wholesale price on ink ribbons.
There’s been such a shortage recently—surely you’ve heard? ”
She chattered on while I did my best not to scowl at her.
Since we were children, élise had taken a disturbing pride in her ability to lie, and went about it with all the commitment and native flair of a songbird announcing the arrival of morning—we’d talked through our story beforehand, but she was inventing most of the details as she went.
It was one of her worst qualities, I thought, as my stomach gave an anxious burble.
Though undeniably useful.
The landlord stopped listening halfway through her speech, I estimated, glancing down at his notebook and nodding absently.
We stood by the counter of the empty shop—most recently occupied by an accountant—with the autumn light spilling through the window and highlighting the tidy contours of the space, one long rectangle tucked between a cobbler’s and a laundering service.
It would be cramped for my needs, but I ached for it nonetheless.
Mathieu scribbled a note, then adjusted the unwieldy stack of loose papers tucked into the notebook’s binding, a hodgepodge of invoices and building plans. I stifled an urge to reach out and straighten them. How did a person get anything done amidst that sort of disorder?
“When can you move in?” he said once élise had completed an amusing anecdote about a baker with such an atrocious hand her assistants were forever replacing baking soda with baking salt and applesauce with apple cider.
“As soon as possible,” I said, grateful for the opportunity to provide an honest answer.
I was not happy with this fabrication of élise’s, which I’d only come round to after days of relentless harping on her part.
It was not fair to the landlord, who had the right to know that I would be filling his property with cats.
“You will not survive the winter,” élise had finally said bluntly. “Or they won’t.”
This I could not argue with. Winter did not envelop Montréal so much as attack it.
Last year the drifts had covered every square and piled all the way up to the second stories of the stone apartments, so that their inhabitants had donned snowshoes and exited out the windows, sometimes pulling children behind them in sleds.
It was not always like that. Perhaps this winter would be mild.
Perhaps.
“Is there a problem with your present situation?” Mathieu enquired, knitting his eyebrows.
“My shop is on Rue Sainte-Roseline,” I said. “The damage was substantial. We cannot remain there.”
He frowned. “I didn’t know there was a typist’s on Rue Sainte-Roseline. My aunt lives by the park on the corner.”
“Ah, but that’s no surprise,” élise said in a rueful voice while shooting me a brief, murderous glare.
élise looked a great deal like me, only prettier, with an elven delicacy about her features that most found universally charming, and she generally took the lead in any negotiations we undertook—when we were little, this had included arguing for larger desserts—because she had more success than I did.
I did not resent her for this, nor did she lord it over me; we’d simply accepted that this was the way it was for us.
“I’m afraid we’re dreadful at marketing,” she continued with a self-deprecating grimace. “We don’t even have a sign on the door! Our clients know us by word of mouth.”
The landlord smiled politely. “Well, I’ll send word by Friday at the latest—do you have a telephone?”
We assured him that we did—in fact, it was Gabriel’s office number on the application, but he would do nothing but grumble about being made to play secretary again until élise appeased him with a kiss, at which point the grumbling would cease.
We exited the building, and élise and I waited while the landlord locked up.
The rent on any shop off Charlotte Square was above my budget—far above—but there was nothing for it.
I would just have to find a way to increase our donations.
If I didn’t, well—I was going to be evicted anyway.
Ruthlessly, élise had calculated that even if Mathieu discovered our deception after I moved in—highly likely—it would take six months or more to actually evict me: the present backlog for hearings at the tenancy tribunal.
Mathieu turned to shake our hands as my stomach gave another lurch, rumbling away in an embarrassingly loud manner.
All this deception! I was not made for it, and élise knew it.
She gave me another steely look as I took Mathieu’s hand, as if preparing herself to interject should my conscience tear a last-minute confession from me.
The man must have heard my stomach going off, or perhaps it was something else about me that softened his expression as he released my hand.
“I’m sorry you’ve been forced to move,” he said.
“That must have been something, though. To be so close to such a powerful enchantment! Did you get a look at the magician who cast it?”
This remark—or rather, the enthusiasm with which he said it—rendered me temporarily speechless. élise came to my rescue. “Fortunately not. Have you an interest in magic?”
He gave an embarrassed huff of laughter.
“I’m afraid so,” he said. “I’m sorry—I’ve been a bit obsessed with magicians since I was a boy.
Can’t enchant anything myself,” he added ruefully.
“Not for lack of trying. But I follow their doings in the papers. Including the Witch King—I wondered if he might have been behind the explosion in Rue Sainte-Roseline. Something of that scale, you know—and they say he’s in New York now.
” Mathieu looked both disturbed and excited at the prospect.
“New York isn’t far, is it? Only a few hours by train. ”
“Not far at all,” I agreed. Havelock Renard, first called the Witch King by those who wished to insult him—the epithet had over the years acquired a darker and almost mythic resonance, like Baba Yaga or Bluebeard—was thought to be the unofficial leader of the worst class of magician: namely, those who romanticized apocalyptic displays of magic. “And nowhere near far enough.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, a flush reddening his dark skin. “Please understand; I’m not one of those ghoulish hero-worshippers. His power is extraordinary—in an appalling way, of course.”
I opened my mouth to argue that appalling was, if anything, an understatement, but élise calmly cut in.
“Yes, and the rest of us can only hope none of the others are inspired to bring about the end of the world. Goodness! Just because Renard failed three years ago doesn’t mean he will the next time he tries—him or the next power-mad lunatic. ”
“Well, we don’t know for certain that was his plan,” Mathieu said with the air of someone about to launch into a familiar line of argument. “One can’t believe everything in the nursery rhymes.”
“ ‘Hair full of spiders, / Eyes like twin fires’?” élise said. “Is that not one of the songs children sing about him? I’d believe worse about Havelock Renard.”
Mathieu fiddled with his pen. “I’d like to offer you the place. I’ll have a chat with Hamad. I’m sure he—”
“With who?” élise said sharply.
“Hamad El-Koury. Surely you’ve met him? He ran that sandwich shop on Rue Sainte-Roseline, and he’s an all-round excellent fellow.
If he can vouch for you, then you needn’t look any further.
I’ll even waive the deposit—it’s only fair.
You’ve not done anything to deserve this—unfortunate turn of events. ”
“That’s awfully kind,” élise murmured, even as I saw her brow knit slightly as she scrambled to think our way out of this.
Oh, Hamad would vouch for me, certainly—as the responsible, highly organized, and neighbourly owner of a well-run cat shelter.
My head began to ache, and I was abruptly aware of how little I had been sleeping.
“Good, good,” Mathieu said, smiling. “Then I can—”
“Thank you,” I interrupted. “But you needn’t trouble Hamad. I’ve thought it over, and it seems the place is too small for our needs. I appreciate your time.”
I walked away, leaving élise and Mathieu staring after me.