Chapter 5
It took perhaps ten minutes for me to decide I’d made a calamitous error.
No, that isn’t quite correct—I’d known all along I’d made a calamitous error, but had chosen to see this as a lesser calamity than homelessness.
But was it? As I made my way through the gathering twilight, I stopped a half-dozen times, on the threshold of going back to tell Yannick that, in fact, the place would not do for a cat shelter.
My main concern was magic.
It was the curtains that had made me think of it, as well as Yannick’s clear desperation to find someone—anyone—to rent the place.
I strongly suspected that the shop had been home to a magical tenant before—perhaps it had even been the baker, who had pressed his spells into his tarts and loaves.
I didn’t know if this was possible—like most, I understood little of magic, as magicians were not exactly forthcoming about their trade—but everyone knew that spells were attached to physical objects.
Magicians did not wield magic so much as summon it from some mysterious otherworld and bind it to our own, via vessels they called Artefacts.
Anyone could cast a spell, which merely involved speaking a word to release the magic from its vessel, be that a pendant or ring, book or decanter.
Doing so was dangerous, though, because spells cast by mere mortals were far more likely to go awry than those cast by magicians, sometimes even causing the death of the spellcaster.
That didn’t stop people from wanting Artefacts, of course.
And it was for this reason that the trade of such Artefacts was illegal in Montréal and most other civilized places.
It was said that a small number of shops still operated in secret, though no doubt some were run by charlatans eager to prey upon the foolish or desperate.
I found myself increasingly convinced that I’d hit upon the most likely explanation.
The place had been a magic shop at some time or other, and the magician had left behind some curse, or curses perhaps, so terrible that nobody would remain there long.
Perhaps the banister transformed into a hungry snake at the stroke of midnight.
Perhaps the cash register put warts on your fingers.
It was also possible that nothing was actually wrong with the place, but that its reputation alone was enough to keep most sensible tenants away.
I had come to a stop for probably the tenth time, just outside a restaurant, its windows steamed and glowing as the lilt of a violin drifted through the door, certain that I would turn around. Naturally, that was when I saw him.
He was only an insignificant shape to my eye at first, small and pale, a discarded sheaf of paper, possibly, crumpled by the wind. But then the shape moved, and the light caught in his eyes.
He was three months old, I guessed, not yet full-grown but lacking the bumbling locomotion of early kittenhood. He was slender as a shadow, and quite afraid of me, but despite his fear he came to me immediately when I crouched down, which told me all I needed to know.
I looked around, wondering if there would be siblings, and eventually I found one—black, in contrast to her grey-and-white brother, tucked into a crevice in the back stairs of the restaurant.
Someone had been feeding them, but sporadically.
I waited for maybe an hour by the steps to see if the mother would return, though I already knew she would not.
These two were not the first cats I’d found in such a situation.
Finally, my hands thoroughly chilled and my stomach rumbling insistently—the smells emanating from the restaurant were torturous—I gathered up the pair as best I could, tucking them into the large pockets I’d sewn inside my coat for this very purpose—pockets that, when occupied, led all those who crossed my path to assume I was at least slightly mad, or perhaps a magician myself, the storybook kind who used familiars to do their bidding.
She struggled a little, but he did not, curling himself into a warm lump against my chest.
My coat emitted only a few growls on the way home, during which I gave no further thought to the shop in Rue des Hirondelles, nor did I continue my agonized internal debate. There was no longer any point.