Chapter 7
Time passed quickly at first, a haze of long days spent cleaning, sorting and resorting, and rushing off to purchase some accessory that we hadn’t needed at the old place but was suddenly critical at the new one.
I grew used to my bed, to the clank of the hot water pipes, the smell of the old oak parquet, and the way the sun poured through the west-facing windows in the afternoon.
I doubted I would ever feel at home in the warm luxury of the upstairs apartment and tried to spend as little time there as possible—I never used the sitting room, and crept from the bedroom to the bathroom in the morning like a mouse navigating a clearing.
Not once did the curtains open of their own accord, though some mornings I could have sworn I saw them twitch, as if they wished to.
Overall, the shop continued to present itself as lacking in both ghosts and magic.
This lasted one week.
The oven was the first dark omen, as I could have guessed it would be.
I had noted on my first visit that it smelled of baking, and I came to realize, once the scent of our floor polish had faded a little, that it still did—but only in the mornings; the smell dissipated after a few hours.
It often varied: sometimes citrus, others chocolate, and sometimes it was clearly sourdough or otherwise savoury.
Was someone breaking into the shop and making use of the oven in the night?
It was the only explanation I could think of, and yet it was impossible.
Not only did I lock up carefully, but the stones of the oven were cold in the morning, the decaying ashes within undisturbed.
Of course, I soon realized that there was no need for someone to break into the shop at night. Someone was already there.
It was only in growing used to the shop that I realized it.
As I came to recognize the clanking of the pipes, which would sound even when no one had touched the taps, and the groaning of the lightless well that was the staircase, I also came to know which sounds did not fit the old building’s pattern.
Namely, the intermittent bangs and creaks from the basement.
A particularly loud thump sounded one morning when élise was assisting a couple interested in one of our tabbies.
“Ghosts acting up again,” élise said, the barest hint of a smile in her eyes. The couple tittered. When the noise came again an hour later, élise stamped on the floor.
“What do you think that will accomplish?” I said despairingly.
élise shrugged. “Whatever it is, it will have to learn to keep it down when I’m with a client.”
She spoke dismissively enough, but I saw, and pretended not to see, how her shoulders stiffened when the noises came again.
The woman in the unidentifiable fur did not return, but others like her did.
I could not work out why they reminded me of her, for they all looked different; perhaps it was only in the way they drew my eye, as most were finely dressed and took up space in the way of wealthy people, but I didn’t think so.
The closest I could come to describing it was to say to élise, nonsensically, that they reminded me of paintings.
First there was a man with an ivory cane and an immaculately tailored black cloak lined with emerald silk.
He spoke not a word to me, merely gave me a nod when I welcomed him to the shelter and swept past, making for the back room as if he were late for a meeting.
I was on my own then, and the shop was quiet, and so I heard the distinct creak followed by—as if I had not guessed already—a thump and a slight tremor in the floorboards that could only be the trapdoor to the basement falling shut.
He emerged perhaps an hour later, giving me that same polite nod, and went out the front door. Most of them exited through the door to the alley—or I assumed they did. I supposed it was possible that some fell monster made a meal of them down in the basement, and they never left.
After him came a pair of men, muttering to each other, more subtly but also more expensively attired, their hats worn low enough to shade their eyes.
They didn’t acknowledge me in any way, though the shorter one frowned at the cats, as if they offended his eyes.
He returned the next day alone, once again striding through the place as if he owned it.
Happily, His Majesty was in a foul mood that day, crouched glowering by the back door like a gargoyle, and slashed at the man’s ankles as he passed.
The man made a movement as if to kick him—deeply unwise where His Majesty was concerned—and ended up with two clawed ankles and a long tear in the hem of his cloak, the latter inflicted by a grey tabby named Céline.
His Majesty had no interest in either friends or minions, but some of the younger cats paid fealty to him anyway, and would take it upon themselves to harass anyone His Majesty took a dislike to.
Another day, a nervous young woman slunk into the shop as if expecting an attack, her hair in disarray. She was the only one who spoke to me.
“I don’t have much time,” she said, after running her gaze over the shop several times, as if we might be hiding someone.
I could have pretended I had no idea what she was after.
But I wanted her gone, her and all the others, so I simply pointed towards the back room.
She nodded once and hurried away, not bothering to close the door behind her.
Thus I saw her fold the rug back and lift the trapdoor, a simple rectangle cut out of the floor with a brass chain attached.
I did not see what was below it, because the trapdoor blocked my view, but I could tell she descended a flight of stairs, slowly lowering the door behind her.
I could have followed them into the back room, of course, and peered into the space below the trapdoor. I could have waited for them when they came out again, or asked what they were doing down there. But I never did.
élise and I were in agreement on this point. “Is any of this worse than a nuisance?” she said. “And is tolerating a nuisance worse than returning to an unheated ruin? It’s a small price to pay.”
While the mystery gnawed at me, I agreed with her. I was additionally motivated to avoid the basement due to my unwillingness to admit that my theory had shifted. I no longer thought the place had once housed an illegal magic shop. I now wondered if the owner of the shop had never left.
At the end of that week, I paid a visit to the bookstore next door.
Oksana, the owner, was not napping this time, but busy with a customer.
I was pleased to see that her shop was not always quiet; several people waited in line, each with a stack of books.
The weather was moody that day, the wind rambling up the narrow street, woven with leaves from the maples in the square.
The wooden sign above the bookshop creaked back and forth.
I waited until the customers had paid and gone, then approached the counter.
The woman glanced up at me, narrowing her eyes.
This did not seem a promising start, but I reminded myself that a face might have a natural tendency towards mildness or severity, as a clock has towards haste or tardiness, and was thus not always a reliable measure of mood.
“You again!” she said.
So much for that, I thought ruefully. I decided to change my approach, for this was a person who seemed to value bluntness.
“I despise magicians,” I said. “I have never had anything to do with them, and hope I never will.”
She blinked at me for a moment. “Seems a bit late for that.”
I felt the breath leave me. So—there was my confirmation, of a sort. “You know who my landlord is.”
“I’ve been in this neighbourhood for decades,” she said. “I know all my neighbours. Including those who don’t wish to be known.”
I waited for her to elaborate. She didn’t. “I would be grateful for anything you could tell me,” I said. “But only if it won’t put you at risk.”
“What did the police want?”
I hesitated, taken aback by her tone. “They—you mean Laurent?”
“I mean Laurent. He’s more cunning than he looks, that one, and more determined than the others ever were. He’s been poking around that shop for nearly a year. I saw him through the window speaking to you. What did you tell him?”
This was baffling. I’d expected her to sigh at me for ignoring her warnings, or perhaps to suspect I was in league with whatever mysterious entity inhabited the basement, and distrust me. Instead she seemed to distrust me for an entirely different reason.
“You warned me to stay away from the shop,” I said slowly. “You implied there was something terrible about it.”
“Did I say that?” Oksana countered. “I warned you off because you seem like the wrong type for the place. I could see it a mile off—you’re just the sort that would make a report to the police and cause all kinds of trouble for the neighbourhood.”
“I don’t—”
“It’s your face,” she went on. “You look like the woman on the cookie tin.”
I flushed. I knew which cookie tin she meant—it was sold in shops around the holidays and featured a beaming hearty-looking woman with red cheeks brandishing a tray of shortbread. It was partly why élise teased me as she did, though she also liked to say that I had a face for organizing bake sales.
“I’m not surprised you operate some silly charity,” Oksana added in a mutter.
“You believe charity is silly?”
“That one is. Do you not realize there are people in this city who need help?”
I decided to assume the woman didn’t mean to be rude, despite the evidence. A self-interested assumption—I cannot tolerate it when people dislike me. I never stop thinking about it, to the point where it is as though I am wearing their dislike wherever I go, which chafes like wet shoes.
“The city seems to have room for more than one form of charity,” I said.
She gave a disdainful grunt. “What are you so worried about?” she said. “Magicians like cats. The stories say Havelock Renard can turn himself into a black one.”
“The stories also say he collects the screams of his victims in jars,” I pointed out.
“And takes his enemies apart just so he can sew them together to make new enemies. When it comes to magicians, I prefer to trust in what they do with their power, not the stories people tell about it. You clearly know more than you are saying—is there no way we might come to trust each other?”
The woman only regarded me with folded arms, forefinger tapping against her elbow. “What about the others?” I said in frustration. “The baker and the importer? The police never took an interest in them?”
“They kept quiet. You should do the same.”
I felt my composure slip. “Even if the shelter is being used to trade in spells that could harm someone?”
“A neighbour is a neighbour.” She looked about to say more, but changed her mind. The bell jingled behind us, and Oksana hurried over to offer assistance to the man who entered. I waited to see if she would speak to me again, but she seemed to be pretending I was not there. I left.