Chapter 9
It was the most curious sensation I have ever experienced.
Curious, and thoroughly horrid. There was a monumental tearing sound, and then on the heels of this a rather unpleasant sort of squelch, as of a boulder-sized boot being pressed into mud.
At the same time, I felt as if I were being ripped apart—or, rather, ripped free of some sticky substance I somehow hadn’t noticed before, then hurled, not gently, neither up, down, nor sideways but somehow between all the earthly directions, and into another stickiness that enveloped me like a monstrous cobweb.
The sensation faded almost immediately—which is to say, nowhere near soon enough—and I fell to the floor, my head spinning and my stomach seeming to hover somewhere above me.
“My apologies,” Havelock said. He was leaning against the counter, looking slightly more dishevelled than before, but otherwise unaffected.
“I didn’t think I had time to smooth the intention behind the spell, and most spatial magic falls into the Wayward order; it’s best to leash it to a compass spell, which I don’t have on hand. ”
This was all completely unintelligible, not to mention unhelpful. “Where are we?” I demanded, trying to stand. My head gave another lurch and I abandoned the attempt, bowing my head over my knees. At least two of the cats were throwing up.
“Rue Sainte-Sophie,” he said, sounding pleased with himself.
He straightened and began pacing in front of the windows, which were in a long row, not separate like those in the shelter, but oddly seemed to be covered by the same green curtains.
He lifted the edge of one and squinted through the glass, admitting the grey light of dawn.
I swallowed and looked around. He hadn’t moved the entire shelter, just ourselves, the cats, and the counter with the cash register.
Even as my head spun and my thoughts tangled together in a useless attempt to comprehend what had happened, a small part of me couldn’t help noticing the proportions of the shop—easily fifty percent larger than the place on Rue des Hirondelles—and picturing the additional cats we could house.
I froze. At the rear of the shop was a monstrous stone oven. And there was the back door, a little farther away from the oven than it had been in the other shop, but still hanging off its hinges. Even the flagstone floor had come with us, though the individual flagstones seemed wider.
“This is the shelter,” I murmured. “Isn’t it?”
“For the most part,” he said absently. He’d excavated a handful of what looked like river pebbles from a pocket and was placing them on the windowsills and along the walls.
He continued in an absurdly reasonable tone, “Oh, but I didn’t bring the exterior walls.
The neighbours would have noticed. But everything between them is here, only stretched a bit. ”
“What on earth does that mean?”
He made no reply, still pacing from window to window and pausing to mutter to himself, or perhaps to the pebbles. In the same moment, my mind cleared enough for me to remember the poor cats, who were more important than interrogating him anyway, and I hurried to attend to them.
They were unharmed, though clearly terrified, cowering at the backs of their cages.
I doubted I would improve their mood by setting them loose, as most cats are alarmed by unfamiliar environments, and indeed they only shrank into themselves when I reached in to pet them.
Clowder, though, was out the door as soon as I swung it open and sticking to the front of my sweater like a burr.
I wrapped my arms around her and only barely managed to catch one of her kittens, an undersized ball of fluff named Ron Ron, as he leapt after his mother.
I placed the kitten on my shoulder for want of anywhere else to put him.
I turned to find Havelock watching me, his dark eyebrows knitted. “What is the point of your charity?” he said. “Do you provide shelter for other city pests? Will I find raccoons stuffed in the upstairs closets?”
His voice held more genuine confusion than it did disdain.
There was a ringing in my ears, and for a moment I was so angry that I could barely see.
It wasn’t a sentiment I liked to indulge; I’ve always preferred to make amends with people rather than carry around resentments.
Perhaps this was why giving in to my anger was so satisfying, and also I had long wished for the chance to tell a magician just what I felt about him.
“What is the matter with you?” I demanded.
“You’ve endangered my life—not to mention my business and reputation—as well as my cats by deceiving me about your identity.
Lynx and Fant?me might have been killed!
And who knows how long we’ve escaped from your sister—what if she returns?
What is your plan to keep her away from here?
What am I supposed to do now that you’ve moved the shelter to a new location?
Surely the police will notice such a ridiculous display of magic and think we’re in league now—I could be shut down!
And what will happen to the cats then? Did you think of any of this, or are you incapable of considering anyone besides yourself, like all other magicians? ”
Now, it’s unlikely that I cut a particularly intimidating figure in that moment, with a cat stuck to my sweater and a kitten on my shoulder—Ron Ron seemed to take offense to my raised voice and was biting my ear.
But I recoiled from my own boldness almost as soon as the last word left me, and cowered back, certain that he would blast me into the storm as he’d done with Valérie.
But to my astonishment, Havelock had also fallen back a step and was gazing at me with trepidation.
“What a sermon!” he said. “Do you think I’m happy about this?
I don’t want anything to do with your charity, if you can call it that.
For one thing, it’s so silly that it stands out, which defeats the purpose—my shop requires a cover that is nondescript.
And, two, I’m allergic to cats. I don’t know what Yannick was thinking. ”
He returned to whatever he was doing with the pebbles.
Several coins lay scattered about the floor from his battle with Valérie—did they have magic still in them?
I had no idea, but as soon as the thought occurred, an uncharacteristically violent urge overtook me, and I snatched the coins up and began hurling them at him, one by one, in the hopes that he might end up magically strung up like Valérie, or, even better, transformed into something unpleasant.
“Ah!” he cried as one connected with his nose, and he shielded his face with his arm.
Another coin bounced off, narrowly missing his glasses.
“Now I’m convinced—Yannick has lost his senses, renting my shop to such an obstreperous person.
Can’t you see I’m working?” He gave me a considering frown. “I should fetch a sleep spell.”
“You—” I stumbled to my feet, dislodging Clowder and Ron Ron, and raised my hands. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare do magic on me.”
“It would be for your own good,” he said, but he was already turning away again. “But I can see you’d only be more insufferable after you came to. Stop pestering me. Valérie could have learnt of this place too, you know. I have to make sure the wards are secure.”
“From what I saw at the other shop, your wards are as good as useless,” I snapped. “Will you at least do me the courtesy of telling me why she attacked us in the first place? Or is it beneath the dignity of the great Witch King to speak in anything other than nonsensical gibberish?”
He paused, toying with the pebbles in his hand.
“She thinks I have a particular Artefact. A book that allows a person to travel to the past, there and back. It is the only enchantment of its kind ever created. But it doesn’t exist—it’s a rumour, and I’ve no idea why she’s so convinced I have it.
According to magical lore, it was created by Alice Vortigern, the greatest magician who ever lived, in the seventeenth century. ”
I was so relieved that he had finally answered me with something approaching clarity that a sliver of my anger dissolved.
“Then—she wants to change the past?” I said.
“But no—that’s impossible. Even for magicians.
” I felt another surge of terror, thinking of such a spell in the hands of someone as violent as Valérie. “Isn’t it?”
“I suppose so,” Havelock said in a flippant tone that did little to reassure me.
“I’m not a scientist. Most magicians fantasize about getting their hands on the spell because it would lead them to other powerful spells—namely, those housed in Vortigern’s library.
She put all her spells in books, and her library burned to the ground in the 1680s, around the time of her death.
A magician who could retrieve even a dozen of Vortigern’s spells in the moments before they burned could become the most powerful person in existence.
That would not change the past, would it?
The library was reduced to ash, and what would be altered if a handful of ashes went missing?
But as for the present—well, that’s another matter. ”
A shudder went through me. “Her spells are dangerous, then?”
His gaze grew distant. “One is rumoured to grant immortality. What is more dangerous than that? More people than you think would commit murder for such a spell.” He shrugged, and placed another pebble against the wainscotting.
“Though Vortigern is dead, so it seems unlikely that it ever existed. Why wouldn’t she have used it on herself? ”
“What about fathoms?” I said, trying to settle my whirling thoughts. “You used that word before. Magic, it—it comes from these fathoms?”