Chapter 15
élise arrived shortly thereafter, and we made our way to the Rue des Hirondelles shelter to see what had become of it, leaving Mina in charge of our new location.
“What will we do if he’s there?” I said. Our rapid footfalls against the cobblestones echoed the pounding of my heart.
“Why would he be there?” élise said. “He moved everything. So his workshop is on Rue Sainte-Sophie, isn’t it?”
“I have no idea—I don’t know how his horrid enchantment works.” I hadn’t gone down to the basement to check if Havelock had brought his workshop. The trapdoor was there, but there could be nothing beneath it, for all I knew. Havelock could still be in the Rivenwood.
A wisp of cold trailed down my back at the thought of that dark world, lush and foreboding. The memory was mixed with curiosity, which disturbed me almost as much as the place itself.
It was soon abundantly clear that wherever Havelock was, it was not Rue des Hirondelles.
The shelter appeared unchanged from without; the green curtains, which somehow were here, too, were closed.
But when I peered through the square of green glass in the door, it was as if the glass had grown thicker, more obscuring.
“What the hell,” I muttered, fumbling with the key. The lock clicked and the door swung open. Because Rue des Hirondelles was on a hill, the door could only drift so far before it hit the slope of the sidewalk, which it did with a dull clang.
“My God,” élise said.
We were staring into—absolutely nothing. What lay beyond the threshold was a greyish void, scentless and ice cold. If that wasn’t uncanny enough, the nothingness rippled slightly at the edges, as if testing its bounds. I held out a hand, wanting to see what it felt like, but élise slapped it down.
“Have you lost your mind?” she demanded. “Don’t touch it!”
“There isn’t any it to touch,” I pointed out.
“Well, then, don’t touch what isn’t there!” she cried, her voice rising in pitch. I stared into the absence for another moment.
“I thought there would be something,” I murmured.
But Havelock, it seemed, had been thorough in his relocation spell.
I wasn’t entirely certain there was even any air left behind.
It was as if the former bakery had been torn from the fabric of the world by some god, as if I’d needed another reminder of the terrifying extent of his power.
It was fortunate that the door opened outwards—I don’t know how we would have closed it again if we’d had to reach through the nothingness to grasp the doorknob. I pushed it shut.
“Coudonc!” I exclaimed. “This is absurd. Well, we certainly aren’t opening today, are we? That will give the police another reason to suspect us of something nefarious.”
“Really?” élise gazed at the shop doubtfully.
“It looks the same from the outside. They’ll probably just assume we’re busy arranging the new location, if they notice at all.
I don’t think anyone’s first thought when they see a Closed sign on a shop is that the owners have magically relocated to another street and left an abyss behind. ”
“Laurent is already suspicious of our landlord,” I argued. “And he knew something was off about the cats yesterday—poor Thoreau looked like he’d been bathed in tomato juice! I don’t want to put even more questions into his head.”
“You mean Detective Rouzet,” élise said.
“Yes.” I frowned suspiciously at the look on her face. “What?”
“You keep calling him Laurent,” she said, knitting her brows in exaggerated confusion. “I wonder why you’re on such familiar terms?”
“He asked me to call him Laurent,” I said even as I felt my cheeks heat. Being a person who cried and blushed easily was enormously inconvenient, as people were always taking it to mean more than it did.
And it certainly did not mean anything in this case.
“I wonder if Laurent suspects that Havelock owns the place,” I said, speaking half to myself. “If the mayor knows he’s in the city, I’ll bet the police have been warned, too.”
élise grimaced, her gaze fixed on something behind me. “Speak of the devil.”
I started and whirled around, but it was only Yannick—he’d crossed the street in our direction and was now kicking his way through the snow piled against the sidewalk.
“Hello!” Yannick said, giving us one of his nervous smiles.
“I trust everything is well? I’m sorry I was gone a few days—I hope those pipes didn’t give you any trouble in my absence!
I had some business—ah, I was visiting a sick aunt.
In Gatineau. Yes, I had business in Gatineau, in addition to the sick aunt, so—”
“Yannick,” I said. “Shut up.”
“We know you’re a magician, you ass,” élise said, advancing on him.
“And we know you were hiding Havelock Renard in the basement.” She punctuated each sentence by stabbing her finger into his chest. It should have been ridiculous.
élise was a full head shorter than him, but her expression held such focused fury that Yannick blanched and fell back.
“You lied to my sister, and nearly got her killed. You and that bastard you work for. If you don’t start telling the truth, I’ll go down to Havelock’s secret little shop and find a spell that will blast you to pieces.
I might not be a magician, but I promise I’ll give it my all. ”
“I—” The colour had left Yannick’s face, and he stood gawping at us. “Havelock—is he—?”
“His sister attacked us,” I said. “She nearly pulled the building down on our heads. We’re lucky none of the cats were injured or worse.”
“Valérie,” he murmured, wincing. “She found him, then. He always said she would, despite all the spells he put on the place to keep her away. Is Havelock all right?”
He looked so worried that it brought me up short. I don’t know what sort of relationship I’d expected Yannick to have with Havelock—well, what kind of relationship could exist between the Witch King and his henchman?—but I’d not imagined there would be much warmth in it.
“He’s alive, if that’s what you mean,” I said. “He had to relocate the shelter, so he’s gone to the Rivenwood to collect enough magic to put it back.”
Yannick looked alarmed. “The Rivenwood! But he’s been trying to stay away from there—he promised he would. How long ago did he leave? Perhaps I can pull him back before he goes too deep.”
He yanked open the door to the shelter and made to charge inside, but luckily élise and I placed a hand on either of his shoulders and hauled him back in time.
“Oh, my.” He squinted at the abyss. “That—you weren’t exaggerating. He moved it. The whole thing! Fascinating.”
He continued to stare into the nothingness as if it were some enchanting landscape. I reached out and shut the door again before the couple passing on the opposite sidewalk could get a look.
“He’s been gone since yesterday,” I said. “The shelter is now on Rue Sainte-Sophie. I thought you would have known he had a spare hideout in the city.”
“He mentioned something about it once,” Yannick admitted.
“But Havelock has woven so many spells that it’s difficult to keep track—some of them are beyond the capabilities of any living magician, or perhaps any magician at all, save Vortigern.
I’d no idea he’d created a relocation spell of this magnitude—I didn’t know this was even possible!
What was it like? When he cast it, I mean. ”
“Horrid,” I said succinctly. Given my recent experiences, I found the worshipful look on Yannick’s face distasteful.
“Well, if Valérie is in town, that explains the business at the train station,” Yannick said. “I would have been here hours ago, if I hadn’t been held up.”
“What business?”
“A group of magicians who came in on one of the earlier trains decided to have a bit of fun when they arrived,” he said, shaking his head.
“One transformed the locomotive into a team of winged horses, which levitated the cars as they pulled into the station. Another animated the benches in the station and had them lurch about, knocking people over, and made the turnstiles into hideous mouths that bit you as you went through. As you can imagine, this created some hysteria among their fellow travellers. Several people were trampled as they fled, and the northbound line had to be shut down. It sounds like the work of Valérie’s followers. ”
“Her followers?” élise repeated.
Yannick winced. “Yes—Valérie has more than a hundred of them. She calls them her apprentices, but really they’re just glorified hangers-on.
Wherever Valérie goes, they follow, and most have as little respect for the law, or really common decency, as Valérie herself.
They live like the aristocrats of old, for pleasure and their own amusement, doing just as they please.
Did you hear about the scene in Pamplona last year?
Those bulls turned into minotaurs? Those were her magicians at work. ”
“Wonderful,” I murmured. My pounding headache had returned. “Just wonderful! And now they’re here. Because of Havelock.”
“He isn’t—” Yannick began, but as if there were some enchantment in the name itself, there came another colossal squelch, nearly identical to the one last night.
“Calisse!” élise swore, covering her ears. Yannick started backwards and slipped on a patch of ice.
“Why does magic have to be so loud?” I exclaimed. “We’ll have the police at our door again.”
“I doubt it,” Yannick said, picking himself up. “It seemed as if all the officers in the city had been called to the train station. I’m not sure they have the time to investigate noise complaints at the moment.”
Hand trembling slightly, I pulled the door open again. And there was the shelter, returned to its rightful place, flagstones and lofty ceilings and ridiculous oven and all.
The shelter, and everyone in it. The cats were yowling in outrage, and an elderly woman stood gawping by the counter.
I recognized her as Thérèse, one of our regular donors and occasional volunteers, who seemed frozen in place, a blank look upon her face.
I saw no sign of Mina, which meant she must have stepped out for her break.
“Oh no,” I murmured, but élise surprised me by springing immediately into action.
“Damn construction noise!” she said, taking Thérèse by the arm and gently shepherding her towards the door. “They’re repairing the sewers on this street, I heard. Lovely to see you, Thérèse, but we need to close early today—it’s a lot of work, opening a new location!”
On and on she chattered, until she and Thérèse reached the door. The woman spoke not one word, only stared at élise in dull shock, then at the altered streetscape without. Bidding her a warm goodbye, élise shut the door behind her and turned the lock.
“Well done,” I said, unsure if I wanted to laugh or cry. Never have I been so grateful for élise’s gift of deception. “But you’ve overlooked one minor detail.”
“I’m aware of that.” élise leaned against the door. Her eyes had a glazed look, but otherwise she appeared ominously calm. “If you can come up with a reasonable explanation for the shelter relocating itself to the other side of the city, and then moving back again, have at it. At least she’s gone.”
Yannick was paying us no attention. He’d gone to the rear of the shop, calling Havelock’s name.
“He’s not here,” he said unhappily. “He must have returned to the Rivenwood after he put the shop back—or perhaps he’s at the other shop.”
He made as if to depart, but élise stepped deftly into his path. “Oh, no you don’t. We’ve not had anywhere near enough answers from you.”
“Why would Havelock be at the other shelter?” I demanded. “Isn’t it a void now, like this place was?”
“Hein?” He gave me a puzzled look that I found more than a little absurd. “Of course not. He only moved this shop, not the one in Rue Sainte-Sophie. So, naturally, the Rue Sainte-Sophie shop has now assumed its former appearance.”
“Naturally,” I said; Yannick seemed not to notice the sarcasm.
“You should stay here,” he said. “Valérie can’t get in if Havelock has fixed the wards, but that won’t stop her from accosting you in the street if she thinks you mean something to Havelock.”
“I mean nothing to him,” I said with certainty. “And Havelock claims he doesn’t have the book she wants.”
“Yes, and she clearly doesn’t believe him,” élise said. “Surely she’ll just keep attacking the shelter, if she’s that desperate to get her hands on this time-travel enchantment. So how do we get rid of her?”
“I don’t know,” Yannick said. He looked pale and more than a little lost. “Valérie wants power. Magicians have no government, no ruling bodies, mostly because there aren’t enough of us.
Not that there haven’t been magicians who have tried to set themselves up as emperor or queen or what have you, and force the rest of us to worship them. But they’ve all failed eventually.”
“So that’s it?” I said. “She wants to set herself up as a queen?”
“I don’t know if she’s ever said so explicitly,” he said.
“Valérie likes to talk about rights. About freedom. She believes it’s wrong that magicians should have to conceal their powers, as we’ve always done—to ‘make ourselves small,’ as she says, to fit into the world.
We were born with the ability to gather magic, and thus we should be free to use it as we will. ”
“It’s clever rhetoric,” élise said thoughtfully. “Yet if I recall correctly, those minotaurs killed ten people.”
“Yes,” Yannick said, looking away. “I really must find Havelock. Now that Valérie has tracked him down, we must come up with—”
“You do that,” I said. “I’m going down to the basement.”
Yannick froze midstep. “You’re—Agnes, Havelock doesn’t—”
“I don’t care what Havelock thinks.” I turned and marched to the back of the shop, leaving Yannick to trail after me. “He’s dragged me and the cats into this mess, without even so much as an apology, to hide his precious shop. It’s only fair that I should see what I’m being used for.”