Chapter 22
I had little time to dwell on my predicament, however; the cats’ needs were, as ever, at the forefront of my thoughts. One of our kittens found a home the following morning, which meant that we had our first opportunity to put my plan in motion.
An hour before his new owner was due to collect him, I brought the cat down to Havelock’s workshop and set him on the table among the scattered notebooks and priceless Artefacts.
I braced myself for—something, I’m not certain what.
Perhaps a flash of light, or a shower of glittering sparks, but Havelock only placed his hand on the kitten’s back and murmured a word, while the cat rubbed his face on Havelock’s books.
“There,” he said, rubbing at his eyes. “One feline periapt.”
“Are you certain it worked?” I pressed. “Is the enchantment—”
“It’s a simple charm,” he said. “Activated by proximity. The more time a person spends with the beast, the more their small aches and pains will be lessened. I don’t know whether it will ease other ailments—surprising as it may be, I’ve never enchanted a cat before.”
“No, that’s perfect,” I said, delighted. I picked up the kitten, who yowled in dismay—all the cats seemed fascinated by Havelock’s shop, and would paw at the trapdoor whenever they were allowed to roam the shelter, no doubt because it was forbidden. “How long will it last?”
“A week or two, possibly longer. Living things leak magic faster than inanimate ones.”
“Leak magic?” I repeated.
“All Artefacts leak if they aren’t taken care of, particularly if they’re poorly made or ancient. Sometimes the magic is absorbed into something else. One Artefact leaked into the cardboard box it was kept in, and now I have an enchanted cardboard box.”
I pictured an old wine cask, slowly dripping onto the floorboards. It was an unexpectedly mundane image to associate with magic.
“Thank you,” I said.
Havelock let out a colossal sneeze. “Please don’t bring them into my shop again,” he said stuffily, and I hastened away, seeing no need to mention the fact that His Majesty had been skulking about down there for days.
Luck was in our favour, and two more cats were spoken for the following day: a black-and-white kitten named Chaplin and a regal tortoiseshell, Baroness.
Havelock placed a spell upon Chaplin that would guarantee pleasant dreams for his owner, while Baroness got a spell for harmony—she was being adopted into a large and boisterous family.
Our foot traffic continued to increase, and even if that was not coupled with a massive rise in adoptions, we were still doing well, and had gone from eighty-five to seventy-one charges between both shelters, even accounting for several new arrivals.
I was optimistic for the future; it did not hurt that Rémy and Oliver were happily spreading the story of the cat who cured his master’s sleeplessness to all who stepped into their bakery.
I could not spend as much time with the cats as I wished to, though, as my priority was excavating Havelock’s workshop.
In this I was assisted by Yannick, who seemed delighted to be finally cataloguing Havelock’s collection, even if we did not find Vortigern’s book there.
Most days I left the running of the shelter to élise or one of our volunteers.
Havelock contributed little to our efforts, hunching over his worktable muttering to himself as he worked on Lord knew what manner of enchantments, sometimes disappearing for a full day or more.
When he returned, I would ask if he had been off devouring maidens’ hearts or cursing the firstborns of his enemies—I came up with something different each time—to which he would reply that maidens’ hearts were far too bland for his taste and he preferred the seasoned hearts of elderly widows, or that his reputation would suffer if he did anything so predictable as cursing firstborns, thus he only laid curses on his enemies’ youngest stepchildren or obscure cousins.
I never got the answer I sought—namely, the truth—but I did not really expect it, and anyway I enjoyed teasing him, as I enjoyed interrupting him while he hunched over his Artefacts, particularly if he was so absorbed that I made him drop what he was doing.
I found myself continually drawn into his orbit, like a wayward comet pulled towards a dark star.
I tried to rationalize my behaviour—yes, I felt something for Havelock, but there was nothing of substance in it.
It was a troubling—though ultimately transient—infatuation.
Valérie’s apprentices continued to cause an array of minor calamities, pranks, and illusions that did not set anything else on fire, but had the effect of setting the entire city on edge.
I could not help wondering why she had not attacked the shop again.
Yes, Havelock had strengthened his warding enchantments, but she had made it past his wards once, hadn’t she?
How long would it be until she succeeded again?
Because of my preoccupation with Havelock’s Artefacts, it was a full two weeks before I was able to visit the second shelter in Rue Sainte-Sophie.
Yannick and I had successfully organized half of the basement’s first floor, and though we hadn’t come across Vortigern’s book, there was a part of me that could breathe a little easier knowing that the mess had been partly tamed.
From the way Havelock behaved, he might not have noticed his working environment had been so drastically altered, apart from the odd caustic complaint tossed my way about my hurricane-like tendencies, or his inability to locate a particular Artefact due to my having neatly arranged everything upon shelves, accompanied by a catalogue he refused to consult.
Yannick, though, was pleased, and told me that Havelock’s work would surely be much easier now, which filled me with an uneasy guilt.
But I had made my decision. I had allied myself with Havelock for the sake of the shelter. While I didn’t believe in his reputation anymore, not truly, that didn’t mean I understood him. And yet whatever he was, he would have continued in his chosen course without me.
So I told myself at night, when I lay awake and unable to sleep.
I felt nervous as I clambered off the tram, which stopped right outside the fortress of marble and glass that was the central bank.
Business had been slow at our new shelter at first, but it had picked up dramatically as the rumours about our cats spread through the city.
Two days before, Mina had even worried that they might run out, which I thought a rather optimistic concern.
And one that had been almost immediately solved when a sailor arrived with a litter of six-month-old kittens he’d found aboard his ship.
Well-dressed men and women alighted beside me, then hurried purposefully up the stone stairs, and for a moment I felt like a small fish overwhelmed by a river’s current.
I couldn’t stop or I would block the flow of those disembarking; thus I was halfway up the stairs before I extricated myself awkwardly, bumping into a scowling man in a fur coat.
I don’t know what astonished me more when I stepped inside the shelter: that the place was, if anything, even more opulent than élise had described, or the fact that it was bustling.
The ceiling was cavernous and the floors were a beautiful eggshell-coloured marble inlaid with a geometric mosaic of vines and fleur-de-lis.
Three electric chandeliers provided most of the illumination, and upon the glass-topped counters that had once held costly jewelry perched several dozen cat cages.
Admiring the cats were a couple with two small children, a young man with the look of a university student, two elderly women in expensive furs, and three people who I knew instinctively, from their posture and dress, to be employees of the bank.
While it might not have been what most shop owners would consider an enormous crowd, it was more people than I’d ever seen in the shelter at one time.
I stood on the threshold, blinking, until Mina came to my rescue.
“I just knew this ritzy place would be good for us,” she said, pulling me forward. “No, we haven’t run out, but look—we’re down to twenty-six. Twenty-six! We had forty only a few days ago.”
“What!” I looked around, astonished to see that she was correct. Well over half the new cages élise and I had purchased were now empty.
“We were thinking we might search the warehouses by the river tonight,” Mina said.
“I know there are still kittens down there—the ships bring them in. And I wonder if Dr. Para or one of her assistants might have time to neuter the ferals living behind city hall? That lot produces more kittens in a year than—”
I shook my head. “We can’t afford that, Mina. We’re already in debt to Noémie, and I can’t—”
“Are we?” I realized she was giving me a sly smile.
“Are we what?”
She didn’t reply, merely gestured me over to the counter, which still held the old jewelry shop’s ornate bronze-and-walnut cash register with a floral design that matched the floor. She pulled the handle and the drawer slid open, and she handed me a cheque.
“What’s this?” My eyes bulged as I read the number scrawled in expensive ink. “Mina! How did you—?”
“It’s a donation,” she said, laughing at my expression. “It came in yesterday. A nice woman who was quite taken with the shelter when she passed by on her way to the bank. It’s the third we’ve received this week. The other two aren’t anywhere near as large, but—”
She didn’t finish the sentence, because I’d pulled her in for a hug. She laughed again, and when I drew back, wiping my eyes, she offered me a handkerchief.
“Thank you,” I said, blowing my nose. “You’re wonderful, Mina. I hope you know that.”
She made a dismissive gesture, but I could tell she was pleased. “I had nothing to do with it! Shall I send a telegram to Dr. Para?”
“You had better—it seems we can pay off our debt now, with a little left over.”