Chapter 25
By the end of the week, Yannick and I had organized most of the second floor.
We had yet to find any Artefacts from Walker Clem’s collection, save an enchanted portrait that hid any doors in the wall it was placed on, but we did unearth a swarm of silverfish beneath a mountain of crates against the rear wall.
Horribly, the little beasts had somehow absorbed the bioluminescence spell Havelock had inflicted on the spiders, and they scattered like an army of twitchy fireflies.
I let Yannick use the pen Havelock had given me—he had an ease with it that I lacked, and never jumped when it came to life and began speeding across the page as if an impatient ghost had got hold of it.
And yet, when Yannick left to bring back lunch, I took up the pen again and used it to identify the spell in a medieval broom made from birch twigs, which turned out to be—quite logically—a spell for freshening a room.
I’d found that most older spells were of a utilitarian nature and accorded with the Artefacts that bound them, whereas modern magicians tended towards unnecessary whimsy, like putting a spell for concealment in a gaudy floral parasol.
I gave the floor of the basement a few sweeps, muttering the simplest of commands I’d learned from Yannick: the smell of must and cobwebs was replaced with lemon, and a breeze so pure it could have been summoned from an alpine meadow lifted the hair from my face.
Once I realized what I’d done, I nearly dropped the broom.
It’s only because it’s useful, I told myself. Yes, magic could be interesting. Beautiful, even. But that didn’t negate its harms, and what use was beauty, anyhow, if it brought nothing of good into the world?
I looked around with relief. The crate Yannick was investigating held the last uncatalogued Artefacts on the second floor.
It had been more of a jumble than the first, and yet it had taken us less time to catalogue each Artefact as we grew more efficient.
It was now a near mirror image of the first floor, minus the worktable, with three neat rows of shelving.
élise had to leave in the afternoon to help Gabriel with something, so I came upstairs to mind the shelter while Yannick got started on the third floor.
To my delight, our visitors had only increased, and while many came simply to marvel at our supposedly enchanted cats, we saw two adoptions that day.
The lucky cats were Nuit, a black cat with batlike ears, and little Lynx.
I felt a little twinge of regret, because I had always seen Lynx as Laurent’s cat. And yet, I reminded myself philosophically, he couldn’t expect Lynx to wait around for him forever.
By the time I had closed the shop and finished the evening checklist—feeding the cats, administering medications, cleaning cages, and so on—I was close to collapsing with weariness.
I lit a fire in the oven and pulled the armchair close, sinking into the cushions with a groan of relief.
Yannick had left and I was alone in the quiet shelter, most of the cats having settled down to sleep off their supper.
Flakes from another snow squall pecked at the windows like the beaks of tiny birds.
“What do you think?” I murmured to the other armchair. “Have I made a dreadful mistake, making this bargain with Havelock Renard?”
The armchair sat in quiet contemplation.
Banshee quickly staked a claim to my lap, lolling on her back and stretching her paws towards the fire.
His Majesty skulked in the darkness against the far wall—patrolling for mice, I assumed.
He liked to leave their bloody corpses lined up by my bed at night so that I could be cheered by the spectacle of his hunting prowess immediately upon awakening.
I had not been treated to such a sight in some time, though, as all mice seemed to flee a place as soon as His Majesty turned up, which was perhaps why he bullied the other cats so—it was, at least in part, a product of boredom.
I called to him, but he seemed absorbed in his business and vanished into some crevice.
Ambulance awoke and began his customary caterwauling. I was aware that I would not know a moment’s peace until I let him out of his cage, and so I settled him on my lap, while Banshee took the other armchair.
Poor Ambulance had been adopted twice now, and twice returned to the shelter.
Unfortunately, in addition to his lamentable vocal cords, the cat had the personality of a raccoon.
He had proven himself a menace to both of the households who had taken him in, getting into the garbage no matter how many obstacles were placed in his way, clambering up curtains, and knocking over any item that wasn’t at least twice his weight, particularly if it was easily broken.
I scratched Ambulance’s cheek, and the cat leaned into me, purring thunderously.
Aside from his destructive tendencies, he had an exceptional temperament, and I knew he only needed a caretaker who would be patient with him and correct his misbehaviour.
I would not give up on him, even as part of me despaired at the prospect of him being returned a third time.
It was not good for a cat, who could fall in love with their caretakers as easily as the reverse.
After the second home failed, Ambulance had curled himself into his nest of scarves for three days, barely stirring even to nibble at his food.
At some point, I drifted off. When I awoke, the fire was down to the embers, and Ambulance and Banshee had curled up together on the rug, close to the fading warmth.
“What did I tell you about letting me doze like an old woman?” I muttered at the other armchair, though Robin had never in his life woken me from one of my fireside naps, even when I began to drool, a spectacle he had always found highly amusing.
I squinted at the fire, confused. I’d fed it only a few small pieces of kindling, and yet the embers lay as deep as the length of my thumb, and covered the bottom of the stone oven. But that was not the most peculiar thing.
Within the oven was a tray of éclairs.
Wonderingly, I scooped out two éclairs, mindful of the hot tray—they seemed a minute or two shy of perfectly baked. Then, for reasons I could not explain, I politely shut the oven door.
I sat motionless with the éclairs on my lap, staring at them as if they would disappear.
For all I knew, they would. Banshee, ever alert to the arrival of food, bestirred herself and placed her forepaws on my knee to sniff them.
Finding nothing of interest in pastry, magical or not, she wandered off.
Abruptly, the light dimmed in the oven. I opened the door with a shaking hand and found what was clearly the remnants of my own smaller fire there, now lightly scented with sugar.
I pulled out my pocket watch. It was just past midnight.
I laughed. The oven was enchanted to make pastry at the stroke of midnight. But the enchantment didn’t last, and the pastry vanished after a few moments. The ones I’d removed remained, however, as if my touch had broken whatever spell lay upon them.
Well, that explained the smell of baking that never left the shop even after we had filled it with cats.
Perhaps it was my growing fondness for the magic pen Havelock had given me, or perhaps I was just becoming used to living in close quarters with magic, but this did not alarm me as much as it once would have.
I leaned back in my seat and bit into the first éclair. It was soft as marshmallow, and although it hadn’t been iced, the pastry was sweet and buttery and delicately flavoured with lemon. The cats dozed in the flickering light, and I couldn’t remember when I’d last felt so peaceful.
Naturally, that was when I caught the smoky scent of magic emanating from the rear of the shop. I turned in time to catch a fearsome glimpse of the Rivenwood yawning open behind me, a wilderness of trees cupping pools of white and pink flowers deep enough to drown in.
This time, though, the door opened onto a village, or the remnants of one.
A steep hillside, dotted with an equal number of trees and houses, built upon flat shelves cut out of the mountain.
They were humble in size and made of pale stone, all ruins now, and roofless, their walls enclosing small meadows of wildflowers.
A flock of black birds perched atop one wall, seeming to gaze out at me, which made me shudder.
Even from a distance I could tell there was something wrong about them, and I was inexplicably certain they had something to do with what had happened there.
Before I could properly take it in, something darted through—a ghost made of shadow and flame, I would have thought, if I hadn’t known better.
And then Havelock stood where the ghost had been, trails of lambent shadow falling about him, which vanished when they touched the floor.
He turned towards the door to the Rivenwood and moved his hands as if he were pushing something against it, but there was nothing there.
My mouth fell open in dumb astonishment as, slowly but surely, the door faded away, as if he were pushing a piece of our world into the door.
The wind from that dark world buffeted at him, which made his cloak and hair billow—and then, abruptly, the door was gone, and the world was whole again.
He turned, the edges of him still sparking a little, and then, to my great amusement, he jumped like a startled cat at the sight of me. I had been cowering instinctively, but I gave a snort of laughter.
“Clearly you didn’t know I was here,” I said. “So I can only assume you chose a dramatic entrance for the sake of impressing the cats. Did you hope they might come to worship you as magicians do?”
He gave me a rueful smile. “More fool me if I did,” he replied. “It seems clear those creatures worship no one but themselves.”