Chapter 37 #3
“Let me show you what I came up with,” he said. “Though you may despise it or deem it morally objectionable in some way, in which case I’ve no doubt you’ll educate me at length.”
He led me towards the stairs—not the ones leading to his workshop, but to the upper floor. I followed as if in a dream, still rather overwhelmed—and, if I’m honest, on the edge of tears from the look of delight on Banshee’s face.
He paused in the hallway and reached for the attic cord. The narrow staircase descended and he took my hand again—this time for balance; the attic stairs were rickety.
I grew nervous, wondering what strange magics he might have stored up here. But I let my breath out when I reached the top.
“It’s still our attic,” I said, suppressing a sneeze as I looked around.
I’d only ventured up here once or twice to store extra boxes of cat supplies, and it looked as it had on my last visit: a jumble of boxes, mostly of scarves—the former shop owner had stored her damaged or inferior product up here.
“Yes,” he said, motioning me over to the window. “Only it isn’t above the shelter anymore.”
I was beginning to feel dizzy. “Havelock.”
“Agnes,” he said, and I couldn’t help smiling at the excitement in his eyes. I went to stand by his side. The window was unchanged, but beyond it—
My hand squeezed the windowsill as the breath went out of me.
The familiar skyline of Montréal was gone, its innumerable church steeples and stained glass, as was the violet twilight and drifts of snow.
In its place was a starlit night and a sprawling city, laid out before me like a child’s model.
I recognized it instantly, though I’d seen it only in artists’ sketches: the narrow, winding streets of the medieval understory; the wider boulevards and squares lined with trees, their dark branches like jumbled scrawls of ink; the Seine carving its way through the streets, black splashed with gold from the streetlamps; and in the distance, the proud domes of the Sacré-C?ur.
“Another illusion,” I murmured.
“No,” Havelock said, looking slightly offended. He turned the handle on the window and pushed it open, and the wind brought it to me: the smell of another world. To me, anyhow.
“You said you hadn’t moved the shop,” I said plaintively. The dizziness was intensifying.
“I didn’t,” Havelock said, his expression growing animated.
“Just the attic. Which proved nearly as tricky as moving the entire shop—you wouldn’t think so, but it’s a matter of lining things up.
The six-layer portal spell turned out to be the easy part; I then had to stitch it with two seven-layer binding spells, one to hold the shop in place in Montréal, the other to affix the attic to its new location in the 17th arrondissement.
If I hadn’t done that, one or the other would have fallen apart or wandered off somewhere, and that isn’t an easy fix, even for me.
I needed magic from deep in the Third Fathom—”
I let his speech wash over me as I gazed out the window; it didn’t last as long as I’d expected. I looked back to find him regarding me with an inscrutable expression, seeming more in shadow than he had a moment ago, his otherworldly self settling over him like a veil.
“The attic is in Paris. But how—” I stared at the open trapdoor, with the Montréal apartment clearly visible below. “How does one get there?”
He gestured to the window overlooking the glittering city. “There’s a fire escape. I’ve tried it already; it’s quite safe.”
“Where did you get the idea for this?” I said. “One of your novels?”
A crack appeared in his veneer of confidence, and I realized how thin it was. He said, a little sheepishly, “Most of my ideas for spells come from my novels.”
I began to smile. “That must make the work more engaging,” I said. “And how convenient, to have a ready supply of inspiration in the form of your library.”
“It is,” he said, and told me about the book he’d taken this idea from, growing more animated as he spoke of this impossible unravelling of the rules that shaped the world.
I wanted to ask if he could put my bedroom in the Alps, to give me fresh air and a fine view each morning, but stopped myself—he might actually do it.
“But what is all this about?” I said when he was finished, folding my arms. “These extravagant gifts. Do they mark some occasion?”
It was as if all the magic in him went out, and he just stood there, gazing at me uncertainly. “I felt the need to apologize,” he began, then floundered.
“You know,” I said, “you could have simply asked me to coffee. It would have spared you a great deal of effort.”
He flushed. “The attic was merely—I wouldn’t presume, given everything—”
I decided to take pity on him. Havelock Renard might have created a spell to end the world, roamed the deepest fathoms of a fearsome otherworld, and defeated a dark magician in a blaze of magic, but I had seen no evidence that, in all his life, he’d asked a single person to coffee, or anything else for that matter.
“You’re right,” I said, suppressing a smile; of course I’d not intuited any meaning from his confused spluttering. “Paris has its share of cafés, doesn’t it? Restaurants too, I hear. The question is: Can you show your face in any of them?”
My dry tone seemed to steady him. “I can certainly show a face.”
“No,” I said, holding my hands up. “No disguises. Please.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s horrible,” I said. “I will never get used to you changing your features the way normal people change clothes. I’m sure you can come up with something else.” Besides, I quite liked his face the way it was, but I wasn’t about to say that; he might disappear again.
He seemed to consider. “One of the cafés in Montmartre is owned by a magician. We’re not the best of friends, but she owes me a favour. We can visit after closing.”
“That sounds lovely,” I said.
A genuine smile flashed across his face, chasing the sardonic glint from his eye, and for a moment I hardly recognized him. “I’ll speak with her now. You can follow in a few minutes, or I can return for you.”
Now it was my turn to splutter. “I—Now? I didn’t—”
But he was already pushing the window back and clambering onto the narrow balcony beyond, and then he was gone, the sound of his boots stomping down the ladder rungs fading into the night.
I looked at the stairs leading to the shelter.
I hadn’t finished my evening checklist—the cats had been fed, yes, but Havelock’s joke had hit the mark—I wanted to clean several of the empty cages in preparation for new arrivals from Longueuil’s shelter, and also put the monthly receipts in order.
We had volunteers who could do both tasks, it was true—in fact, there had been days recently when élise and I had more volunteers than we knew what to do with.
It would have been more sensible to remain than to follow Havelock, whose spell no doubt carried with it significant danger, not to mention that it was simply irresponsible to be transporting attics halfway around the world.
But perhaps I was tired of being sensible.
Banshee had followed me into the attic, trailed by Cataclysm. I put my hand out, but both were too occupied with cat business, sniffing every shadowy nook for threats or delicacies, ideally in the form of mice, and neither attended to me at all.
I turned back to the window, squaring my shoulders and trying to calm the thundering of my heart. I stepped over the window ledge, and then I lowered myself onto the uppermost rung of the ladder, taking my first step into a new city.