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“Someone stole it from you,” I said.

He gave a quiet laugh. “That’s the most charitable explanation, isn’t it? What was I just saying about obstinate humanitarianism?”

“Is it not the truth?” I pressed. “Was it Valérie?”

He went still, which was answer enough.

“I thought so,” I said, feeling self-satisfied. “Well, it wasn’t difficult to work out. I hope this doesn’t offend you, but your sister is more frightening than you are.”

“I created the spell when I was nineteen,” he said. “I put it in one of Klinger’s globes, a particularly rare specimen from the 1700s. After that it sat on a shelf for years. I kept meaning to take it apart, but the spell was so powerful, I knew doing so would be difficult and dangerous. So I put it off, then put it off again.”

He set the music box aside, toying with his half-empty coffee cup. “I told Valérie about the spell. I wanted to impress her, as I often did back then. She seemed more irritated than impressed, and I assumed she was angry that I had been so irresponsible.” He paused. “She seemed to forget all about it until three years ago, when she said she wanted us to destroy it together. I thought it was strange, this sudden interest of hers, but I trusted Valérie, and I thought—I still wanted to impress her. So I brought it to her in New York, where I was still pretending to live.”

I shuddered—it seemed the only logical reaction. And yet there was something painfully human about the whole thing. “And she released the enchantment,” I said.

“She didn’t want the world to end, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said. “She resented my skill with magic, but at the same time, she never believed I’d really done it. That I’d been able to create something so far beyond her own abilities. She took the Artefact to the home of one of her rivals, a magician who had everything she wanted: followers, a real dragon’s hoard of Artefacts. I think that she assumed the effects would be devastating but limited; she could claim credit for whatever chaos ensued, and her other rivals would be too terrified not to give her whatever she wanted. Above all else, Valérie is reckless. The type to jump from a precipice without knowing the depth of the water. Her luck had always held before.”

“But,” I murmured, when he didn’t go on.

Havelock turned away from me and picked up the music box again. “You know the rest.”

“Do I?” But it seemed he was finished; the window had closed. He took up one of his notebooks and scribbled something. Sweat prickled my brow, and I felt slightly ill. Nevertheless, I forced myself to ask the question I most wanted to ask. “Why did you make the spell in the first place?”

I was surprised by how easily he answered. “No one had ever created a spell to end the world before,” he said. “Not even Vortigern. Most magicians thought it wasn’t possible. That’s the thing about magic—presumably it has limits, but we don’t know what those are. Magicians are like explorers unravelling the map as they go.”

Silence fell again, and I wondered if that was it. “I wanted to see if I could do it,” he said at last, still looking down at his work.

Yannick came downstairs then, and Havelock absented himself, still muttering at the music box, to barricade himself in his library, where he need not listen to us thumping about. I watched him go, frowning.

I turned to find Yannick eyeing me with a look of understanding. “What?” I demanded.

He held up his hands. “Nothing!”

“Yannick, I know what you’re thinking. In case you didn’t realize, I always know what you’re thinking.”

He looked away. “I—It’s just—you’re not the only one. That’s all.”

“What do you mean?” I said, though I could already guess. But I liked Yannick, and I wanted us to be honest with each other.

Yannick chewed his lip for a moment, then said in a rush, “There are at least two magicians and one collector who visit Havelock’s shop on a regular basis for purposes other than perusing his wares. None have succeeded in turning his head, nor am I certain he’s even aware of their feelings.”

I eyed him. “And can the same be said for you?”

“Oh!” Yannick gave me a surprised smile. “That’s not—I don’t have an interest in romance, with Havelock or anyone. Just not my thing. And as for Havelock, I’m not sure he’s capable of it.”

He sighed. “I do care about Havelock, though. He took me on as an apprentice when I had nowhere else to go.”

I nodded. Like many parents of magicians, Yannick’s had been horrified to discover what he was. He had been handed off from relative to relative until he turned eighteen, when he’d been turned out without a penny to his name. After living on the streets for several months, struggling to find employment, he’d followed another magician to Havelock’s shop, more out of desperation than anything else. And Havelock, with much sarcastic commentary and complaints, had let him stay as his apprentice, and assigned him mostly simple, useful enchantments—not spells to poison one’s enemies, as Yannick had expected—and even paid him a salary.

“Havelock isn’t always himself these days,” Yannick said. “He’s seemed—on the edge.”

“Of what?”

He was quiet, thinking, and a chill seemed to settle in the air. “I don’t know how to put it. I don’t know precisely what happens to a magician when they’re taken over by the Rivenwood, only the—aftereffects.”

I suddenly didn’t want to pursue the subject. “So far as I’ve known him, he rarely seems to fit the definition of evil villainy. Unless evil is defined by pettiness and snark.”

“He seems almost human when you’re around,” Yannick said, smiling. “I’ve never seen anybody intimidate him like you do.”