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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.”

“Are you certain about that?” I said, as Banshee gave one of her voiceless yowls and made her way to Havelock. She deposited herself at his feet, paws in the air and tail curled around the toe of his boot.

Havelock eyed her with the same expression I had probably worn when I saw the Rivenwood. “I can’t work out what this one wants from me,” he said. “Is it merely senseless, or is it plotting something?”

“She likes you,” I said. “Banshee has never plotted anything in her life.”

He opened his mouth, then stopped, turning his head aside to release a resounding sneeze. He stepped over Banshee, who watched him go with a forlorn expression.

“I thought you weren’t supposed to go to the Rivenwood anymore,” I said. “Yannick said so. It will make you even more wicked than you are now.”

He raised his eyebrows at the half-eaten éclair in my hand. “And I thought you despised magic in all its forms. Don’t tell me you’re venturing off the moral high ground for the first time in your life. You’ll be hopelessly lost.”

“I make an exception for pastry,” I said, and held the second éclair out.

After a moment’s hesitation, he came towards me, bringing with him the scent of magic, and accepted it. He took a bite and sighed. “How I miss Claude.”

“Oh! Are these his, somehow?” Yannick had told me that the baker who had rented the main shop from Havelock was a man named Claude de la Fosse, a surly sort whose unprepossessing demeanour was counterbalanced by his skill with a rolling pin.

“They’re certainly a convincing imitation,” he said, settling himself elegantly on the stone ledge in front of the oven. “Though I’ve often felt they lack a certain aftertaste Claude’s had. Perhaps he seasoned his with frowns.”

“How does the enchantment work?” I said, motioning at the oven. “Should I have left room for the sugar pie it will spit out at one?”

“And madeleines at two? I’m afraid not. I’ve no idea what enchantment is on the thing, but it fires only at midnight.”