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Havelock looked exasperated. “As I keep saying, not that anyone is listening to me, I have no interest in wars, intrigues, plots, machinations, et cetera. If only people would leave me alone, none of this would have happened.”

Élise gave a snort of laughter, though I could see she was too exultant to make more than a half-hearted attempt at her usual antagonism towards Havelock. “And I’m going to believe you are the innocent victim in all this?”

“No, you’re going to believe I feast upon the hearts of infants and sleep beneath a blanket of kitten hides, like you always have.”

“I almost wish you did,” Élise said. “Agnes would have stabbed you to death a long time ago. Also, you look like you’re about to spontaneously combust. Agnes, should he be so close to the filing cabinets when he’s like that?”

Yannick, who had been quiet through all this, his hands pressed into his hair as if attempting to physically contain his astonishment, said, “I don’t understand. Didn’t everyone see Havelock fighting Valérie outside this very shop? Surely the public knows there’s some connection—why are they supporting us?”

Élise rolled her eyes. “I was hoping you weren’t going to mention that. Didn’t you read the signs?”

She drew one of the curtains back, and we crowded around the window. I had not been paying the signs too much attention before, but now I examined them more carefully, my mouth falling open.

Havelock Renard is not the enemy, read one. Another: Havelock saved my daughter’s life. And: Magicians are part of our community, too.

My initial impression hadn’t been wrong—most of the signs were about the cat shelter or opposing the bylaw. But there were far more signs expressing favourable sentiments towards Havelock than I would have anticipated, that number being zero.

“Havelock,” I called faintly, but he had already come to stand behind me at the window. He made an inarticulate sound of dismay and turned away to begin pacing from one end of the shelter to another.

“How did this happen?” Yannick said. He looked nearly as disturbed as Havelock did. “Did Roger Fairwood—”

“It wasn’t the Gazette,” Élise said. “Or not only them. Haven’t you noticed that the papers have spent the past week talking about that battle between Havelock and Valérie’s apprentices? Initially the reports said that Havelock was equally to blame, that it was another irresponsible street duel that got out of hand. No one was even mentioning the shelter. But more eyewitnesses have come forward, all saying that Havelock wasn’t trying to duel Valérie, he was trying to stop her from tearing the shelter apart—and not only that, but he also used his magic to protect the crowd from Valérie’s apprentices.”

I gave a short laugh. “I don’t recall that part. Though I suppose—” I thought it over. “I suppose you could interpret things that way. Those magicians were causing chaos, with no thought to bystanders, and Havelock did stop them.”

“Do they know this is his shop?” Yannick demanded.

Élise shook her head. “I don’t think so, though some may suspect it. The story I saw this morning in La Ville speculated that he lives in the neighbourhood and stepped in to stop Valérie out of samaritanism. The paper ventured no explanation for why Valérie attacked us, but seemed to imply we are not only trading in enchanted cats, but Artefacts too.”

I groaned. “Naturally. That’s what their police sources would have told them.”

Havelock hadn’t been listening to us. “No,” he said. “I—no. I refuse to be part of a neighbourhood. I will never be left alone. There will be people demanding not just charmed cats, but horses and umbrellas and all sorts of silly things. This is not some magical tinker’s shop.”

Élise looked up, her jubilation becoming a malicious sort of glee. “That’s right, they won’t leave you alone if they find out you are not the fearsome variety of villain at all, merely the crabby, antisocial sort, like some old witch who lives alone in the woods, cackling to herself. I would say you owe the world a great deal of enchanted umbrellas, Havelock Renard.”

He only rolled his eyes at her characterization, but then the import of her words seemed to sink in, and he looked ill. “It won’t be hard to make them afraid of me again,” he said. “I’ll just unleash a few illusions on the city. Dragons, wolves, perhaps a chimera or two—”

“You will not!” I cried. “This is all so ridiculous—Havelock, what you should do is shut yourself away in your workshop again and never come out. Pretend you aren’t here, like you did before. Let these people think the rumours of you are just that—rumours.”

He looked so relieved I briefly wondered if he would kiss me again, and an unexpected warmth climbed up my neck. “That’s a much better idea,” he said.

I had my eye on the clock. “Given that I’m not, at present, in danger of being arrested, we might as well open the shop for the day.”

Yannick pressed his hands to his head again, his expression so transparently despairing that I almost laughed. I felt a great deal like laughing all of a sudden. “Agnes, we can’t open,” he said. “What are we going to say to these people if they ask about Havelock? What about the rest of Valérie’s apprentices? They weren’t all blasted by that lantern. We have to resolve all this before—”

“We can resolve it later,” I said, holding my hands up. “Right now, we have cats needing homes, and donations to collect.” I found my relief giving way to a jittery, triumphant sort of determination. “Something tells me we won’t fall short of donations today.”

I paused to give Séraphine one final pet before lifting her into the cardboard box. Her paws windmilled but she gave only a token cry of protest before settling into the scarf-blanket. I once again wondered if cats couldn’t sense when their fortunes had changed for the better, even if they resented the accompanying disruption. Poor Séraphine, a remarkably quiet Siamese, had lost her guardian the previous week and been left in our care by the old woman’s daughter, who could not keep her.

“There you are,” I said, handing her off to her new caretaker, a soft-spoken conductor with greying hair and a grim look. “I would recommend indulging her at first, even if she misbehaves. She’s suffered a loss, which cats do not forget as easily as people think.”

“I know a bit about that,” the man said, then fell silent. I pressed his hand briefly, and finished up the paperwork for him. We had already completed our interview and I was confident that Séraphine would be happy in her new home.

After the man left with the box tucked under his large arm, looking less nervous than when he’d come in, I flipped the sign and locked the door.

The shop was warmly lit by both fire and lamps, and the faintest scent of baking still hung in the air—the enchantment seemed to have sunk deep into the stones of the oven, and still reliably turned back time each midnight. Only two pairs of eyes gazed at me: those of Simone, a small grey tabby, and Mme. Annette, a matronly calico, both only a few days in our care. We had restocked both shelters twice in the fortnight since Valérie’s attack, and had even accumulated a waiting list. Our donations had also shown no sign of decreasing, and we were making plans with Dr. Para and half a dozen other vets to have as many feral cats trapped and neutered as possible over the next several months. I was optimistic that we could halve the city’s stray cat population within the next two years, and if things continued as they were, that would be only the beginning.

“I’ll head out, then,” Mina said, emerging from the back room, where she’d been writing up a supply order. “Unless you need anything?”