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“Old spells are unpredictable. They can warp or stretch, or take on new facets. People think that magic spells can break, but in fact magic is more like water. One can contain it in vessels, but it always wants to shift, to flow. I was unpicking the workings of a medieval summoning spell last week, and found it just as likely to repel as to…”

“Wonderful,” I murmured faintly, not listening to him as he rambled on. “Just wonderful. Not only do I have a spell on me, it’s a mutated spell. How comforting.”

He narrowed his eyes, and I forgot for a moment how strangely easy it felt, talking to him. But he only said, “What happened?”

I explained how, in the weeks following the duel that had damaged the old shelter, I’d been drawn to Rue des Hirondelles time and again—too often, I realized now, for mere coincidence.

“Yes,” he said when I’d finished. “It sounds like she enchanted you. What wonderful luck! Her spell couldn’t have rebounded on a maker of ice cream or fine wines. No, it found a woman who makes my eyes itch by her proximity alone.”

I realized his eyes did look red and glanced down at myself—I was wearing one of my old sweaters, which I rarely took the lint brush to.

“Sorry,” I said. I couldn’t work out whether I should thank him. The idea of doing so was absurd, and yet I’d endangered him by moving there—inadvertently, of course—and he hadn’t thrown me out, or subjected me to some cruel form of punishment, which didn’t exactly accord with his reputation. I realized I no longer believed in his reputation, though that didn’t mean I understood him, or thought him good. Goodness was hardly defined by not being the cause of an apocalypse.

And anyhow, Havelock’s quarrel with his sister had been the reason I’d lost my home. Did I really owe him any thanks, even if the quarrel wasn’t of his making?

For some reason, though, the question that surfaced through all this doubt was “What does your face look like under all the spells you’ve put on yourself?”

“I don’t have a face. I’m actually a handful of cobwebs mixed with moonlight, like all dark magicians.”

I scowled, suppressing an unexpected snort. “I’m being serious.”

“Are you ever anything else?” He paused. “I have only the one spell on me at present.”

So he had always looked like a handful of mismatched puzzle pieces. I glanced around the room, which, now that I was able to focus on it, seemed specially designed to maximize comfort. In addition to the couch there were two wide, squashy armchairs, and lamps perched on various tables and bookshelves. Wool rugs were scattered about, a few heaped in a pile in front of the fire, as if Havelock were in the habit of curling up there when the fancy took him. On the whole, it was more like the manifestation of some librarian’s fantasy than a dark magician’s lair.

“Yannick thinks you store your most powerful spells down here,” I said.

“Yes. He leaves me alone that way.”

I gave a huff of laughter. “He said the trapdoor was locked.”

“I never bothered with a locking spell. I just told him it was, and he never tested it.”

So Yannick was afraid of Havelock, at least a little. “Why is Valérie so convinced you have this book?”

“The first thing you must understand about my sister is that she is an insufferable egotist,” he said. “The surest way to stump her is to ask about the last time she was wrong about something. She claims she’s been following the book’s trail for years. She tracked it to a collector who sold it back in the ’90s to a reclusive American magician called Walker Clem. He died without heirs, and his Artefacts were inadvertently donated to a museum. A few years ago, I was able to purchase his collection from the museum once they worked out they were magical Artefacts, not an old man’s collection of antique curios—they were only too happy to be rid of them. But Vortigern’s book was not among the Artefacts.”

“Are you certain?”

“Of course,” he said, looking offended. “I would have recognized it.”

I considered this. “Where did you put Clem’s collection?”

“Oh—” He waved a hand. “No particular place. I remember he had a collection of poison enchantments that mimic ordinary illnesses when cast, which I took apart and stored in one of the cabinets. They were nasty things, but fascinating in their own way, and strengthened by five-layer hexes—”

Just as I thought. “Did the collection contain any books?” I cut in, because I could see he was building up a head of steam again. “Vortigern’s wouldn’t necessarily look like a grimoire, yes? It could be a guidebook to mushrooms of the Acadian forest or a treatise on ridge and furrow farming. If an Artefact is just a vessel to store magic, surely there are Artefacts that don’t look particularly interesting but contain powerful spells.”

“I would have sensed Vortigern’s enchantment,” he said. “Her spells have a distinct signature.”

“Are there spells for hiding other spells?”

He was fiddling with one of his rings, gazing into the distance with a slight frown between his eyes. “Yes, but—”

“And given that you didn’t learn of the potential importance of Clem’s collection until later, when Valérie came looking for it, you might not have examined everything closely.”

He didn’t reply for a moment. Absently, he removed the ring he’d been toying with and tossed it on the table. I leapt back in my seat with a muffled shriek, bringing my hands up.

He gazed at me in surprise. “What are you doing?”