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I flushed. This implied Laurent had heard the rumours about our enchanted cats—and yet, his expression was friendly rather than suspicious. Even if he had heard the rumours, did I need to worry? The trafficking of Artefacts was illegal, but there was nothing illegal, to my knowledge, about placing a harmless charm upon a stray cat. It seemed the sort of item most politicians would not think to put into law, even as a footnote.

“Roger seems kind, but I admit I don’t know him,” I said carefully.

“No?” Laurent looked surprised. “His is one of the largest shipping companies this side of the Atlantic. Not to mention he owns a sizeable percentage of the city’s warehouses, as well as the Daily Gazette.”

“Oh! How silly of me.” Of course I had seen the Fairwood name on the side of many of the ships that roamed the St. Lawrence. “I didn’t make the connection.”

Something about the mention of the Gazette made me uneasy. That, and Roger Fairwood’s influence in the city—no wonder our rumours were spreading so well, with him on our side. Yet, it was what I’d wanted, wasn’t it? Gossip of magical cats, entertaining enough to draw the attention of the general public, but too vague to be widely believed?

We made small talk for a while, Laurent asking after Lynx and me gently teasing him with stories of how the cat was clearly pining for him, seeming uninterested in other suitors.

“The winter festival begins next week,” Laurent said. “I don’t suppose you’ll have any time to spare for it?”

“Oh—I doubt it,” I said. I loved the festival, which consisted of an outdoor market, tobogganing, ice castles, and other events scattered throughout the city. Robin and I had attended every year: I’d been content to tour the many food stands, eating toasted cheese and sugar pie until I felt ready to burst, while he’d been particularly fond of the masquerade in the park.

My attention drifted from Laurent as a familiar melancholy settled over me. The festival was so intertwined with memories of Robin that I’d never contemplated attending without him.

Laurent glanced away, but not before I caught the flash of disappointment in his eyes. It hadn’t been a casual enquiry—he had been asking me to attend with him!

“I always make a point of seeing the snow sculptures,” he went on before I could speak. “I used to compete as a boy. I won third place when I was ten.”

“No!” I said, smiling. “For what?”

He looked sheepish. “A polar bear.”

“Ah.” I nodded gravely. “They say the classics are the trickiest to execute. The standards are so high.”

“That’s what I tell everyone,” he said. “The truth is that the dinosaur I had in mind proved a tad overambitious. All those pointy bits.”

We laughed, and he told me how the contest had been a family tradition, passed down from his grandfather, who had won a record eight years in a row. His eyes grew warm when he spoke of his family, which made me like him even better than I already did.

“Anyway,” he said, “if you do have any spare time—not that it’s of interest to everyone—”

“I would love to go with you,” I said, realizing that it was perfectly true.

He smiled, the opacity of his demeanour dissolving, and he promised to call upon me again to arrange the details.

“Élise will be pleased,” Mina said after he left, giving me an uncharacteristic wink.

I scowled. “I thought you were unloading the supplies.”

“I was, but Élise made me promise to report any developments where your detective was concerned.”

I gave her a mock swat and she went away laughing. I turned back to the cats, feeling more buoyant than I had in days.

I saw nothing of Havelock over the next several days—another of his mysterious disappearances—and I missed him sitting at his worktable, muttering to himself or rubbing at his hair. I was adding another empty crate to the pile when I realized, to my astonishment, that I’d nearly tamed the entire first floor of Havelock’s workshop.

There were now two tidy corridors running lengthwise from the stairs, each lined with shelves and cabinets. I’d measured and constructed the shelves myself, which was why (I noted with satisfaction) Havelock’s Artefacts, which ranged awkwardly in size and shape, fit them so perfectly, not a one seeming out of place. The spent Artefacts, which had previously been mixed in haphazardly with the enchanted ones, were stored in crates against the far wall. At the centre of the middle row of cabinets was Havelock’s worktable, which now seemed almost an ordinary thing in its new context, the desk of some museum curator perhaps, rather than a precarious little raft about to be capsized by the teetering waves of treasure rising around it.

“It’s a new place entirely,” Yannick said wonderingly when he arrived the following morning. “You can see the floor. At times I wondered if the place even had a floor and wasn’t held up by spiderwebs.”

“We still have three more levels to work through,” I said with a sigh, though I was pleased by his praise. I should not have been so comforted by what I saw, for a poorly organized hoard of dangerous magic was probably preferable to one where the magician in question could find everything with ease, but such was my fondness for a well-organized space that it overrode my moral qualms. Even better than the new shelves was the fact that I’d labelled and catalogued everything in a notebook, so that any Artefact could be located within minutes.

Because of Havelock’s extended absence, it came almost as a surprise when I descended the stairs one morning to find him at his worktable, taking apart a delicate music box with unhurried concentration.

“Still here, Mme. Hurricane?” he said without looking up.

“You look dreadful,” I said bluntly. His eyes were darkly shadowed, and he seemed even more slender than the last time I’d seen him. “Have you had breakfast?”